Honors and Awards

FIFTH TONY AWARD WINNER - BRIAN MACDEVITT
Brian MacDevitt won his 5th Tony Award for Best Lighting Design for the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon at the Tony Awards on June 12, 2011.. Assisting Brian were two MFA in Design students, Jonathan Dillard and Ariel Benjamin.

2011 HELEN HAYES AWARD NOMINEE
Professor Mitch Hebert has been nominated for The Robert Prosky Award for Outstanding Lead Actor, Resident Play, for his performance in Clybourne Park at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

COLLEGE OF FELLOWS OF THE AMERICAN THEATRE
Professor Frank Hildy will be invested into the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Theatre during ceremonies at Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on April 24. Membership in the College is one of the highest honors theatre professionals and educators can confer on their peers.

PROFESSOR NATHANS RECEIVES FELLOWSHIP AWARD
Congratulations to Heather Nathans, recipient of a 2011 Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The Fellowships are awarded to a diverse group of scholars, artists, and scientists and appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise. Professor Nathans was chosen for her work, Hideous characters and beautiful pagans: performing Jewish identity in the antebellum American theatre.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR CARPENTER RECEIVES GRANT
Faedra Carpenter was awarded a seed grant from the Qualitative Methods Research Interest Group (QRIG), a joint project of the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity (CRGE) and the Maryland Population Research Center (MPRC). The award is in support of Professor Carpenter’s proposal titled Whiteface to Postrace: Understanding Whiteness in Contemporary African American Performance.

2010 TONY AWARD NOMINEE
Four-time Tony Award winner, Brian MacDevitt, was nominated again for Best Lighting Design for Fences at Cort Theatre. This production won three Tony Awards, including Best Play Revival, Best Actor for Denzel Washington, and Best Actress for Viola Davis. Brian, who recently joined the faculty, received his fourth Tony award on June 7, 2009 for his lighting design of the Lincoln Center production of Joe Turner's Come and Gone and previously received the award for his designs of The Coast of Utopia, Pillowman, and Into the Woods.

2010 HELEN HAYES AWARD NOMINATIONS
Continuing the long-standing tradition of University of Maryland theatre and dance faculty participating in Washington-area performances, two were nominated for 2010 Helen Hayes awards.

Mikhail (Misha) Kachman: Outstanding Set Design, Resident Production, Fever/Dream, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Daniel MacLean Wagner: Outstanding Lighting Design, Resident Production, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Round House Theatre

FACULTY MEMBERS PEARSON AND WIDRIG AWARDED NEA GRANT
Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig have just received a National Endowment for the Art's Access to Artistic Excellence grant to support a tour of Unmoored (Love Letters to New Orleans), their full-evening live documentary of dance, spoken word, video, and New Orleans music. Premiered at the Kennedy Center in May 2006, it has toured throughout the country since then. Unmoored was originally developed in multiple residencies throughout New Orleans during the months following Katrina. “Heart-wrenching and wryly humorous” (The Washington Post), the work inspires and challenges Americans to become actively engaged in the rebuilding and revitalizing of their country. Continually evolving as it tours from city to city, Unmoored offers an experience that is transformative in the deepest sense. In workshops and performances, students of all ages join displaced New Orleanians to creatively participate in a new kind of community rich in humor, honesty, and compassion that can touch the deepest places of grief and love.
The grant will help support the restaging of the project with members of PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER and dance students at the University of Maryland at College Park , and will support four 3-day performance residencies of Unmoored on tour: Berkeley-Carroll School, Brooklyn, NY; Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY; School of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA; George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.

2009 TONY AWARD WINNER
Congratulations to Brian MacDevitt on his fourth Tony award - which he received Sunday, June 7, for his lighting design of the Lincoln Center production of Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Brian, who recently joined the Department of Theatre faculty, has previously received the award for his designs of The Coast of Utopia, Pillowman, and Into the Woods.

2009 HELEN HAYES AWARD NOMINATIONS
In February, the 2009 Helen Hayes Awards nominations were announced at the National Theatre. The Department of Theatre was pleased that once again we had a strong showing of faculty, alumni, and affiliated artists among the nominees. The Helen Hayes Awards honor outstanding achievement in Washington area professional theatre. Department Chair, Daniel MacLean Wagner served as producer for the awards ceremony, which was held on Monday, April 13, 2009 at the Warner Theatre. We congratulate the following nominees from the Department of Theatre family.

Faculty
Helen Q. Huang: Outstanding Costume Design, Resident Play or Musical, Stunning, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Daniel Conway: 
Outstanding Set Design, Resident Play or Musical, Stunning, Woolly Mammoth Theatre company (winner)

The Canadian Embassy Award for Outstanding Ensemble, Resident Play: Rabbit Hole, Olney Theatre Center
 (directed by Mitchell Hébert)
  (member of the ensemble: Aaron Bliden, Senior Theatre Major)

Alumni
Kathleen Geldard (MFA 2003): Outstanding Costume Design, Resident Play or Musical, 
The Neverending Story, Imagination Stage

Diedra LaWan Starnes (BA 1992): 
Outstanding Supporting Actress, Resident Play,
Doubt: A Parable, Olney Theatre Center

Diedra LaWan Starnes (BA 1992): 
Outstanding Lead Actress, Resident Play, 
Intimate Apparel, African Continuum Theatre Company

The John Aniello Award for Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company: Constellation Theatre Company 
(A.J. Guban, Resident Designer, MFA 2005)
(Yvette Ryan, Associate Artist, MFA 2006)

Outstanding Resident Musical: Les Misérables, Signature Theatre 
(member of ensemble: James Gardiner, BA Theatre 2006, Michael Grew, BA Theatre 2006)

Affiliated Artists
Matthew Nielson:
 1984, Catalyst Theater Company

Felicia Curry: (Undergraduate student 1996-2002) 
Outstanding Supporting Actress, Resident Musical,
Les Misérables, Signature Theatre

DEPARTMENTAL RECOGNITION
Graduate students Aaron Tobiason, Chris Martin, Ara Beal, Jessica Holman, Matthew Shifflett, Erin Bone Steele, Natalie Tenner, and Emily Townsend were recently recognized as 2008-2009 Distinguished Teaching Assistants by the Center for Teaching Excellence.

PhD graduate student Karalee Dawn was awarded a Graduate Student Summer Research Fellowship by the Graduate School to pursue research on her dissertation, Today We Are All Scottish: The Creation of Scottish Cultural Identity at Highland Games Festivals and Gatherings.

MFA student Brian Engel received a Jacob K Goldhaber Travel Award from the Graduate School for his participation in the Hemsley Lighting Portfolio Review in New York.

Lindsey Snyder successfully defended her PhD dissertation Sawing the Air Thus: American Sign Language Translations of Shakespeare and the Echoes of Rhetorical Gesture.

Ivania Stack successfully defended her MFA thesis project on the costume designs for Boom.

Sean Urbantke successfully defended his MFA thesis project on the set design for The Winter's Tale.

Elizabeth Forte Alman successfully defended her PhD dissertation's prospectus for Shakespeare’s Stage in America: The Early History of the Folger Shakespeare Theatre. Elizabeth, who is a master teaching artist at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, was recently the associate voice and text coach for Dog in the Manger at the Shakespeare Theatre.

PhD student Casey Kaleba will be the master teacher for a three week Stage Combat Workshop for Shakespeare Theatre this summer.