This past summer, it was my pleasure as President-Elect of TETA to put together a committee made up of a diverse group of members charged with providing a slate of nominees for the Board of Directors. We had representatives from the College/University area, the public school sector, the private school realm, and fine arts administration. While few in number, I believe the list of nominees is vast in experience and expertise and each is eager to serve, if elected.
To begin with, as a point of information only, Perry Crafton has been elected to serve the board as the Chair of the College/University interest group, succeeding Mike Burnett. Perry should be no stranger to the TETA membership. He is an Associate Professor of Drama at Austin Community College. Prior to ACC, he was the Director of the Theatre Program at West Texas A&M University from 1998-2010. He is a Past-Chair of Texas Theatre Adjudicators and Officials for which he has been a member and a UIL One-Act Play Adjudicator since 1996 and has had the honor of judging the State One-Act Play Contest on six occasions, most recently for conference AA in 2015. He holds a BFA from Sam Houston State and an MFA from the University of Arizona.
We have three nominees for the Board of Directors to present to the membership at the annual Business Meeting at TheatreFest. The first is Ronald Watson. Ronnie was elected last year to serve a one year term as one of two Members-at-Large on the board. His dedication, enthusiasm, and contributions to the activities of the board, and the fact that he only served a one year term and is eligible for re-election, made him a logical and desirable nominee. Ronnie is a tenured Instructor of Theatre at San Antonio College. He earned a B.F.A. in acting from Texas State University and an M.A. in directing and design from Baylor University. He has participated in the One-Act Play contest for 34 years as a student, site-crew member, director, contest manager and adjudicator. He also has been the State Contest Director for the Theatrical Design Contest since its inception.
The second nominee is for the very important position of the Secretary of the Board of Directors. The committee’s nominee, also a renowned TETA member and contributor is Erin Moore, the Director of Theatre and Fine Arts Coordinator at Sealy High School. Erin has been a Theatre teacher for twenty-four years and was last year’s TETA High School Educator of the Year. She has worked with the Curriculum Committee, the IM School Visit Committee, and has served as the K-12 Chair. She has presented over fifty workshops at TETA conventions. Her one-act productions were state qualifiers in 2010 and 2014, she was the Denius Award winner in 2007, and has served on the Texas Thespians Advisory Board. In addition to training at Wharton Junior College and Stephen F. Austin State University, she holds a BA from the University of Houston, and an MA from Lamar University.
The third nominee is for a new board position. It was determined at the fall BoD meeting that the Secretary/Historian board position would be more effective as two positions. One of the deficiencies identified over the life of TETA is the lack of a consistent and effective method of maintaining the historical record and archives. There are boxes of past annual reports and other important documents stored in a variety of places. In an effort to insure we gather those archives from the different locations before they are lost to time and neglect, and to compile a valid and documented history of the organization, the board voted to separate the two positions and to charge the individual elected as Historian with beginning this recovery and cataloging process. Once the process of reclaiming our history is completed, the Historian position will be charged with maintaining and enriching the archives for future Theatre educators and artists.
The nominee for the newly created board position of Historian is also no stranger to Texas Theatre. We nominate Luis Munoz for this important position. Luis Muñoz has served as the State Theatre Director for Texas' University Interscholastic League since 2002. Since being employed at UIL, he has tried to create opportunities for our children to learn and grow through arts education and competition. During his tenure at UIL the One-Act Play Contest has grown from just over a thousand participants to over 1200. He also introduced the Theatrical Design Contest in 2005, involving six-hundred students each year, and the UIL Young Filmmakers Festival in 2013, involving approximately ten-thousand students in 2015.
Prior to working for the League he taught high school theatre at Douglas MacArthur High School in San Antonio, Texas where he took his students to the State Meet several times winning three seconds and a first. After that, he worked in film and video production for twelve years. He has served on the boards of the Texas Educational Theatre Association, the Southwest Theatre Association and on many committees and panels for national, regional and state organizations. He served as TETA President from 1991-93 was awarded the TETA Founders Award in 1993 and the Emeritus Award in 2015. He was named to the Texas Thespians Hall of Fame and received the AATE’s Loren Winship Award in Secondary Education in 2014.
In closing, I want to emphasize that with the exception of Perry Crafton, the names listed above are nominees. You, as members of TETA, have the right to nominate others to fill the positions and you will be given that opportunity at the Annual Business meeting Friday afternoon, January29th, following the Convocation at TheatreFest. I encourage you to attend both events and to take an active part in the governance of your organization. I look forward to seeing you there. Dream Big! Make Magic! Make a Difference!
Charlie Hukill
President-Elect
president.elect@tetatx.com
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