Photo courtesy of Jamie Stephenson
Jamie Stephenson is the theater teacher at Vestavia Hills High School.
Jamie Stephenson, the theater director at Vestavia Hills High School, has been selected for induction into the national Educational Theatre Association Hall of Fame.
Stephenson is scheduled to receive the award at the National Theater Educators Conference in Minneapolis in September. She is one of two teachers being inducted this year and is believed to be only the third theater teacher from Alabama to be inducted into the Hall of Fame since its inception in 1990.
The others were Bobby Smith, who was inducted in 1999, and Donnie Bryan, who was inducted in 2012 and who was a mentor for Stephenson.
Stephenson earlier this year was inducted into the Alabama Educational Theatre Association Hall of Fame and selected as the Secondary Arts Teacher of the Year by the Alabama Arts Alliance. “It’s been a big year,” she said.
She has been at Vestavia Hills High School for seven years and previously taught at Pelham High School for 15 years and a Catholic school in Charlotte, North Carolina, for two years, giving her a total of 24 years as a theater teacher.
Stephenson has been a part of the Alabama Educational Theatre Association for about 20 years and served as director of the group for the past seven years. The group, also known as the Alabama Thespians, has held its state conference at Vestavia Hills High School for the past six years, she said.
Her theater students this year were selected to perform a one-act play, “Antigone Now,” at the International Thespian Festival in Indiana in June.
“It went really well. The kids did a wonderful job,” she said. “We’re really blessed in Vestavia to have not just talented students, but incredibly hard-working young people.”
Four of the 10 students on the Alabama Thespians student board are from Vestavia Hills, she said.
“Being a part of those things, it’s really just a way to give back and let other students see what we see in the joy of theater,” Stephenson said.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:12 p.m. on July 26 to indicate that at least two other teachers from Alabama have been inducted into the Educational Theatre Association Hall of Fame: Bobby Smith in 1999 and Donnie Bryan in 2012.
