Homewood-Flossmoor High School theater teacher J.R. Willard-Rose has been chosen to receive the Illinois Theatre Association’s 2024 Award of Excellence in Secondary School Theatre at is annual members meeting Aug. 3.
Willard-Rose is being honored for his significant contributions of promoting quality theater at the high school level and theater production throughout Illinois. He was nominated for the honor by the Illinois theater community. He has directed 75 plays and musicals at the educational, community and professional levels over more than two decades.
Willard-Rose has been a teacher at H-F for 22 years. He accepted the position as his first job after graduating from Illinois State University with a double major of theater education and acting.
During the more than two decades he has been at H-F, he has received numerous accolades and his work with students has led to H-F productions placing in IHSA State Competition. Willard-Rose had five H-F productions selected for the Illinois Theatre High School Theatre Festival.
“It’s been a wonderful 22 years, and a really wonderful school and a new performing arts center that’s beautiful and wonderful and lets our kids really find and explore in lots of new ways. It’s great,” he said.
Willard-Rose first took to the stage as a pre-teen in a park district program. It was during his high school years at Maine South that “I just really found the theater department and had a wonderful theater educator there, who allowed me to find myself and my passions for theater and then I was like ‘Oh, maybe I can do what he does’ and I figured out that as a career path,” he said.
He also credits numerous teacher/mentors in college and while student teaching and in the theater world who were helpful along the way.
“It was a lot of really wonderful people,” Willard-Rose said. “I feel like I have pieces of all of them as a teacher and director. I still hear their voices in the back of my head a little bit.”
The teacher says he’s helped dozens of H-F students find their passion through the theater program. Today they have Broadway careers or are part of national or regional theater productions, some are working in film and television, and others are working in design, technical and managerial positions.
Asked to choose a favorite production over his 22 years at H-F, Willard-Rose points to “Ragtime,” the first musical he ever directed. It was just his second year at H-F, and he remembers it as a quite an undertaking. It even required a Model T Ford as a prop.
But Willard-Rose said he draws from that production because it required a diverse cast, and at the time the theater program wasn’t very diverse. His invitation to students of color to try out for roles in the play brought out talented kids who hadn’t thought about theater.
“I think that really opened the door to have students of color realize this was a program for them too. I think it changed the face of our program, and it was just a really great production. Super proud of it,” he said.
He remembers one of the 12 lead characters was a student named Anne Calderon who today is a fellow theater teacher at H-F.
In 2013, Willard-Rose was director of the All-State presentation of “Memphis,” and he’s served on the organization’s various committees the past two decades. This coming school year, he will be sharing his time with H-F and the Illinois High School Theatre Festival as a co-producer of the All-State production of “The Prom.”
Students from throughout the state try out for roles. Willard-Rose is especially proud of the seven H-F students who were selected – the largest number from any high school. He points out that he didn’t have anything to do with the selections: that was left to the director and crew chief. H-F senior Stella Hoyt has a lead role in the production. Three other H-F students are cast members, and three H-F students were selected for technical staff positions.
Willard-Rose and his husband, Brandon, live in Flossmoor with their son, Rowan.
