Ruth Denney: In Memoriam

A teacher, mentor, and inspiration for who knows how many theatre artists over the past half-century has died. Ruth Denney, one of the most influential arts educators that Texas ever knew, passed away Monday, March 26, little more than a week before her 93rd birthday. Compli-cations from a hip fracture earlier in the month led to her death. Denney, born and educated in Ohio, moved to Houston in the Fifties and landed a teaching job at Lamar High, where over a dozen years she led her students to six state wins in the annual University Interscholastic League one-act play contest. After a shift to an administrative post with the Houston Independent School District, she founded a major institution for young artists, the Houston High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, in 1971, just the third fine-arts magnet school in the U.S. Five years later, Denney moved to Austin and the collegiate world, spending 12 years on the UT Department of Theatre & Dance faculty. In her storied career, Denney inspired thousands of students to careers in theatre, some to notable success. The one named most often is nine-time Tony-winner Tommy Tune, who has repeatedly paid tribute to Denney, headlining a concert to raise funds for the UT Presidential Scholarship that bears Denney's name and including a Ruth Denney Award for lifetime achievement in theatre education among the Tommy Tune Awards handed out to high school performers by Theatre Under the Stars in Houston. But the list of Denney's celebrated students also includes Jaclyn Smith, Robert Foxworth, Carlin Glynn-Masterson, and Paula Prentiss, among others. When Denney was given the UT College of Fine Arts' prestigious E. William Doty Award, honoring exceptional support for and cultivation of the arts in Texas, Smith, Shelby Bryan, Dan Hedges, and former Fine Arts dean David Deming made a gift of Deming's sculpture It's Hard to Be a Top Dog to UT in Denney's name. It's one of many honors the educator received: the Sara Spencer Artistic Achievement Award from the American Alliance for Theatre & Education, the Founders Emeritus Award from the Texas Educational Theatre Association, the Houston Mayor's Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts, induction into the first class of the Austin Arts Hall of Fame. Best of all, she has her own theatre at the performing-arts high school she founded, where new generations of young artists can continue to develop their talents and love of theatre under her name.