Alumni
In the decade of its existence the ADA produced a number of successful alumni.
About 20% of graduates earned their living in the professional theater in 1976, and maybe half were still actively pursuing professional careers. This was quite an achievement, considering the limited employment prospects for actors.
The most successful were probably the early graduates.
Dirk Benedict (Niewoehner)
A June 1969 graduate, by 1972 Benedict was already playing leading roles on Broadway productions, such as Abelard and Heloise and Butterflies Are Free. He was also starring in a feature film, Georgia, Georgia.
Curtis Armstrong
A 1974 graduate, Armstrong is a successful actor who appeared in Risky Business and starred in the Revenge of the Nerds as well as numerous TV series like Moonlighting. He came back to OU to appear in Meadow Brook Theatre’s Present Laughter in 1986.
He is shown here in the Studio Company's production of The Tempest.
Robert Englund
Best known for his role as Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, Englund has appeared in dozens of films and TV series. In 1973 he returned to the Academy of Dramatic Art to teach a stunts and stage fight class and also appearing at the Meadow Brook Theatre.
Jayne Houdyshell
A 1974 graduate and award-winning actress, she continued to appear in Meadow Brook Theatre plays in the 1980s and early 1990s. She won multiple Tony Award nominations starting in 2006, and won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for her role in The Humans.
Defoy Glenn
The first ADA African American graduate (1971), he directed "The sty of the BIind Pig," a play by former Pontiac writer PhiIlip Hayes Dean at the Ujamaa Theatre of Pontiac in 1974. The play, in which Dean had explored his own experience as a black man and the sociology of black communities, was later quite successful Off Broadway. Glenn would go on to a successful acting and directing career.
Credits
All documents and images are from the Records of the Academy of Dramatic Art, Oakland University Archives
Exhibit prepared by Dominique Daniel, May 2017