Yale School of Drama Annual Magazine - 2013

Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage Paid New Haven, CT Permit No. 167

ANNUAL MAGAZINE Yale School of Drama P.O. Box 208244 New Haven, CT 06520

Annual Magazine of Yale School of Drama 2013–2014

Yale school f Drama

Yale school Annual Magazine of Yale School of Drama 2013 – 2014

Inside the Sideshow: Coney Island USA Projection Design: Poetry for the Eye William Ivey Long = Broadway

From the Dean

I love rehearsals, but I particularly love first rehearsals. For me, they are about the excitement of seeing the whole company together for the first time, the magic of hearing a play read aloud by those actors who will actually perform it, the unfolding of the director’s and designers’ ideas to their colleagues, and the welcoming of new collaborators to the professional community of Yale Repertory Theatre and the School of Drama.

I recently had the pleasure of greeting the company of Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist on their initial day at Yale Rep —except that it was no one’s first day.

Every single person in the room had worked here before, in the School or at the Rep, and most of them more than once: the only time this has happened in my 12 years as dean and artistic director. In fact, in my three decades of professional experience, this was the sole occasion on which I attended a first rehearsal knowing everyone in the room beforehand.

The coziness of that particular first day warmed a late October week in which winter sent us warning messages of cold and wind. It was also a poignant reminder to me of how often, in our field, we find ourselves in unfamiliar surroundings, with new collaborators, and how vulnerable we often feel as we enter a new environment, undertake a new project, and meet new people.

Indeed, ours is an art form and a profession in which such beginnings are ritualized markers of evanescence. It is because theatre art passes from an anticipated future to a vital present and then a remembered past, that we feel its transforming energy. And paradoxically, every beginning contains the seeds of the closing night to come, because we all know that the work we are about to make will live vibrantly for some moments, and then pass into memory, the lasting engine of our cultural power.

You’ll see these rites of passage captured over and over again in this magazine, in part because our students and graduates are so often drawn to leadership, which requires them both to be vulnerable and to be agile, learning more, perhaps, than they imagined they would when they first contemplated training at Yale.

Their stories are vivid reminders of why it is important for the School to draw gifted young professionals to our community in New Haven; of what it means to become, in training, both stronger and more flexible; and of the new vistas that may open up for any of us at any time, anywhere in the world.

I am sure you will see your own learning and accomplishment reflected in these pages, and it is a privilege to share them with you.

Sincerely yours,

James Bundy

Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theatre James Bundy ’95 Dean, Artistic Director Victoria Nolan Deputy Dean/Managing Director

From the YSD Scrapbook Can you guess the cast from this photo of Interview by Jean-Claude van Itallie?

Hint: The production was part of the Yale Summer Cabaret, 1981. If you’re still stymied, turn the page upside down to see who’s who.

Yale School of Drama Board of Advisors John Beinecke yc ’69, Chair John Badham ’63, yc ’61, Vice Chair Amy Aquino ’86 John Lee Beatty ’73 Sonja Berggren srf ’13 Lynne Bolton Clare Brinkley Sterling B. Brinkley, Jr. yc ’74 Kate Burton ’82 Lois Chiles Patricia Clarkson ’85 Edgar (Trip) M. Cullman III ’02, yc ’97 Scott Delman yc ’82 Michael Diamond ’90 Polly Draper ’80, yc ’77 Charles S. Dutton ’83 Sasha Emerson ’84 Heidi Ettinger ’76 Terry Fitzpatrick ’83 Marc Flanagan ’70 Marcus Dean Fuller ’04 Anita Pamintuan Fusco yc ’90 Donald P. Granger, Jr. yc ’85 David Marshall Grant ’78 Ruth Hendel Catherine MacNeil Hollinger ’86 David Henry Hwang ’83 Ellen Iseman yc ’76 David Johnson yc ’78 Asaad Kelada ’64 Sarah Long ’92, yc ’85 Donald Lowy ’76 Elizabeth Margid ’91, yc ’82 Drew McCoy Tarell Alvin McCraney ’07 David Milch yc ’66 Arthur Nacht ’06 Carol Ostrow ’80 Amy Povich ’92 Liev Schreiber ’92 Tony Shalhoub ’80 Michael Sheehan ’76 Anna Deavere Smith Jeremy Smith ’76 Ed Trach ’58 Courtney B. Vance ’86 Henry Winkler ’70

James Bundy photo by Joan Marcus

Dear Alumni,

(clockwise from left) Charles S. Dutton ’83, Patterson Skipper ’83, Jonathan Krupp ’82, YC ’79, Susan Picillo, photo by Margaret Glover ’88, YC ’81.

Contents

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16

2013–2014

Coney Island USA

William Ivey Long

26

20 Michael Price

Viva LasDesign: Vegas Projection Poetry for the Eye

Features

Departments

14

26

Antony and Cleopatra via Tarell Alvin McCraney

Projection Design: Poetry for the Eye

By Mark Blankenship ’05

16 William Ivey Long = Broadway

By Peter Marks yc ’77

20 Michael Price: Forty-Five Years at Goodspeed

By Barry Jay Kaplan

By Erik Pearson ’09

34 The Gospel According to Joe

3 On and Off York Street 10 Alumni Events 12 Sketchbook 48 The Season in Review 59 Graduation 61 Honors and Awards

By Barry Jay Kaplan

64 In Memoriam

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72 The Art of Giving

Start Here. Proceed.

Make a Sharp Right Turn

By Ilya Khodosh ’14

42 Inside the Sideshow: Coney Island USA

By Joel Abbott ’14

71 Bookshelf 73 Alumni Notes 96 Contributors/ Legacy Partners

From the Editor

Dear Friends, Navigating the streets and secrets of downtown New Haven, as recent graduate Edward Morris ’13 has lovingly, satirically, illustrated on pages 12–13, is the first challenge of anyone coming to Yale School of Drama. Our alumni roam far and wide from these streets after graduation on routes that, as you will see in the pages ahead, wind around a Victorian wedding cake like the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, to the briny Brooklyn shore of the garishly painted Coney Island Museum, to a basement workshop in Soho, the red carpets of Hollywood, and beyond.

For some graduates, the path is set early on: a character actor who has rarely been out of work since graduation; a producer who’s run the same theatre for 45 years; a designer with an interest in architecture who came to the School to study set design and graduated to become one of the most successful costume designers the theatre has ever known.

For current students there is the leap from understudy to Rep stage lead, from Los Angeles lawyer to special research fellow in directing, from male to female and back again in gender-bending drama, to actors who’ve never sung, singing Sondheim.

For other graduates the way doesn’t become clear until years after they’ve left the School. As you’ll read in the story on alumni career shifts, an actor turns out to be a writer, another a producer, another a casting director; a lighting designer takes on the artistic directorship of a regional theatre; a theater management student changes into a best-selling author.

These are only a sampling of the creative odysseys taken by YSD alumni.

What an embarrassment of riches!

Journeys taken by the alumni of YSD are either long or short, circuitous or stop and start, clear and straight or curving and bumpy, but all of them began at the intersections of Chapel and York, Park and Crown, and George and Howe.

annual MAGAZINE YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA Fall 2013, Vol. LVIII

Editorial Staff Deborah S. Berman Editor Barry Jay Kaplan Associate Editor Belene Day Managing Editor Susan Clark Editorial Coordinator Jane Youngberg Editorial Assistant

Contributors Joel Abbott ’14 Chris Bannow ’14 Sonja Berggren srf ’13 Margot Bordelon ’13 Austin Durant ’10 Ethan Heard ’13, yc ’07 Molly Hennighausen ’15 Maura Hooper ’15 Hansol Jung ’14 MJ Kaufman ’13 Ilya Khodosh ’14 Reynaldi Lolong ’13 Peter Marks yc ’77 Edward Morris ’13 Erik Pearson ’09 Amelia Roper ’13 Stephanie Rolland ’15 Vicki Shaghoian (Faculty) Matthew Suttor (Faculty) Jack Tamburri ’13 Justin Taylor ’13 Walton Wilson (Faculty)

Design Jack Design, jackdesignstudio.com

On the Cover

Director of Development and Alumni Affairs deborah.berman@yale.edu

(front cover from left) Dan O’Brien ’14, Catherine Chiocchi yc ’15, Ashton Heyl ’14, and Mariko Nakasone ’14; (back cover from left) Robert Grant ’13, Matt McCollum ’14, yc ’11, Sophie von Haselberg ’14, Carly Zien ’14, and Carmen Zilles ’13, in Yale School of Drama’s 2012 production of Sunday in the Park with George.

Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

On and Off York Street

News fromYale School of Drama

(left to right) Joe Grifasi ’75, Edward Strong ’77, Michael David ’68, Neil Mazzella ’78 (Former Faculty), Mark Linn-Baker ’79, yc ’76, Lewis Black ’77. Photo by Michael Marsland.

The Louie Goes to Lewis On April 1—no fooling—the Third Annual Louie Award was presented to comedian Lewis Black ’77. The award is given by Mory’s, the legendary club on York Street, to a Yale alumnus who has made a significant impact globally. Before the award ceremony, in the Law School’s impressively serious Levinson Auditorium, Lewis was introduced by Mory’s Council President Christopher Getman yc ’64 and interviewed by former classmate Mark LinnBaker ’79, yc ’76.

At Yale, Lewis was a playwriting student. “Playwriting is impossible to do and of course impossible to teach,” he said. Frustrated, he started doing stand-up comedy and made an early appearance at Toad’s Place, which he referred to as a *%@! , adding, “If any of you find this language disgusting . . . please leave!” On that long-ago night at Toad’s, he was introduced

thus: “Here’s a guy who thinks he’s funny.

Let’s see if he is.” Lewis admitted, “I had minimum stand-up chops. Actually, no one listened.”

Since Lewis has been public about his less-than-ideal time at the School, an audience member asked why he came back.

“Because I was asked,” he said, with deadpan aplomb. “That’s all it takes.”

As he began his career post-Yale, a lot of things about daily life, politics, playwriting, and the theatre were making Lewis very angry. Another comic advised him to bring that anger onstage. Lewis took the advice and found himself becoming known as the Angry Comic. “Finding one’s voice as a comic is the most important thing,” he says. “I was funniest when I was angry. And the rest is comic history!”

Then he took questions from the audience. Characterizing Lewis as a man

known for not expressing his softer feelings, an audience member asked how he felt about getting the Louie award. Lewis confessed: “It’s truly sad that it’s come to this. I think the system is broken.”

At this point in the proceedings there was a lot of noise in the back of the room, which turned out to be the entrance of the Yale Marching Band. Audience questions came to an end as the band rocked the walls of Levinson Auditorium with a brass version of “I Fought the Law and the Law Won.” Then it was on to Mory’s, where Lewis posed outside for photos and signed autographs.

Inside, diners were serenaded by the Whiffenpoofs, Lewis was presented with the Louie, and drank from Mory’s traditional silver cup. He seemed genuinely pleased and not at all like an angry man.

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On and Off York Street Taking a Chance A new magazine about the theatre is born.

Chance is the brainchild of a consortium of YSD alumni that includes Edgar (Trip) Cullman ’02, yc ’97, Lee Savage ’05 (Faculty), Camille Assaf ’04, Junghyun Georgia Lee ’01, Sean Cunningham ’01, Drew Lichtenberg ’08, dfa ’11, Fitz Patton ’01, Claire Lundberg ’02, yc ’98, and Matthew Richards ’01. The core mission of the magazine is nothing less than to change the way the theatre is photographed and documented. To achieve this goal, Chance commissions an original photo session illustrating various aspects of theatrical production.

The first issue highlighted Tom Watson’s wigs for Wicked, Susan Hilferty’s hat designs, an interview with set designer Andrew Lieberman, and the Transport Group’s site-specific production of Three Sisters, as well as feature stories about Jane Greenwood (Faculty), Ben Edwards, and Adrian Jones.

Through photos shot in a studio space, the reader can see exactly how something is built and tailored and the true color and texture of the fabrics. As the sets are seen in full detail, carefully and cleanly illuminated for photography, the viewer can examine the set dressing and the paint elevations and read what the designer has to say about them, often in conversation with another designer whose work also appears in the magazine.

Chance is a place to look at design, to consider the work, and to enjoy grounded, serious engagement about the theatre. Editor Fitz Patton encapsulates the belief of its founders when he says, “Superior visual documentation will transform the way people see and think about both the theatre itself and the people who design for it.”

The first cover of Chance magazine.

USITT Honors Neil Mazzella This year, Neil Mazzella ’78 (Former Faculty) was honored by the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) for Distinguished Achievement in Technical Production. It was fitting that his former mentor and teacher, Ben Sammler ’74 (Faculty), himself a past USITT honoree, should have made the comments that accompanied the presentation of the award. Here are some excerpts from Ben’s remarks: The year was 1975. I was facing my second class of incoming graduate students at Yale School of Drama. Still a bit anxious about my responsibilities, I found myself staring at a very serious but much younger version of Neil and thinking: incredulous farm boy meets uncompromising hippie! Since then we have both had a profound impact on each other’s professional lives and share a deep committed friendship. Since his business is technical production, it is more than fitting that USITT recognizes Neil’s unparalleled performance in commercial scenery with the Distinguished Achievement Award in Technical Production.

Neil founded Hudson Scenic Studio in 1980 with Gene O’Donovan. The company began in a small shop in upstate New York with five

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employees and 5,000 square feet of shop space and now makes its home in a 120,000-squarefoot complex in Yonkers, where it regularly employs over one hundred people. Hudson Scenic Studio has constructed and engineered scenic elements for Broadway plays, musicals, and touring companies, international cruise ships, and live events, such as the Tony Awards, Pope Benedict’s Mass at Yankee Stadium, and countless New Year’s Eve events in Times Square.

Yet in his unbelievably busy life Neil has always had the time to give back. He is one of the most charitable figures in the business. He was the first to provide financial support for the inaugural USITT Technical Theatre Exhibit. He served many years as the Chair of the Yale School of Drama Board of Advisors, encouraging not only generous donations but also the giving of time. He taught graduate classes in technical theatre at Yale and at Columbia. From his mentorship of young technicians to his support for training institutions, from sharing his expertise with whoever needs it to providing hours of his time to manage both celebratory and sad occasions in the theatre world, Neil has been a beacon in the industry.

