Awards - Association for Theatre in Higher Education

ATHE’s 22nd Conference:
Difficult
Dialogues:Ceremony
Theatre
ATHE Awards
Thursday, July 31
and
the Art of Engagement
Imperial Ballroom – 2nd Floor
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm (immediately preceding the Keynote Address)
ATHE proudly salutes its many award winners in this opening general session of the conference on Thursday, July 31.
Vice President Robert Schanke and the 2008 Awards Committee members will present the award recipients to the conference attendees.
ATHE’s eight awards categories are:
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Career Achievement Award in Professional Theatre
Career Achievement Award in Academic Theatre
Outstanding Teacher of Theatre in Higher Education Award
Research Award for Outstanding Article
Research Award for Outstanding Book
Excellence in Editing Award
Jane Chambers Playwriting Award
David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award
ATHE Career Achievement Award
for Professional Theatre
Bill Irwin is the 2008 recipient of ATHE’s Career Achievement Award for Professional Theatre. For twenty-five years, Bill has been creating
work as a choreographer, actor, dancer, director, producer and writer. Irwin has achieved success on the stage, on the small screen, and on the
big screen as well, but it is the quality and creativity of his stage work that has captured the minds and hearts of so many.
Highlights of Irwin’s awards/honors include:
• 2005: Tony Award for Leading Actor in a Play
(Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf)
• 2005: Drama Desk Award for Woolf
• 2004: PBS Great Performances, “Bill Irwin, Clown Prince”
• 2003-4: Playwright in Residence, Signature Theatre Company
• 1984: Guggenheim Fellow
• 1984: 5-year MacArthur Fellowhip (Genius Award)
• 1983: Largely New York receives 5 Tony Nominations, Drama Desk,
Outer Critics Circle, and New York Dance Performance Awards
• 1983: NEA Choreographer’s Fellowship
• 1981: NEA Choreographer’s Fellowship
Irwin was an original member of the Kraken Theatre Company directed by Herbert Blau as well as
an original member of San Francisco’s Pickle Family Circus. He has worked at the Public Theatre
in Beckett’s Texts for Nothing, directed by Joe Chaikin, in The Tempest directed by George Wolf,
and at Lincoln Center, appearing with Steve Marin, Robin Williams and F. Murray Abraham in
Waiting For Godot. He has worked at La Jolla Playhouse, on Broadway, Off-Broadway and created original work at theatres across the country,
including Fool Moon, with David Shiner and the Red Clay Ramblers which played on Broadway, in Los Angeles, Vienna and Munich; Irwin was
Mr. Noodle in “Elmo’s World” on Sesame Street and has dozens of other television and film performances to his credit. Bill’s career is a sustained
and focused career, guided by intense personal decisions about his projects and integrity that is recognized by all who work with him.
In addition to Irwin’s work in film, television, and on the stage, he is a passionate advocate for a number of issues. He serves on the board of the
New 42nd Street, a state chartered entity charged with the renewal of 42nd Street. Bill works with a group of local residents in his hometown,
Nyack, New York, as part of a preservation project for a neighborhood theatre now re-named Riverspace Arts in Nyack.
Creations such as Not Quite/New York, The Regard of Flight, Largely New York and Fool Moon have consistently demonstrated Irwin’s ability
to honor the traditions of clowning and physical comedy that are his foundation, while simultaneously inventing new spaces for the “clown”
to occupy on the contemporary stage. Bill’s innovative approach to clowning, his exploration of freedom, autonomy, flight, and survival have
made him one of the most human performers of our time, always vulnerable and completely accessible to his audience. As Ron Jenkins writes
in Acrobats of the Soul:
“In the end Irwin always manages to do more that just survive. Whether he is battling pretentious critics, resisting the pull of technology, or taming
a plateful of wild pasta, Irwin keeps his dignity as well as his body intact. His frustrated desires to fly express the dreams and fears of his audience
in surreal passages of inspired buffoonery. Using aspirations for the impossible as fuel for slapstick, he is like Icarus with baggy pants, laughing
at his melting wings as he prepares for a pratfall and thumbs his nose at the sun.”
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July 31- August 3, 2008
Grand Hyatt Denver
Denver, CO
ATHE Career Achievement Award
for Academic Theatre
Richard Schechner, New York University, is awarded the 2008 ATHE Career Achievement Award for Academic Theatre.
Richard’s record of reaching out and supporting students, scholars, and
practitioners from all parts of Asia (and elsewhere) is outstanding. He has
in effect trained an entire generation (two generations in fact) of theatre
and performance studies specialists who now hold teaching and administrative posts at universities in their home countries, globalizing ther field
in important ways that are unprecedented. His influence on transnational
and intercultural performance practitioners has been equally significant.
