The art of acting will be on display on both stage and screen at West Liberty University this weekend, with both the university’s 48-Hour Film Festival and the West Virginia Theatre Association’s 2025 Community Theatre Festival being held on campus.

The WVTA’s Community Theatre Festival is the second such event in the association’s history, the first coming last year at West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon. WVTA Chair Cassie Majetich said the plan is for the association to hold the Community Theatre Festival in different cities each year.

Majetich said she really wanted to see the Northern Panhandle’s theatre community see some of the spotlight.

“Being able to showcase theatre in the Northern Panhandle, especially community theatre, has never really been done before for the West Virginia Theatre Association,” she said. “So that’s a big goal, to be able to showcase that.”

The three-day festival, running from 4p.m. Friday through 7 p.m. Sunday, includes a full slate of shows, competitions and activities for theater aficionados of all ages. There will be several workshops, including dialects for community theatres, short form improvisation for community theatres, and stage combat for community theatres, among others. Three acting troupes will compete in the festival’s one-act competition, and anyone is able to join in one of two flights of a monologue slam – the chance to perform a two-minute memorized monologue – for $5.

The weekend also includes two performances — the Featured Workshop Production of “The Macbeths” by the American Globe Theatre at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, and a feature full-length production of the musical “Next To Normal” by the Landmark Studio for the Arts.

“There’s something for everybody, for all ages, because that’s what community theater is,” Majetich said. “That’s been a big goal of mine, to not just silo community theater into something that’s just for people of an older age.”

Admission is $15, which gives the person an individual WVTA membership. Those can be purchased at westvirginiatheatreassociationcom.ludus.com or at the festival door. A full schedule can be found on the WVTA’s Facebook page.

Also this weekend. WLU’s Department of Media and Visual Arts hosts the annual WLU 48-Hour Film Festival. In that event, student filmmakers are charged with taking a project from script to screen in just two days. The festival begins at 4 p.m. Friday in the WLU Media Arts Lobby, and a public screening of completed films will be held 7 p.m. Sunday at downtown Wheeling’s Waterfront Hall.

The competition is open to all WLU students and area high school students. Competitors draw a genre, required line of dialogue, character profile, and prop at the kickoff. All of those elements must appear in the final 6-to-10-minute submission, and cash prizes will be awarded.

“This is a very unique event for our community,” said event organizer Jared Thompson, an assistant professor of visual communication at WLU. “It challenges students by pushing their creative and technical skills to create a compelling story with required elements in just 48 hours.”