WILMINGTON — Wilmington College alumnus Bill Kincaid Jr. will be honored Saturday, Sept. 26 as the recipient of the Illinois Theatre Association’s 2020 Excellence Award in College/University Theatre.
The award presentation is part of the Illinois Theatre Association’s (ITA) annual “Red Carpet Gala — The Show Must Go …. Online!” held virtually this year.
The New Vienna native and East Clinton graduate will be recognized for his “significant contribution of promoting quality theatre throughout the state of Illinois,” according to Almee-Lynn Newlan, the ITA’s executive director.
The 1986 WC graduate is a professor emeritus at Western Illinois University, where he was head of the Master of Fine Arts program in acting for 17 years. While on the WIU faculty, Kincaid received the College of Fine Arts and Communication’s Creative Activity Award, Outstanding Teacher Award, Scholarly Activity Award and Outstanding Service Award.
ITA presented him with its Award of Honor in 2014 and he is a recipient of the Gold Medallion from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.
Wilmington College honored him in 2019 with its Alumni Citation for Distinguished Professional Achievement. At WC, he studied music with Max Carr, Robert J. Haskins and Elizabeth Haskins, and theatre with Hugh Heiland, Lois Hock and Becky Haines.
In addition to his work at WIU, he served on the faculty at both the University of California Davis and Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and has been very active directing at a number of repertory theatres and summer theatre festivals.
He is the author of Performing Shakespeare Unrehearsed: A Practical Guide to Acting and Producing Spontaneous Shakespeare, the 2018 book that grew from his longstanding interest in Elizabethan performance practices.
While the COVID-19 pandemic tabled his summer 2020 directing projects at Festival 56 and Ozark Actors Theatre, he plans to continue his freelance theatre career in his retirement.
Kincaid resides in Brownsburg, Ind., with his husband, Derick Logan.