After I grew accustomed to his appearance I knew that Neil would succeed in any

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Ben Sammler ’74 (Faculty) presents Neil Mazzella ’78 (Former Faculty) with the 2013 USITT Distinguished Achievement Award in Technical Production. endeavor he chose. He set himself on a course to learn at a time when many did not believe that an MFA in technical production was necessary, and he was an avid learner. He set himself on a course to realize a scene shop business, and we are all witness to his unmitigated success. Life has not always been kind to Neil, but he has always been kind to life.

I am proud of him for his accomplishments, professionally and personally. And I am proud to be his friend.

News from Yale School of Drama

The Return of Courtney B. Vance Courtney B. Vance ’86 received the 2013 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in Lucky Guy; prior to this, he had been nominated for his performances in Fences and Six Degrees of Separation. Courtney was also a regular on the television series Law and Order: Criminal Intent, in addition to appearing in many films. In May, he visited New Haven and welcomed students in the third-floor lounge of 222 York. Courtney was so entertaining and informative that, in the interests of clarity and brevity —and the reader’s pleasure — this article quotes exclusively from him.

On getting cast in the Broadway production of Nora Ephron’s Lucky Guy I did a reading for Lucky Guy, then found out they were going to do the play on Broadway.

My manager told me they wanted me to read for the part. I said, “But I already did the reading. What do they want to see?” So I went in to read. George Wolfe, the director, is brilliant but crazy. He said to me: “Courtney, this character is heavier than you. I want you to gain 30 pounds.” So I said: “George, I’ll gain 30 pounds if you gain 30 pounds,” and I left, thinking: “Well, I guess that part’s not mine.”

I ran into Keith David outside. He’s 30 pounds heavier. I appreciated that they put Keith up

“

Courtney B. Vance ’86 (back row in the red sweater) with students during his visit to YSD in May 2013. computer—meaning yourself—and spitting it back out. My gift comes from putting everything in the pot and then getting on stage and something happens. My gift happens on stage. Acting to me is problem solving.

On making a performance work Once you figure out what your journey is, the performance is connecting the dots. And that’s why you have to be fresh every night because you have to start over again. And it’s fresh every night for me because I don’t believe in “how am I going to do it again?” I get

On leaving Yale School of Drama

My gift comes from putting everything in the pot and then getting on stage and something happens.

My gift happens on stage.

Acting to me is problem solving.

for the part and went back home. I told my wife the joke. She didn’t think it was funny.

Two weeks later I got a call from my agent: I got the part.

On acting onstage I knew nothing from nothing. I put my head down and worked. Here at YSD you do all kinds of things and all kinds of roles because you have to get very good at taking what somebody gives you and putting it into the

you are when you are up. Everybody’s time is not the same time, and that is hard. You have to weigh how long you are willing to be down until you are lifted up. The world will look at who you are when you graduate and make an assumption about you. Some people don’t have the fortitude to keep going because it is too dark. And sometimes you have to do things in front of people and learn things in front of people and it takes a lot of courage.

Actors are the most courageous people because you have to get in front of people and work it out.

”

in the dressing room, close the door, sit down, and start to say my lines. Certain scenes are more difficult than others for me, and then I’m back. At home, I’m defeated. In my dressing room, I’m OK.

On being in the School’s Third-Year Actor Showcase Some people are not going to get chosen by agents. And if you don’t, you just have to say you are the same person when you’re down as

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Once you get out of Yale, nobody cares where you went to school. It matters once you get lifted up. Then people say, “Where did you go to school? Oh! Yale!” But until that time, nobody cares. So wring this puppy for all that you can. Don’t let a minute go by, because in another minute you will be out of here, looking back at the school and sighing. And money: Get a flexible job that allows you to audition and pay your bills. Whenever I got a nice job, I put a chunk away. Ten years, fifteen years later: no more loan. I started this process with nothing and all of a sudden I have a Tony Award. But here is where I started out.

Back in Los Angeles I thought, “I don’t know if I can really do this.” But I’m not going to get caught thinking that, because in a minute I won’t think that I can do anything again.

Start where you are. The business is cold and harsh and lonely. Stay in touch. Help each other. This is a marathon. It ain’t a sprint.

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On and Off York Street

Paul Giamatti ’94, yc ’89 with moderator Murray Biggs during the 22nd annual Maynard Mack Lecture. Photo by Michael Marsland.

A Literary Disposition Every year the Elizabethan Club brings a distinguished theatre practitioner to Yale to speak. The Lectureship honors the late Maynard Mack, Sterling Professor of English at Yale, chair of the department, and eminent scholar and critic of Shakespeare, Pope, and other literary figures. For its 22nd annual Maynard Mack Lecture, the Club had to look only as far as the University Theatre, where native son, actor Paul Giamatti ’94, yc ’89—his father was former Yale University President Bartlett Giamatti—was giving a riveting performance in the title role of Yale Repertory Theatre’s production of Hamlet. An enthusiastic full house greeted Paul as he took a seat stage center, next to moderator Murray Biggs, Yale professor of English and Theatre Studies, who elicited the following comments from Paul.

The chance to play Hamlet came about because James Bundy ’95 (Dean) offered him the role. “I realized I’d be stupid not to

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do it,” Paul said. “Nobody in New York would ask me to play Hamlet.” There is a stirring in the audience, as if such a thought is, well, unthinkable.

“No pumpkin pants,” Paul went on.

“Modern dress was mentioned, which was fine with me but it could’ve gone many ways.

I asked James what he would think if Hamlet was in his underwear or pajamas. It suggested a morbid kind of humor, but it seemed to make sense.”

Many of the characters Paul has played speak in a modern patois, and it is certainly a leap from there to Shakespeare. Recalling his preparation for the role, Paul said: “If you let the language in, it will guide you where you need to go. The character takes possession and tells you what you’re doing wrong and what you’re doing right. The energy of the man himself carries you along, if you don’t fight it.”

Paul has had great success in other media, winning an Emmy for his portrayal of John

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Adams and an Oscar nomination for his work in Sideways. He has taken a long break from acting on the stage, however; his last appearance was in the Broadway revival of The Iceman Cometh in 1999. When asked if Hamlet was a role that he could see himself acting on film, he said: “I don’t know that I’d like to play this role in a movie.” He added, with refreshing frankness, “I don’t have the native sense of playing for the camera. I find it easier to play a lead in a play than in a film. In a film, I’m more suited to being the guy sitting in the back of the room.” Straightening in his chair, displaying the very enthusiasm he is talking about, he said, “I was so happy to have physical space around me while rehearsing Hamlet, without a camera between me and the other actors. There was so much space. I could use my entire body. In film, the repetition and spontaneity can be interesting, but having the actual passing of time in the theatre is wonderful.”

News from Yale School of Drama

Sonja Berggren: A Year in the Life For one amazing school year (2012–2013) I was a special research fellow in directing at Yale School of Drama. Sitting in classes with MFA students was like being in the middle of a spectacular fireworks display. I was surrounded by brilliance: theatre greats of the future, the present, and the past. A latein-life actor, producer and director, I began acting at 50. Ten years ago, at 55, a friend and I started a theatre company. Today we have a vibrant ensemble with resident artists of many ages and talents, and a strong commitment to new works.

My previous relationship with Yale was through my family. My husband, Patrick, who joined me for my year at YSD as an avid but aged undergraduate, is a Yale College alumnus, as are two of our three children. It was in 2010, when I joined the Yale School of Drama Board of Advisors, that I got the idea to come to the School. I hoped to gain an understanding of the School from a student’s perspective and to learn new things to incorporate into my work.

What did I find? Joy, stimulation, excitement, provocation, and delight. I would have been happy as the School’s house cat, but instead I was submerged in theatre day and night. Under Liz Diamond’s (Faculty) care, I was part of the “College of Directors” (the nine MFA students plus special research fellows of the directing department). Each of these distinct directorial spirits taught me to look at theatre from a different perspective.

We played, creating street theatre in front of the University Theatre. I crawled on the floor of the classroom in a scene from Brecht and directed in the styles of Meyerhold and Stanislavski. I learned that I can watch a scene performed in Farsi and know what’s going on without understanding a word. I directed a stage reading of 8, the play, in the University Theatre as part of a national project, after which James Bundy ’95 (Dean) told me that, in his experience, it was the most diverse and eclectic cast of YSD students, faculty, staff, and administration to be brought together on that stage.

Ming Cho Lee (Faculty), Michael Yeargan ’73 (Faculty), Wendall Harrington

(Faculty), and Jennifer Tipton (Faculty) opened my eyes to design fields beyond my experience and expertise. From David Budries (Faculty) and Matthew Suttor (Faculty), I discovered that auditory culture is almost limitless. I learned about the Russians from David Chambers ’71 (Faculty), and Robert Woodruff (Faculty) surrounded me with Greeks. Each week I sat in on Ron Van Lieu’s (Faculty) acting class and saw 16 talented young actors grow under his patient tutelage.

Total immersion in theatre. From 9 am to 2 pm I studied the craft. After 2 pm I watched rehearsals and performances. I saw show after show, ranging from the intimate, provocative offerings of the Cabaret to School performances directed by the MFA students and Yale Rep’s polished productions. A free afternoon? I went to rehearsals and saw Paul Giamatti ’94, yc ’89 work on Hamlet and Bill Camp learn to walk in high heels and a corset for In a Year with 13 Moons.

I don’t know yet how this experience will unfold in my own work. I do know that I am

filled with the seeds of new ideas. This year at YSD has changed what I am as an actor, what plays I want to produce, how I direct. I am committed to wholehearted, fearless exploration and risk taking, to collaboration with all the designers and dramaturgs and playwrights I can find. I will comb through texts searching for the heart and soul of the playwright. With a fresh eye, I will add a directorial perspective. When it comes to design, I know that less is more, that scrappy theatre on limited resources is even more thrilling than an expensive Broadway production. I was reminded that the fourth wall can be broken in many different ways, and the audience is as much a part of the show as what happens on stage.

I stand grateful and amazed.

Sonja Berggren srf ’13

Submit Letters to the Editor Please address all editorial comments to: Deborah Berman Editor Annual Magazine of Yale School of Drama PO Box 208244 New Haven, CT 06520 deborah.berman@yale.edu (203) 432-2890

Sonja Berggren srf ’13 and husband Patrick Seaver yc ’72.

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On and Off York Street Chinese Lessons “This is not the China of your father’s years, or even slightly older brother’s,” Deborah Davis, internationally respected China expert and Yale professor of sociology, wrote to me on the eve of our departure for Shanghai. Indeed.

The Shanghai Theatre Academy’s gated compound, where Anne Trites (Faculty) and I were to teach for a week in January, is nestled on a busy city street next to Lamborghini Shanghai. While the Academy’s unheated classrooms may have been reminiscent of an older regime, the gleaming glass and lightfilled luxury new car showroom next door shouted a very new order entirely.

Anne and I were in China to teach at the Academy's Winter Institute, where we were the second wave of Yale School of Drama faculty to venture east. “I thought it highly unlikely that I would ever do so,” Anne said afterward. Never say never. In preparation for the trip, I had asked Professor Davis for one piece of advice about teaching in China. We were to have translators and we had prepared PowerPoint presentations in advance, but “get key terms translated by a Chinese student at YSD,” Davis wrote. Clearly this was good advice; every time a slide came up with translated terms during our classes, out came a sea of iPhones to enter this new information.

We both found students to be bright, curious, and a joy to teach. As Anne said, “They were so keen to learn everything I could pack into each class.” Anne taught “How to Find an Audience, American Style,” and I taught two introductory courses on sound design and composing for theatre. Following class, the students surrounded us, wanting to talk further. And, there were autographs to be signed and photographs taken. Anne joked, “This is the only time in an arts marketer’s life when you're the one being asked for an autograph!”

A highlight for Anne was seeing a performance of composer Tan Dun’s Water Heaven with Academy students. She had already taught the basic steps involved in developing a marketing strategy and plan. In this class Anne used slides created by YSD theatre management student Louisa Balch ’15 for a marketing assignment the previous fall.

Louisa’s slides illustrated the marketing strategy for Yale Rep’s production of Hamlet, a play all of the students at the Academy knew well.

Following Tan Dun’s performance, “We were able to depart from American examples and

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use the concepts already covered to discuss how to find an audience for this production,” Anne said.

Anne was able to adjust to the students’ interests on the fly: “It became clear during my second class that students were very interested in methods of increasing earned revenue.

Their desire to start and maintain secure theatre companies in China was strong. This led to talking about dynamic pricing, which I hadn’t planned to do, but their interest was so great that I changed plans. The discussion was similar to those we have had in the United States. Some embraced the principles immediately, while others were concerned about a negative impact on accessibility.”

For me, it was a privilege to explain the work of our sound designers to their Chinese contemporaries. Before I departed, I had asked YSD students to send me examples of

their work to present. Interestingly, most sent me work from Shakespeare repertory productions. We concentrated on Enobarbus’s description of Cleopatra on her barge (Act 2, Scene 2). The setting came from director Margot Bordelon’s ’13 production of Antony and Cleopatra, with sound design by Palmer Hefferan ’13. In class we tried every possible combination of male voices, female voices, fluent Chinese speakers, fluent English speakers, and even a young Swedish woman reading Chinese, to explore the effect of different voice qualities over Palmer’s underscoring. We discovered that the underscoring worked as effectively in both English and Chinese. And Shakespeare sounds fabulous in Chinese—somehow it felt like the rhythms and tone were preserved in translation. It was exhilarating teaching.

Matthew Suttor (Faculty)

Anne Trites (Faculty) and Matthew Suttor (Faculty) touring in China.

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News from Yale School of Drama

“Today is the best day of my life, pretty much.”

At work during Yale University's O'Neill Playwriting program. Photo by Samantha Contis for the Yale Co-Op Partnership.

