Lyric Stage Announces Winners - 15th Annual Schmidt and Jones Awards - High School Musical Theatre

Elizabeth Lenart — Wed, 15 May 2024 09:12:32 Z

Lyric Stage presented the 15^th Annual Schmidt & Jones Awards on May 7 at the Moody Performance Hall. The theatre company also gave the Ashley Newman-Schneider Scholarship to the best stage manager.

Scott Guenther, Lyric Stages general manager, Established in 2010 and named after renowned composer Harvey Schmidt and lyricist Tom Jones, these awards honor excellence in high school musical theatre across Dallas-Fort Worth. The evening featured performances by nominated schools, productions and performers, and they were amazingly talented.

The winners:

BEST SHOW

Denton Guyer High School Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812

BEST ENSEMBLE

Liberty Christian School Singing in the Rain

BEST CHOREOGRAPHY

Liberty Christian School - Presley Anderson & Gigi Plisga Singing in the Rain

BEST LIGHTING DESIGN

Denton Guyer High School Brayden Dorman, Roseanna Medlock, Anna Quigley Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812

BEST SCENIC DESIGN

Denton Guyer High School Brayden Dorman Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Rowlett High School - Francine Parcero & Anthony Bedolla - SIX

BEST ORCHESTRA

Wylie High School Beauty and the Beast

BEST STAGE MANAGER

Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts William Mars Bartell Sister Act

Winner of the Ashley Newman-Schneider Scholarship

Newman-Schneider was an influential presence in the DFW theatre community.

BEST ACTOR

Sean Forman as Man in Chair in The Drowsy Chaperone at North Texas Performing Arts Conservatory; Forman also received a $500 scholarship.

BEST ACTRESS

Francine Parcero as Anne Boleyn in SIX at Rowlett High School; Parcero also received a $500 scholarship.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Bradford Arnold as Wolf in Into the Woods at Grapevine High School

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Anya Guidry as Alice Beineke in The Addams Family at Cedar Hill High School

ACTOR IN A MINOR ROLE

Hudson Donnell as LeFou in Beauty and the Beast at Wylie High School

ACTRESS IN A MINOR ROLE

Grace Betts as Race in Newsies Jr at Harvest Christian Academy

MALE ENSEMBLE PERFORMER

Darren Sanders as Featured Dancer in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 at Denton Guyer High School

FEMALE ENSEMBLE PERFORMER

Maria Luiza Viana as Flapper Ancestor in The Addams Family at Cedar Hill High School

A panel of judges, consisting of theatre educators and professional theatre artists, viewed 21 productions of the accepted applicants from schools in Dallas, Tarrant and Collin counties. The panel made nominations and then voted to determine winners. The directors of participating schools also received written production evaluations.

The judging panel, adjudicating and awards are organized and led by the director of the Schmidt and Jones Awards,Amy Stevenson, who is well-known in Dallas-Fort Worth as both an artist and educator.

About Lyric Stage:

Lyric Stage, a Dallas-based 501c3 not-for-profit professional musical theatre company, was established in 1993 with the mission of the development and preservation of the musical, a unique art form. In its thirty-year history, Lyric Stage has produced over 125 productions, which include 21 world-premiere musicals and 2 Off-Broadway shows. For more information, visit www.lyricstage.org

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Harvey Schmidt & Tom Jones:

Native Texans Harvey Schmidt (composer) and Tom Jones (lyricist) are, perhaps, most known as the creators of the longest running show in the history of the American theatre, The Fantasticks, which ran Off-Broadway for 42 years and 17,162 performances.

In addition to an Obie Award and a special Tony Award for The Fantasticks, Schmidt and Jones were inducted into the Broadway Hall of Fame at the Gershwin Theatre, and their stars were added to the Off-Broadway Walk Of Fame outside the Lucille Lortel Theatre. In 2012, they were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and in December of 2017 they received the Oscar Hammerstein Award.