SETC’s Community Theatre Festival — a three-day performance festival held each year during the annual SETC Convention — features community theatres representing the 10 southeastern states.
2019 Community Theatre Festival
The 2019 Community Theatre Festival is scheduled to take place Feb. 28 – March 2, 2019, as part of SETC’s 70th annual convention in Knoxville, TN at Austin East High School’s impressive and beautiful performance space.
Since 2019 is an AACTFest year, SETC’s two advancing productions will get the honor of representing our region at the National AACTFest 2019 in Gettysburg, PA, June 18-22, 2019.
Questions?
For more information, please contact:
Lyle Tate
Community Theatre Festival Chair
Phone: 662-312-3610
Email Lyle Tate
Tom Booth
Community Theatre Division Chair
Phone: 662-844-1935
Email Tom Booth
April J’C Marshall
SETC Director of Professional Theatre Services
Phone: 336-272-3645
Email April
2019 Adjudicators
James Alexander Bond
Bio coming soon.
T.K. Lee
T.K. Lee’s award-winning work crosses multiple genres: both on stage and off. At times a playwright, and other times a poet, he is at all times firmly planted in the southern tradition of gothic storytelling. His work has appeared in national publications including The Louisville Review, Carolina Quarterly and Deep South Magazine, to name a few. Internationally, his short fiction has been translated into French and Italian, and, in 2018, selections of his poetry, short fiction and playwriting were anthologized for the first time, through two collections published in the U.K.
Lee has also won accolades for his work in theatre, including here at SETC as well as AACTFest. His award-winning credits include turns taken as director (for 2009’s SETC winner Catfish Moon and other honors at AACTFest Tacoma), as actor (for 2017’s winner Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and other nominations at AACTFest Rochester), and as playwright (for 2018’s SETC winner Paper Thin).
After receiving his MFA in 2015 from Spalding University in Louisville, KY, he immediately joined the faculty in the nascent MFA in Creative Writing program at Mississippi University for Women, teaching both undergraduate literature and creative writing, as well as playwriting and poetry. His first collection of poetry, entitled To Square a Circle, debuted this past October at the Eudora Welty Symposium and has garnered high critical praise for Lee’s “uncanny wit; impeccable sense of pacing” which is ushering in “a dynamic new voice to southern poetry.”
On a personal note, he has three cats (Peej, Beeze and YinBin) because he was a nice guy that one time and fed them…and now they won’t leave. In fact, they’ve been not leaving for the last six years, four years, and going on three months, respectively.
Amy Wratchford
Bio and headshot coming soon.
2018 Community Theatre Festival
The 2018 Community Theatre Festival was held March 7-10, 2018, as part of SETC’s 69th annual convention in Mobile, AL at Mobile’s beautiful Saenger Theatre.
Congratulations to 2018’s winners!
- Best Production: I Am My Own Wife – Proud Mary Theatre Company, SC
- Best Production: Paper Thin – Starkville Community Theatre, MS
- Best Actor: Dave LaPage, I Am My Own Wife – Proud Mary Theatre Company, SC
- Best Actress: Drew Baker, The End of a Line – Theatre Tuscaloosa, AL
- Alabama: South City Theatre, Doubt
- Alabama: Theatre Tuscaloosa, The End of a Line
- Florida: Venice Theatre, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton
- Georgia: Fort Gordon Dinner Theatre, Don’t Dress for Dinner
- Kentucky: Actors for Children Theatre, Flowers for Algernon
- Mississippi: Center Players Community Theatre, Second Lady
- Mississippi: Starkville Community Theatre, Paper Thin
- South Carolina: Aiken Community Playhouse, The Last Five Years
- South Carolina: Proud Mary Theatre Company, I Am My Own Wife
- West Virginia: M. T. Pockets Theatre, Women on Fire
Testimonials
“As director of a new theatre company, I’ve found the SETC Community Theatre Festival to be constructive, well-run and a terrific way to network and grow. Actors for Children Theatre has had an enjoyable experience the past two years and we hope to be back!”
– Sarah Diamond Burroway, Actors for Children Theatre
