DPAC is pleased to announce the finalists for The DPAC Rising Star Awards, central North Carolina’s High School Musical Theatre Awards, that will take place on May 17^th, 2026, at 6:30 PM with host, Clay Aiken. The DPAC Rising Star Awards is presented by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.

 

The DPAC Rising Star Awards is a regional competition that celebrates keeping the performing arts alive in our school systems and is proudly a part of the National High School Musical Theatre Awards® (NHSMTA), also known as the Jimmy Awards®.  This program offers the potential to catapult the careers of Broadway's future stars and is open to high school musical theater programs across central North Carolina.

 

This year marks the 15th anniversary of The DPAC Rising Star Awards. Since 2010, The DPAC Rising Star Awards have celebrated outstanding achievements in high school musical theatre made throughout central North Carolina. This program focuses attention on the meaningful work being done both on and off stage by dedicated teachers and students. The DPAC Rising Star Awards are part of the National High School Musical Theatre Awards®, also known as the Jimmy Awards®, in honor of Jimmy Nederlander Sr.

 

This year, The DPAC Rising Star Awards judges reviewed over 54 high school musical theater productions, which included 216 student nominees. From this group, 20 students have been selected as finalists and are in the running for winning "Best Actor" or "Best Actress."

 

The DPAC Rising Star Awards will feature performances by these 20 student finalists as they compete live for their chance to advance to the national level of the competition at the Jimmy Awards® in New York city this June. The evening will also include return performances by The DPAC Rising Star Awards' 2025 Best Actor and Actress winners, Josiah Jennings and Carmen Sophia Dubon.

 

New This Year: In celebration of The DPAC Rising Star Awards' 15th anniversary, alumni will return to DPAC’s stage to take part in the event, including many previous “Best Actor” and “Best Actress” winners spanning all the way back to our first-ever season. 

 

Enhanced This Year: DPAC continues the tradition of inviting students from each participating school to perform in the Ensemble at The DPAC Rising Star Awards.  Approximately 100 students were invited to represent their school in this way, and we look forward to seeing many talented high school students make their DPAC debut in the Ensemble on May 17. Inspired by Josiah Jennings’ "Best Performance in an Ensemble" award that he received last June at the Jimmy Awards®, this year, for the first time ever, The DPAC Rising Star Awards will recognize four Ensemble members in the same way. 

 

BEST ACTRESS FINALISTS:

• Campbell Hill – St. David’s School – Mayzie La Bird, Seussical
• Colleen Eveson – Saint Mary’s School – Jean Valjean, Les Misérables
• Faith Sutton-Daniels – Knightdale High School – Rachel Marron, The Bodyguard
• Gabriella Brunson – Pinecrest High School – Regina George, Mean Girls High School Version
• Gabrielle James – South Garner High School – Miss Adelaid, Guys & Dolls
• Maddie Behrens – Cardinal Gibbons High Schol – Ilona Ritter, She Loves Me
• Mollie Reeves – Cardinal Gibbons High Schol – Amalie Balish, She Loves Me
• Natalie Gossin – St. David’s School – Gertrude McFuzz, Seussical
• Rain Readling – Enloe Magnet High School – Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins
• Rosalie Salissou – Weaver Academy – Snow White, Once Upon A One More Time

 

BEST ACTOR FINALISTS:

• Alexander Min – East Chapel Hill High School – Sam Carmichael, MAMMA MIA!
• Caleb Zedek – Cardinal Gibbons High School – Georg Nowak, She Loves Me
• Conor Hernandez – Durham Academy – Damian, Mean Girls High School Version
• Ethan Johnson – CE Jordan High School – August Rachinger, Water for Elephants
• Gabriel Emery – Wake Forest High School – Nick Bottom, Something Rotten!
• Kael Alley – Millbrook High School – Will Bloom, Big Fish: High School Edition
• Khatari Lane – Nash Central High School – Donkey, Shrek the Musical
• Mason Miller – South Garner High School – Nathan Detroit, Guys & Dolls
• Nicolas Sanchez – Enloe Magnet High School – Bert, Mary Poppins
• Owen Henderson – Wake Forest High School – Nostradamus, Something Rotten!

