Festival of Movement to showcase student talents

The Newfangled Theater Company is accepting submissions for Festival of Movement, this fall’s small show.

The Festival of Movement is designed to showcase student talents involving movement in any way. Students can create an act that emphasizes movement in a unique way and submit their act online to the NTC board.

Justin Heim, a senior pursuing a musical theater degree and chair of the NTC, originally wanted to put together a choreographer’s showcase. The NTC board broadened Heim’s idea to include all forms of movement.

“I see people around campus doing interesting things all the time,” Heim said. “There are so many talented people on campus.”

Movement can include anything from unicycling, to juggling, to stilt-walking, Rachel Geinert, a senior majoring in English education and theater and vice chair of NTC, explained.

Heim and Geinert were both involved with planning the Festival of Movement for the NTC’s small show.

Each act will have a four-minute time limit to show as many acts as possible. No microphones will be provided, as performers are encouraged to “use their voice to emphasize the movement,” Geinert said.

“We didn’t want to set too many parameters,” Heim said. “We left it open to encourage creativity.”

Also, one member of each act must be a registered student at any Tri-college university.

“We really want this to be a showcase for the entire campus and the tri-college,” Geinert said.

After the NTC board collects all submissions, they will do a preliminary screening of the acts. Two weeks following, they will do another mid-way screening by audition.

Heim and Geinert encourage students to submit acts “just for fun.”

“If you have the skill, why not show it off?” Geinert said.

The goal of the NTC is to involve the NDSU student body in their productions.

“The Newfangled Theater Company belongs to the entire student body,” Geinert said.

The NTC’s small shows in particular demonstrate people outside of the theater department taking an interest in theatrical performances.

The idea is “theater for and by the students,” Heim explained.

Theater offers opportunities to explore ideas and topics that cannot be explored through any other means, Geinert said.

“The point of the Newfangled Theater Company,” she said, “is to bring to life the things that young people living in the world today want to explore.”

Each year, the NTC puts on a small show and a main-stage show. This year’s main-stage show is titled “The Transdimensional Couriers Union,” and will be presented in April.

Those wishing to submit acts for the Festival of Movement can find the online submission form at https://adobeformscentral.com/?f=w1ZK-PPxGRyFq68J-QgGRA.

Deadline for submission is Sept. 5.

For more information, visit the Newfangled Theater Company Facebook page.