2019 AACTFest – Meet the Adjudicators
What is ADJUDICATION?
Adjudication is a response to a performance by your group. At AACTFest adjudication is conducted by 3 trained adjudicators who experience your production and share their response with all members of the production. The entire process is conducted in a friendly and supportive manner. It is a positive learning experience intended to offer ideas through which actors, directors, and technicians can learn and grow.
At AACTFest following each performance there is an abridged version held for the group that just performed that is given in the theatre (that the audience can observe). The performing group then gets a full report at the conclusion of the weekend’s festivities for them to take back to their organization and learn from.
Meet Michigan’s 2019 AACTFest Adjudicators
Ron Cameron-Lewis has judged AACTFest productions at the state, regional, national, and international levels. He has also taught the art of adjudicating twice at AACT National Festivals and five times in Canada.
In his home province of Ontario, Ron taught and coordinated the Music Theatre Department at Sheridan College in Oakville since its inception 46 years ago. It is now the largest and most successful Music Theatre program in Canada, with an international reputation. Many of Ron’s former students work on Broadway, the West End in London, on cruise ships around the world, and at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and Shaw Festival in Canada.
Ron has served as Member-at-Large for AACT since 2012 and has worked for regional theatres in Ontario, the Canadian Maritimes, and major TV networks. He has a degree from Western University, and he trained in theatre at the Banff Centre, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the University of London.
Larry Nielsen has been involved with community theatre since 1980, when he started as an actor and stagehand. Now, Larry mostly directs and adjudicates/responds. To keep his theatrical passion soothed, he remains active in his home group, Twin City Players. His most recent directing experiences have been Assassins, Book of Days, A Piece of My Heart, The Cover of Life, and A Streetcar Named Desire.
Larry is an experienced adjudicator of state, regional, and national AACTFests. He is also the CTAM Adjudication Chair. Larry retired after 32 years of public service. He is married and has two grown daughters.
Kathy Pingel has adjudicated AACTFest at the state, regional, national, and international levels, and in 2015 and 2017 she taught AACT’s Adjudication Workshop at the national festival. She facilitated AACT’s Theatre Education Directors’ Conference in 2010 and 2016. In 2016 she and her husband, Ron Ziegler, won the Cloris Leachman Award for best direction of The Hobbit. Kathy’s newest role is dramaturge for AACT’s NewPlayFest.
Kathy retired in 2015, after serving as the
Director of Education and Youth Programming at the Des Moines Community
Playhouse for 10 years. She also served as Artistic Director of the Kate
Goldman Children’s Theatre. She holds a BA in Theatre from Eastern Michigan
University and an MA from Northwestern University in Performance Studies. At
the Des Moines Playhouse, Kathy directed over 50 productions, including Anne of Green Gables, Holes, Don’t Dress for
Dinner, Cinderella, Biloxi Blues, Dinner with Friends, Lend Me a Tenor, Peter
Pan, The Wizard of Oz, and Sound of
Music.
Tickets for this three-day theatre competition will be available to the public at the door. For show times and more information on MI AACTFest 2019, visit owossoplayers.com. Michigan AACTFest 2019 is sponsored by Community Theatre Association of Michigan and hosted by Owosso Community Players at the Lebowsky Center.
If you wish to attend all performances you can get also sign up using the
INDIVIDUAL REGISTRATION FORM
