Setting the Stage : Theater festival will narrow the top college productions and actors before Washington finale.

Have you ever wondered where all the trained actors come from? They’re sprouting like spring seeds in colleges and universities all over the country, in professional-level theater departments that try to duplicate the real onstage world outside.

The most visible evidence of this is the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Washington, which each year presents the best of college theater productions from all 50 states and the top regional students in the renowned nationwide Irene Ryan acting competitions.

But before this festival in the nation’s capital, a panel of “adjudicators” (academia’s way of saying judges ) visits each of eight regional festivals to decide which productions will move on to Washington, along with the Irene Ryan winners.

This year, from Tuesday to March 5, and for the first time in 25 years, the American College Theatre Festival for Region 8, which includes Arizona, Nevada, Utah, California, Hawaii and Guam, will be held locally, at Glendale Community College. It’s also the first time in the same period that the six-day festival is being sponsored by a community college rather than a university.

Ken Gray, the Glendale professor of theater arts, who has organized his school’s participation in the festival, is proud to welcome this year’s Region 8 winners, and just as proud that he and his department associates, theater arts instructor Jill Benone and Nancy Greene, an instructional aide, have survived the organizational ordeal.

“Let’s just say this,” Gray says with a chuckle. “Going in, we knew it was going to be more work than we thought it was going to be. And it was more work than that.”

Even with the encouragement of John Davitt, Glendale College’s president, and the support of the Glendale College Foundation, which also arranged the refurbishment of the campus’s Dance Theatre as one of the production venues, “the trench work” has been formidable, Gray says. The scheduling of seven full productions from six colleges and universities throughout Region 8 is not a simple task. Each of the schools will bring complete sets and costumes for their productions, along with equipment, performers and technical personnel.

The closest entrant is Pierce College in Woodland Hills, which will stage Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon.” That’s not a big jump to Glendale. But consider the shows from the remaining schools.

There is an original short play, “Disassemblage” by Moire K. Lynch, and an original full-length play, Nicole Thomas’ “Color of Bruise,” both from the University of Las Vegas. Utah State University is bringing Lee Blessing’s “Patient A,” and from the University of Utah comes another original short play, “Elizabeth II” by Jason McCullough.

Utah’s Brigham Young University will be presenting Arthur Miller’s “Playing for Time,” and Octavio Soliz’s “El Paso Blue” will be traveling from Northern Arizona University. The logistics are daunting.

Gray says it’s all worth the time and effort in making college theater more visible and for the advantages to the students. And he is grateful for the support of industry professionals in organizing the many workshops that will run concurrently with the festival. One of those is Donna Ekholdt, NBC casting manager, who put Gray in touch with many of the workshop speakers.

“Donna’s very supportive of the festival,” Gray says. “So many young actors who audition for her don’t have any training. She’s constantly faced with people who need to go back to school.”

Theater instructor Benone agrees. “If actors don’t have the basic tools,” she says, “they most certainly don’t have technique. That’s something academic theater strongly provides. The greatest benefit of the festival itself is that it exposes the theater students to the work of their peers, in a way that otherwise wouldn’t happen.”

The productions are staged two a day, in Glendale College’s Dance Theatre and Auditorium Mainstage, at matinee and evening performances. During the six-day festival, there are also technical design exhibits and high-profile workshops, led by such actors as Paul Provenza (“Northern Exposure”), Jason Alexander (“Seinfeld”), and Broadway’s John Raitt with Tony winners Joanna Gleason, Michael Maguire and Deborah Shapiro. Playwright and screenwriter Fay Kanin also will lead a workshop.

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WHERE AND WHEN

What: “American College Theatre Festival.”

Location: Glendale Community College, 1500 N. Verdugo Road, Glendale.

Hours: 2 and 8 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Price: $5 per show.

Call: (818) 240-1000, Ext. 5618 for production schedule.