2022 Honoree
Michael Spicer (Salina, Kansas) has served 43 years as a theatre professional. After graduating in 1978 from the University of Virginia with an M.F.A. in Theatre Directing, he held leadership positions as Artistic Director at Sioux Falls Playhouse, Artistic Director and Associate Director at the Delray Beach Playhouse, Theatre Midland, Sunset Playhouse, and Palo Alto Players. He became the Executive Director of Salina Community Theatre (SCT) in 1998 and remains so today. Under Michael’s leadership, SCT has received two National AACTFest awards and the Governor’s Arts Award, doubled its staff, increased its programming, and successfully completed a multi-million-dollar capital campaign to expand its facility. Michael has served on the boards of AACT, the Association of Community Arts Agencies of Kansas, the Texas Non-Profit Theatre Association, and the Salina Area Chamber of Commerce. Michael has stated that he believes that “community theatre is the foundational theatre of this country.”
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2021 Dennis Gilmore* (Indio, California)
2020 Kathy Pingel (North Port, Florida)
2019 Tim Jebsen (Midland, TX)
2018 Kay Armstrong (Dallas, TX)
2017 Julie Crawford (Fort Worth, Texas)
Linda M. Lee (Fort Worth, Texas)
2016 Ginger Heath (Monroe, NC)
2014 Murray Chase (Venice, FL)
2014 Norman Small (Winter Haven, FL)
2013 Mary Britt* (Ocala, FL)
2012 Bill Muchow (Minneapolis, MN)
2011 Jim Sohre (Army Europe Command Entertainment
Sherman C. Ward* (Alexandria Bay, NY)
2010 Tom Cowley (Ponca City, OK)
2009 Frank Peot (Sun Prairie, WI)
2008 Joanne Berry (Bay City, MI)
Stephen Peithman (Davis, CA
2005 Jack Phillips (Downers Grove, IL)
2004 John Viars (Des Moines, IA)
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2003 Shirley Harbin* (Detroit, MI)
2002 Twink Lynch* (Topeka, KS)
2001 Rod McCullough* (Lancaster, PA)
2000 Rusty Clauss (Alexandria, VA)
1999 Bea Miller* (Memphis, TN)
1998 L. Ross Rowland* (Muncie, IN)
1996 Betty Tomlinson* (Spokane, WA)
1995 Enid Holm* (Odessa, TX)
1993 Norman McPhee (Racine, WI)
1994 Jim Carver (Kalamazoo, MI)
1992 Harv Thompson (Madison, WI)
1991 Sherwood Lohrey (Memphis, TN)
1989 Mort Clark* (North White Plains, NY)
1988 Sydney Spayde* (Iowa City, IA)
John Wray Young* (Shreveport, LA)
1987 Art Cole* (Midland, TX)
* Deceased
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Art Cole
This award is named in honor of Art Cole, who founded the Midland Community Theater in 1946. He served as president of the Southwest Theater Conference, chairman of the Theater Panel for Gov. John Connally’s Texas Conference on the Arts, and vice president of the National Theater Conference. He was one of the small band of community theatre directors and visionaries to meet in Chicago in 1958, under the aegis of the American Educational Theatre Association (which latter became the American Theatre Association), to found the American Community Theatre Association as a provisional program of AETA. ACTA became a full-fledged division of AETA in 1963, and Art served as President from 1968-70.
He organized the first national community theatre festival and was elected to the Governing Council of the International Amateur Theater Association. He was the first recipient of the American Community Theater Association’s David Bryant Award and was named best director at the International Drama Festival in Dundalk, Ireland, with the production of Butterflies are Free. He also was an AACT Fellow, and chairman of the Theater Advisory Panel to the Texas Commission on the Arts and president of the International Amateur Theater Association. He died in 2013 at the age of 92.
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