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It is such detailed work making a third-degree burn look genuine and a head injury realistic, and causing a body to fall exactly as planned.

"It is special effects," says Simone Marcus, a junior theater major at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. "I had to make a third-degree burn look real, and rig up a wig so when the character fell forward in death, her brain was exposed. The gasp from the audience is what I lived for."

Recognized for her creativity and ingenuity in theatrical makeup, Marcus will join two other Indiana University and two Carnegie Mellon University theater students in the national competition and prestigious showcase at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Washington, DC, this week.

The festival is a national program started in 1969 to recognize the best among university theater programs. The students go for the experience and opportunity to work with professionals in their specialized fields. They network with and often dazzle those in charge of internships, graduate-school offers and scholarship money.

Aside from the National Selection Team Fellowships, a new award from the Kennedy Center Festival this year, only eight students in the nation are chosen to compete in each of eight categories including set, costume, light, sound and makeup design, stage management, directing and dramaturgy.

The students were chosen based on their showing at the Region II festival -- which covers Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Washington, D.C. -- held in January at Carnegie Mellon University.

"They are exposed to major people in the industry at the national festival," says Maggie Lally, who chairs the Kennedy Center's Region II. "They have career-advancement workshops, fellowships are awarded, summer internships are awarded, and they can be invited to the Sundance Film Festival."

While Marcus, a 2005 United High School graduate from Armagh in Indiana County, competes in the makeup category, fellow IUP students senior Theresa Huber of Livonia, N.Y., and Jessica Sabol of Morrisdale, Pa., will be judged in sound design and dramaturgy, respectively.

Sabol and Carnegie Mellon's Taylor Harris are National Selection Team Fellowship recipients.

Harris of Naples, Fla., earned the fellowship in arts administration, and Robert Smith of Columbia, S.C., will compete in playwriting.

"I have been involved with theater ever since I was 10 years old," says Harris, who will graduate in May with a master's degree in arts management. "While completing my secondary education, I realized that my passion for the performing arts and fascination with business could be combined to pursue a career in arts management."

Smith's play, "Dust," is a story about a once-promising violinist who confronts her dying father and reveals the reason why she gave up music.

"I write plays because I'm supposed to," says Smith, who will graduate in May with a master of fine arts degree in dramatic writing. "It's the only thing I'm good at."

Marcus, Huber and Sabol were selected based on their work in the IUP production of "The Beauty Queen of Lenanne" at the regional festival.

In the dark Irish comedy, the elderly and infirm matriarch, Mag, impedes the dreams and desires of her aging daughter, who is forced to care for Mag. The details brought out by the students heightened the story's abusive characters.

"I was up 'til 2 a.m. most nights building prototypes," Marcus says. "I used my sister's nursing books to research anatomy."

Huber, sound designer for the production, focused on amplifying the psychological elements to influence the audience.

"Take the death scene with Mag, if those few dying notes hadn't played as her body fell forward, there might have been a weaker element of fear in the audience," Huber says. "I worked a month nonstop. Technical skills that I learned included recording live sound and turning it into something else. I recorded pickles, meat and oil frying and turned it into the flesh-burning sequence used in the show."

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