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Thank You, Marcus Overton!

Marcus Overton
SCETV

  We at South Carolina ETV Radio would like to take a moment to thank Marcus Overton, who has retired from his position as host extraordinaire of Spoleto Today. In a career that has crossed disciplinary lines with impressive ease, Marcus became an Emmy Award-winning television producer, radio commentator, arts administrator, writer, and actor.

In December 1991, composer Gian Carlo Menotti invited Marcus to become Executive Director of Spoleto Festival USA, a post he assumed in February 1992.  Marcus continued to hold the festival together after Maestro Menotti withdrew from the Festival in late 1993, and assumed the title of Producing Director for the 1994 season.

In 1995, while working as an adjunct professor of theatre at the College of Charleston, he began a long, productive association with South Carolina ETV and ETV Radio.  His half-hour interview show, “Who Do You Know?” was broadcast weekly, eventually supplemented by daily reports for ETV Radio from the Spoleto Festival USA.  These daily bulletins eventually lengthened into the half-hour Spoleto Today, now known to many as “the voice of Spoleto.”  From 2002 to 2007, he also produced half-hour television specials for SCETV, all of them focused around that year’s Spoleto Festival USA, and a third of which were honored with an Emmy Award.

In December 1997, Marcus made his home in San Diego, a city that had long been his destination for (semi-) retirement.  Since then he, has been an active member of the San Diego music and theatre communities.  He served as Board Chairman of the Actors Alliance of San Diego for seven years, and continued his acting career in widely-praised productions of Edward Albee’s Zoo Story (Renaissance Theatre), Arms and the Man (Moonlight Playhouse, Vista), and Oedipus Rex (6th @Penn Theatre).

SCETV and South Carolina ETV Radio extend our thanks and greatest appreciation to Marcus for a job well-done, and a legacy which we proudly carry forward with Spoleto Today.