Germantown, Tennessee
Frank Bluestein was the 1996-97 Disney National Performing Arts Teacher of the Year and the 1994 Tennessee Teacher of the Year. In October of 1998, USA Today named him one of the top forty teachers in the United States.
Mr. Bluestein is a past winner of the American Theatre Association’s John C. Barner Award, a national award given annually to one secondary school teacher whose theatre program is judged to be exemplary. He has served as an arts advisory panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and on the College Board Arts Advisory Committee, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the Tennessee Arts Commission. He is a former president of both the Tennessee Alliance for Arts Education and the Germantown Arts Alliance. He serves as executive director for the Tennessee Shakespeare Company and managing director of the Tennessee Arts Academy, a nationally recognized statewide teacher training institute located in Nashville. The National Conference of Christians and Jews presented a community service award to Mr. Bluestein for his accomplishments in education.
Recently retired, Mr. Bluestein served for thirty-seven years as the chairman of the Germantown High School Fine Arts Department. He was the founder and artistic director of the school’s theatre, the Poplar Pike Playhouse, and also served as executive producer for the school’s award-winning, three-million dollar educational television facility. In 1984, he helped the Germantown High School Department of Fine Arts become one of eight secondary schools in the nation to be chosen to receive the prestigious Rockefeller Brothers Fund Arts in Education Award.
Mr. Bluestein has served as a director of shows at Opryland, and most recently wrote and directed the national touring production of Beale Street Saturday Night starring blues legend Joyce Cobb. He is a frequent speaker and writer on arts-related issues.
