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During the run of the popular revival of The Music Man last year on Broadway, Shuler Hensley — who grew up in Marietta and moved home in 2012 — was one of only a handful of cast members who had not tested positive for Covid. He was planning on attending the annual Georgia High School Musical Theatre Awards named after him, but two days before the awards show, he received his first positive diagnosis. “It was horrific,” he recalls. “I was packed and ready to go and had to call out.”
Any further obstacles permitting, the performer will be back at the 15th anniversary of the event — also known as the Shuler Awards –April 20 at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. It will be televised live by Georgia Public Broadcasting. Fifty-one different high schools will be competing from around the state, representing 22 counties, with 18 awards on tap interspersed alongside musical numbers.
Elizabeth Lenhart is the director of arts education for ArtsBridge Foundation, an organization with the mission to expand arts to students across the entire state. According to Lenhart, roughly half of those schools participating are from the metro Atlanta area and five new counties are involved this year — Baldwin, Floyd, Houston, Walker and Whitfield.
In 2017, Jennifer Dobbs started working as ArtsBridge’s executive director, and the event has grown substantially since then. The program received its first Emmy Award that same year for Special Event Live Coverage and has won three more times since.
It’s been important for Dobbs and her team to keep ticket prices and registration fees for participants as low as possible. Equally vital has been employing an I.D.E.A. policy, implementing areas of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access. I.D.E.A. isn’t just a cutesy acronym, either. The policy covers the inclusion of pronouns, the non-gendering of certain categories, a mandated allyship training for every adjudicator, director and student, plus purposeful community outreach. “We are concerned about being as inclusive as possible and making sure everyone has access to participation,” she says.
When Dobbs started, the number of schools participating was 13. Before the pandemic, the number of participating schools had grown to 75, which made rating them all a difficult process. Everyone realized they needed to make a change. “Our small team is nimble, but that is a little too much to manage. Now, we are at a more manageable 50 to participate. We want our adjudicators to have enough bandwidth to put into the process for each school and provide them more in-depth feedback.” Artsbridge currently utilizes 70 volunteer adjudicators across the state, up by 20 last season.
The awards are advantageous for all those involved. For the schools, the experience helps directors improve their processes and programs and be able to advocate for more funding and materials. For the students, the event is life changing. “We see them get more self-esteem,” says Dobbs. “[I love seeing] their reaction when they have stepped onto the big stage for the first time. For many of them, it will be their only opportunity to perform on a stage this large as well as be on a live broadcast. I see them push themselves and grow in their skills and interacting, opening up and broadening their reach.”
Even those who don’t wind up working in the arts feel more comfortable speaking in front of a group now. “To us, that is very selfishly a personal blessing. It feeds my heart and soul,” Dobbs says.
Georgia Thomas won last year’s Shuler Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her titular role in Norcross’ Greater Atlanta Christian School version of Anastasia. She is now studying vocal performance at Furman University. Going to the Shuler Awards, winning in her category and later attending the Jimmy Awards (the national high school musical theater awards, held in New York) were events she will never forget. Although Hensley was not at the 2022 production, Thomas and her family went to New York and met him later at the stage door after a performance of The Music Man.
Other local Shuler winners include McKenzie Kurtz, now playing Glinda in Wicked on Broadway, and Jai’Len Josey, who was featured in Broadway’s Spongebob Squarepants Musical and has toured with artist Ari Lennox.
Back when he was growing up, Hensley — who won a 2002 Tony Award for Oklahoma! — recalls there were certain stereotypes. “You’d have a certain type of kid who’d be in theater and a type in athletics.” Little overlap existed.
He was raised by a mother who was a ballet director and a father who was an all-American football player. While at the University of Georgia playing baseball, Hensley was also in the Men’s Glee Club and later moved to New York to pursue opera. “My parents supported me and wanted me to be well-rounded, to pursue what set fire to me — and theater did that. I think it’s definitively more inclusive now. There are more crossovers. I think more and more people in the world are getting a chance to do [what they want to do].”
Hensley is proud that through the awards show, he has become a mentor for many of the participants. “When I was that age, I had some people that I really looked up to and I will never forget [those] who took their time to talk to me. It’s encouraging to meet people in person who you look up to and realize that we are all in this together.”
Every season, he marvels at the Georgia talent he sees and is happy that even those who don’t go on to professional careers in the arts still have that passion for theater in their souls.
While he did participate virtually in the 2022 awards, it wasn’t the same. This performer relishes the in-person component. “I have always made it a point of being there. I get so much from the experience itself. It re-energizes me as a performer and re-affirms my belief that there is nothing like live theater. Audiences come with full support and excitement. This has become an amazing positive for the community,” he says. “I will do this as long as it is physically possible to do.”
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Jim Farmer covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival. He lives in Avondale Estates with his husband, Craig, and dog, Douglas.
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