In addition to his mentoring of graduate students and countless junior colleagues, Richard Schechner has consistently authored, edited, and published the most innovative and provocative scholarship on theatre and performance studies, both through his role as editor of TDR and through his own
publications. Even as he creates new and exciting paradigms for current
research, his previously published texts have become seminal classics and guiding foundations for the field, here in the United States as
well as in other regions of the world including Europe, Asia, Africa, and
Latin America.
Throughout Asia and in diasporic Chinese nations in particular (including
Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and mainland China itself, including Hong
Kong), Richard’s influence has transformed academic theatre studies.
Along with the translation of his many monograph texts and articles into
Chinese and other Asian languages, and the dissemination of his theories and praxis through educators trained under his guidance at NYU,
performance studies branches of institutions of higher education have emerged because of his profound influence. The recently established
Schechner Center for Performance Studies at the Shanghai Theatre Academy is one case in point.
Richard graciously accepts invitations from all over the country and the world to speak at universities, conferences, and theatres in order to
disseminate dialogue about intercultural theatre work and its emergent paradigms. He continues scholarly field work on festivals in India that
he initiated decades ago, exhibiting his simultaneous commitment to lifelong research interests as well as newly emergent topics. He has been
a consistently generous contributor as a member of the Association for Asian Performance and a cherished mentor and colleague to all of its
members.
Schechner also continually creates and collaborates on experimental intercultural theatre productions as a director. His long list of recent
productions reflects his global outreach and influence, as well as his genuine desire to promote theatre forms for artists and experiences for
audiences that are enlightening, engaging, and international.
Richard devotes considerable time and energy to advocacy and public service. His recent participation in the project Home, New Orleans?
(a series of performances in the devastated New Orleans neighborhoods during Lent-Easter season 2007, based on a scenario conceived by
Richard) is but one example of his long list of contributions to the public good. In short, Richard not only has a brilliant mind, a formidable work
ethic, a creative spirit, and a global reach, but also a huge heart.
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ATHE’s 22nd Conference:
Difficult Dialogues: Theatre
and the Art of Engagement
ATHE Outstanding Teacher
of Theatre in Higher Education
Judith Royer, C.S.J., Loyola Marymount University, is the recipient of the 2008
Outstanding Teacher of Theatre in Higher Education.
Judith Royer was honored this Spring for 35 years of teaching and service at Loyola
Marymount University, Los Angeles, where she currently teaches acting, playwriting, dramatic literature/criticism, is a director, and is the founder of the Playwrights
Center Stage Series for the development/performance of both student and guest
professional writer/artist new works. She has directed over thirty-five revivals and
forty original scripts in the United States and British Isles. She has worked as producer, director, and dramaturg with new play development programs sponsored by
the National Endowment for the Arts, Playwrights Theatre, The Mark Taper Forum
and Theatre Gallery in Los Angeles, of which she was founder and former artistic
director.
Royer was producing director for the Southern New Plays Festival, sponsored by
Southern Repertory Theatre in New Orleans, and has directed new works and/or
American premiers at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, at
New Dramatists, Alice’s Fourth Floor, and the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York, as
well as the Victory Theatre, Gascon Center Theatre, and Interact Theatre Company
in Los Angeles.
Judith was awarded a Kennedy Center Gold Medallion for her work in fostering
new plays and playwrights around the country. Royer is a founding member of the
Association for Theatre in Higher Education; former Chair of that organization’s Acting Program; a Past-Chair of the Playwrights Program; current New Play Production
Coordinator for the Playwrights Program; and co-director of ATHE’s annual New Play
Development Workshop. She is a past member of the National Playwriting Committee for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival National Board and
currently continues working with KC/ACTF as the Respondents Workshop Coordinator for Region VIII, Pacific Southwest.
Selection Committee:
Judith Williams, Chair, University of Florida
Gladys Crane, University of Wyoming
Georgia Gresham, Loyola University
Doug Paterson, University of Omaha, Nebraska
David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award
George Brant is the 2008 David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award recipient for his play, Elephant’s Graveyard. George Brant is currently in his
final year as a Playwriting Fellow at the James A. Michener Center for Writers. His work has been produced in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles
and Austin. His plays have been selected for the Prop Theatre New Play Festival, the Circle Theatre New Play Festival and the WordBRIDGE
Playwright’s Lab, and have been finalists for the Clauder Competition, the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, the Hangar Theatre Lab, the Herrick
Theatre Foundation’s New Play Competition and the Keene Prize for Literature.
