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Department of Theatre 2025

Department Honors for Undergraduate Theses

Melanie Ahn
Asian American Dining Tables

Alena Haney
More to Learn

Mark Park
Call Me Eris

Departmental Excellence Award for Undergraduate Students

Recognizes selected students from all four undergraduate classes with strong academic records and outstanding records in theatre production and design

First-Year

  • Shea Frimmer
  • Nora Mary Hubert
  • Seidy Pichardo
  • Casper M. Wong

Second-Year

  • Azalea Brown
  • Grace Demarest
  • Oscar Giles
  • Mila Levit

Junior

  • Kason Chesky
  • Nastia Goddard
  • Katherine Dean Horton
  • Jing Xi Yap

Senior

  • Talya Braverman
  • Caroline Humphrey
  • Ethan Karas
  • Mark Park

Theatre Departmental Award for Excellence in Leadership and Service

For leadership and service to the theatre department

  • Rachel Olkin

Aurand Harris Award

Awarded to honor excellence in children’s theatre; established in 1998 to honor the late Aurand Harris (C39), who became the most decorated and produced children’s playwright in America

  • Kennedy Naseem

Agnes Nixon Playwriting Awards

Provides a cash award and a production to winners of the annual playwriting competition, underwritten by a trust fund established to help playwrights by Northwestern alumna Agnes Nixon, an extremely prolific television writer who created or served as head writer for numerous daytime serials

  • Alena Haney
  • Samantha Hernandez
  • Leo Kurland

Norrenbrock Design Award

Created to commemorate the life and work of Tony Norrenbrock, who died in 1989 and who, though his period of service with the theatre department was relatively brief, inspired countless students with his creativity and love of his craft

  • A Inn Doo

Susan Rae Anderson Vetrono and Clarke J. Vetrono Scholarship

Presented to an outstanding theatre student with an interest in children’s theatre

  • Aashna Rai

Winifred Ward Award

Presented by Zeta Phi Eta to a student interested in creative dramatics; honors the memory of Winifred Ward, a School of Communication faculty member from 1918 to 1950, who cofounded one of the first US children’s theatres and made creative dramatics a new discipline in American education

  • Kaitlyn Fields
  • Natalie Tangeman

John Woodbridge Williams Memorial Scholarship

Awarded to a talented design program graduate student, preferably a lighting designer; established in 1994 by family, friends, and colleagues of John Woodbridge Williams—a theatre professor from 1974 to 1992, talented lighting designer, gifted and inspiring teacher, and giving humanitarian—to honor his life and work

  • Rembrandt Pieplenbosch