About
The Cloris Awards
OUR MISSION
The Cloris Leachman Excellence in Theatre Arts Awards ("The Cloris Awards"), celebrate excellence in theatre in greater Des Moines. The annual awards program brings together the theatre community and enhances the visibility of local theatre companies and their productions.
Transparency and Fairness
The Cloris Awards Committee strives for transparency and fairness in how we adjudicate.
Every show
is adjudicated by
6 Cloris judges,
minimum
Standard adjudication procedures help
screen outlying scores
Since 2015, the
Cloris Awards have
from 12 to 19 categories
by popular demand!
grown
Scoring
The Cloris Awards season runs from August 1 through July 31, a team of volunteer Cloris Awards judges are assigned 10 shows each per season.
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At least six judges attend each show. If a judge is unable to attend, another judge is asked to fill in, or the Cloris Awards Committee Chair members attend in their place.
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Each judge submits a ballot after the show, evaluating every billed element of the performance.
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After all judge ballots are in, the ballots are reviewed. Our standard adjudication procedures help screen outlying scores, this is done so every theatre is evaluated on the median consensus scores.
Cloris Judges
2025-2026 Season
Joshua
Brown
DC Felton
Katie
Murphy
Shauna
Sonderstraum
Jason
Crowley
Darcy Godfrey
Mark
Magnum
Minsu
Song
Kimberley Darr-West
Beth Hansen
Paige
Harden
Susan
Thompson
Lisa Mae DeWaard
Lojo Jordan
Carol
Palmer
Our History
The Cloris Awards were founded in 2015 by three local theatre critics with support from the Des Moines Social Club. The founders recognized significant growth in central Iowa’s theatre scene and created the awards to simultaneously honor local companies’ achievements and offer a new incentive to further elevate their work. The Des Moines Social Club hosted the first two annual ceremonies, including the 2016 event that featured a visit from Cloris Leachman herself, before the ceremony moved in 2017 to Hoyt Sherman Place.
Our Namesake
Cloris Leachman
The Cloris Awards are named for the legendary actress and Des Moines native, Cloris Leachman.
Cloris was born April 30, 1926, in Des Moines, Iowa, the eldest of three daughters, to a middle-class family, owners of a lumber company. She began performing at age 7 at Drake University’s Children Theater and continued at the Kendall Playhouse (now the Des Moines Community Playhouse) while a student at Roosevelt High School and on local radio stations. She won a scholarship to study drama at Northwestern University near Chicago, where she also began competing in beauty pageants: having won the title of Miss Illinois, she then competed in the Miss America pageant in 1946, where she was awarded a scholarship to study acting at the Actors Studio in New York City. She married actor-director-producer George Englund in 1953, moved to Los Angeles in 1954 and raised five children before stepping into the roles that made her a household name in the 1970s. Cloris starred as the nosy landlady Phyllis Lindstrom in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and its spin-off "Phyllis." Her most memorable roles were as Frau Blucher in "Young Frankenstein," Nurse Diesel in "High Anxiety", Grandma Ida on "Malcom in the Middle", and numerous bit parts in tv and movies.
In all, she was nominated 22 times for prime-time Emmy awards and won 8, making her the most nominated and the most awarded actress in Emmy history.