🎠NEW! Dallas Theatre Newsletter
SMU Meadows School of the Arts has revealed that the recipient of the 2026 Meadows Award is Brian Stokes Mitchell, known for his Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award-winning turns in Kiss Me, Kate, Man of La Mancha, August Wilson’s King Hedley II, Ragtime and more. Stokes’ career spans more than 40 years in Broadway, television, film, recordings, and concert appearances with the country’s finest conductors and orchestras. As the recipient of this year’s Meadows Award, first given in 1983, Stokes will complete an artistic residency in Dallas, including leading masterclasses for Meadows students, and will perform alongside the Meadows Choirs and the Meadows Symphony Orchestra at the 33rd annual “Meadows at the Meyerson” benefit concert on March 31.
🎠NEW! Dallas Theatre Newsletter
The Meadows Award is given to an artist of national or international renown who has soared to the utmost height of their profession, honoring the accomplishments of an artist at the pinnacle of a distinguished career. The Award includes an on-campus residency working with Meadows students and is presented to an artist in a discipline represented by one of the academic units within the Meadows School: advertising, art, art history, arts management and arts entrepreneurship, corporate communication and public affairs, creative computation, dance, film and media arts, journalism, music, and theater.
Beyond his work in theater, television, and film, Stokes has an extensive history of involvement in charitable work, including a nearly 20-year-long term as the Chairman of the Board of the Entertainment Community Fund (formerly The Actor’s Fund), for which he received the 2016 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award. An advocate for both artists and the importance of art, Stokes is also on the Board and Artist Committee of Americans for the Arts, and is a founding member of Black Theatre United. Earlier this year, Stokes was awarded the inaugural William Wolf Drama Desk Award in recognition of his continued contributions to the entertainment community.
The renowned musical theatre actor’s selection as the recipient of the 2026 Meadows Award coincides with Meadows’ recruiting of the inaugural cohort of students to its newly created Sexton Institute of Musical Theatre, set to commence classes in the fall of 2026. Designed to prepare students for the rigorous demands and shifting landscape of the contemporary musical theatre industry, the Sexton Institute for Musical Theatre will offer intensive conservatory training in acting, singing, and movement, along with the well-rounded liberal arts education for which SMU is known. In-class education will be supported by performance opportunities, mentorship and guidance from SMU alumni, collaboration with renowned organizations in Dallas-Fort Worth’s vibrant theatre scene, and masterclasses and guest lectures led by Broadway performers and industry leaders like Stokes himself.
“Brian Stokes Mitchell is a leader and iconic figure in the entertainment industry not only due to his incredible talent and dedication to the art form, but also on account of his legacy of supporting and giving back to the community throughout his career,” said Samuel S. Holland, Professor of Music and Algur H. Meadows Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts. “The Meadows School is pleased to honor Brian with the Meadows Award on account of his artistic and charitable contributions to the arts, through his spectacular performances on stage, screen, and film, as well as his support for his fellow artists, modeling for our students the importance of community involvement, especially in an art form as collaborative as the theater. We’re thrilled to welcome Stokes as our students are performing Ragtime with Dallas Theater Center, giving them the rare opportunity to take a masterclass with the originator of the role of Coalhouse Walker Jr.”
Stokes was born in Seattle, Washington, to father George Mitchell, a civilian electronics engineer for the Navy and one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, and mother Lillian Mitchell, an educator. He began studying acting, singing, and dancing at San Diego Jr. Theatre at the age of 14, and within two years was performing on numerous San Diego stages before setting out for a career in TV and film. Stokes’ screen credits include appearances on a wide variety of beloved shows and movies, including Frasier, The Prince of Egypt, Madam Secretary, Prodigal Son, and more. An incredibly versatile singer, Stokes has performed a range of genres at venues across the country with many notable collaborators, including John Williams, The San Francisco Symphony, Reba McEntire, The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Big Band, The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and The Muppets, among others, and has been invited to the White House twice to sing for Presidents Clinton and Obama.
Tickets for the 2026 Meadows at the Meyerson benefit concert featuring Brian Stokes Mitchell, the Meadows Choirs, and the Meadows Symphony Orchestra on Tuesday, March 31 at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center (2301 Flora St, Dallas, TX 75201) are available from the Meadows Box Office or can be purchased here.
About the Meadows Award
The Meadows Award is awarded by the Meadows School with funding from The Meadows Foundation, first conferred in 1983. A vital component of the Meadows Award is an on-campus residency where artists work directly with Meadows School students. Previous winners of the Meadows Award, also formerly known as the Meadows Prize, include choreographer Martha Graham (1982); playwright Arthur Miller (1991); lyricist and composer Stephen Sondheim (1994); trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis (1997); actress Angela Lansbury (1999); Grammy-winning contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird and New York-based public arts organization Creative Time (2010); playwright and performer Will Power and choreographer Shen Wei, artistic director of New York-based Shen Wei Dance Arts (2011); Tony-winning playwright and screenwriter Enda Walsh and choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan, artistic director of Dublin-based Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre (2012); violist Nadia Sirota and sociopolitical artist Tania Bruguera (2013); choreographer and founder of Urban Bush Women Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (2014); the Detroit-based performance artist collective Complex Movements, and Lear deBessonet and The Public Theater’s Public Works program (2015); southwest curatorial initiative New Cities, Future Ruins (2016); the arts investment initiative CultureBank (2018); and musician and composer Stewart Copeland (2024).