 

Special Guest Director: As a special treat to celebrate the 15^th year, DPAC welcomes Brendan Stackhouse as a Guest Director for The DPAC Rising Star Awards. Brendan is an experienced Director/Choreographer with both Broadway and national tour credits. Most recently, Brendan served as the Resident Director for the Les Misérables national Broadway tour. Brendan has also worked seasonally with the Broadway League in leadership roles at the Jimmy Awards®, bringing an incredible amount of insight to the table. Brendan will be restructuring the awards ceremony, breathing new exciting life into the event.

 

Esteemed Panel of Judges: This year, finalists will be adjudicated by an esteemed panel of Ceremony Judges including Meredith Blair (President & CEO of The Booking Group), Courtney Liu (Director, Choreographer, and Assistant Professor of Music Theatre at Elon University), and Eric Woodall (Broadway Casting Director, Broadway Associate Director, and Artistic Director of Theatre Raleigh). These three will select which two finalists will go on to compete nationally at the Jimmy Awards® in June.

 

Other awards recognizing excellence in student performance and production that will be presented throughout the course of the evening include Best Ensemble, Best Musical, Best Student Orchestra, Best Student Choreography, Best Student Lighting Design, Best Student Costume Design, Best Student Set Design, and more.

 

At the ceremony on May 17, winners in all award categories will be announced, and nearly $10,000 in scholarships will be awarded. The two students who win Best Actor and Best Actress will each receive $2,000 in scholarships, and an all-expense paid trip to New York City to compete in the Jimmy Awards® this June.

 

National High School Musical Theatre Awards

 

The National High School Musical Theatre Awards® (NHSMTA) was established in 2009 by Pittsburgh CLO and Nederlander Alliances, a division of The Nederlander Organization, to elevate the importance of theatre arts education in schools and reward excellence in student performance.  The program impacts over 140,000 students annually who participate in high school musical theatre competitions sponsored by over forty professional theatres throughout the US.

 

Since its inception, NHSMTA® has been the catalyst for more than $4,000,000 in educational scholarships awarded to deserving young performers.  Also known as The Jimmy Awards®, named for Broadway impresario James M. Nederlander, this year-round program is administered by The Broadway League Foundation Inc.

 

DPAC nominees have had great success at The Jimmy Awards® in recent years.  In 2021, Triangle Rising Stars nominee Elena Holder won the coveted Best Performance by an Actress title at The Jimmy Awards.  This honor came with $25,000 in scholarships, an invitation to audition for multiple Broadway shows and the opportunity to perform in Times Square in celebration of the reopening of Broadway.

 

Josiah Jennings was one of five recipients who received the Outstanding Performance in an Ensemble Award in 2025, which came with a $2,500 scholarship.

 

In 2022, both Joshua and Symoné were named Top Four Finalists at The Jimmy Awards®, which is an incredibly rare accomplishment for two students from the same regional program.  As Top Four finalists, Joshua and Symoné received thousands of dollars in scholarships and multiple invitations to audition for Broadway shows, which are still being received today.

 

Tickets are $25 for The DPAC Rising Star Awards and are on sale today:

• Online at DPACnc.com
• Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina - Ticket Center at DPAC: 919.680.2787,
  123 William V Bill Bell Way, Durham NC

 

For more information about The DPAC Rising Star Awards, visit https://www.dpacnc.com/community/dpac-rising-star-awards

 

The DPAC Rising Star Awards are made possible by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.

 

For more information about the National High School Musical Theatre Awards®/Jimmy™ Awards, visit: https://www.jimmyawards.com/

 

About Clay Aiken

Clay Aiken most recently starred on Broadway, alongside Ruben Studdard, in Ruben & Clay’s First Annual Christmas Carol Family Fun Pageant Spectacular Reunion Show at the Imperial Theater.  The New York Times called the production ‘A Christmas Miracle’.  This came ten years after Clay’s critically lauded Broadway debut in Monty Python's Spamalot. 

On the heels of Idol, he became the first artist in history to have his first single debut at #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.  His subsequent album, Measure Of A Man, also debuted at #1 with the highest first week sales by a debut artist. His 2004 holiday release, Merry Christmas With Love, set a record for the fastest selling holiday album of the SoundScan era and remains tied for the highest charting debut of a holiday album in Billboard history. He served 9 years as a UNICEF Ambassador and in 2003, he co-founded, with Diane Bubel, what is now the National Inclusion Project to advocate and increase opportunities for children with disabilities to be included in extracurricular activities (such as summer camps and after-school programs) with their non-disabled peers.

