Return to Table of Contents
Related Link: Department of Theatre
By Erik Novak
Two Bloomington emeritus faculty members have received awards from the Indiana Theatre Association (ITA).
R. Keith Michael, who retired this spring after 25 years as chair of the Department of Theatre and Drama at IUB, was the winner of the Indiana Theater Association's highest award: Theater Person of the Year. His wife, Marion Michael, who also retired this year from the faculty at IUB, won the ITA's University/College Educator of the Year award.
R. Keith Michael built a distinguished personal career at IU, serving as the only chair of the Department of Theatre and Drama since 1971, in addition to establishing the department as one of the nation's best. He has also been the producer of the Brown County Playhouse in Nashville, the longest-running professional summer stock theater in the state.
The department's doctoral program ranked second nationally, and its overall program ranked sixth in a recent "U.S. News & World Report" magazine survey. The program attracts students from across the nation, and its undergraduate program is among the 10 largest in the country.
Graduates of IUB's theater program include stage-and-screen star Kevin Kline; Charles Kimbrough, an Emmy nominee for his role as Jim on television's "Murphy Brown;" Patricia Kalember, who played the role of Georgie on "Sisters;" and the late Howard Ashman, who wrote and staged the musical "Little Shop of Horrors" and was an Oscar and Grammy award winner for the scores of "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Little Mermaid."
R. Keith Michael is currently president of the National Association of Schools of Theater.
Marion Michael established the voice and speech program at IUB and developed strategies with which a voice and speech specialist could assist work in theatrical rehearsals. She has served as voice and speech specialist for more than 200 productions at the University Theatre in Bloomington, the Brown County Playhouse and the Indiana Repertory Theater in Indianapolis.
Courses she developed and taught include "Voice and Diction," "Speech for the Stage" and "Voice and Dialects/Accents." She has served on the executive board of the Indiana Theater Association, has twice coordinated the national acting competition sponsored by the National Society of Arts and Letters, and established the women's theater and theory programs for the American Theater Association.