Success Stories

193 posts

Mark Shonsey: $7,464

Blessings of childbirth have come with medical hardships for Mark and Shauna Shonsey, but the DAF has been there to help with the bills Financial-aid recipient: Funnyman Mark Shonsey has been an an actor in the Denver theatre and improv-comedy communities since 2003. The graduate of John F. Kennedy High […]

Paul and Amanda Hartman: $2,950

Financial-aid recipient: Paul Hartman and his wife, Amanda, are both longtime members of the local theatre community. Paul is a musician who has playing in pits from the Midtown Ats Center Arts Center in Fort Collins to the Candelight Dinner Theater in Johnstown to Performance Now in Lakewood to more. […]

Greg Alan West: Transport

Financial-aid recipient: Greg Alan West is a longtime actor and costumer in the Colorado theatre community whose notable roles have included the one-man epic I Am My Own Wife and Lucien in The Boys Next Door for Firehouse Theatre Company; Peter Quince in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Colorado […]

Carol Kelly: $1,499

Financial-aid recipient: For 18 years, Carol Kelly was the Hair and Makeup Coordinator for Phamaly, the acclaimed Denver theatre company that creates performance opportunities for actors with disabilities. Most recently, she worked on Cabaret at the Denver Center’s Space Theatre. Her medical story: Carol has been put on a two-week […]

Daniel Perkins: $10,787

Financial-aid recipient: Daniel Perkins, known in your theatre programs as DP Perkins, came to Colorado in 1980 to do a show at the Heritage Square Opera House, and stayed. He was part of a brigade that piled into a car and drove to Golden after the Goldenrod Showboat in St. […]

Norrell Moore: $4,785

Financial-aid recipient: Norrell Moore has been regularly performing in the local theatre community since 2012, when she played Vivienne Kensington and Rachel Jackson in high-profile, back-to-back productions of Legally Blonde The Musical at the Arvada Center and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at the Aurora Fox. Major roles that followed included […]

Emily K. Harrison: $1,520

Financial aid recipient: Actor and producer Emily K. Harrison is the founder of the now 12-year old, intentionally lower-cased square product theatre. She just completed a controversial turn playing child beauty queen and murder victim JonBenét Ramsey in House of Gold, performed in Ramsey’s hometown of Boulder. Joanne Ostrow of […]

Christopher Tye: $2,500

Financial aid recipient: Adrianna Tye is the mother of actor Christopher Tye, who appeared as Curtis Taylor Jr. in Ignite Theatre’s production of “Dreamgirls” in 2014-15 at the Aurora Fox. Christopher died without warning on July 20, his birthday. He was 36. “He died too young and without warning or signs,” […]

Abner Genece

Abner Genece: $10,859

Denver Actors Fund helps actor with dental emergency after previous, life-threatening freeway collision Financial aid recipient: Actor Abner Genece is the co-writer and assistant director of Benchmark Theatre’s world-premiere devised work, “Elephant,” which imagines the horribly deformed archetype David Merrick as a contemporary Black Man who is discovered in a […]

Katherine Paynter: $4,290

Financial aid recipient: Katherine Paynter is an actor who just performed in Performance Now Theatre Company’s “The Wedding Singer,” which closed Sunday. Paynter, who hails from Minnesota, studied theatre arts through a dual-college program within both Minnesota State and North Dakota State universities. She is now a Denver-based flight attendant […]

Lara Maerz: $1,185

Financial-aid recipient: Lara Maerz has been an active Stage Manager in the Colorado theatre community for many years, including stints at The Edge Theatre, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Colorado Springs TheatreWorks, Theatre Aspen and  Parker Performing Arts School. Most recently she ran The Addams Family Musical for the Northglenn Players. She […]

Maggie Sczekan: $365

Financial-aid recipient: Maggie Sczekan has been performing in the Colorado theatre community for the past six years, most recently as Fiona in Colorado Springs Arts Center’s “Shrek The Musical” (billed as Maggie Davenport), and in the Arvada Center’s “Sister Act.” Of her performance as Fiona, The Gazette wrote: “Maggie Davenport […]

Faith Angelise Goins-Simmons: $4,375

Financial-aid recipient: Aurora native Faith Angelise Goins-Simmons is playing Lily in the Aurora Fox’s Porgy and Bess. The daughter of Pastors Verdale and Jane Goins is a graduate of Aurora Central High School and the University of Denver, where she was the first person of color to graduate from the […]

Cody Schuyler and Jacquie Jo Billings: $4,000

Financial-aid recipients: Cody Schuyler and Jacquie Jo Billings are longtime performers in the Colorado theater community and engaged to be married next year. The couple recently appeared together in Miners Alley Playhouse’s “You Can’t Take it With You” as Essie Carmichael and Tony Kirby Jr. Schuyler was nominated for a […]