Alumni Awards: Hall of Fame

2023 Winners

Priscilla Lindsay (BA ’71, MA ’72, theatre)

Priscilla Lindsay, Claribel Baird Halstead Collegiate Professor of Theatre, joined the faculty of SMTD’s Department of Theatre & Drama as its chair in 2010, serving in that position until spring 2021, when she stepped down as chair to focus on teaching and directing.

Following her formal training at U-M, Lindsay performed professionally at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas. Subsequently, she was appointed associate professor at the University of Missouri – Kansas City and became a member of the Missouri Repertory Theatre Company. Lindsay spent the bulk of her career with the Indiana Repertory Theatre (IRT), performing for more than 30 seasons in upwards of 50 roles. She also directed dozens of productions and served as associate artistic director for twelve years. She headed up the IRT’s Summer Conservatory for Youth program and was director of the Young Playwrights in Process playwriting competition. Lindsay has returned to perform with IRT several times since joining the SMTD faculty, most recently in the role of Mrs. Jennings in Sense & Sensibility.

Lindsay has directed a number of plays at U-M, including Tartuffe; You Never Can Tell; The Beaux’s Stratagem; Three Sisters; Henry IV, Part I; You for Me for You; Sense and Sensibility; and, most recently, Jen Silverman’s Bonnets: How Ladies of Good Breeding Are Induced to Murder. In addition to her theatrical talents, Lindsay has had a long and successful voiceover career, with clients including Maytag, Cool Whip, Gerber, Hyundai, Kraft, Kellogg’s, and McDonald’s, among many others. Lindsay will retire from SMTD in the spring of 2023.

Ava Ordman (BM & MM ’75, trombone)

Ava Ordman served for 24 years as principal trombone with the Grand Rapids Symphony – a job she attained at age 19. At age 41, Ordman returned to school to pursue a master’s degree in counseling psychology from Western Michigan University. In 1997, she began her work as a psychologist while subbing with the Detroit Symphony and Detroit Opera orchestras and teaching low brass at Oakland University. In 2002, Ordman was appointed professor of trombone at Michigan State University.

At MSU, in addition to her professorial duties, Ordman continues to enjoy a varied life as a performer. She is principal trombone of the Lansing Symphony Orchestra and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music Orchestra, and she performs with the Monarch Brass, which is the flagship brass ensemble of the International Women’s Brass Conference.

Ordman played her solo debut at Carnegie Hall in 1990 with the American Symphony and has been a featured artist at the International Trombone Festival; the International Brassfest; the American Trombone Workshop; and the International Women’s Brass Conference. She performed the world premieres of Steven Smith’s Trombone Concerto with the Eugene Symphony and Libby Larsen’s Mary Cassatt with the Grand Rapids Symphony; both works were written for Ordman and, along with Donald Erb’s Trombone Concerto, were performed by her throughout the United States. Ordman’s most recent venture was leading a consortium to commission a new trombone concerto by David Biedenbender; Their Eyes Are Fireflies received its world premiere in 2018 with the MSU Wind Symphony. Another recent milestone for Ordman was the release of a solo CD in 2017, It’s About Time: Music for Trombone by Women Composers.

In 2018, Ordman was named the recipient of the Neill Humfeld Award, for excellence in teaching, by the International Trombone Association.