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| Harry Dietzler - Upper Darby |
Harry Dietzler is the "music man" of Upper Darby Township. He has been the executive director of the Upper Darby Summer Stage community theater program since 1976 and has overseen hundreds of shows at the Upper Darby Performing Arts Center.
Dietzler was a Temple junior when he persuaded Upper Darby officials to give him $4,000 to put on a show. That led to the building of a program that Mayor Thomas Miccozzie said, "...keeps kids, who could be hanging out on street corners, backstage making costumes for shows. The atmosphere is an amazing thing to have in a community of our size."
Alumni of the program are actress/writer Tina Fey, Broadway actress Alyse Alan Louis, and Terrence J. Nolen and Amy Murphy, founders of the Arden Theatre Company in Philadelphia.
In 2011, Tina Fey wrote a personal letter nominating Dietzler for a Lifetime Achievement Award calling him "the irreplaceable heart of the Summer Stage Program."
Lauren Stevenson Yacini wrote about Dietzler, "There are few people in the Philadelphia region who have made as great an impact on the lives of young people as Harry Dietzler.” In addition to establishing Summer Stage in 1976, Harry founded the Upper Darby Performing Arts Center, the Greater Philadelphia Cappies (Critics and Awards Program) and the Upper Darby Arts and Education Foundation.