The O’Neill Playwriting Program: An Ordinary Day As part of Yale University’s O’Neill Playwriting Program, students from Yale School of Drama, Yale College, and Cooperative Arts and Humanities (Co-Op) High School in New Haven work together to develop plays. The 2012 program began with playwrights from YSD and Yale College co-teaching a playwriting course at Co-Op during a week in spring. A few weeks later, the Co-Op students, teachers, and the YSD mentors spent a weekend retreat at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center. During the retreat, the group participated in an intensive playwriting program, developed by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel (Faculty).

In the following fall semester, the YSD mentors worked on their own pieces, while

conducting after-school workshops at the high school to refine the plays written by the Co-Op students. By the time winter recess arrived, plays were submitted as part of the program’s Annual Festival of New Work.

This is where Yale School of Drama actors would read nine original plays written by Yale undergraduates and students from CoOp High School, on Friday and Saturday, February 1 and 2, at Yale Cabaret.

Those two nights at the Cabaret began with an empty stage, five music stands, and nine nervous playwrights waiting for the lights to go down. Then the actors entered, the audience clapped, and the writers tried to remember to breathe deeply. As the plays were read, audiences met a ninja princess who beheaded three Prince Charmings, the

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Big Bad Wolf who wanted his story rewritten, and a modern Snow White with homicidal tendencies.

Too soon the readings came to an end, the actors and writers took their bows to the whoops and applause from the audience.

Then backs were patted, cheeks were kissed, pictures were taken, and celebratory chocolate cake was consumed. It was an ordinary post-show party for a not-so-ordinary theatrical event. Toward the end of the night, one young playwright answered a casual, “How’d you think it went?” with a matter-offact “Today is the best day of my life, pretty much.”

And so ended the journey that is Yale University’s O’Neill Playwriting Program.

Hansol Jung ’14 Curtain.

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Alumni Events

New York Holiday Party (2012)

1

at The Yale Club of New York City 1 Linda Sithole ’91, Michael Rogers ’85,

Dennis Reid ’89, Walker Jones ’89

2 Roberta Pereira Da Silva ’08,

David Roberts ’08, Stephanie Ybarra ’08

3 Kathy Houle ’88, Catherine MacNeil Hollinger ’86,

2

Herb Scher ’86

4 Sheria Irving ’13, Miriam Hyman ’12, Lupita Nyong’o ’12

3

5 Fisher Neal ’12, Benjamin Horner ’11

and his son, Henry

6 Eric Gilde ’07, YC ’04, Ellen Adair,

Campbell Scott, Kathleen McElfresh Scott ’06, Erin Buckley ’06, Corena Chase ’06

4

Photos by Samuel Stuart Hollenshead

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Alumni Events

West Coast Alumni 2 Party (2013)

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at the home of Jane Kaczmarek ’82 1 Drew McCoy and Amy Aquino ’86 (recipients

of the 2012–2013 YSD Warfel Award); James Bundy ’95 (Dean)

2 Sasha Emerson ’84, Stephen Godchaux ’93 3 Malcolm Darrell ’07, Joan Channick ’89 (Associate Dean)

4 Jane Kaczmarek ’82, Angela Bassett ’83, YC ’80,

3

Joan van Ark ’64

4

5 Alexandra Henrikson ’11, Sidney Johnson ’12, Joshua Bermudez ’13, Amanda Bermudez

6 Asaad Kelada ’64, Charles Dillingham ’68, YC ’65

7 Cliff Warner ’87, Kate McConnell ’05,

5

Rachel Rusch ’05, DFA ’08, YC ’00, Aaron Epstein, Mattie Brickman ’09, Rebecca Phillips ’09, Nora Brickman

6 Photos by Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging

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Edward T. Morris ’13 has reimagined New Haven from the perspective of current YSD students and with his tongue lodged firmly in his cheek.

Any resemblance to The New Yorker magazine cover is purely intentional.

Take a closer look at the streets and buildings and you’ll find a New Haven that is at once familiar and facetious.

Sketchbook

Antony and Cleopatra via Tarell Alvin McCraney

By Mark Blankenship ’05 Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is slippery: Every time you think you’ve grasped its structure and themes, it wriggles away, demanding that you classify it as something else. For Tarell Alvin McCraney ’07, that is part of its appeal. This season, he is directing his own adaptation of the play in three major productions around the world. With each production, he is honing his vision of what the play can mean, both as a work of art and as a tool for community action.

From an aesthetic perspective, Tarell sees the play as both a history and a tragedy, evoking the political ramifications of Antony’s and Cleopatra’s power and the mythic tenor of their doomed relationship. “Critic Harley Granville-Barker wrote extensively about this play being a hybrid,” Tarell says. “When I read that, the first thing I thought was, how can I make both the history and the tragedy feel immediate without having to explain so much of it to an audience that may not be familiar with Antony or Cleopatra or Shakespeare?”

To that end, Tarell has transferred the play to the late 1700s in Saint-Domingue, Haiti, when that country was on the verge of revolting against France. “We hope that setting it in this part of the world at this particular time will buoy the historical factors,” he explains. “This history is a little more present to us, and our brains and bodies can viscerally understand that world. I think we can get inside the idea of colonialism and imperialism and also subscribe to the mythical elements.”

As both director and playwright, Tarell has a unique chance to nurture his vision, as well as the benefit of working with the same cast and creative team in all three productions. The show began in November at London’s Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), and early next year it will play at Miami’s GableStage and New York’s Public Theater. The team includes both British and American actors, a Miami-based movement director of Haitian

descent, Catherine Sheehy ’92, dfa ’99 (Faculty) as dramaturg and Stephen Strawbridge ’83 (Faculty) as lighting designer.

This blended community speaks to one of the Tarell’s other goals: that Antony and Cleopatra belong to audiences in all three cities. “Each venue is so different,” he says, “so the relationship to each audience will be different. And in response, we’ll have to shift and evolve.”

Miami has a personal resonance for Tarell; he is a native, and he frequently returns there to work. When the RSC asked if he was interested in adapting Antony and Cleopatra, he immediately thought of home. “I said yes, but only if I could take it to Miami and have it play for the students there for free,” he recalls. As a result of that request, GableStage will offer multiple student matinees that let students see the show for no charge.

If all goes well, this production will help Tarell and GableStage launch a winter Shakespeare festival that would radically increase student exposure to the Bard. “Shakespeare isn’t necessarily on the curriculum in Miami-Dade,” Tarell says, but he recalls many arts programs that changed his life when he was young. “It’s important for me to provide the young people in my community with the opportunities I was afforded.”

With this in mind, the Miami production could give this version of Antony and Cleopatra yet another identity: as history, as tragedy, as a reflection of the Haitian revolution . . . and as a gateway to the theatre for Miami’s young people. “It’s a huge task,” Tarell says. “We still have to raise money in Miami. But the show is now in its sixth week of rehearsal in London. It’s something I’m growing very proud of, and I will be excited to see this art at home.” Y Mark Blankenship ’05 is the editor of the online theatre magazine TDF Stages.

Tarell sees the play as both a history and a tragedy, evoking the political ramifications of Antony’s and Cleopatra’s power and the mythic tenor of their doomed relationship.

note: Antony and Cleopatra will open at GableStage in Miami on January 9, 2014, and at The Public Theater in New York on February 18, 2014.

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william ivey long equals

broadway by peter marks yc ’77 photos by samuel stuart hollenshead

Chipper and chatty, the highly decorated Broadway costume designer William Ivey Long ’75 leads a visitor through the racks of suits and gowns and skirts and boas and trousers and corsets and vests that fill his TriBeCa studio. He’s a nattily dressed trail guide in an enchanted forest of fabric.

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“What you are looking at is Big Fish,” William says.

“I worked on it for a year. I work on every show I do for a year.”

The racks of costumes are being readied for shipment to Chicago, where the new musical, based on the novel and film of the same name, and starring Kate Baldwin and Norbert Leo Butz, was to try out in April for a Broadway opening in the fall. Its director is Susan Stroman, one of William’s longtime friends and collaborators, for whose celebrated production of The Producers he received one of his six Tony Awards for outstanding costume design.

“I spend my life helping people become other people,” he declares. Indeed, over the course of nearly 40 years and more than 60 productions, as a gleeful sort of Mad Hatter to Broadway, he has helped some of the biggest names transform themselves. It was William’s outsize vision of Harvey Fierstein in monumental paisley frills that helped the actor become Hairspray’s Edna Turnblad. His black come-hither negligee transformed Bebe Neuwirth into a killer Chicago hoofer. He suited up macho Hugh Jackman to play the gay Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz; outfitted classically trained Natasha Richardson in a bustier for Cabaret; and turned a little yellow dress into a star in its own right for the dance musical Contact.

He copped his sixth Tony in June for the designs of the Broadway debut of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella, a show for which he doesn’t mind saying that he’s done some of the best work of his career. Among the marvels: the astonishing quick change as Cinderella’s glittery ball gown seems to materialize before our eyes out of her drudge’s rags.

His love of the theatre goes beyond costume design. Just last year, for instance, he was elected chairman of the American Theatre Wing, the almost century-old service organization that established the Tony Awards. His immersive embrace of theatrical causes extends, too, to some unlikely passions, such as his role as production designer of The Lost Colony, an annual summer pageant on Roanoke Island, in his native state of North Carolina, that claims to be the longest continuously running outdoor drama in the country.

It seems entirely appropriate that his own name has become synonymous with an exuberant style that exclaims “Broadway!” as brashly as any marquee or billboard in Times Square. Although, like any designer, he’s required to adapt to a production’s guiding conceit—and has worked on serious dramas as well as brassy musicals—he’s the go-to guy when you want the clothes to make a big statement and, sometimes, to take us all the way to camp. It’s no surprise that his clients beyond Broadway have ranged from

Mick Jagger to Siegfried and Roy. And who more rightfully should have been called on to build the jaw-dropping piece of drag architecture Gary Beach’s Roger DeBris wore for his entrance in The Producers?

Still, William holds to the belief that he is just a cog and not the whole machine. “We don’t want the costumes to wear the actors,” he says, as he descends into the studio basement, its walls papered at the moment with Cinderella sketches. “You still want to hear the story and see the performers. If they’re wearing something that distracts, it doesn’t help.”

He didn’t dream himself into the world of spools and spindles; he bumped into it.

Born to a clan with centuries of Tarheel history—“I am one of the Longs of North Carolina,” he says, in that way that alerts you to something deep-rooted and proud—William studied history as an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. “I went because of the architecture,” he says, adding: “I’m a frustrated architect. That’s what I wanted to do.”

When he enrolled at Yale School of Drama, his goal was the natural theatrical outgrowth of that ambition — set design. “I went to study with Ming Cho Lee (Faculty), who was and is a spiritual mentor,” William explains. “The very first day of class he sent us all to downtown New Haven to register to vote.” It was a gesture intended in part to underscore an artist’s responsibility to the world, a philosophy that William took to heart. “You have to give back,” he observes. “That’s how you do it.”

That impulse, serendipitously, steered him toward the work that would become his life. Discovering that the School’s costume collection was in disarray, he volunteered to organize it, then took on the job of doling out costumes for the Yale Summer Cabaret.

One of the Cabaret shows was Walton Jones’ The 1940s Radio Hour, set in a seedy Manhattan radio station during World War II—with costumes by William and a cast that included Meryl Streep ’75, dfah ’83. When The 1940s Radio Hour bowed on Broadway in 1979, William won a Drama Desk award for his costumes. And thus a man needled his way into a profession.

He is consistently in high demand; his current projects include the new Bullets Over Broadway, a musical adaptation of Woody Allen’s 1994 movie. There no doubt will be stories he could tell about it, but they will have to remain on the fitting room floor.

“Costume designers,” he says, “take their own Hippocratic oath.”

Even regarding Cinderella’s quick-change trick? Especially that.

“I am not saying,” he replies, with a tantalizing vagueness, “that I learned it from Siegfried and Roy.” Y

...he’s the go-to guy when you want the clothes to make

a big statement and, sometimes, to take us all the way to camp.

Peter Marks is the chief theatre critic at the Washington Post.

YSD 2013–14

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MICHAEL PRICE: Forty-Five Years

by Barry Jay Kaplan

Overture The five-story “wedding cake” rose on a hill in East Haddam, looking out over the Connecticut River. The building, completed in 1876 by local merchant William Goodspeed, originally housed his various businesses, including a fleet of steamboats. Goodspeed also had an appetite for the theatre, and so, on the top two floors, he built one. Luminaries of the contemporary stage—actress Minnie Maddern Fiske, orator and preacher Henry Ward Beecher—appeared there, and whole shows came up from New York on Goodspeed’s own boats. Alas, after Goodspeed’s death in 1882 the building began a decades-long decline, changing owners several times (its last production was Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1902), until it shut its doors completely in 1930. The state of Connecticut owned it during World War II and used it as a garage. After 40 years, despite efforts of actors from William Gillette to Katharine Hepburn to save it, the building was close to ruin. Then, in a last-minute act as thrilling as any of the melodramas it used to present, the building was rescued from destruction by a group of local preservationists led by Libby Kaye and Mrs. Alfred Howe Terry. One million dollars later, Goodspeed opened once again, this time as a summer theatre.

Enter Michael Price ’63.

(above) Michael Price ’63. (right) Goodspeed Opera House at 50 years.

Photos courtesy Goodspeed Musicals.

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at Goodspeed

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His credentials were promising: a Bachelor of Arts degree from Michigan State, a Master’s from the University of Minnesota, and a Master of Fine Arts in technical production from Yale School of Drama, where his teachers, now deceased, included Donald Oenslager (Former Faculty), Stanley Russell McCandless (Former Faculty) and Oren Parker (Former Faculty). Michael Price also took courses at Yale School of Architecture, and during his last year Professor Henry Pfisterer told him that the restoration of the Goodspeed theatre, then under way, might make an interesting subject for a term paper. Michael drove up to the theatre and, after spending many days there doing research, became the production manager for the first season.

This was not the beginning of an illustrious career, however. “I was a smartass,” Michael admits today. “I was arrogant. I was from Yale, after all.

I deserved to be fired and after a year, I was.”

He went to New York and worked as a stage manager for the inaugural season of musical theatre at Lincoln Center under Richard Rodgers, then spent three years designing the lighting for Salt Lake City’s Valley Music Hall. Just as that theatre was about to go under, Michael received a call from Goodspeed’s board of trustees.

