Arts Council of Southeast Missouri honors Mike Dumey, Utahna Hancock for work with the arts

If you've seen Mike Dumey, you've seen him smile.

The director of stage choir for Cape Girardeau Central Junior High has a relentlessly optimistic demeanor and a seemingly unending supply of energy, which helps as he runs around stages and shepherds teens and pre-teens into the cast of Broadway shows and musical revues.

His involvement and dedication to youth musical theater recently earned him the 2009 Otto F. Dingeldein Award for outstanding achievement in the arts from the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri.

"You constantly see him involved in musical productions for the theater for adults for youth. It seems like he's involved with everyone," said Vicki Outman, a member of the arts council board. "Anytime anything with music comes up, Mike Dumey's name is associated with it."

Dumey will receive the award at the arts council's annual meeting at 5 p.m. today in the Riverview Room at Buckner Brewing Co.

Dumey started performing, directing and organizing musical theater performances as a sophomore at Jackson High School. He and a group of friends saw "Jesus Christ Superstar," and "I was pricked," Dumey said.

He and the others formed the Saints and Sinners at New McKendree Methodist Church and performed musicals and revues in the basement for the community. The group also performed at Six Flags in 1976.

"That's probably the biggest springboard to everything else in my life," Dumey said.

He went to Southeast Missouri State University to earn a teaching degree and study music as his minor. Dumey said he realized he was as good as the music majors, so he changed his major to music education.

Dumey has started or bolstered the musical theater programs at every school with which he's worked. He did "The Wizard of Oz" with fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders at Oak Ridge Elementary, using kindergarteners and first-graders for the munchkins. At Schultz School he put on "The Little Mermaid."

"And we never looked back," Dumey said. He went on to do other Disney productions with cardboard sets. Five years ago he produced "Annie" at Central Junior High and the school's spring musicals were never the same. He followed "Annie" with "Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat" and other Broadway musicals.

"I learned when you do those, you can't turn back," Dumey said. "I could never go back and do an hour and 10 version of something."

Quitman McBride III, now a senior at Central High School, was in those first two Broadway productions.

"He has been with me from then on," McBride said. "It was like a match made in heaven."

McBride has performed in "at least a dozen" shows or musical revues with Dumey. From the junior high musicals to Dumey's latest project to get teens on the stage: Starz on the Rise, which performed "Godspell" in August and September.

He said Dumey ranks in the top three musical influences, "because he's always been there. He's always been by my side."

That guidance and professionalism contributed to Dumey receiving the Dingeldein Award, Outman said.

"It gave [students] an experience of Broadway right here in Cape Girardeau," she said.

Dumey said the award recognizes not only his work, but the community's support of youth musical theater.

Utahna Hancock, outgoing arts council chairwoman, will also be honored at today's banquet with the Jeff Maguire Award, a friends of the arts council recognition. The Maguire Award has been given annual since 2002 to a person, business or organization that has been especially helpful to the Arts Council.

"She was the chairman of the arts council board through a time when we were without a director and has brought us through some strenuous financial times on the board," Outman said.

Hancock, an artist herself, has been the chairwoman of the arts council for two years, staying on while the organization changed directors and went without a director for a period of time and eventually hired the new director.

She moved to Southeast Missouri in 2004 when her husband took a job at Southeast Missouri Hospital. At that time, Hancock decided to take a break from her career as a counselor and art therapist to focus on her own art. She has bachelor's degrees in art education and sculpture and a master's degree in art education with specialty in art therapy.

But, she said, "first and foremost, I'm an artist."

A sculptor to be exact.

Hancock took up shop at Southeast Missouri State University, joined the Artists Co-op, helped form Modest Living Artists, a now-disbanded art group, and joined the arts council board when asked by Jean Chapman. She served as vice chairwoman for a year, during which she had to decide if she wanted to take the chairwoman position.

"Man I struggled with it for a full year," Hancock said.

Once she said yes, she stayed on to lead the council through two turbulent years. Hancock said she had nominees ready for the Maguire Award and when the board told her she had earned the award herself, she said she didn't understand.

"This is something you volunteer for. It isn't something you do for glory or awards. You do this because it's your service," she said. "I'm a little flabbergasted by it."

charris@semissourian.com

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