DON DUNSTAN - 1998

Arts leader and legislator

The late Premier, Don Dunstan's leadership brought Adelaide its most halcyon period in which it led the nation in cultural endeavour, arts and  socialist politics.
Don Dunstan is fondly recalled throughout Australia for the enlightenment he vested upon his State - and by extension, the nation.
From stage to sage, he was one of the most effective performers - and his love for the arts from the culinary to the thespian and the infrastructure he provided will always endow the arts in SA.

HAROLD TIDEMANN - 1999

Singer, journalist, critic and broadcaster

Harold Tidemann was considered the elder statesman of Adelaide's theatre critics until his death in 2002 aged 96.
He also established a distinguished reputation as a singer, a protege of South Australian-born international baritone Peter Dawson.
 For two decades he wrote a regular Saturday column on music, stage and screen.
His death in 2002 was received with silent homage before curtain at three productions.

LYNDALL HENDRICKSON - 2000

Musical prodigy and teacher

Lyndall Hendrickson was child prodigy violinist who become a  teacher of virtuoso violinists and autistic children. She started learning violin at the age of six. At 14, she won a scholarship to the Elder Conservatorium, where she studied for 2.5 years.
Ms Hendrickson, 85, now teaches instrumental methodology and supervises a masters student at the University of Adelaide. For the past 20 years she has researched psycholinguistics and given papers at scientific conferences throughout the world.
Among her famous students are Jane Peters and Adele Anthony.

PHYL SKINNER - 2001

Entertainer

Phyl Skinner is known as a living national treasure and one of the last remaining vibrant links  with the golden years of vaudeville where she worked alongside such legendary comedians as Roy Rene, George Wallace and Bob Hope.
In a long career, she has continued to entertain South Australian audiences with long legs, laughter and love.
She has also been well known as a teacher, director and actress and is acknowledged as "an ornament of the South Australian stage".
 

WALLY CARR - 2002

Entertainer and producer

Wally Carr has had an extraordinary career in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom as an entertainer and producer. Most recently he was responsible for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival sell-out success Hotspots, celebrating the greats of Adelaide cabaret in the 1960s. He’s trodden the boards as a song and dance man since his teens - through J.C. Williamson days, live television, the Paprika, Bull & Bush ... and, usually in the company of singer Marie Fidock, he continues an impressive work schedule to this day.
 
 

ZORA SEMBEROYA - 2003

Dance teacher and ballerina

Born in 1912, Zora Semberova is a distinguished dance teacher and former ballerina with the Prague National Theatre. Aged only 8 she was attached to the  Brno Opera House, later training in Paris and other European centres. She was the first to dance the role of Juliet to Prokofiev's great ballet score Romeo and Juliet.
She came to Adelaide from Czechoslovakia in 1968 as the Russian tanks rolled into Prague and she became a long-term teacher of dance at Flinders University. Among her students have been director Scott Hicks and his wife, Kerry Heysen, mime arist Jennifer Hope, Greig Pickhaver - the HG half of Roy
and HG - Lord Mayor Michael Harbison and theatre direction Gale Edwards.
 
 

LARAINE WHEELER - 2004

Lighting technician

She's known as the Margaret Rutherford of sparkies. Wooed into the theatre some 40 years ago by the late Anne-Marie Mykyta, Laraine Wheeler has been behind the scenes for almost every company in almost every capacity - from prompt and ASM to stage manager and lighting designer. Chief technician and lighting operator is how she best is now known - and respected both as a technical authority and a theatre talent. At 62 she says that every single working day is a happy day.
 

TRISTRAM CARY - 2005

Composer

Tristram Cary, 80, is the father of electronic music. He chose Adelaide as his home, but his fame is global. Son of novelist Joyce Cary, he was serving as a wartime naval radar officer in 1945 when he conceived the idea of electronic and tape music - and became a world pioneer in the field. In 1967 he founded the electronic music studio at London's Royal College of Music, and was designer/builder of his own electronic music facility, which later largely moved to Adelaide as part of the Adelaide University teaching studio. He now runs Tristram Cary Creative Music Services continuing to generate extraordinary music for film and concert. In 1991 this sweet-natured giant of music was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to Australian music. He is a teacher, performer and composer whose achievements across the musical spectrum have been legion - but, for many, he is still most quickly identified as "the Dr Who man" - the composer of the Dalek music.