Was he ready to try it again?

“I needed a job,” Michael recalls. “So I came back to run the business side while the actor Alfred Drake ran the artistic side.” In short order Drake left, Michael produced Peter Pan, which turned into a hit, and the board gave him the title of executive director. Since there was no such thing as theatre management training at Yale School of Drama at that time, where did he get the skills to run a theatre?

“Who knows where skills come from?” he says with a shrug. “Some of it is chutzpah, some of it is moxie. I had a tech background, and I could ask questions.”

That was in 1968. Michael is still there.

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Metamorphosis Under Michael’s leadership, the artistic mission of Goodspeed underwent a radical transformation. At first it was the home of the lost or undiscovered American musical. The addition of the Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, Connecticut, as a second stage, allowed Goodspeed to become a place to develop and produce new American musicals. Then came a spurt of physical growth with the purchase of additional properties in East Haddam and the gradual establishment of a theatre complex.

In the wake of their first really big success—Man of La Mancha—six Goodspeed musicals have moved to Broadway, including Shenandoah, Very Good Eddie, Something’s Afoot, Whoopee, and of course, Annie. “It’s nice, but you can’t live with Broadway in mind,” Michael says. “If New York reviewers come and like it, it moves to New York. Today the new musicals at the Norma Terris, where we develop that work, have a better chance.”

The dark side of Michael’s second tenure at Goodspeed, by his own admission, was the leadership style of a benevolent dictator. Staff, crew, and actors knew him as a stern taskmaster; even audiences felt the brunt of his temper when he refused seating to latecomers and wouldn’t let anyone leave until the curtain came down on the final call.

Palpable tension was rising in the ranks. Something had to be done. “The place had gotten too big,” Michael says. The staff was unhappy being micromanaged, and Michael didn’t know how to effect the changes he saw were necessary. And so he sought out the advice of David Berg, professor of clinical psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. Berg listened to Michael’s problems and told him: “Change the way you do business. It’ll hurt but you can’t keep running it all by yourself.”

A new openness was required, mostly within Michael himself. “I said to my staff: if you screw up, tell me. I’ll say ‘How can I help?’ or I’ll let it go. They were wary at first. It took us a long time to build the necessary trust. But over the years they have all delivered more. I deliver less—and enjoy life more. Socially, the place is very cohesive, and this is very important. But it was painful.” Much of his job these days is concerned with policymaking and fundraising. “It takes you away from the art,” Michael says, with a little regret in his voice, “and it becomes less interesting.”

(opposite top) Irving Jacobson, Richard Kiley and Gerrianne Raphael in Man of La Mancha, 1965.

Photo by Arthur Cantor. (opposite bottom) Michael Price ’63 in the 1970s. Photo courtesy Goodspeed Musicals. (left) Reid Shelton and Andrea McArdle in Annie, 1976. Photo by Wilson H. Brownell.

Michael as Host (this page, from left) Khris Lewin and Liz Pearce in Something’s Afoot. Photo by Diane Sobolewski. Randy Rogel and Ann Kitteredge in Very Good Eddie.

Photo by Wilson H. Brownell.

Most nights, Michael can be found on the top step outside the theatre, welcoming audience members, who then enter the restored lobby of the building, which is dominated by a grand staircase worthy of Tara. The floors and walls are a combination of artfully painted faux marble and faux wood. Down one hallway is a bar with a few tables and a view of the Connecticut River. Michael’s office, down another hallway, is often used to entertain guests. Walk up the redcarpeted staircase—there is also the modern addition of a small elevator in the rear of the lobby—to a lounge furnished with Victoriana. Up another flight, and you arrive in the theatre itself, an immaculately renovated jewel box of a space, seating 360 people, with an orchestra pit and wraparound balcony. Though the stage is small, it’s big enough for a dozen dancers to do “The Varsity Drag” from the recent production of 1927’s Good News. There is no wing space; everything is flown up and down. Set walls are designed to come apart so they can fit in the narrow stairwells and be reassembled onstage.

The Campus After the show Michael is eager to take me around the East Haddam campus of Goodspeed. As he drives, he narrates. Little by little over the years, as the need became clear, Goodspeed built small homes to house actors and repurposed warehouses which now contain a scene building shop, a scene painting shop, a prop shop, The Scherer Library of Musical Theatre, and a shop where they make tubes to hold painted drops which are sold to theatres around the country. An old factory building is the home of the costume shop where clothes are built or pulled from a stock of 250,000 pieces. There are dressing rooms with views of the river and a room devoted exclusively to wigs.

And while Julie Andrews has directed at Goodspeed, the productions rarely, if ever, feature stars. “It’s self-defeating,” Michael explains. “You use a star in one show, the audience expects you to use another one in the next.” There is, however, a long list of performers who have performed at Goodspeed and later become stars, among them John Cullum, Idina Menzel, Charlotte d’Amboise, Raul Julia, Faith Prince, Patrick Wilson, and S. Epatha Merkerson.

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The Goodspeed Opera House is located on the Connecticut River. Photo courtesy of Goodspeed Musicals.

“It’s like we’re in the woods,” Michael says, shaking his head as if he can’t quite understand how this could be.“It’s like a secret from the world.”

The very size of this campus astonishes, and Michael can’t suppress a grin as he shows it off. And yet it becomes clear, after a half dozen “oh wows” from me, that one of the most depressing things you can say to Michael Price is that you had no idea how extensive Goodspeed really is.

“It’s like we’re in the woods,” Michael says, shaking his head as if he can’t quite understand how this could be. “It’s like a secret from the world.”

He is consoled by the Goodspeed Opera House’s two Tony awards, one for its contribution to the American musical and another for best regional theatre.

Michael can point with pride to the fact that it is the only LORT theatre that is exclusively dedicated to musicals.

Back in the opera house I ask him if, at the age of 75, there is any musical he hasn’t done that he wants to do. We walk down the hallway looking at photographs of dozens of shows done years ago. “Most of the time I thought we were doing a terrific job,” he says. “But what we’re doing now… it’s clear that the quality has continued to improve over the years. And that is the most important thing to me.” Y

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A scene from Rusalka, Minnesota Opera 2008.

Projection design by Wendall Harrington (Faculty).

Photo by Daniel Michal.

“Projection is poetry for the eye.

Projection is akin to music.

It is ephemeral and there is nothing there, no weight, no gravity.

It is an ephemeral layer.

That is the thing I love most about projection, the dichotomy of making something that is invisible, visible, fleeting, seen by the heart.

When projection design is at its best, the audience feels that they put the image on stage out of their own imagination.”

Wendall Harrington (Faculty)

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Projection Design:

Poetry for the Eye

by Erik Pearson ’09

In May 2013, the first class of projection designers — Paul Lieber ’13 and Hannah Wasileski ’13 — graduated from Yale School of Drama. Contemplating the end of a theatre season bursting with projections, LED walls, and flat-screen TVs as well as industry milestones, including the introduction of a new Drama Desk award for projection design, one can’t help but think: it’s about time!

It is an important milestone, worthy of celebration and reflection, not only on the significance to the School and the professional theatre, but also on the state of the art and its history.

Many people are under the impression that projection design—a term increasingly used to describe all forms of video in live performance—is a relatively new field. As Wendall Harrington (Faculty) — chair of YSD’s new MFA program and widely considered to be the godmother of contemporary projection design—teaches her students, the craft has roots that go back to the magic lantern shows of the seventeenth century. It was the innovations in visual media and technology of the twentieth century that accelerated its evolution. By the mid-1950s movies were an integral part of the social culture, and, only a short while later, television. This development also had a significant influence on narrative structure in the theatre. Just as D. W. Griffith was inspired by Charles Dickens’s use of parallel narrative to experiment with the sort of film editing we now take for granted, the cinematic form has had a profound effect on plays and playmakers. In 1945’s The Glass Menagerie, for example, Tennessee Williams describes dozens of expressionistic slides he intended to be projected throughout his play. Changes in technology—including better access to electricity, increased sophistication of film equipment, and the invention of video—made projections more adaptable and inexpensive.

Far more recently, computer control as well as major advances in projectors (smaller, quieter, and brighter) and LED screens/walls have made projection cheaper and faster still, transforming the way projection design is conceived, rehearsed, and presented. No longer are designers and their collaborators handicapped by the high cost and painstaking work of creating new slides or motion picture film every time a change needs to be made.

A scene from The Who’s Tommy, St. James Theatre, NY, 1993.

Projection design by Wendall Harrington (Faculty).

Photo by Peter Cunningham.

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A scene from Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth, Longacre Theatre, NY, 2012.

Projection design by Erik Pearson ’09.

Photo by Erik Pearson.

“The difference between projection design and the other design disciplines is that only a handful of people have done it before.” — Paul Lieber “That was a crazy way to work,” recalls director Robert Woodruff (Faculty), referring to his 1992 production of Le Petomane at La Jolla Playhouse. “We shot 22 minutes of film that cost $100,000 for a big huge mother of a projector. And to sync it with live performance was the biggest pain in the ass.”

Twenty years later Woodruff continues to use projections in his work, including his last four productions at Yale Repertory Theatre, but the experience is very different. Today he and designer Peter Nigrini use WatchOut media servers capable of capturing and processing live video while rendering multiple feeds of hi-resolution content in real time, streaming video to an array of projectors and LED walls.

As the technology has improved exponentially over the last few decades, the limits on what artists can create have fallen away. “You’ve always had this cap on your imagination,” reflects Woodruff, “and now you can unleash it again.” And so he has.

Of his adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground (Yale Repertory Theatre 2009), Woodruff acknowledges, “Without video, I wouldn’t have even thought of doing it. It was the only reason to do it.”

Neil Mazzella ’78, chairman of Hudson Scenic Studio, explains the present moment in projection design’s evolution by noting that when he begins a new project, he knows to ask not only, “Is there smoking on stage? Is there open flame?” but also, “Is there video?” We’ve not yet reached the day when projection can be assumed to be a part of every production, but one must always ask the question. And yet projection design is by many accounts still in its infancy. “Or maybe we should say it’s in its terrible twos,” jokes Wendall Harrington. “There are a lot of tantrums going on. I don’t think the beautiful and full integration has even begun to take place.”

While the craft has been around for a long time, the recent increase in use has created an epidemic of growing pains.

Major New York and regional theatre companies all have scenic, costume, lighting, and sound departments, but even such companies as The Public Theater, which regularly produce shows with projections, have no video supervisor on staff. Far too often projection is an afterthought, added to a production long after the design process has begun, in the hopes that it will provide an affordable solution to a problem that cannot be solved with physical scenery, and often it is designed by an amateur with little or no experience with theatre and/or video. It should come as no surprise that so much of what we see of projection design when we go to the theatre disappoints. Professional theatre companies around the country continue to struggle to integrate the new

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technology into their producing model, and designers, directors, and playwrights continue to wrestle with how to work together to make the best use of the exciting new technologies.

“This is why I teach,” says Harrington. “I hope to create the total theatre artist, or at least that’s the goal. I’m hoping to start the conversation before the play is in the director’s hands. I’m trying to teach everybody what I had to learn the hard way—how to collaborate with lighting, how to collaborate with sets, how to work with directors. Heck, I’m trying to inform the playwright, too. Wouldn’t it be good if projection was grounded, not in the latest technology, but in the deepest thinking?” YSD provides Harrington the opportunity to teach students from all disciplines about what projection is and isn’t. She hopes the legacy of the program will be the lasting influence of her belief that theatre design begins with the word or gesture.

“The difference between projection design and the other design disciplines,” says Paul Lieber, “is that only a handful of people have done it before, and they haven’t been doing it very long. They don’t have an ancestry. Having made the mistakes, having worked on the big crazy shows, having learned from it all, Wendall provides this, a little bit of history for us to build on.”

Indeed, Harrington is widely credited with having singlehandedly kick-started the recent flood of projections with her innovative design for The Who’s Tommy in 1994. Her Broadway resume dates back to They’re Playing Our Song in 1979, and over the decades that follow reads like a concise history of projection design on Broadway. Being a pioneer of her profession, she now takes on an entirely new set of challenges as she incorporates her students into the pedagogy and producing model of YSD. “I did Jean Anouilh’s Eurydice, the first show at YSD designed by a projection design MFA candidate,” Paul Lieber recalls. “They gave us an engineer and that was it. And it turns out we needed a programmer as well. As time went on, we added an engineer who was also a programmer, and then an operator had to be added, and through the slow example of things crashing and failing, whether it was a computer or an engineer, adjustments have been made. By year three the system was set.”

Harrington has faced similar challenges in shaping her students’ classwork and production assignments. Unlike costumes or scenery, projection design is a time-based medium that does not work well on a reduced scale. As a result, the paper projects that have long been a staple of traditional design training have been reimagined as full-scale projects in the Annex, where designers and playwrights work together to create staged evenings of scenes and projections.

A scene from Eurydice,Yale School of Drama 2010. Projection design by Paul Lieber ’13.

Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

Candy Buckley and Rebecca Henderson in Autumn Sonata, Yale Repertory Theatre, 2011. Projection design

by Peter Nigrini. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Additional complications have arisen in projection students’ production assignments. While other design departments can trust that each YSD and Yale Rep production will require a scenic, costume, lighting, and sound designer, the same cannot be said for projections. To insure that her students get the kind of hands-on production experience critical to their education, Harrington has forged collaborative relationships with the School of Music, where her students have designed for Yale Opera as well as outside the university for Martha Graham Company and Richard Move.

Of course the greatest oppor­ tunity for Harrington and her students is the exploration of what makes good projection design.

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand dollar question,” jokes YSD CoDesign Chair Michael Yeargan ’73 (Faculty). “I’m fascinated by what projections can do, what the possibilities are. I don’t think anyone has realized that fully.

When projections are used to fill in the blanks with scenery— when there’s a park bench for example, and the leaves on the trees are moving—I find it to be the most enormous distraction. All I can think of is ‘how did they do that’ and ‘oh my gosh there goes a bird.’ If had it been a film I wouldn’t even think about it because it’s all in the same plane, the same language. I would rather see projection design that is abstracted in some way.”