Additional TV appearances include: 30 Rock, The Office, Scrubs, Days Of Our Lives, and Law & Order: SVU. Additional 2nd place finishes include: The Celebrity Apprentice in 2012 and the NC 2nd District US House race in 2014.  Beyond all of his successes (and near successes) his proudest accomplishment remains his son, Parker.

 

About Brendan Stackhouse:

Brendan Stackhouse is a New York City-based Director, Choreographer, Teacher and Producer with a passion for reimagining classic stories and developing new musicals and plays, Recently, he was the Resident Director for the U.S. National Tour of Les Misérables. He has worked on Broadway as the Assistant Choreographer to Danny Mefford on the 2015 Tony Award-winning production of Fun Home. Off-Broadway, he was the Assistant Director for the Transport Group revival of Once Upon a Mattress, directed by Jack Cummings III and starring Jackie Hoffman and John "Lypsinka" Epperson. He was also the Associate Director for the 2016 revival of The Marvelous Wonderettes at Theatre Row. 

For five seasons, he served on the Executive Board as the Resident Director for Hemlock Theatre Company on Staten Island, where he directed revamped productions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Assassins, Big Fish, Dog Sees God, and Next to Normal. Additional recent credits include Summer of '42, Speech and Debate, Rocky, Dogfight, and Avenue Q. He has received Best Director awards for his work on The Wedding Singer and See What I Wanna See.

Brendan has developed new plays and musicals at Dixon Place, the NYTB Choreographers Lab, Lowell Memorial Auditorium, Hudson Guild Theatre, The Little Victory Theatre, and through student organizations at Wagner College. He is currently attached to several new plays and musicals in development.

 

About Meredith Blair:

Meredith Blair has served as the President of The Booking Group since its inception in 1996. In 30 years, TBG has represented 28 Tony Award® winning Best Musicals, Revivals and Plays. Some of TBG’s current touring productions include Hamilton, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, The Book of Mormon, Hadestown, Six, Mamma Mia!, MJ the Musical, Suffs, Some Like it Hot, The Notebook, and The Wiz, as well As Richard Thomas in Mark Twain Tonight. TBG is also proud to represent the upcoming tours of:  Boop!, Buena Vista Social Club, Oh, Mary!, Operation Mincemeat, Ragtime, Schmigadoon, The Devil Wears Prada, The Lost Boys, Two Strangers (Walk a Cake Across NY), and Just In Time.

 

About Courtney Liu:

Courtney Liu is an Assistant Professor of Music Theatre and Director-Choreographer at Elon University. She has performed with the Broadway cast of the Phantom of the Opera (Ballet Ensemble, Swing, Meg u/s, Assistant Dance Captain), Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, AEA & Disney Developmental labs, the Broadway Dance Lab, Norwegian Cruise Lines (Performer, Assistant Director), Busch Gardens Theme Parks, the Cincinnati Ballet, and Peridance Contemporary Dance Company. Recent choreography credits include Forestburgh Theatre, Playmakers SYC, and the American Dance Festival in collaboration with the Nasher Museum. Courtney has taught dance for 20+ years and completed certification programs in Luigi Jazz Technique, Giordano Jazz Dance Technique, Vinyasa Yoga, and the ABT Ballet Teacher

 

Training Program. Her research on flow states and dance pedagogy has been published in the Journal of Dance Education (JODE) and presented at conferences across the United States. Courtney received her BA in Psychology and MFA in Dance from Duke University.

 

About Eric Woodall:

Eric Woodall is a director, casting director, and educator with a distinguished career in American theatre. He spent over fifteen years as Casting Director at Tara Rubin Casting, working on more than thirty Broadway productions, including The Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, Aladdin, Mary Poppins, and Mamma Mia!, with regional credits spanning Yale Repertory Theatre, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and The Old Globe, among others. He also served as Resident Associate Director of Mamma Mia!, overseeing its Broadway, National Tour, Las Vegas, and Royal Caribbean productions.

 

A proud North Carolina native, Eric has taught and led masterclasses at NYU, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, and institutions in the UK and Australia. He returned to his home state in 2018 as Producing Artistic Director of The North Carolina Theatre — the same year American Theatre magazine named him "A Person You Should Know" — and was appointed Artistic Director of Theatre Raleigh in 2024. He holds a BFA in Drama with Honors from Carnegie Mellon University.