Arts

Oscar-winning actress and Carolina alumna Louise Fletcher will receive the PlayMaker Distinguished Achievement Award at the 20th annual PlayMakers Ball Nov. 10 at UNC.

Remaining tickets to the ball, to be held at the Carolina Inn, are limited in number. For tickets, call (919) 452-8417 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . The event is the annual fundraising gala for PlayMakers Repertory Company, the professional theatre in residence in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. The 2007 theme is “A Designer’s Dream.”
           
Fletcher is perhaps best known for her portrayal of the tyrannical Nurse Ratched in the film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” for which she won the 1975 American and British Academy Awards for Best Actress. She is a 1957 graduate of UNC’s dramatic art department and a self-described “Playmaker,” who trained with the late Foster Fitz-Simons, a longtime PlayMakers member and professor of dramatic art, and acted in the outdoor drama “Unto These Hills” in Cherokee.

 “One of the best lessons I learned was through my experience working as a Playmaker,” Fletcher said. “I dug ditches to lay the cable in [UNC’s] Forest Theatre. I built sets and moved them. I learned how to stage-manage. All these jobs gave me a healthy attitude about the big picture.”

Past winners of the award include actors Jack Palance, Eva Marie Saint, Faye Dunaway and Hume Cronyn; New York Times critic Frank Rich; costume designer William Ivey Long,; director Gene Saks; and Broadway composer and lyricist Richard Adler.

Designers for the ball include Giorgios Bakatsias of Giorgios Hospitality Group; Kathy Buck of the Purple Puddle; McKay Coble, chair of the dramatic art department, with help from the PlayMakers Production Shops; Bitty Holton of Chapel Hill; J.W. Walton of The Catering Company; and Melanie Woods of MW Design.

Photo of Fletcher: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/releases/fletcher_louise.JPG