JoAnn Evans

JoAnn Evans supports all the arts, but her personal art is theatre. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Speech at Northwestern University and a Master of Arts in Theatre with an emphasis on Acting at Governors State University. She developed and taught a creative drama and children’s theatre program for the park district in her community, and after earning her masters, she taught speech and theatre for 10 years at Thornwood High School before becoming Director of Curriculum and Staff Development. During those 10 years, she coached two stage championship speech teams. She also coached two readers theatre teams to fourth place finishes in the state and one readers theatre team to a state championship. She was selected as a Governor’s Master Teacher, developed and taught a Humanities Course that was selected as a Center of Excellence by the National Council of Teachers of English, and won a fellowship from the National Foundation for the Humanities to study at Vanderbilt University.

As an administrator she was honored for Outstanding Leadership by the Illinois Association of Curriculum and Instruction, and she was one of 25 teachers selected by the National Staff Development Association for their Life Coaching Program. She worked for 30 years with the Chicago Heights Drama Group, acting and directing. Her final role there was that of Penny in You Can’t Take It With You, which played for two weeks in Chicago and then toured for two weeks in Hastings, England. She and her husband, Don, moved to South Padre Island in 2001. She served for eight years as member of the City Council and continues to serve on SPI Chamber committees.

The Chamber honored her with their leadership award and nominated her for induction into the Rio Grande Valley Walk of Fame. She was one of the founding members of El Paseo Arts Foundation and has served on the board of Directors since its inception. She developed the community theatre wing of the foundation and serves as one of the play directors. She also currently serves as president of the Board for the South Padre Island Art Business Incubator, and she led the committee that developed the ABI program. She has acted in leading roles for five productions at the Camille Playhouse, and she will take to the EPAF stage this season when she and her favorite leading man, Ray Stewart, reprise their roles as Melissa and Andrew in A.R. Gurney’s play, Love Letters.