Lighting designer Robert Wierzel ’84 (Faculty), a long-time collaborator of Harrington’s, who has worked extensively on shows with projections, most notably on the Broadway hit Fela, says of projection design, “It’s not an extension of set design. It’s not that simplistic. You can say it’s night by showing a night sky, but that is the least satisfying. We have other ways to convey that. A projection can have a more emotional, psychological, and intellectual impact because it can immediately and quickly change the tone of the whole stage. Imagery that strikes you, that is seared into your consciousness in some way.”

James Bundy ’95 (Dean) shares in Harrington’s high hopes for the new program, and its positive influence on the professional theatre. “The specific value that projection designers coming out of YSD can bring to the table is that their training will have versed them in a range of dramatic literature and aesthetics that allows them to assess, not only the baseline question of whether or not projections are going to add to a particular piece, but also the varied ways in which projections can add to a piece

or indeed become the heart of a piece. Ming Cho Lee (Faculty) always used to say the best designers are the best dramaturgs, and I think one of the things that Wendall has brought is a tremendous sense of visual history, modes of seeing, modes of relating experience visually, and a really sharp dramaturgical sense for how projec­tions work. There are other programs that are analogous to this around the country, but their students aren’t embedded in the study of drama the way they are at YSD, and that’s, I think, a big advantage for the students who go through the program.”

The degrees given to Lieber and Wasileski in 2013 signify something greater than simply the three years of work produced by these two; they validate the status of an entire community of artists who have only recently begun to receive the respect and recognition long enjoyed by their professional colleagues. “I’ve been doing this since 1978,” reflects Harrington, “and I fought for everything: billing for projection designers, royalties for projection designers, tech time, union recognition (only recently granted). It’s very important that there’s a level of respect for the profession, that it’s not just some technical craft but design. The program at YSD brings it that much closer to achieving this. It makes it clear that this is real.” Y Erik Pearson ’09 is a Brooklyn-based director and projection designer. (above) A scene from Die Gezeichnten, Los Angeles Opera, 2010. Projection design by Wendall Harrington (Faculty). Photo by Ruppert Bohle.

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The Gospel

According to Joe

by Barry Jay Kaplan

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Photo © LaRae Lobdell.

“Actors’ careers are often defined by the set of their features.”

This is the gospel according to Joe Grifasi ’75. Sitting across from him at a sidewalk restaurant on Lenox Avenue in Harlem, I’m looking at the face of a regular guy, a little weathered, ethnic but not specifically, a face that’s been cast as a good guy and a tough guy, a cabbie, a waiter, a bandleader, a gangster, Phil Rizzuto and Yogi Berra, a desk clerk, a detective, a lawyer. It’s the face of someone you know or think you know, a distant relative or the guy who works at that place you used to go to, a man who’s seen a lot and isn’t fooled by much. In other words, Joe is that enviable kind of actor— a character actor who has been cast and cast and cast since he graduated from Yale School of Drama in 1975. (IMDb has Joe listed in more than 100 movies and television shows, plus dozens of plays, and cites him as one of the most underrated actors in the business.)

Despite working a lot, Joe still believes that “the best part of being an actor is not when you’re acting, not when you’re rehearsing, not when the reviews come out. . . . It’s when the call comes and someone says: You’ve got the part.”

If there can be such a thing as an ideal background for the life of an actor— an artistic environment, worldly parents, dedicated teachers who recognize a child’s talent—Joe didn’t have it. He was born in Buffalo, New York, 21 miles from Niagara Falls. He stumbled into acting at Bishop Fallon High School when one of the priests suggested he be in a play instead of cutting up in the classroom. When he graduated, he briefly attended Canisius College before joining the army, and then auditioned for YSD because he heard that you could get in without a college degree. “I was working at the time at a hospital with a bunch of Spanish guys as co-workers. One said he was sorry to hear about my bad luck. I said, ‘What bad luck?’ And he said: ‘I hear you going to jail.’ ‘Not jail,’ I said. ‘Yale. Yale!’”

He arrived in New Haven on the back seat of a bus and stayed at the Taft Hotel, still reeling from the shock that he’d been admitted to the School. During his first year he was sure he wasn’t good enough and was going to be kicked out.

He walked the streets and cried. Then he was approached by Bill Peters ’79 and John McAndrew ’72 and asked if he wanted to do a comedy with them at the Yale Cabaret. “At that time, the Cabaret was just a basement room where people ate breakfast,” Joe says. “There was no connection to the School and there were no rules. The best idea wins. It was that kind of group. It was the greatest experience I ever had at YSD. It was ‘four boards and a passion,’ to quote Lope de Vega.”

After graduating from YSD, Joe performed the Cabaret piece in Toronto with Peters and McAndrew, then got an offer from Yale Repertory Theatre and went on to play seven roles there in three years in Yale Rep productions. “That’s how I really learned to act,” Joe says. “I can trace everything I’ve done in my professional career—with writers, actors, and producers—within three degrees to what I did at Yale Rep.” One thing he never expected to do was teach, since he was always jumping around from job to job, city to city. He had tried teaching once, to undergraduates, and frankly didn’t like it. “I thought they were too young to be really committed,” he says. “I didn’t want to teach the basics. I wanted to teach people who were ready to put both feet in the water.” When The New School in New York approached him, the situation was different. “I would be teaching graduate

... the best part of being an actor is ... when the call comes and someone says: You’ve got the part.

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Meryl Streep ’75, dfah ’83 and Joe on the set of the film The Deer Hunter. Photo courtesy Joe Grifasi.

Joe with Brian Dennehy in Goodman Theatre’s production of Hughie.

Photo courtesy of Goodman Theatre.

Joe and Carmen de Lavallade (Former Faculty) in The Banquet Years, Yale Repertory Theatre.

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students who had already made the decision to be actors. And the school wanted someone with professional experience,” Joe says. “So I thought, let me try it.” He was interested from the point of view of a professional, not an academic. “It’s comparable to an accomplished ballet dancer who becomes a ballet master. I like that as an idea; it’s more liberating. The acting department at The New School hires people who are working actors.”

In addition to teaching, Joe found himself becoming a mentor to young actors. The idea for mentoring began at the annual YSD Showcase for graduating actors. Joe had been working as a director at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and came to the showcase to see young talent. Jennifer Lim ’04 caught his attention.

Jennifer remembers that day very well. “I really wanted to work in the theatre. But when I was meeting agents, the focus was always on TV and film.

Joe gave me a different perspective, that it was possible to work in the theatre.

He told me about regional theatres I’d only heard about. I learned more about the profession in 10 minutes talking to Joe than in the years I was at Yale School of Drama.”

Joe proceeded to talk to James Bundy ’95 (Dean) about a mentorship program, careful to make clear that he didn’t want the idea to become official or to be co-opted by the School. After so many years in the theatre, and being the gregarious guy he is, he knows a lot of people. “I have friends in the theatre that I’ve had for over three decades.

That’s why I have so many connections.” Joe began meeting with third-year students. He asks what they’re interested in and sets them up with people he knows who might help them: one graduating student to one older alum, so there is no competition between them. After that, as Joe explains, “A simple phone call from a graduating student to a working alum of the School can be an opportunity.”

Mentorship is also a way to bring alumni closer to the School, pairing seasoned actors with new graduates. It creates the kind of relationships that the world of theatre has been built on for centuries, a chain of help, support, and companionship among artists. Joe is too modest as an actor—and as a man—to give himself credit for helping to keep the chain of mentorship alive and thriving. “It’s not that I’m at the top of the heap and want to share my wisdom,” Joe says. “I want to create colleagues.” Y

‘Not jail,’ I said. ‘Yale. Yale!’

Joe at a family farm near Agrigento, Italy. Photo courtesy of Joe Grifasi.

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Start here.

Proceed.

Make a sharp right turn.

by Ilya Khodosh ’14

The stories of Yale School of Drama alumni whose professional lives evolved in completely unforeseeable ways are testaments to their openness and creativity.

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For Yale School of Drama students with interdisciplinary interests, choosing one department in which to earn an MFA may seem like prematurely committing to one professional path, leaving other talents and passions behind. But some alumni have parlayed their training into the kinds of careers they never envisioned as students.

Here are the stories of five distinguished alumni who transformed their career trajectories and became leaders in fields quite different from what they studied at Yale. Their success stories are living proof that the creativity and resourcefulness that students cultivate at Yale are just as valuable as the technical skills and professionalization they receive. It is never too late for students and alumni to broaden their possibilities, find their true paths and create exciting second acts for their professional lives in the theatre and beyond.

Alex Witchel

Photo by Fred R. Conrad.

Who would have guessed that journalist, novelist, and memoirist Alex Witchel ’82 earned a degree in theater management from Yale School of Drama? In fact, she has written four books, profiles theatrical luminaries for The New York Times Magazine, and interviews authors, comedians, chefs, vintners, and restaurateurs. Alex arrived at her writing career unexpectedly, when nothing else worked. After YSD, she became an apprentice Broadway house manager but quickly hit a glass ceiling. “About a year into it, Bernie Jacobs said that I had gone as far as any woman was ever going to go at the Shubert Organization,” said Alex. “That was 1983. So I thought: I am really sunk.”

On the advice of a “very expensive” career counselor Alex went on 165 informational interviews, and almost became a junior account executive at an advertising firm. A secretarial agency advised her to remove YSD from her resume to avoid seeming overqualified. She finally got a job as an assistant to the editor in chief of Elle magazine. When her boss was fired three months later, the interim editor invited her to publish a story every month and build a portfolio. “I didn’t think I could be a writer,” Alex remembers; her father read her early work and wasn’t exactly a fan. She took an assignment to interview Bernadette Peters over the phone. Later, watching a higher-level writer read the article, “I could tell from the way he was standing. I knew immediately it was no good.” She reworked the draft—less formal, more conversational—and it ran. And her writing career was born.

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Carol Ostrow

Geoffrey Johnson Geoffrey Johnson ’55 is recognized as one of the theatre industry’s most respected and successful casting agents.

For three decades, Geoffrey and his business partner Vincent “Vinnie” Liff, have cast more than one hundred shows, including the original productions of Amadeus, Dreamgirls, Cats, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and The Producers. Yet he started out in the YSD acting program. He had wanted to act ever since, as a child, he saw Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie; but once Geoffrey moved to New York after Yale, he found the life of an actor less stimulating than he had in graduate school. He applied for work as an assistant stage manager at the St. Louis Municipal Opera, an 11,000-seat amphitheatre.

He stage managed many musicals before entering into life-changing collaborations, as David Merrick’s casting director and Noel Coward’s United States representative.

His casting agency’s contributions to American theatre were eventually recognized in 2003 with a Tony Award Honor for Excellence in Theatre and a Drama Desk Career Achievement Award. “Anything you do in life is a gamble, really,” Geoffrey says, and taking himself out of the New York acting pool was a risk. But his experience as a young actor made him an empathic and compassionate presence backstage and especially in the audition room, where for almost 40 years he calmed the frayed nerves of hopeful auditioners. In recent years Geoff has served as one of three American trustees of the Noel Coward Foundation.

YSD actors know, or learn how, to improvise, to go with what is happening. Carol Ostrow ’80, producing director of the Flea Theater, had the daunting distinction of being the first actress from Vassar College to be admitted to Yale School of Drama after Meryl Streep ’75, dfah ’83. Carol acted professionally for five years after graduation from YSD; she even screen tested for the movie Arthur and lost the part to Liza Minnelli. But she became frustrated with how replaceable actors seemed to be, and their lack of creative control.

Carol considered law school and the police academy before getting hired to start a summer theatre program for Vassar students. Suddenly she was spending all Photo by Angela Jiminez. her time budgeting, marketing, fundraising, overseeing productions, planning seasons; she was now a producer. “I became so engaged each time I raised ten thousand dollars, each time I got an actor or a director to say yes. When I make those things happen, it’s a rush!”

Soon, her love of being at the center of creative decision making eclipsed her desire to be a leading lady. She knew she made the right choice “when I watched an actress in a play and no longer said, ‘that’s my role.’”

“When you go into a new field and hit obstacles, you start to regret what you left behind and feel like maybe you made a mistake ... it’s sort of like leaving a relationship.”

— David Marshall Grant

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Anita Stewart

“The creativity that every YSD student has is what’s at the essence of making a wonderful life.”

— Anita Stewart

David Marshall Grant David Marshall Grant ’78 enjoyed an illustrious acting career before becoming known as a television writer and producer for such shows as Brothers and Sisters and Smash.

Fresh out of the YSD acting program, he won the part of Richard Gere’s lover in Martin Sherman’s Bent and eventually played Joe Pitt, the closeted Mormon lawyer, in the Broadway production of Angels in America. He took advantage of professional down time to write his first play (on a yellow legal pad), revising it on and off for five years. After a reading of the play in Williamstown, playwright Jon Robin Baitz told him, “The good news is you have to stop working on this play. The bad news is you’re a writer so you have to start another one.”

David made his New York playwriting debut in 1998 with Snakebit. A favorable review in The New York Times— along with a nomination for the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play—began opening doors. Playwriting felt solitary, but the television writing room was as collaborative an environment as the rehearsal rooms he was used to. “I wouldn’t have given up being in Angels in America for anything I could’ve written. When you go into a new field and hit obstacles, you start to regret what you left behind and feel like maybe you made a mistake. Maybe you left a sense of security for the unknown, but it’s sort of like leaving a relationship. It’s never as good as the way you remember it.”

Anita Stewart ’88, yc ’83 is the executive and artistic director of Portland Stage and one of the few professional designers to lead a regional theatre. Early in her career, she gained momentum as a freelance set designer and worked all over the map. But after 10 years, Anita felt that she was starting to repeat herself. She wanted a deeper connection to audiences, something more than “you stay through opening, and then you get on a plane.” She was teaching at the University of Iowa when fellow designer Christopher Akerlind ’89 suggested they jointly apply for the vacant artistic director position at Portland Stage.

As artistic directors/in-house designers, they could bring in diverse directors with a wide latitude of perspectives.