Elephant’s Graveyard has been workshopped at WordBRIDGE Playwright’s Lab, had readings at both Seattle’s Capitol Hill Arts Center and
Providence’s Trinity Repertory Theatre, and has received a student production at the University of Texas at Austin, directed by Trinity Repertory’s Laura Kepley.
Selection Committee:
Dennis Black, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Judith Royer, Loyola Marymount University
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Jane Chambers Playwriting Award
Mary F. Casey is the 2008 Jane Chambers Playwriting Award recipient for her play, Unspeakable Acts. Ms. Casey has received numerous
awards for her plays. She was the recipient of the 2003 Butcher Scholar Award through the Women of the West Museum and the Autry National
Center. Mary was a finalist for the 2007 Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Her full-length play, Women and Horses and A Shot
Straight From the Bottle, a 2000 finalist for the Jane Chambers Award, received its world premiere at Echo Theatre in Dallas, Texas, in 2006 and
was nominated for three Leon Rabin Awards through the Dallas Theatre League. Her short plays have been produced at Secret Rose Theatre,
Celebration Theatre and Theatre of NOTE in Los Angeles – and at the Six Women Theatre Festival down the road in Manitou Springs. Mary
lives in Southern California.
During the repressive McCarthy Era, a tenured, nationally prominent UCLA physical education professor is suspended for alleged illicit lesbian
activities at her home. Based on historical events, Unspeakable Acts follows one woman’s courageous and lengthy struggle against a powerful institution and the larger society’s censure. Opposed by an ambitious university dean, she risks everything to try to regain her position, her
partner and to restore her good name.
Selection Committee
Chair, Maya Roth, Georgetown University & David Performing Arts Center
Co-coordinator, Priscilla Page, New WORLD Theater and University of Massachusetts, Amherst
ATHE Excellence in Editing Award
John Gronbeck-Tedesco, professor, University of Kansas, is the 2008 recipient of the Sustained
Achievement Award for Excellence in
Editing for editing the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 1986-2007.
John Gronbeck-Tedesco co-founded the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism with Paul Newell-Campbell “on a shoestring” at the University of Kansas in 1986. Professor Gronbeck-Tedesco served as editor from the founding of the journal until 2007, and he remains a consulting
editor for that publication. JDTC was one of the first journals in theatre to explicitly proclaim an interest and commitment to contemporary
theory and its relevance to the field, and, as noted on its website, “The Journal publishes full-length articles that contribute to the varied conversations in dramatic theory and criticism, explore the relationship between theory and theatre practice, and/or examine recent scholarship
by a single author.” The journal has published some of the most significant figures in theatre studies and, in the words of one supporter, “has
remained a place of genuine discourse about the field.”
Professor Gronbeck-Tedesco joined the faculty of the Department of Theatre and Film, University of Kansas, in 1979. He is the author of Acting
Through Exercises: Journeys for the Actor, published in 1992, which received the “Best Book in Theatre Pedagogy and Practice” award from
ATHE. He is also the author of several plays including Tony and the Telephone Pole, Prairie Fire, Parts I and II, The Four Horsemen, and Coming
Here, A Trilogy, as well as a translation of Machiavelli’s The Mandrake. In addition to his teaching and writing, Professor Gronbeck-Tedesco
works as a director.
Selection committee:
Chair, Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., Loyola Marymount University
David J. Jortner, Baylor University
Thomas E. Postlewait, University of Washington
ATHE 2008 Award
for Outstanding Book in Theatre Practice and Pedagogy
ATHE’s 2008 Award for Outstanding Book is presented to Alicia Arrizón for her groundbreaking book, Queering Metizaje: Transculturalism
and Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006--released in 2007).
Alicia Arrizón is professor and chair of the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She received her PhD from
the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Stanford University in 1992. Her academic interests are firmly situated in contemporary cultural
and performance studies, with a strong commitment to the examination of race and ethnicity and their interchange with gender and sexuality
studies. Interdisciplinary concerns link her to the fields of performance and visual arts, literature, and critical race theory. She is the author of
Latina Performance (Indiana University Press, 1999), designated an “Outstanding Academic Title” by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic
Libraries and coauthor of Latinas on Stage (Third Woman Press, 2001). Her most recent book, Queering Mestizaje: Transculturation and Performance (published by the University of Michigan Press, 2006) was awarded the fifth annual MLA Prize in United States Latina and Latino and
Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies for outstanding scholarship (2007).
