 |
| Tom Skerritt |
Actor Tom Skerritt will return to where his remarkable 50-year career began when Wayne State University's Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance presents "A Conversation with Apple Award Recipient Tom Skerritt" at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 22, at the Hilberry Theatre. Skerritt will participate in an Inside the Actors Studio-style interview and question-and-answer session.
Skerritt has appeared in more than 40 films and 200 television episodes since 1962. He is best known for his work in M*A*S*H, Alien, Top Gun, A River Runs Through It and the television series Picket Fences and Cheers.
After serving in the U.S. Air Force, Skerritt attended Wayne State University and later UCLA for filmmaking and directing. His first professional acting job was in 1962's War Hunt, with Robert Redford and Sydney Pollock. His directing mentor Robert Altman cast him in 1970's M*A*S*H. He won an Emmy in 1994 for his work as Sheriff Jimmy Brock on Picket Fences.
Skerritt has appeared on Broadway in A Time to Kill and in Seattle at the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Don Quixote and at the Intiman Theatre in Our Town. He also received WSU's Arts Achievement Award in 2007.
The Apple Award, named for Sarah Applebaum Nederlander, is given by the Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance at Wayne State University on behalf of the Nederlander family. In 2001, the family formed a partnership with Wayne State's College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts, establishing the Sarah Applebaum Nederlander Award for Excellence in Theatre, an annual theatre award and a visiting artist fund.
The Apple Award brings a nationally prominent theatre professional to Detroit and the Wayne State University campus as a guest lecturer to interact with and educate the department's rising stars through master classes and a question-and-answer forum. Previous Apple Award winners include Neil Simon, Carol Channing, David Stone, Stephen Schwartz, Mandy Patinkin, Patti Lupone, Marvin Hamlisch and Elaine Stritch.
Tickets are $20 and may be purchased at 313-577-2972, at the box office or at wsushows.com.
Wayne State University's Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance serves nearly 300 students as a nexus of performance, production, management, and research. It provides a wide choice of degree programs that allow students the flexibility to study these disciplines broadly or to concentrate more specifically. The dance program is one of the longest-running in the U.S., tracing its beginning to Ruth Lovell Murray's founding of the Dance Workshop in 1928. The theatre program is internationally recognized as a training ground for theatre professionals. The Hilberry Theatre is the nation's longest-running graduate repertory company. The two programs are accredited by the National Association of Schools of Theatre and the National Association of Schools of Dance, respectively.