EDWIN HODGEMAN - 2006

Actor

Edwin Hodgeman, known in the trade as "Teddy", has been an actor of distinction in Adelaide and nationally for many decades. Born in 1935, he emerged in the ’50s from under the wing of the legendary pioneer Adelaide theatre director Colin Ballantyne - the man many deem the founding father of modern professional theatre in South
Australia. Hodgeman's career has included significant theatre roles and endless critical approbation. He is recognised as a respected classical stage actor - and a versatile one. He also has worked extensively in Australian cinema - and his long list of credits includes Shine, Robbery Under Arms, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Playing Beattie Bow, Tracks of Glory, The Survivor, Sara Dane, Eureka Stockade, Human Touch, and Look Both Ways.

DENNIS OLSEN (AM) - 2008

Actor and opera singer

Dennis Olsen (AM) is one of the country's leading exponents of Gilbert and Sullivan opera. He has the particular qualification of having spent a year in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in England in the ‘70s.
Dennis Olsen was born in Adelaide in 1938, trained at NIDA and has worked in and studied operetta through Europe before becoming established as a star of the genre in his homeland. There are few G&S works in which he has not performed, always hailed in comic roles. He is also recognised as an actor, director and accomplished pianist - and is ever popular for his skill as an exponent of Noel Coward. He has appeared in three films and two television mini-series.

Lifetime Achiever Harold Minear, centre, with ACColade winners David Mealor and Amanda Phillips. Picture: Calum Robertson, courtesy of The Advertiser

HAROLD MINEAR - 2009

Director, actor, playwright, lyricist and revue writer

Harold Minear has been immersed in the theatre for most of his adult life. He has worked a day job as a leading advertising man and a night job as a director, actor, playwright, lyricist and, significantly, a writer of revue.
Minear has directed productions for most all of the non-professional theatre companies of Adelaide and has been guiding light to the busy and popular suburban company of St Judes Players which is based at Brighton and commonly plays to full houses.
He also was in of the first production mounted in The Arts Theatre, Romanoff and Juliet which was directed by Ruby Litchfield, later Dame Ruby.
At 81, he is still working in the theatre.

DALE RINGLAND - 2010

Musical director, conductor and repetiteur

Dale Ringland's outstanding career includes stints as repetiteur, musical  director and conductor. He worked on J.C. Williamson shows, opera and ballet companies with names such as Joan Sutherland,  Rudolph Nureyev, Keith Michell, Luciano Pavarotti and Kathleen Gorham. His versatility delivered him through the musical genres from Gilbert & Sullivan   to the Bolshoi Ballet.

BARBARA WEST - 2011

Actor, director

Barbara West has been treading the boards in Adelaide since the 1950s when she arrived from the UK with her writer husband and children, quickly becoming one of those at the Dutkiewicz Studio where ''The Method'' was studied and performed. She already had RADA qualifications and experience on television and in theatre. Thus was West one of the early actors onstage at the historic Union Hall at Adelaide University and, indeed, she went on to act with and even direct at the Guild.
She has worked for the State Theatre Company in its many incarnations, among things more recent, The Crucible.
She has worked with John Noble's  long-lamented Stage Company and today's VitalStatistix and performed in Festival shows such as My Life, My Love. Then there are her film and television credits Robbery Under Arms, Breaker Morant, The Shiralee, Tracks of Glory, The Battlers, Human Touch and most recently in The Moment, a very beautiful short film adapted from a story by Shaun Micallef directed by Troy Bellchambers and Shane McNeil.

DON BARKER - 2012

Actor

Don Barker has been a familiar figure on the Australian stage and screen for many decades. Now 73, his credits include many State Theatre roles as well as film roles and, most notably, work in Australian television series such as Homicide, Prisoner, McLeod's Daughters and Matlock Police.

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