Congratulations to local community theater legends honored for lifetime achievement at last weekend's ACT-Greater Cincinnati convention, held in conjunction with the Southwest Ohio's OCTAFEST competition:

• Costumer Peggy Stouffer, who initiated a costume database when not designing for theaters - including her primary home, Loveland Stage Company - received the Mario Pitocco Award for achievement in technical theater.

• Bill and Stella Brinkmann, who can trace their community theater involvement back to 1929 and have spent more than half a century devoted to Northern Kentucky theaters, won the Art Rouse Award for exceptional commitment and dedication to community theater.

ACT-Cincinnati handed out its 2003-2004 season awards, dubbed Orchids. Interestingly, the big winners weren't among the shows chosen for excerpt by their producing theaters for Ohio Community Theatre Association competition.

The night's big winner, with 14 awards, was Cincinnati Music Theatre's splendid Ragtime, directed by Dee Anne Bryll and Ed Cohen. (The theater sent Kiss Me Kate into competition, which was not among the top six finishers.)

Other favorites with local judges were Greater Hamilton Civic's Vietnam memoir A Piece of My Heart, which won a dozen Orchids. Mariemont Players' Dames at Sea and Showbiz Players' In the Beginning both took home 11 Orchids.

The excerpts invited to participate in the Ohio Community Theatre Association state conference over Labor Day weekend at Holiday Inn-Eastgate are:

Jesus Christ Superstar, Falcon Theatre; Belles, The Drama Workshop; The Fantasticks, Lebanon Theatre Company; Jitters, Mariemont Players; Man of La Mancha, Footlighters. Alternate is The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Landen-Deerfield.

Jackie Demaline