IVEY AWARDS: 2016 Minneapolis Honorees Announced

The Twin Cities theater community honored Graydon Royce, long-time theater critic for the Star Tribune, with the Lifetime Achievement Award, and costume designer Trevor Bowen with the Emerging Artist Award at the 12th annual Ivey Awards. The yearly celebration was held Monday, September 19, at the Historic State Theatre in downtown Minneapolis.
The 2016 Ivey Awards attracted a sold out audience to the show designed to celebrate and showcase the work of professional theater companies and artists over the past year.
Based on evaluations completed by the more than 150 volunteer theater evaluators who saw more than 1,200 performances created by 84 professional theaters in the Minneapolis-St. Paul seven-county metropolitan area from September 2015 through August 2016, three productions and seven individuals/ensembles were also recognized:
Productions - The Wizard of Oz (Children's Theatre Company) - Overall Excellence - Glensheen (History Theatre) - Overall Excellence - Le Switch (Jungle Theater) - Overall Excellence
Individuals/Ensembles - Victor Zupanc - Sound Design and Music: Pinocchio (Children's Theatre Company) - Kevin Fanshaw and Charles Numrich - Acting: Equus (Theatre Coup d'Etat) - Warren C. Bowles - Direction: The Tale of the Allergist's Wife (Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company) - Kate Sutton-Johnson - Set Design: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Theater Latté Da) - Jasmine Hughes - Acting: Sunset Baby (Penumbra Theatre) - Ensemble - Acting: Trouble in Mind (Guthrie Theater) - Ensemble - Acting: Now or Later (New Epic Theater)
The 2016 Iveys - including pre-event activities, behind-the-scenes interviews and the Awards show - will be broadcast on 45TV at 7pm on Saturday, September 24 and on KSTP-TV at 1am on Sunday, September 25.
About the IveysThe Iveys are unique among awards events in the country in that they are open to the public and that there are no nominees, set number of awards or pre-determined award categories, with the exception of the Lifetime Achievement and the Emerging Artist Awards. The artists and organizations receiving special recognition are selected from evaluations completed by the general public and the volunteer theater evaluators. Each participating theater receives a vote to determine the Lifetime Achievement and Emerging Artist Awards.
The Ivey Awards are presented with the generous support of Target, Best Buy, Delta, Disciplined Growth Investors, Lurie Wealth Advisors, UBS, Galleria, JP Morgan, IATSE, Actor's Equity Association, AIMIA, Fox Rothschild, Knock, Robins Kaplan, Risdall, BMW of Minnetonka, Far North Spirits, myTalk 107.1, MinnPost, Mpls/St Paul Magazine, martinpatrick3, Summit Brewing, Joel Gott Wines, iheartmedia, Arts Ink, Clear Channel Outdoor, City Pages, William Clark Photography, McKnight Foundation, Thomson Reuters, Marin, Savvi Formalwear, Principal Financial and RBC Dain Rauscher.

GRAYDON ROYCE (Lifetime Achievement Award) recently retired from the Star Tribune as a full-time reporter covering theater, classical music and other fine arts. He grew up in Mound, Minnesota, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire with a degree in Journalism. He was a fellow at the 2003 O'Neill Theater National Critics Institute and a fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts Institute on Classical Music and Opera in 2009. Prior to his work on the arts team, Royce was an editor in various capacities at the Star Tribune for 19 years.
Royce got his career start in radio before joining the Star Tribune in 1980, and he's renewed that path with the "New Frontier Lutheran Radio Hour," a monthly variety program that he's created and hosted at his south Minneapolis church since 2011. He's also written and produced several plays, including one that went off-Broadway.
In his own words, "Graydon Royce has been in love with theater ever since he portrayed Crusher, Mad Dog Vachon and Wally Karbo to frenzied applause in the 6th grade talent show at Hilltop Elementary School. His most embarrassing moment in life was a dance audition at Chanhassen Dinner Theatre in 1974. So many steps, so few feet. Now he just likes to watch."
TREVOR BOWEN (Emerging Artist Award): "A powerhouse of a costume designer and critical thinker, [his] designs have thundered onto the scene and he quickly became a fixture of Twin Cities theatre" (Technical Tools of the Trade) when he arrived in Minnesota less than five years ago. Bowen got his start as a design assistant in the Guthrie's costume shop (2012-13 Season) and since then, has designed costumes for many of the area's major theater companies, including Mixed Blood Theater (An Octoroon, Pussy Valley, Colossal, Hir, Charm, DJ Latindad's Latino Dance Party), Theatre Latté Da (Our Town, Lullaby), Pillsbury House Theatre (The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry), Park Square Theatre (Nina Simone: Four Women, My Children! My Africa!), Ten Thousand Things (Romeo and Juliet, Pericles), the History Theater (George Bonga: Black Voyageur) and the Jungle Theater (Bars and Measures).
Nationally, Bowen has designed costumes for the Contemporary American Theater Festival (West Virginia), the Gateway Playhouse (New York) and has assistant costume design credits with The Public Theater (New York City) and Steppenwolf Theater (Chicago), Jess Goldstein costume designer; and Long Wharf Theater (Connecticut). Bowen holds an M.F.A. in costume design from West Virginia University.

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