Articulations

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It's the Doty for Denney

Every spring for the past several years, the UT College of Fine Arts has singled out an individual whose support for and cultivation of the arts in Texas has been extraordinary and then has honored that individual with an award named for E. William Doty, founding dean of the College of Fine Arts. It doesn't get much play outside the Forty Acres and not much even there except at commencement time, when the award is presented. Still, when you think about the size of the Lone Star State and the reach of the university and the size of a contribution that would be significant in both those realms, and then you look down the list of recipients to date -- which includes late author and art collector James Michener, visual arts and museum patron Jack Blanton, and world-renowned theatre historian and scholar Oscar Brockett -- well, that makes it a damn prestigious award no matter who does or doesn't hear about it. This Saturday, May 20, at 12:30pm, the sixth Doty Award will be presented, and it will again go to a giant in the arts in Texas, someone whose contributions have extended the length and breadth of the state and even extended far beyond its borders through her work as an educator, a director, and a friend. The recipient is Ruth Denney, teacher, mentor, and inspiration for who knows how many theatre artists over the past half-century. Her career began in Houston, where she taught at Lamar High in the Fifties and Sixties. Then, in 1971, she founded a major institution for young artists: the Houston High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Five years later, she moved to Austin and the collegiate world, spending the next dozen years on the UT Department of Theatre & Dance faculty. During her storied career, Denney set thousands of students on the road to careers in the theatre, and some of them even hit the big time. The name most often put forward as one of her former charges is Tommy Tune, and with good reason: In addition to being a recognizable celebrity, he has repeatedly paid tribute to Denney; on one occasion, a concert of his helped raise funds for the UT Presidential Fellowship that bears Denney's name. But the roster of Denney's notable students extends further, to include such folks as Robert Crutchfield, Robert Foxworth, Carlin Glynn-Masterson, and Paula Prentiss, among others. One grateful star pupil, Jaclyn Smith, will be joining in the rush to pay tribute to Denney this week by joining with several other of the teacher's admirers (Shelby Bryan, Dan Hedges, and former College of Fine Arts dean David Deming) to make a gift of Deming's sculpture "It's Hard To Be a Top Dog," located in the lobby of Bass Concert Hall, to the university in Denney's name. An unveiling of the sculpture will take place just before commencement, Saturday at 11:45am in the concert hall lobby. If you need any other kind of testimonial about Denney's impact on her students, you probably won't find one more heartfelt and succinct than this one from local director Rod Caspers: "More than any other individual, she shaped and enriched my work in the theatre ... She is a generous and caring teacher. She always made us feel special, and yet we could always count on her to give us objective -- sometimes painfully honest -- feedback about our work. I still go to her for advice, in fact after 20 years I still feel most comfortable calling her Ms. Denney. She was -- still is -- a model educator and wonderful friend."