However, having to reach agreement on every detail proved onerous for the two, so Christopher stepped down and Anita took over as artistic director. She learned on the job to make theatre that resonated with the Portland community; she found the local artists and audiences she’d been looking for. As an added benefit, staying in one place ensures she can never repeat her designs, which “keeps me honest and on my toes.”

No matter what you do, says Anita, “the creativity that every YSD student has is what’s at the essence of making a wonderful life.”

As students, Alex, Geoff, Carol, David, and Anita never anticipated the transformation their careers would undergo after Yale. But there came a time when they all said, “Let me try something. Let me be creative, again.” What these alumni demonstrate with their career switches is that, while an unswerving road may be the surest path to your destination, a more improvised route can take you someplace wonderful you never imagined you’d go. Y Ilya Khodosh is a third-year YSD student of dramaturgy.

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Inside the Sideshow :

Coney Island USA

by Joel Abbott ’14

●

photos by Samuel Stuart Hollenshead

Dick Zigun ’78 is the greatest promoter of the circus sideshow and also its greatest preserver. He is the founder and artistic director of Coney Island USA, which is to the circus sideshow what the Met is to opera. ☛

Sword swallowing is just one of the talents Dick Zigun ’78 teaches in his Sideshow School.

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Success has not come overnight for Dick Zigun ’78. Since his graduation from Yale School of Drama, he has worked hard to carve out his cultural niche: “By persevering for more than 30 years here in Coney Island, suddenly it’s a place where—if you take an offbeat view of American theatre—alternative traditions that come out of P. T. Barnum and amusement parks are legitimate subjects of theatrical interest. Coney Island USA has become a national center for that. And, with the real estate and the staff, its budget is over a million dollars a year,” says Dick.

Dick keeps the theatrical art of sideshow alive, producing a juicy assortment of variety shows (Coney Island Circus Sideshow), burlesque (Brooklyn Babydoll’s Tantastic Nudie Showcase of Class), and special events (Menagerie of Mayhem—Serpentina’s Little Sideshow of Horrors). He runs Sideshow School, a place where people learn how to perform such acts as sword swallowing, fire eating, and being a human blockhead. On the second floor of his headquarters at Coney Island USA he oversees the Coney Island Museum, which boasts an eccentric collection of fun mirrors, books, antique postcards, photographs, musical instruments, posters, and pieces of rides.

Dick is also the man behind the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (“America’s most undressed parade”), which is estimated

to have attracted over 750,000 spectators in 2012. He has become one of Coney Island’s most famous residents, both as the “selfproclaimed mayor of Coney Island,” and as a political lobbyist.

He is known for promoting the arts and guarding the peninsula (it is no longer an island) he loves from undesirable zoning and development, and for helping to maintain Coney Island’s status as America’s capital of popular culture.

Dick grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the same town where P. T. Barnum was born. In addition to an early awareness of Barnum (his father’s used furniture store was on Barnum Avenue, and his grammar school was next door to circus performer Tom Thumb’s house), he also cites his early proximity to the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut, as being formative in his development. “All of us poor, urban school kids would get bused three times a year to see Shakespeare. So by the time I graduated high school, I had seen most of Shakespeare in performance, with people like Morris Carnofsky.”

As a playwright and theatre maker, Dick says his influences include Charles Ludlam, Mabou Mines, and Richard Foreman.

“My thesis at YSD was a play about Charles Lindbergh, where Lindbergh is played by a toy plastic airplane, the Atlantic Ocean by a fish tank. The airplane is hung by a string. One side says New

“…I became this sort of New York City weird legend, and respectable, and got all this funding.” — Dick Zigun

(above) Unidentified participants of the 29th annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade on June 22, 2013 at Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY. Photo by Vladimir Korostyshevskiy. (opposite) Posters at Coney Island USA, promoting the variety shows.

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“there’s a whole new generation of

circus idiots for the twenty-first century that have trained here.” — Dick Zigun

(left) A poster advertising the Human Blockhead act, and (above) Ray Valenz performing.

York, the other side says Paris, but then the sides keep changing, manipulated by actors. When Lindbergh gets married, his wings are clipped off. It’s almost like ventriloquism except there’s no human-like doll with a moving jaw, there’s just an airplane.”

Dick found Coney Island the perfect place to produce his kind of theatre. He explains, “Here, in the most offbeat of places, suddenly, in my 50s, I became this sort of New York City weird legend, and respectable, and got all this funding. Millions and millions of dollars in funding. It’s wonderful that New York City thinks my bizarre obsession is that important.”

Dick produces a kind of “visceral theatre,” where performers do physically uncomfortable things to their bodies and the performances elicit shocked reactions from the audience. “Instead of a quiet audience in a dark room, in a sideshow every five minutes someone eats fire or sticks a nail into their face. People

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yell and scream, and sometimes they throw up. It’s a very loud and responsive audience.”

Before Hurricane Sandy landed at Coney Island on October 29, 2012, Dick and his colleagues at Coney Island USA felt prepared for the predicted two-foot flood. “I’ve been here for three decades,” Dick says. “I’ve been here for some hurricanes. We were such know-it-alls about flooding.” The problem was that Hurricane Sandy did not cause a two-foot flood but a five-foot one, entirely submerging all of Coney Island for several hours. “If I hadn’t gotten out of my house, I could have died,” Dick says. “By the time I realized I had to get out, it was too late to drive anywhere.

I went to friends who lived on the third floor across the street and watched my house get submerged. If the building we were in had caught fire, or had collapsed, the only alternative would have been to dive out of the second floor window and swim around in

Dick is the artistic director of a theatrical organization that is cold, polluted water, with cars floating around in it. In my panic the best in the world at what it does. And while some theatregoers to leave, I just ran across the street. During the night, you saw cars may not accept sideshow acts and burlesque as legitimate theatre, under water with the lights on. You heard electrical transformers Dick believes there is a place for it. “I’m not trying to overthrow blow up, and little fires happened. The doorbell on the ground your whole dramaturgy, just trying to create a weird American floor started ringing, and then the second floor doorbell started dramaturgy, as an option.” Dick also has some advice for younger ringing. And then it got creepy, so we pulled the wires from the theatre makers, who are more focused on financial than on artistic doorbell. And you begin to wonder if this is the weirdness of the success. “I think it’s a mistake to think you just go make money in last thing you hear before you die.” television or the movies, doing work you don’t feel fulfilled by, so The show that was running at Coney Island USA at the time that you can make money and start your own theatre and do the Hurricane Sandy hit was a play written by Dick called Dirty Work work you want to do 20 or 30 years later. I think you’re better off at the Waxworks, a Halloween-appropriate horror story that takes just doing what you want to do from the get-go. It might be harder. place in a wax museum. The lobby and bar were decorated with I’ve seen one or two people who’ve made a lot of money, went off bloody bodies for Halloween. When Dick and his colleagues and started their own company and accomplished something. returned to Coney Island USA after the flood, they found it But most of the time those people get lost and have some type difficult at first, in the dark and mud, to determine if the floating of career but never find the fulfillment they thought they were bodies were real or props. They also found the stage ruined, looking for.” Y waterlogged, items floating everywhere, and thousands of dollars of equipment destroyed. Everything had been flooded to Joel Abbott is a third-year YSD student of sound design. about five feet high. “This was not only salt water but toxic water, even from sewers backing up. So everything was wet, ruined, and disgusting. Plus, it’s not like your house is just wet. Everything falls over and floats around. There’s stuff everywhere.

It’s not orderly wet. It’s chaos wet.”

The first floor of Coney Island USA, including the 100-seat theatre, reopened six months after Hurricane Sandy for Memorial Day weekend 2013, with a calendar filled with burlesque, sideshows, and magic acts. The second floor, housing the Coney Island Museum, which had served as storage during the first-floor renovation, reopened later in the summer of 2013.

Dick views his Sideshow School as similar to Ringling Brothers’ Clown College, where those who are interested can learn from professionals how to perform sideshow acts. He explains, “It’s the first time anyone has, for tuition, advertised that you can come, and as safely as possible, after signing an agreement, have somebody teach you to swallow a sword or breathe fire. This is so much better than at home, by yourself, on the Internet, downloading something that Jim Rose once wrote and trying it yourself, and ending up in the hospital. So there’s a whole new generation of circus idiots for the twenty-first century that have trained here. All those sideshows, including the Venice Beach Freakshow—most of those people in them learned their craft here.”

He warns that most sideshow acts are not tricks. “They are about learning the anatomy of your body and carefully learning how to do those things for real. There is no such a thing as fake fire.

Stairs leading up to the Coney Island USA museum The sword does not collapse into the handle. They feature names of park rides and attractions. really do put a drill bit or a nail up their nostril.”

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Yale Repertory Theatre

The Season in Review

Yale repertory theatre’s 2012 – 2013 Season

What is it like to come back to the School where you’ve been a student and in one year appear in two plays at Yale Rep? Is it scary or a thrill to revisit the School as the director of a new and difficult play? How does it feel to be the understudy to the lead in a Yale Rep play? Do you hope you’ll go on or fear you never will? Is it in your power to create an environment in which two actors can play multiple roles? Can you make the leading man in a play sound convincingly like a woman? We asked Austin Durant ’10, Rebecca Taichman ’00, Maura Hooper ’15, Edward Morris ’13, Chris Bannow ’14, and Walton Wilson (Faculty), and this is what they told us.

marie antoinette

Hannah Cabell, Marin Ireland, and Polly Lee in Marie Antoinette by David Adjmi, directed by Rebecca Taichman ’00. Photo

by T. Charles Erickson.

The Director Who Returned Rebecca Taichman ’00 Marie Antoinette

I have been fortunate enough to return to Yale Rep as a director three times since graduating from YSD. Two of those productions were plays by David Adjmi—The Evildoers and Marie Antoinette. In very different ways both take a vicious look at an empire on the verge of self-destruction, drunk with power, toppling over from inequality and indulgence. Hope in these plays comes in the vision of cracking and breaking apart the structures of power, leaving space for something new to emerge.

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Marie Antoinette is about democracy, and the responsibility we all have to take for what structures we exist in and promote. The play calls out to us all to wake from a kind of fog of apathy and take action. It is a difficult, fierce, funny, painful, smart play, and Yale Rep is singularly suited to develop and support it. The play required enormous visual ideas, truly virtuosic acting, thorough dramaturgy, and tremendous support.

I am so grateful to collaborate with the staff and leadership at YSD. I hope to keep coming back. It feels like coming home.

2012– 2013

Yale Repertory Theatre

dear elizabeth

Mary Beth Fisher and Jefferson Mays in the world premiere of Dear Elizabeth, a play in letters from Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell and back again, by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Les Waters. Photo by Joan Marcus. (inset below) Jefferson Mays yc ’87 and Maura Hooper ’15 prior to Maura going on as understudy for Mary Beth Fisher in Dear Elizabeth.

The Understudy Who Went On Maura Hooper ’15 Dear Elizabeth

It was 5:30 pm when Stage Manager Kirstin Hodges ’13 called to let me know that I would be going on at 8 pm as the understudy for Mary Beth Fisher in the title role in Yale Rep’s Dear Elizabeth, opposite Jefferson Mays YC ’87. With a mixture of panic and excitement, I ran to the theatre to prepare for the performance. At that point I had run through the entire play only once with my fellow understudy, Matthew Raich ’15. When I entered the theatre that night, I was nervous and worried that I would forget the roughly 45 minutes of text I had thankfully memorized. But Ron Van

Lieu (Faculty) stopped by my dressing room and alleviated my doubts by telling me I would get out there and simply know what to do. He was right. Once I got onstage, the tasks of the character quickly overcame my nerves. There was so much for Elizabeth to accomplish—from the moment Kirstin called “places” until the curtain call—that there was no time to worry about my own fears. Mary Beth had been incredibly gracious throughout the rehearsal process, offering me advice and insight into the character, and Jefferson was equally generous onstage. I am extremely fortunate to have worked with such fine role models for my first understudy experience. Understudying Dear Elizabeth was an exercise in trust, in my own abilities as well as in a scene partner with whom I had never before worked. Although it was only one night, I will never forget how it felt to play Elizabeth Bishop.

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The Season in Review

stones in his pockets

The Understudy Who Didn’t Go On Chris Bannow ’14 Hamlet

Fred Arsenault (left) and Euan Morton in Stones in His Pockets by Marie Jones, directed by Evan Yionoulis ’85, yc ’82 (Faculty). Photo

by Joan Marcus.

The Dirt On the Designer Edward Morris ’13 Stones in His Pockets

The conversation for Stones in His Pockets started a full six months before audiences saw the play on the Yale Rep stage.

From the first meeting we knew we wanted to use rolls of sod to create the environment of the play. The green, of course, was reminiscent of Ireland. The sod rolls also created obstructions and level changes that facilitated creative staging. The technical team did an excellent job of fabricating realistic-looking grass.

The most enjoyable part of the design process for me was developing a film reel for the top of the second act. I was introduced to projection design at Yale and was grateful for the opportunity to design in that medium on the Yale Rep stage. Director Evan Yionoulis ’85, YC ’82 (Faculty) and I spent many a late night in the editing room searching for the right footage. We were gratified with the responses of audiences and reviewers alike.

It was a real pleasure to work with my classmates Matt Otto ’13 (sound), Nikki Delhomme ’13 (costumes), and Solomon Weisbard ’13 (lighting).

(right) Paul Giamatti ’94, yc ’89 and Austin Durant ’10 in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, directed by James Bundy ’95 (Dean). Photo by Joan Marcus. (inset above right) Chris Bannow ’14.

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In the spring of my second year at YSD I was lucky enough not only to be cast as Osric in James Bundy’s ’95 (Dean) 2013 production of Hamlet, but I was also assigned to understudy Paul Giamatti’s ’94, YC ’89 Hamlet.

If you can imagine.

The role of Hamlet is 1) a third of the total lines in the play, 2) a role that comes with centuries of bias and expectation, and 3) a role I didn’t see myself cast in. On top of that, Paul Giamatti was an iconic figure in my mind (back when his film Sideways came out, I was 17 and convinced that I, too, hated merlot) whom I was about to be rehearsing with for eight weeks.

