Mollie Young will receive the award during the American College Theatre Festival held Jan. 18-24.
Mollie Young, an adjunct faculty member at Wayne State College, will receive the Acting Teacher of Excellence Award during the American College Theatre Festival (ACTF) for Region 5 being held Jan. 18-24 in Rochester, Minn.
The award honors exceptional acting teachers for significant contributions to theatre education. Region 5 consists of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
“I’m extremely happy to see Mollie getting the recognition she so richly deserves,” said Dr. David Bohnert, dean of Wayne State’s School of Arts and Humanities. “Her dedication and commitment to our students and theatre program is on full display every day. She is a tremendous asset to our theatre program and to Wayne State College.”
Young, a native of Milford, Neb., began teaching at Wayne State in 2008, and she teaches courses in theatre and theatre education. She has worked on numerous Wayne State theatre productions in several capacities such as director, sound designer, and intimacy coordinator.
Prior to Wayne State, Young taught in Nebraska high schools and coached speech and one-act teams. She formerly served as a certified speech and drama judge for the Nebraska School Activities Association (NSAA). She has directed plays and musicals at elementary, middle school, high school, college, and community theatre levels. She also adjudicates shows for the ACTF and Omaha Performing Arts.
Young has served on advisory boards for the Nebraska Language Arts Council, the Wayne Public Library, Wayne Community Theatre Board of Directors, and St. Mary's School in Wayne. She received the Outstanding Young Teacher Award at Concordia University in Seward, Neb., in 1997.
Young earned her bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education Language Arts from Concordia University in Seward, Neb., and her master of arts degree in Theatre Education from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.
About the ACTF
According to its website, the American College Theater Festival (ACTF) is a national theater program involving 18,000 students annually from colleges and universities across the country.
ACTF aims to encourage, recognize, and celebrate the finest and most diverse work produced in university and college theater programs; provide opportunities for participants to develop their theater skills and insight, and achieve professionalism; improve the quality of college and university theater in the United States; and encourage colleges and universities to give distinguished productions of new plays, especially those written by students; the classics, revitalized or newly conceived; and experimental works.
Since its inception, ACTF has given more than 400,000 college theater students the opportunity to have their work critiqued, improve their dramatic skills, and receive national recognition for excellence. More than 16 million theatergoers have attended approximately 10,000 festival productions nationwide.