SIDNEY — Sidney resident Ed Graczyk was honored in Columbus recently with the Central Ohio Theatre Critics Circle’s Roy Bowen Lifetime Achievement Citation.

Graczyk, who has made Sidney his home since 2001, was cited for leading Players’ Theater in Columbus for two decades and for his work as a playwright. His “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,” was directed on Broadway by Robert Altman and included Cher, Sandy Dennis, Kathy Bates and Karen Black in its cast. Altman later made it into a movie.

The citation was presented by Michael Grossberg, chief theater critic for the Columbus Dispatch, during a ceremony hosted by Theatre Roundtable at the Jewish Community Center in Columbus. Graczyk received a standing ovation.

“I was very thrilled and honored for all of the recognition and appreciation of what I’d done,” he told the Sidney Daily News several days later. But it was the opportunity to visit with old friends and colleagues whom he had not seen for years that made the event special.

“It’s looking back at a very important part of my life. Seeing the people there, a lot of the people who worked with me — it’s sort of like Sally Fields’s saying, ‘They like me. They really do like me.’ — seeing how much (the work at Players’) meant to them as well as to me,” Graczyk said.

According to Grossman, the Bowen Citation is not awarded every year. The eight members of the Critics Circle, all Central Ohio-based theater reviewers for print, broadcast or online media, meet to decide if there’s a worthy candidate.

“We like to give it to someone who has deserved it for many years, but there’s a special reason (for giving it in the year it’s given),” Grossman said by phone from Columbus, Monday. “This is the 40th year of ‘Jimmy Dean.’ It’s still being done not all over the country but all over the world. (Ed) had been on our short list for over a decade.”

The “Jimmy Dean” play was written for Players’ Theater in 1976, when Graczyk was artistic director there. Following a professional production at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, it headed to New York. A 40th anniversary production opened this week in Columbus. Other plays scripted by Graczyk continue to enjoy regional and educational theater performances regularly, too.

Graczyk started his career at 18 as a set designer at the Erie, Pennsylvania, Playhouse. From there, he went to a children’s theater in Midland Texas, where he began to write plays for his young actors. He continued to write, direct and design when he became artistic director of the then failing Players’ Theatre in 1972.

“When I got to Players’ it was more of a club. I got rid of that,” Graczyk said. “I stopped doing old standards and started doing plays from London and New York City.” The theater began to hire actors on union contracts in 1987 and moved to the Riffe Center in 1988.

“I did a lot of plays that came from the heart. You do the kind of work that relates to the audience you have. You want to challenge them, but not slap them in the face. Out of that philosophy, the theater grew and grew and grew,” he said.

The Theatre Critics Circle acknowledged Graczyk’s talent for both playwriting and direction.

“Many Bowen awards have recognized directors who have staged plays and musicals with sensitivity and insight,” Grossberg said in presenting the citation. “Several times, this award has gone to outstanding stage designers. And often, the Bowen Award has honored artistic directors whose vision and hard work have sustained troupes for a decade or more — often, a thankless job. But the triple-threat talent I’m talking about was an especially resilient artistic director, who helped bolster a long-established company. Then he left to pursue other dreams, but returned to save it again, reversing a five-year slide in season ticket sales with critically acclaimed hits, the kind that make us laugh, then cry.

“Part of the reason is that while he excelled at direction, design and artistic leadership over three decades in central Ohio, today he’s remembered for something else. Very few Central Ohio playwrights have had plays staged outside Columbus. Fewer have had hits produced at hundreds of regional theaters – much less reach Broadway. This individual has seen a dozen of his smaller plays receive over 2,000 stagings. Two of his full-length plays sparked national awards.

“His best-known work has been translated into eight languages and received more than 1000 productions worldwide, with half a dozen more in the works right now. It’s still in the repertory, partly because of the film version, rereleased last year in a Blu-Ray DVD with a 20-minute commentary by this writer,” Grossberg added.

Graczyk has two unfinished plays in his computer. He works on them sporadically, but he has no specific ideas about what comes next.

“I’m a great believer of fate,” he said. “I’m at a point where I’ve thrown enough seeds out there. A lot of them have grown. Maybe some are left to grow. But I’m just here. If you want to do something, call me and we’ll try it. I feel I’m under somebody else’s control. If you try to push things to happen, it never works.”

So, he comfortably writes and reads in the spacious house he purchased two years ago, enjoying the company of two cats, and an extensive collection of framed etchings.

Among other Bowen Award winners are renowned playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Academy/Emmy/Tony Award-winning actress Eileen Heckart, Tony-nominated choreographer Randy Skinner and producer John Kenley.