How was I to do this?

Well, actually, it was a blissful experience. The cast was filled with YSD alumni who took the students under their wing. James proved himself the most capable director I’ve ever worked with on Shakespeare. And Paul…well, I don’t know how else to say it… he’s a beast in the room. Always present, always working, always humble, and forever daring. He offered such a distinct and clear perspective on the role, my job was easier day by day. Just watching him work, lines and couplets started to seep into my subconscious. And the more I watched his Hamlet emerge, the more I hungered for my chance to speak those speeches and bring that role to life.

And although I never did go on (thank god) I did have five understudy rehearsals to take my stab at the role. Off book, ready, and so very, very thankful for the opportunity.

Maybe next time: Hamlet. Until then. . .

hamlet

2012– 2013 My Fourth Year at Drama School

Yale Repertory Theatre

in a year with 13 moons

Austin Durant ’10

This past season I appeared twice onstage at Yale Rep, the first time in American Night: The Ballad of Juan José, and the second in Hamlet. It was deeply rewarding to reconnect with friends and teachers in the development of two very ambitious pieces of theatre. It was what I warmly refer to as my fourth year at drama school.

It’s only been two years since I graduated, so spending six months in New Haven was an interesting experience. In the best ways not much has changed—someone’s directing a thesis project set in a galaxy far, far away, someone’s getting naked in his or her cabaret show, and BAR still has the best pizza in town. On the other hand there are some notable differences. Rudy’s, the former watering hole of New Haven’s gutter punks, derelicts, and dramaturgs, has cast off its dive bar livery and moved to a new location on Chapel Street.

Now it resembles something of a gastropub replete with brunch menu, karaoke, and actors. There’s an Apple store near where Cutler’s Records once stood, and Sullivan’s has closed. But, to my mind, the change that seems most significant was pointed out in the welcome speech by James Bundy ’95 (Dean) to the first-year class. In the mission statement of the School there is a small change in phraseology in relation to the idea of failure. According to the new list of core values for the School, YSD is no longer a place where students are “safe to fail” but a place where students can “risk and learn from failure.” The change implies a subtle but important shift in pedagogy. In a place where a student is safe to fail there is no implicit challenge to succeed. We are theatremakers—at the end of the day we have to produce something, ideally something worth watching. Risking failure, on the other hand, implies that there is a cost involved in bringing an idea to life. To that end we, as theatre artists, are called to invest our hearts, our minds, and our bodies. It’s a standard that makes sense both in training and in practice—to champion those ideas that we love even when they are wildly out of order. It’s the only way to truly go down in flames…or not.

american night: The Ballad of Juan josé

Bill Camp and Monica Santana (with Jesse Perez and Gabriel Christian in background), in the world premiere adaptation of In a Year With 13 Moons, film and screenplay by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, adapted for the stage by Bill Camp and Robert Woodruff, directed by Robert Woodruff. Photo by Richard Termine.

The Sound of Her Voice Walton Wilson (Faculty) In A Year With 13 Moons

As an element of his transformation into the character of Elvira, a transgender woman, Bill Camp wanted to access some of the less familiar areas of his vocal range and have the ability to speak quite softly and intimately, as the moment dictated, and still be audible and intelligible.

Bill and I worked together on a regular basis to exercise the higher parts of his range with a greater sense of ease and release. We experimented with shifting vocal posture, resonance, and dynamic. I designed and recorded a vocal workout for him that he could practice on his own. Bill was costumed in a corset and girdle, but his breathing needed to remain relatively free and fluid—vital to a performance where the character is on stage for two hours.

There were also moments in the story when Elvira was the victim of physical violence, and Bill needed to be able to respond to that aggression in a way that was both vocally expressive and technically sound. In a Year with 13 Moons marked the fourth time I have served as a voice and dialect coach on a production directed by Robert Woodruff and the second time I have had the opportunity to collaborate with Bill Camp. It was a joy to be in the rehearsal room with these two remarkable artists, who share an appetite for bold theatrical gestures, a disdain for cliché, and the courage to put their vision on the stage without regard for propriety or convention.

René Millán and Nicole Shalhoub in American Night: The Ballad of Juan José, written by Richard Montoya, developed by Culture Clash and Jo Bonney, directed by Shana Cooper ’09. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

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Yale School of Drama

The Season in Review

Yale School of Drama’s 2012–2013 Season

Playwrights and directors talk about developing the play by producing it, writing and rewriting and cutting, and learning by listening to the audience; about the relationship between funny and sad, finding a design that embraces the story, illuminating small human moments; about finding a form to fit the plot; about creating art that acknowledges constant change; about nightmare moments and faith in collaboration; about actors who are game and audiences with imagination; about the challenge of the human voice; about exhilaration, cohesion, and generosity; and about spirit and ambition, fearlessness and the physical life of a story.

iphigenia among the stars

Sheria Irving ’13 in Iphigenia Among the Stars, adapted from Euripides by Benjamin Fainstein ’13, conceived and directed by Jack Tamburri ’13. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

Jack Tamburri ’13 on Iphigenia Among the Stars

Why are imaginative adventure stories supposed to be only for children? In February 2012, I proposed to adapt and direct two plays by Euripides as a single story, reset in the colorful, bombastic universe of superhero comics—specifically the intergalactic gods-and-warriors stories produced by artist Jack Kirby in the 1970s. I couldn’t help it. Whenever I read certain Greek tragedies, I saw these kings in green capes standing on orange moons with fire streaking from their eyes. I needed to see my ideas take shape on the stage. And in November I did, with Iphigenia Among the Stars, an adaptation of Iphigenia Among the Taurians and Iphigenia at

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Aulis. The production featured roaring aliens, exploding robots, and a vengeful goddess ripping apart time and space. The actors, bless them, were game. They put on the purple helmets and the yellow polka-dots and the glitter makeup and went to town on Greek tragedy, never giving in to the impulse to wink, or camp it up. I hope that the audience saw something that opened its imagination: neither the obvious, domesticated “Iphigenia in Iraq” of many modern productions, nor the alienating, opaque rituals we’ve seen in others. Instead Euripides not only survived the collision with post-war American pop culture, he sang anew, refreshed.

2012– 2013 Ethan Heard ’13 on Sunday in the Park with George

I’ve always loved musicals. I performed in about 30 of them before I turned 18.

But I never thought I would direct a musical as my third-year production at YSD. I doubted we would have the resources, and I assumed the School wouldn’t let me. So when I started looking for possible projects, I read Williams, Miller, and Pirandello. Then my advisor, Tim Vasen ’93, YC ’87 (Faculty), said, “This is not an eat-your-vegetables project, Ethan. You have to do something you will love working on every day.” From then on, the choice was simple: Sunday in the Park with George, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine.

Producing a big musical at YSD was a challenge, but every member of the company and every department of the School rose to the occasion. Pianos were tuned; the costume shop built bustles; the technical directors rigged four flying TVs; the projections engineer hung a projector so we could measure how loud it was when we turned it on. (Too loud.)

It turned out that we had more than enough vocal talent at YSD, and we were thrilled to welcome two undergraduates into the cast as well. I asked my friend Dan Schlosberg mus ’13, yc ’10 to be our music director, and at the suggestion of Sondheim himself, Dan re-orchestrated the entire show for nine players, under the mentorship of Michael Starobin, who had done the original Broadway orchestrations.

On most days we rehearsed in two rooms at once. Vocal Director Vicki Shaghoian (Faculty) was instrumental in guiding the singers through Sondheim’s complex score. Most cast members had performed in musicals before, but a few were musical theatre virgins. They brought extraordinary excitement to the enterprise.

I found the entire process—design, budgeting, rehearsals, tech—completely exhilarating. We had too much to accomplish in too short a time, but the brilliance of Sondheim’s and Lapine’s writing lifted us up, the cohesion and generosity of the company nourished our spirits, and our own ambition sped us onward.

In the finale of Act 1, the painter Georges Seurat sees all the elements of his masterpiece come together in perfect harmony. Staging that moment, on the UT stage, with the joyful participation of 15 actors, 5 designers, 9 musicians, 12 backstage crew people, and so many others was an experience I will treasure forever.

The Actor As Singer Vicki Shaghoian (Faculty)

Staging a musical is a huge undertaking. Staging Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, with an ensemble of YSD actors, some of whom had never performed in a musical, was an exercise in fearlessness and extraordinary vision by Director Ethan Heard ’13.

With only four weeks to rehearse, how the music was introduced to the actors was crucial. Sondheim provides the roadmap in the musical text in much the same way Shakespeare does in verse; there are no mistakes in how he set the lyrics, either melodically or rhythmically. The greatest challenge with Sondheim’s minimalist scoring is that since the actor’s melody is not doubled in the orchestration, the actor has to be able to hear the underscore as another scene partner.

Yale School of Drama

sunday in the park with george

Jeremy Lloyd yc ’13, Max Roll ’13, and Monique Barbee ’13 in Sunday in the Park with George, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine, directed by Ethan Heard ’13. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

When the actor doesn’t read music, musical directors and coaches often teach the actor how the words are notated in terms of pitch and rhythmic value. The result is that actors learn by copying and repeating what they hear on the piano. The piano, however, is a percussive instrument, whereas the actor is a wind instrument, which allows for an emotionally connected expression of the text.

Therefore I started with the actors reading the text, then listening to the bass clef line. This gave the actors an immediate understanding of where the phrase was going. Next, I had them speak the line rhythmically, and then again, following the musical inflection. Next we sang the melody to ensure that the actors found the sound in their bodies, not their throats.

Next they sang while only saying the text in their minds, much like reading a book in silence. Once they felt the text and the melody line up, they were ready to sing the text and focus on the physical life of the story.

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Yale School of Drama

The Season in Review cloud nine

MJ Kaufman ’13 on Sagittarius Ponderosa

Mickey Theis ’14 and Molly Bernard ’13 in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, directed by Margot Bordelon ’13. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

Margot Bordelon ’13 on Cloud Nine

Yale School of Drama directors spend a year preparing for their third-year productions: researching and investigating the text, meeting with designers and dramaturgs, and of course, rehearsing the play with actors. By opening night of Cloud Nine I felt we were fully ready to share our work with audiences.

Nothing, however, could have prepared us for the large-scale technical snafu to come. Just as Clive, the British colonial patriarch, is about to be shot at the end of Act 1, a massive Union Jack drops from the rafters masking the impending assassination. The flag acts as a curtain during the intermission—masking the set change—and when the audience returns for Act 2, the top of the flag drops to the ground (called a Kabuki drop in Japanese theatre), revealing the Act 2 characters 100 years later.

On opening night, the audience returned from intermission, the lights dimmed, the music faded and...nothing. I heard the click of the mechanism engineered to release the flag. I heard it click again. The Union Jack hung strong. Above me a member of the stage crew scurried up to the catwalk. The actors, restless behind the curtain, began trying to pull it down themselves. When that failed, they came out from under it and sang the Act 2 opening song. They finished, and still the flag remained. The performance was at a standstill. We couldn’t move forward until the flag dropped and the Act 2 set was revealed.

I have had nightmares about moments like this. As a director, you have a hand in crafting every aspect of a production, but once opening night arrives, all you can do is sit back and hope everything goes smoothly. You must put utter faith in your collaborators.

The stage crew began to lower the pipe securing the flag. The stage manager turned on David Bowie’s “Changes” from the intermission playlist, and Gabe Levey ’14, in the role of four-year-old Cathy, took the stage and peacocked for the audience while the crew manually detached the curtain. He danced, he played air drums, he improvised lyrics.

This flag lowering was an obvious mishap but one that was handled with joy and skill! Gabe’s little dance was a delight to watch and was easily my favorite performance in the run. Despite all our preparation, there are always surprises. It’s the reason we go to live theatre: anything can happen.

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I started writing Sagittarius Ponderosa after Sarah Ruhl challenged me to find a new plot form for writing about gender. I had been feeling frustrated that most queer narratives are coming-out stories and most transgender narratives are transition stories. Why are the most prominent narratives organized around arriving at a more stable identity? I wanted to create art that would acknowledge constant change as an intrinsic part of being a person. Through examining a landscape of gender fluidity, I arrived at a more ecological fluidity and, ultimately, a sort of spiritual fluidity: the way that love and souls are recycled. I was blessed with an incredible group of collaborators who made me laugh and cry at practically every rehearsal. They dug deep into the play and found new stories and revelatory moments. Most astonishing for me was the director’s decision to keep a character onstage after he died. The pain of his absence for the family was expressed through his presence onstage, through movement, laughter, and energy he was present in the lives of the family long after death.

Sagittarius Ponderosa

Ceci Fernandez ’14, Celeste Arias ’15, and Yahya AbdulMateen ’15 in Sagittarius Ponderosa by MJ Kaufman ’13, directed by Margot Bordelon ’13. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

2012– 2013 house beast

Ato Blankson-Wood ’15 and James Cusati-Moyer ’15 in House Beast, by Justin Taylor ’13, directed by Jack Tamburri ’13. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

Justin Taylor ’13 on House Beast

For me, the Carlotta Festival production of House Beast was a magnificent script development gift. The idea of developing a play by producing it could not be a truer description of how I like to write and for the way I used the Carlotta Festival. Through the design, rehearsal, and performance phases, I wrote and re-wrote almost every page of the play. I aimed to use the entire production process to learn everything I could about House Beast— what it is and is not—and to arrive at a strong production draft.

In rehearsals with the actors, the script went from 90 pages at first rehearsal to about 75 by first performance.

Thankfully, we were blessed with professional, deft actors who kept up with the constant stream of new pages.

Tom Pecinka ’15, Ato Blankson-Wood ’15, and James Cusati-Moyer ’15, I bow in gratitude to you.

Performances were about learning what the fourth member of the cast—the audience—did to complete House Beast. I learned where certain beats and storylines landed and where they didn’t. I learned that I have a script that I am proud of and eager to work on again. I learned that I have a stellar collaborator in the director, Jack Tamburri ’13, who embraced my writing process and brought phenomenal dramaturgical gifts to the fore at every step, often inspiring the re-writes. It was magic.

Jack Tamburri, anytime, anywhere, I’m yours.

