• Feb

  9

  UK Opera’s Academy for Creative Excellence wins big in Atlanta competition

  Filed under: Central Kentucky Arts News, Musicals, Opera, Theater, UK; Tagged as: Academy for Creative Excellence, Annie, Junior Theatre Festival, Lilly Meekin, Sally Struthers
  
  

  Academy for Creative Excellence students celebrate their victory at the Junior Theatre Festival. Photos courtesy of the Academy for Creative Excellence.

  The University of Kentucky Opera Theatre’s Academy for Creative Excellence won several awards including outstanding performance at the Junior Theatre Festival last month in Atlanta.

  The Academy is the UK Opera’s preparatory performing arts program for school age students. The Junior Theatre Festival is presented by New York’s iTheatrics and Atlanta’s Theater of the Stars and sponsored by theatrical licencor Music Theatre International (MTI), Disney Musicals and the NBC series Smash. According to an MTI report, with more than 3,000 attendees, it is the largest musical theater festival dedicated to groups working with elementary school-, middle school- and high school-aged students.

  

  Lilly Meekin and Sally Struthers backstage at the Fox Theatre.

  Director Mary Joy Nelson said the groups of students were split up into pods of eight to 10 groups that perform for and compete with each other. The Academy for Creative Excellence group was honored for outstanding performance in their pod for their performance of excerpts from Seussical Jr. The honor meant that the group performed on the last day for the entire festival. Patrick Garr, a student at the School for Creative and Performing Arts was honored as best male performer in the pod.

  Among the adjudicators who evaluated the ACE group was choreographer and Butler University adjunct professor of dance and theater Kenny Shepard who said in his notes, “You may hear some coaches say, you’ve raised the stakes.” He added that ACE was unlike any other group he had seen.

  In addition to participating in the theater festival, the Lexington group got to see one of their own on stage at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre in the national tour of Annie, starring Sally Struthers as Miss Hannigan. Lilly Meekin, a 10-year-old student at Sts. Peter and Paul School,  was one of five out of 130 auditioners to win a spot as one of the orphans while the tour was in Atlanta.

  The Academy for Creative Excellence will present Seussical Jr. in its entirety on the University of Kentucky campus May 25-28. The specific location and other information will be announced at a later date.

  
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