The Eugart Yerian Award for Lifetime Achievement
The Ostrander’s premier award is presented in recognition of an individual’s distinguished lifetime and career as demonstrated by outstanding, significant, valuable, and lasting service in a variety of aspects of theatre within our Greater Memphis theatre world.
Given at the first Memphis Theatre Awards in 1984, this special award for "service to Memphis theater that spans generations" went to Eugart Yerian, director of the Memphis Little Theatre from 1929 to 1961. The following year, the award itself was named the Eugart Yerian Award.
Eugart Yerian, an aesthete and adventurer, served as the director of Memphis Little Theatre (now Theatre Memphis), for 21+ years. Recruited to Memphis from the Pasadena Playhouse, Yerian helmed the company from 1932-1939 and again from 1947-1961, on either side of WWII. He began the tradition of mounting ambitious shows that had been popular on Broadway just a season or two earlier.
Yerian also founded the “Soaring Club,” the first gliding club in the Southeast. He was a member of the SSA Board and Editor of Soaring magazine. In 1967, when mountain "wave riding" was being pioneered, he became one of the first 100 glider pilots to reach 30,000- feet in altitude during a flight over Pike's Peak in Colorado.
Given at the first Memphis Theatre Awards in 1984, this special award for "service to Memphis theater that spans generations" went to Eugart Yerian, director of the Memphis Little Theatre from 1929 to 1961. The following year, the award itself was named the Eugart Yerian Award.
Eugart Yerian, an aesthete and adventurer, served as the director of Memphis Little Theatre (now Theatre Memphis), for 21+ years. Recruited to Memphis from the Pasadena Playhouse, Yerian helmed the company from 1932-1939 and again from 1947-1961, on either side of WWII. He began the tradition of mounting ambitious shows that had been popular on Broadway just a season or two earlier.
Yerian also founded the “Soaring Club,” the first gliding club in the Southeast. He was a member of the SSA Board and Editor of Soaring magazine. In 1967, when mountain "wave riding" was being pioneered, he became one of the first 100 glider pilots to reach 30,000- feet in altitude during a flight over Pike's Peak in Colorado.
Eugart Yerian Award Honorees
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* posthumously awarded
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