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Department of Theatre 2023

Department Honors for Undergraduate Theses

  • Madeline Oberle
    Beyond Ali Stroker: Improving the Musical Theatre Audition for Disabled Performers
  • Xinyuan Pu
    New Spring: Retelling the Self as a Path for Resistance and Re-imagination of Future
  • Sydney Tennill
    Creating a More Accessible, Collective, and Reciprocal Devising Process: The Application of Lois Weaver’s Public Address Systems in Community Based Devising

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

  • Nastia Goddard
  • Kate Horton
  • Xinyuan Zhang

Second-Year

  • Abraham Deitz-Green
  • Kaitlyn Fields
  • Arwen-Vira Marsh
  • Ella Stevens

Junior

  • Riley Glick
  • Jordan Muhammad
  • Elise Pakiela
  • Sophia Talwalkar

Senior

  • Andrew Hartman
  • Madalena Martins
  • Molly McDermott
  • Sean Zuckerman

Theatre Departmental Award for Excellence in Leadership and Service

For leadership and service to the theatre department

  • Arella Flur
  • Morgan Frost
  • Gabriela Furtado Coutinho

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

  • Sami DeVries

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

  • Mitchell Huntley
  • Austin Kelly
  • Adelina Marinello

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

  • Tianxuan Chen

Susan Rae Anderson Vetrono and Clarke J. Vetrono Scholarship

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

  • Isadora Coco Gonzalez

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

  • Natalie Rarick

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

  • Chelsea Strebe