History
In 1987, Margaret Davidson contributed $4,500 to an NCA restricted reserve fund (with matching funds from NCA). The purpose of the endowment is to create an award in the area of interpretation and performance, and carrying the name of Lilla A. Heston. "The award was named for Lilla A. Heston because, despite her untimely death, she had a major impact in contributing to and even defining the field. She was teacher, scholar, performer, director, editor, and administrator. In all of those roles, she made her professional and personal contribution on her own campus, in state and regional associations, and in the national association, both in her division and in the association as a whole. Her commitment and her accomplishments touched all of Interpretation and Performance Studies. Her work brought credit to the entire field of Speech Communication.
Selection Criteria
The Selection Committee is responsible for soliciting and evaluating published research and creative scholarship in interpretation and performance studies. The scholarship recognized by the award is to be broadly defined to include the spectrum of scholarship expressed by Text and Performance Quarterly (TPQ). While TPQ is to serve as a model for defining the scope of the award, the scholarship recognized by the award may be published in any NCA journal; in a major research or literary journal of another association or organization; in book or monograph form; or published in other than a print media, such as but not limited to live performance, film, videotape, photography, audiotape, and radio.
- The award is given to authors of scholarship published during the previous three-year period. The date of copyright of the published material will serve as the date of publication.
- The award recipient is selected by the Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship Selection Committee.
- The award will only be given to NCA members.
The Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies is an award for scholarship. For example, when Frank J. Galati received the first Heston award in 1990, in the memo from the 1990 Selection Committee composed of Mary Frances HopKins (Chair), Beverly Whitaker Long, and Allen Wade, the Committee underscored the scholarly nature of the award:
"Frank Galati's production of Grapes of Wrath began as a part of his creative research at Northwestern University, where, as a professor of Performance Studies in the School of Speech, he has for some 20 years been engaged in staging literary texts. This production, informed by his years of teaching and creative work, is indeed outstanding artistic scholarship, illuminating as it does the historical, cultural, and ideological significance of a major American novel. The performance provides a site for the contemporary interpretation of a text that through several decades has been accorded intense and respectful attention from scholars and from the general public, who know it as a novel, as documentary history, and as a film. Because of the quality of this performance and the impact of the production and the discourse that surrounds it, the committee takes pride in recognizing Frank Galati as recipient of the first Lilla A. Heston Award."
Recipients
1990 Frank J. Galati
1991 Beverly Whitaker Long
1992 Dwight Conquergood
1993 Elizabeth C. Fine
1994 No award given
1995 Mary S. Strine
1996 Mary Frances HopKins
1997 Judith A. Hamera
1998 Della Pollock
1999 Kirk W. Fuoss
2000 Ronald J. Pelias
2001 Paul Edwards
2002 Lisa Merrill
2003 Kristin Langellier
2004 E. Patrick Johnson
2005 Shannon Jackson
2006 M. Lane Bruner
2007 Jacqueline Taylor
2008 Michael Bowman
2009 Bernadette Marie Calafell
2010 Mindy Fenske
2011 Bruce Henderson
Harvey Young