Queering Mestizaje: Transculturation and Performance brilliantly examines the notion of “mestizaje” (the mixing of indigeous peoples with
European colonizers) in the contexts and common colonial histories of the United States, Latin America and the Philippines. It effectively
“queers” the intercultural body (and “mestizas” the queer), drawing on an eclectic postcolonial cultural studies methodology that cites and
contributes significantly to performance studies, queer, and feminist theories. Its transnational/transcultural approach legitimates complex
topographies of subaltern history and changes the way we think about the performance.
Selection Committee:
Ric Knowles, Chair, University of Guelph
Jeanne Colleran, John Carroll University
Haipang Yan, University of California, Los Angeles
July 31- August 3, 2008
Grand Hyatt Denver
Denver, CO
17
ATHE’s 22nd Conference:
Difficult Dialogues: Theatre
and the Art of Engagement
ATHE 2008 Award for Outstanding Article
Emily Roxworthy is the 2008 recipient of the ATHE Award for Outstanding Article. Her piece, “’Manzanar, the eyes of the world are upon
you’: Performance and Archival Ambivalence at a Japanese American Internment Camp, “ was publishing in Theatre Journal, 59, 2007.
Emily Roxworthy is an assistant professor on the PhD faculty in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego.
Emily Roxworthy’s “’Manzanar, the eyes of the world are upon you’: Performance and Archival Ambivalence at a Japanese American Internment
Camp” demonstrates an impressive synthesis of historical research and theoretical analysis and an important rethinking of ethnic American
performance histories and practices. In historicizing and theorizing the role of performance in the administration and daily life of the Manzanar Internment Camp, this essay brings together a wide-ranging investigation of both archive and performance that consists of present day
commemorations, Ansel Adams’s photography, advertisements and reviews from the internee newspaper Manzanar Free Press, scrapbooks,
Cynthia Gates Fujikawa’s 1999 one-woman show “Old Man River,” and, at the center of the analysis, four performances staged by internees
between 1942 and 1944: The Hospital Open House (1942), The Fourth of July Carnival (1943), The Evening for Issei (1944), and the operetta
Loud and Clear (1944).
Looking at this range of cultural performances that shaped what she calls Manzanar’s “camp politics”---how Manzanar was both lived by internees and interpreted by the nation-Roxworthy provides new methods by which we can apprehend, understand, and respect the ways that
intercultural performance and spectatorship are practiced, disguised, and continued under hostile and historically violent conditions. Conceptually, historically, and theoretically ambitious, it not only provides an important reconsideration of internee performance and its role in shaping
discourses of nationalism and immigration, but also offers methods and conclusions that will have a wide impact on theatre and performance
studies more generally.
Honorable mention: Mike Sell, “Bohemianism, The Cultural Turn of the Avantgarde, and forgetting the Romá,” TDR, 51, 2007.
Selection Committee:
David Román, Chair, University of Southern California
Kate Johnson, Miami University of Ohio
Shane Vogel, Indiana University
2008 Awards Committee
Chair, Vice President, Robert Schanke, Central College, Emeritus
Dennis Black, David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award Chair, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Ric Knowles, Book Award Chair, University of Guelph
Priscilla Page, Co-coordinator, Jane Chambers Award, New WORLD Theatre, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
David Román, Outstanding Article Award Chair, University of Southern California
Maya Roth, Chair, Jane Chambers Award, Georgetown University
Frank Trezza, Member, SUNY New Paltz
Kevin J. Wetmore, Editorial Excellence Award Chair, Loyola Marymount University
Judith Williams, Outstanding Teacher of the Year in Higher Education Award, Chair, University of Florida
Nominator, Career Achievement in Professional Theatre
William Doan, Miami University of Ohio
Nominator, Career Achievement in Academic Theatre
Claire Conceison, Tufts University
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ATHE’s 22nd Conference:
Difficult Dialogues: Theatre
and the Art of Engagement
ATHE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT
IN PROFESSIONAL AND
ACADEMIC THEATRE
OUTSTANDING TEACHER
OF THEATRE IN HIGHER
EDUCATION
Year
Education
Profession
2008............Richard Schechner................ Bill Irwin
2007............Jorge Huerta......................... Robert Woodruff
2006............Sue Ann Park........................ Christopher Newton
2005............Robert Benedetti................... Jon Jory
2004............Leon Katz.............................. William Hutt
