PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 20, No. 5, Sept. 7, 2000

UI theater faculty members, students share Tony honors, nominations

Melissa Mitchell, News Bureau Staff Writer
(217) 333-5491; melissa@illinois.edu

Measure for measure, there's no bigger deal in the theater world than winning a Tony Award.

Kathleen Conlin, dean of the UI's College of Fine and Applied Arts, can testify to that. The Utah Shakespearean Festival, a summer theater for which Conlin has been the casting director and resident director for 11 seasons, won this year's Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater. The televised awards ceremony took place in New York's Radio City Music Hall on June 4.

Also bearing the orange-and-blue flag at this year's Tony Awards was Daniel Sullivan, a nationally known director who joined the UI theater faculty last year as a Swanlund Chair. His production of Eugene O'Neill's "A Moon for the Misbegotten" was nominated for the award for Best Play Revival.

Sullivan also was named best director this season by New York's Drama League and the Outer Circle Critics. In addition to "Moon," he directed three other plays in New York this season: "Proof," by David Auburn, "Dinner With Friends," by Donald Margulies and "Ancestral Voices," by A.R. Garney -- all to critical acclaim, Conlin said.

Meanwhile, far far west of New York City, Conlin and company recently wrapped up another season at the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City. The festival offers six plays in repertory each year during its summer season, June through September, and mounts two additional plays in its fall season, September through October. One of the oldest Shakespearean festivals in North America and fifth largest in terms of budget and size, the festival began in 1962.

Half of the plays presented each summer are by Shakespeare; the other half run the gamut from contemporary to children's to musical theater. This year's non-Shakespearean fare included Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard," directed by Conlin.

The dean was not the only UI presence at the festival this season. Theater professor Robin McFarquhar has served as fight choreographer for the past three years, and theater professor Henson Keys made his first appearance this year as an Equity actor. MFA students Danforth Comins, Nathan Michael and Victoria Goro-Rapoport, and UI alumni Bill Black and Virginia Stitt also filled positions in the festival's various casts and crews.

"The quality of our work is high," Conlin said, noting that the USF is not the typical regional theater that draws cast and crew members from surrounding communities. "Our actors, directors and designers come from all over the country and this year included 15 Equity actors."

Conlin said that just as individual actors and directors receive a career boost from winning a Tony, the Utah festival will benefit from the honor.

"It increases attendance and visibility," Conlin said. "Artistic directors of other theaters that have won this award have said that it raises the profile when attracting actors, directors and designers. It raises the bar, and you start thinking in terms of that echelon and of maintaining that standard."