The MaTilDa Award.
The Department of Music, Theatre and Dance of Oakland University in Rochester Hills, Michigan, surprised me this year with an Alumni Achievement Award in Theatre as part of its 18th annual MaTilDa Awards honoring “outstanding contributions from music, theater and dance students, alumni and distinguished community members.” The honor, being presented on campus April 18, is for my “contributions to playwriting,” OU department program director Kerro Knox 3 told me.
Past Matilda Alumni Achievement Award recipients include Tony Award winner Jayne Houdyshell, director and actress Lavinia Moyer, actor Curtis Armstrong, actor Esau Pritchett and many more. (In a happy coincidence, Pritchett, who graduated OU long after I did, appeared in the first reading of my play Alabama Story when it was presented in the Southern Writers’ Project of Alabama Shakespeare Festival in 2013.)
“Matilda” refers to the late OU founder Matilda Dodge Wilson, on whose donated land the university was built. Her given name was chosen because imbedded within it are the letters M, T and D, representing “music, theatre and dance.” OU is the home of the nationally known Meadow Brook Theatre, a regional Equity theatre independent of the undergrad department. Theatrically, the OU Department of Music, Theatre and Dance offers BFA degrees in acting, musical theatre, and design and technology.
In the past year, OU professor of theatre Karen Sheridan, who teaches acting and directing — and whose work I knew and respected back in the 1990s when I was working in the Detroit area — became aware that my play Alabama Story was being produced in regional theatres around the country, and suggested me to the department for this alumni honor.
In the coming 2017-18 season, Alabama Story will be seen in at least five productions, with more to follow. My play Two Henrys was recently seen in a reading by Hudson Stage Company in New York following a workshop by the Co-Op of Pacific Resident Theatre in California. My play Hollywood, Nebraska, will get a Wyoming workshop in late summer following its 2016 success in a reading by Off-Broadway’s TACT/The Actors Company Theatre.
I just completed a draft of a new play called Circa 1976, which I’ve been billing this way: “It’s July 4, 2016, and alumni of Evergreen Elementary School’s class of 1976 have gathered for the 40th anniversary of their graduation from sixth grade. A handful of former classmates in their early fifties — a jock, an artist, a cheerleader, a brain and an overachiever — find themselves in their old music room, where memories of past teachers, tensions and traumas are conjured like half-remembered songs. The present concerns of a divided America dovetail with the anxieties of the past to spark an unforgettable reunion that calls into question the Spirit of 76.”
The play’s inspiration is a series of unsolved child murders that happened in 1976-77, when I was growing up in the suburbs of Detroit. The play is not a crime drama; it seeks to be an exploration of universal modern fears as it presents a portrait of a generation leaning into middle age. The characters recall the killings and its victims.
If you’re a producer, literary manager, director or artistic director, you can request perusal copies of my work here.
I was not able to attend the MaTilDa Awards dinner, but in a letter read to the crowd, I said, “My playwriting career began when I was in my late forties. I am an ‘emerging playwright’ in middle-age. Patience was everything. And the payoff is somehow sweeter. It’s an honor the receive the MaTilDa Alumni Achievement Award. Thank you, Department of Music, Theatre and Dance, for the tools to be a smarter theatergoer, a smarter arts writer and a smarter dramatist.”
The 2017 MaTilDa Award recipients follow.
Alumni Achievement Award in Music
Cheryl Ogonowski
Alumni Achievement Award in Theatre
Kenneth Jones
Distinguished Community Service Award
Bibianne Yu
Distinguished Musicianship Award
Alyssa Primeau
Outstanding Student in Voice Performance
Jacob Surzyn
Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Piano Performance
Karen Li
Outstanding Graduate Student in Piano Performance
Robert Schneeweis
Outstanding Student in Instrumental Performance
Halla Hillborn
Jessica Julian
Outstanding Student in Composition
Ian Lester
Outstanding Student in Music Education
Kelsey Millerschin
Jared Seymour
Outstanding Student in Jazz
Zollie Schut
Outstanding Student in Chamber Music
Tubas Ignis: John Andersen, Colin Holstein, Ian Lester, Brandon Thibault
Gittlen Theatre Award
Emily Stoddard
Gittlen Achievement Award in Acting
Gabriel Jamison
Gittlen Achievement Award in Theatre Design & Technology
Krystal Smoger
Gittlen Achievement Award in Musical Theatre
Stefanie Sambrano
Ian Turnwald
Pat and Mercedes Nicosia Meadow Brook Estate Award
Brian Baylor
Distinguished Dance Student Award
Noelle Millis
Maggie Allesee Choreography Award
Becky Ciccone
Outstanding Dance Performance
Rachel Pawson
Katie Reid
Outstanding Student Service Award – Music
Timothy A. Brown
Outstanding Student Service Award – Theatre
Joey Fontana
Outstanding Student Service Award – Dance
Alexis Moore
MTD Award
Jessica Stasik