2003............Vernell A. W. Lillie.................. Adrian Hall
2002............Sidney Berger........................ Edward Albee
2001............Don B. Wilmeth..................... Martha Coigney
2000............M. Lin Wright......................... Robert Brustein
1999............Robert Cohen........................ Anne Bogart
1998............Arthur Lessac........................ Zelda Fichandler
1997............James V. Hatch..................... Augusto Boal
1996............Margaret B. Wilkerson........... Ruby Dee &
Ossie Davis
1995............Marvin Carlson...................... Ellen Stewart
1994............Kristin Linklater..................... Jose Quintero
1993............Winona L. Fletcher................ Alice Childress
1992............Burnett M. Hobgood............. Maria Irene Fornes
1991............Oscar Brockett...................... Lloyd Richards
1990............Vera Mowry Roberts.............. Frank Galati
1989............Helen Krich Chinoy............... Ming Cho Lee
1988............Patricia McIlrath.................... Marsha Norman
1987.......................................................... Roger L. Stevens
2008............Judith Royer, CSJ, Loyola Marymount University
2007............Sandra L. Richards, Northwestern University
2006 ...........Diana Mady Kelly, University of Windsor
2005............Vivian Fusillo, Winona State University
2004............James Symons, University of Colorado - Boulder
2003............Suzanne Burgoyne, University of Missouri - Columbia
2002 ...........Bill Harbin, Louisiana State University
2001............Felicia Hardison Londre, University of Missouri - Kansas City
2000............Ronald A. Willis, University of Kansas
1999............Edgardo de la Cruz, California State University, Hayward
1998............Jewel Walker, University of Delaware
1997............Leonard Pronko, Pomona College
1996............Jonathan Levy, SUNY-Stonybrook
1995............Stanley Kauffmann, Columbia University
1994............James K. Brandon, University of Hawaii
1993............Grant McKernie, University of Oregon
Past winners are:
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Past winners are:
ATHE AWARD FOR
OUTSTANDING BOOK
Past winners are:
2008............Alicia Arrizón
2007............Esther Kim Lee
2006............Carrie Sandahl and Phil Auslander
2005............Shannon Jackson
2004............Diana Taylor
2003............Katrin Seig
2002............Anthony Tatlow
2001............Freddie Rokem
2000............Michal Kobialka
1999............David Roman
1998............John D. Cox and David Kastan
1997............Katherine E. Kelly
1996............Kathy A. Perkins and Roberta Uno
1995............W. B. Worthen
1993............Robert Barton
1992............John Gronbeck-Tedesco
July 31- August 3, 2008
Grand Hyatt Denver
Denver, CO
ATHE AWARD FOR
OUTSTANDING ARTICLE
DAVID MARK COHEN
PLAYWRITING AWARD
2008............Elizabeth Colburn-Roxworthy
2007............Stacy Wolf
2006............Margaret Werry
2005............Rustom Bharucha
2004............Susan Leigh Foster
2003
2002............Elin Diamond
2001............Andrea Most
2000............Jennifer Havie and Erin Hurley
1999............Marc Robinson
1998............Stanton B. Garner, Jr.
1997............Penny Farfan
1996............David Savran
1995............Coco Fusco
1994............Shearer West
1993............Joseph Roach
1992............Frantisek Deak
1986............Carole J. Carlisle
2008............George Brandt
2007............Ben Clawson
2006............Romulus Linney
2005............Ed Stevens
2004............LeeAnne Hill Adams
2003............Molly Smith Metzler
2002............Attilio Favorini, Lynne Conner
2001............Elizabeth Wong
2000............Edward EmanuEl
Past winners are:
ATHE EXECELLENCE IN
EDITING AWARD
Past winners are:
2008............John Gronbeck-Tedesco
2007............Thomas Postlewait
2006............Harry J. Elam, Jr.
2005............Samuel Leiter
2004............Robert A. Schanke
2003............Don Wilmeth
2002............University of Michigan Press
Past winners are:
JANE CHAMBERS
PLAYWRITING AWARD
2008............Mary F. Casey
2007............Christine Evans
2006
2005
2004............Madeleine George
2003
2002
2001............Bernadette Flagler
2000............Terry Lawrence
1999............Mindi Dickstein
1998............Elizabeth Wong
1997............Brighde Mullins
1996............Kathleen Cahill (book and lyrics), Deborah Wicks LaPuma (music)
1995............Rosemarie Caruso
1994............Lisa Loomer
1993............Christina de Lancie
1992............Sherry Kramer
1991............Wendy Kesselman
1990............Jenna Zark
1989............Arlene Fanale
1988............Gloria Parkinson
1987............Micki Goldthorpe
1986............Patricia Montley
1985............Charlotte Anker and Irene Rosenberg
1984............Karen Boettcher
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