Kish students show off skills in acting showcase

The Kishwaukee College theater department held an acting showcase on April 28, featuring the talents of 12 beginning and advanced acting students under the direction of Nadine Franklin. Students performed scenes from “Barefoot in the Park” by Neil Simon, “Mercy Seat” by Neal LaBute, “Graceland” by Ellen Byron, “True West” by Sam Shepard and several other monologues.

The cast included beginning acting students Kate Busch, Amber Davis, Casee Edsall, Keely Haag, and Elizabeth Steed. It also included advanced acting students Ben Dougherty, Vincent Giles, Jessie Jacobo, Devon Nimerfroh, Kent Nussbaum, Ivy Pemberton, Coleman Ranahan and Gillian Strachan.

Nadine Franklin worked closely with the students – some whose future plans include the spotlights and some whose plans do not – in selecting and crafting their performances.

Ben Dougherty of Rochelle and Devon Nimerfroh of Malta took completely different paths to advanced acting with Nadine Franklin.

Dougherty has been acting since third grade.

“I love to act,” Dougherty said in a recent news release. “If I have to spend my life on a street corner performing monologues, I’ll do it.”

Dougherty had acted in productions throughout his years at Rochelle High School and was accepted into the theater department at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Nimerfroh is a pre-med student. He will graduate from Kishwaukee College in December 2009 and hopes to transfer to Loyola University in Chicago. He enrolled in Franklin’s beginning acting class just as a learning experience.

“I took the class for self development,” he said in the release. “The more you learn, the more you learn about yourself. I found out that acting is a cool way to learn.”

Franklin frequently stages productions that put the sometimes ugly actions, beliefs, behaviors and motivations of people under the microscope.

The past several autumns have found the Kishwaukee theater department pulling out all the dramatic stops – dealing with themes of addiction, homophobia and relationship conflicts. Fall 2009 will see a slightly different turn in a comedy.

The Kishwaukee College production of Neil Simon’s “Rumors,” a farce that focuses on upper crust New Yorkers trying to keep a dinner party fraught with disaster away from the media, will be staged Nov. 4-7. Franklin will hold auditions in mid-September.

For more information on the theater department at Kishwaukee College, contact Nadine Franklin at 815-825-2086, ext. 2720, or at nadinefr@kishwaukeecollege.edu.