Amelia Roper ’13 on Lottie in the Late Afternoon

Yale Repertory Theatre

lottie in the late afternoon

Lottie in the Late Afternoon is a comedy about sad characters. The relationship between funny and sad has always been interesting to me, and I especially like watching audiences laughing uncomfortably. I think, as people, we hide our discomfort from each other, so live performance is such a remarkable art form to be involved in. This play was inspired by a bunch of novels, so finding a common vocabulary around style was a challenge, and so was design, though we eventually embraced the idea of Edward Hopper paintings. They have a certain loneliness that all the designers could relate to in their own ways, and our sound designer, Steve Brush ’14, recorded some beautiful music. Ultimately, for me, watching my work in performance is about remembering how human small moments can be, and that not everything has to be clever or funny (and I try so hard to be clever and funny!). So I like it when people say, “my favorite line was...” and it’s something really simple.

Ashton Heyl ’14, Aaron Profumo ’15, and Chaston Harmon ’15 in Lottie in the Late Afternoon by Amelia Roper ’13, directed by Ethan Heard ’13. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

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Yale Cabaret

The Season in Review

cab45: presence and purpose Yale cabaret’s 2012–2013 Season

The staff for this year’s Cabaret included Managing Director Jon Wemette ’13, Artistic Director Ethan Heard ’13, and Associate Artistic Directors Benjamin Fainstein ’13 and Nick Hussong ’14. Ethan Heard explains this year’s mission and methods.

Two of our guiding principles in leading the Cabaret’s 45th season were presence and purpose.

Presence—being here and now—is the essential ingredient of live theatre. The Cabaret is an especially dynamic place for making theatre because it holds artists and audience in such an intimate embrace. You can’t zone out; you’re within inches of the action. You can’t shut down; you’re seated at a round table that requires sharing and exchange. In choosing our season, we selected shows that we thought would take advantage of the Cabaret’s unique potential for fostering presence. Moreover, we strove, as leaders of the Cab, to be present for our community as much as possible. We wanted to create a home for artists and audiences alike, a place of inclusivity and warmth. Presence is not just showing up; it’s opening one’s heart, actively listening, and breathing in the moment.

In nurturing each production this year, we also tried to help each team of collaborators identify and hone their purpose. We asked our colleagues: why this show, why here and why now? What will it do for you and what will it do for your audience? Theatre can have all sorts of aims—to teach, to entertain, to persuade—but it is the artist’s responsibility to articulate the purpose and pursue it wholeheartedly. We found that one of our most important jobs was reminding teams of the goals when they were in tech. We were the cheerleaders and coaches on the sidelines urging the players to dig a little deeper and go a little further. Ethan Heard ’13

the bird bath

ermyntrude & esmeralda

cat club

(top) Hannah Sorenson ’13 in The Bird Bath, created by Ensemble, directed by Monique Barbee ’13. (above) Cat Club, created by and featuring Paul Lieber ’13 and Tim Hassler ’13. (right) Sophie von Haselberg ’14 in Ermyntrude & Esmeralda, based on the novella by Lytton Strachey, adapted and directed by Hunter Kaczorowski ’14.

Photos by Nick Thigpen.

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2012– 2013 milkmilklemonade

Yale Cabaret

(left) Xaq Webb ’14, Lico Whitfield ’13, and Heidi Liedke in MilkMilkLemonade by Joshua Conkel, directed by Jabari Brisport ’14. (below) Emily Reilly ’13 in The Small Things, by Enda Walsh, directed by Emily Reilly and Hugh Farrell ’15. Photos by Nick Thigpen.

the small things (right) Kate Attwell ’13, Mitchell Winter ’14, Gabe Levey ’14, and Brenda Meaney ’13 in Bertolt Brecht’s Lindbergh’s Flight. (far right) Ilya Khodosh ’14 in The Fatal Eggs, by Mikhail Bulgakov, adapted by Dustin Wills ’14 and Ilya Khodosh, directed by Dustin Wills.

Photos by Nick Thigpen.

lindbergh’s flight

the fatal eggs

(right) Tiffany Mack ’15 in all of what you love and none of what you hate, by Phillip Howze ’15, directed

by Kate Tarker ’14. Photo by Nick Thigpen.

all of what you love and YSD 2013–14 57 none of what you hate

Yale Summer Cabaret 2013

The Season in Review

Summer Cabaret Fund Honors Jim Perlotto

The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife

For 25 years, Dr. Jim Perlotto was the chief of Student Health and Athletic Medicine at Yale Health Services. Countless undergraduate and graduate students—and hundreds from the School of Drama—benefited from his personal care, his advocacy and his friendship. Jim left Yale last June to join his husband, Tom Masse, who accepted a deanship at Stetson University School of Music in Florida.

To honor Jim’s marvelous career at Yale— which included his unwavering commitment to Yale Summer Cabaret—the Jim Perlotto Summer Cabaret Fund has been created to support the creative work of students at the School in their collaborative efforts to produce, direct and perform in the Summer Cabaret. we are grateful to those who have already contributed to this fund: Dr. Moreson Kaplan and Nina Adams Ivy M. Alexander Drs. Nancy and Ronald Angoff Deborah Berman Jasmina Besirevic-Regan Robert L. Blocker James Bundy Joan Channick Susan C. Clark Jane S. Edwards Penelope Laurans Fitzgerald Nanci J. Fortgang Dr. Paul Genecin and Dr. Victoria Morrow Dr. Carole Goldberg Joseph W. Gordon Jeffrey Hoover Hilary Fink Kawall Sarah Krasnow

Heart’s Desire

In the bar of a toyko hotel (top) Prema Cruz ‘14 and Ato Blankson-Wood ‘15 in The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife by Federico Garcia Lorca, directed by Dustin Wills ‘14. (middle) Ato Blankson-Wood ’15 and Mitchell Winter ’14 in Heart’s Desire by Caryl Churchill, directed by Dustin Wills ’14. (bottom, left to right) Mitchell Winter ’14, Celeste Arias ’15, and Mamoudou Athie ’14 in In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel by Tennessee Williams, directed by Chris Bannow ’14.

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Ann Kuhlman George Levesque Molly Meyer Raymond A. Miller Janice L. Muirhead Arthur and Merle Nacht Victoria Nolan and Clark Crolius Pohlman-Doolittle Family Dr. Michael Rigsby Dr. David Roth Susan Sawyer and Dr. Michael D. Kaplan Mark Schenker Sharon L. Schmidt Liev Schreiber Dr. Lorraine D. Siggins Paula and Peter Steere Patricia S. Stumpf Dr. Madeline S. Wilson

To make a contribution or for more information, contact: Susan Clark Development and Alumni Affairs Yale School of Drama P.O. Box 208244 New Haven, CT 06520-8244 Or call Susan at (203) 432-1559 to make a gift by credit card.

Congratulations to our newest alumni— the Class of 2013!

Master of Fine Arts/ Certificate in Drama Acting Josiah Bania Monique Barbee Joshua Bermudez Molly Bernard Winston Duke Robert Grant Timothy Hassler Sheria Irving Brenda Meaney John Moran Marissa Neitling Paul-Robert Pryce Alexander Roll Hannah Sorenson Carmen Zilles Design Nicole Delhomme Portia Elmer Maria Hooper Paul Lieber Edward Morris Meredith Ries Adam Rigg Kristen Robinson Martin Schnellinger Masha Tsimring Hannah Wasileski Solomon Weisbard Jayoung Yoon Directing Margot Bordelon Ethan Heard John Tamburri Dramaturgy Kate Attwell Benjamin Fainstein Emily Reilly Alexandra Ripp Ilinca Todorut

Playwriting MJ Kaufman Amelia Roper Justin Taylor Sound Design Palmer Hefferan Keri Klick Matthew Otto Stage Management Geoffrey Boronda Kirstin Hodges Alyssa Howard Nicole Marconi Technical Design & Production Michael Backhaus Alex Bergeron Nicole Bromley Eric Casanova Theodore Griffith Nora Hyland Jonathan Pellow Daniel Perez Hannah Shafran Brian Smallwood Barbara Tan-Tiongco Karen Walcott Theater Management Michael Bateman Jennifer Lagundino Kate Liberman Reynaldi Lolong Jonathan Wemette Max Whitfield Technical Internship Certificate Sang Hyun Ahn Emily Erdman Nathan Jasunas Pornchanok Kanchanabanca Clare McCormick Wyatt Tilka Elizabeth Zevin

Geoff Boronda ’13 and Alyssa Howard ’13.

GRADUATION PRIZES

Dexter Wood Luke Memorial Prize Theodore Griffith ’13

Prizes are given each year to members of the graduating class as designated by the faculty.

Mentorship Award Brian Smallwood ’13

ASCAP Cole Porter Prize MJ Kaufman ’13

Donald and Zorka Oenslager Fellowship Meredith Ries ’13 Kristen Robinson ’13

Edward C. Cole Memorial Award Jonathan Pellow ’13

Pierre-André Salim Prize Hannah Wasileski ’13

John W. Gassner Memorial Prize Jessica Rizzo ’14

The Frieda Shaw, Dr. Diana Mason OBE, and Denise Suttor Prize for Sound Design Palmer Hefferan ’13

Bert Gruver Memorial Prize Kirstin Hodges ’13 Allen M. and Hildred L. Harvey Prize Jonathan Pellow ’13

Oliver Thorndike Acting Award John Moran ’13 Paul Pryce ’13

Morris J. Kaplan Prize Kate Liberman ’13

George C. White Prize Jonathan Wemette ’13

Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize Margot Bordelon ’13

Herschel Williams Prize Molly Bernard ’13

Jay and Rhonda Keene Prize Jayoung Yoon ’13 Leo Lerman Graduate Fellowship in Design Martin Schnellinger ’13

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Graduation YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA FELLOWSHIPS AND SCHOLARSHIPS

Sanghun Joung ’14 Jayoung Yoon ’13

The recipients for the 2012–2013 academic year were:

The Sylvia Fine Kaye Scholarship Fund Carly Zien ’14

John Badham Scholarship Margot Bordelon ’13

The Foster Family Graduate Fellowship Alyssa Simmons ’14, yc ’09

The John Badham Scholarship in Directing Dustin Wills ’14

The Annie G.K. Garland Memorial Scholarship Robert Chikar ’14 Hannah Sullivan ’14

The George Pierce Baker Memorial Scholarship Whitney Dibo ’14 Lauren Dubowski ’14 Sarah Krasnow ’14 The Herbert H. and Patricia M. Brodkin Scholarship Merlin Huff ’14 The Patricia M. Brodkin Memorial Scholarship Nicole Marconi ’13 Alyssa Howard ’13 The Paul Carter Scholarship Michael Backhaus ’13 Nicholas G. Ciriello Endowed Scholarship Fund Nora Hyland ’13 The Caris Corfman Scholarship for Students at Yale School of Drama Prema Cruz ’14 The Cheryl Crawford Scholarship Amelia Roper ’13 Edgar and Louise Cullman Scholarship Jessica Holt ’15 Cullman Scholarship in Directing Sarah Holdren ’15, yc ’08 Nicole Lewis ’14 Jack Tamburri ’13 Holmes Easley Scholarship Fund Christopher Ash ’14 Reid Thompson ’14 The Eldon Elder Fellowship Kate Attwell ’13 Michael Bergmann ’14 Brian Dudkiewicz ’14 Kyungijin Kim ’14 Paul-Robert Pryce ’13 Emily Reilly ’13 Yu Shen ’15 Ilinca Todorut ’13 Andras Viski ’15 Mitchell Winter ’14

Wesley Fata Scholarship Fund Daniel O’Brien ’14

Randolph Goodman Scholarship Nicholas Hussong ’14 Jerome L. Greene Endowment Monique Barbee ’13 Timothy Hassler ’13 Sheria Irving ’13 Alexander Roll ’13 Pamela Jordan Scholarship Hannah Sorenson ’13 The Jay and Rhonda Keene Scholarship for Costume Design Martin Schnellinger ’13 The Ray Klausen Design Scholarship Katherine Noll ’14 Gordon F. Knight Scholarship Fund Palmer Hefferan ’13 The Lotte Lenya Scholarship Fund Ashton Heyl ’14

The Donald M. Oenslager Scholarship in Stage Design, 3rd year Adam Rigg ’13 Hannah Wasileski ’13 The Donald and Zorka Oenslager Scholarship in Stage Design Elivia Bovenzi ’14 Portia Elmer ’13 Paul Lieber ’13 Meredith Ries ’13 The Eugene O’Neill Memorial Scholarship Justin Taylor ’13 The G. Charles Niemeyer Scholarship Maya Cantu ’10, dfa cand.

Brian Valencia ’10, dfa cand., yc ’05 The Mary Jean Parson Scholarship Katherine McGerr ’14 Barbara E. Richter Scholarship Fund Molly Bernard ’13 Carmen Zilles ’13 The Mark Richard Scholarship Kathryn Tarker ’14 Lloyd Richards Scholarship in Acting Mamoudou Athie ’14 Scholarship for Playwriting Lee Ryan Campbell ’15 Pierre-André Salim Memorial Scholarship Joeng Sik Yoo ’15 Hansol Jung ’14 Barbara Tan-Tiongco ’13

The Richard Harrison Senie Scholarship Masha Tsimring ’13 Solomon Weisbard ’13 Daniel and Helene Sheehan Scholarship for Yale School of Drama Students Kate Liberman ’13 Howard Stein Scholarship Mary Laws ’14 The Stephen B. Timbers Family Scholarship for Playwriting Phillip Howze ’15 The Frank Torok Scholarship Geoffrey Boronda ’13 The Leon Brooks Walker Scholarship Jabari Brisport ’14 The Richard Ward Scholarship Reynaldi Lolong ’13 The Zelma Weisfeld Scholarship for Costume Design Maria Hooper ’13 The Constance Welch Memorial Scholarship Gabriel Levey ’14 Mariko Nakasone ’14 The Rebecca West Scholarship Matthew McCollum ’14, yc ’11 Elia Monte-Brown ’14 The Audrey Wood Scholarship MJ Kaufman ’13

Victor S. Lindstrom Scholarship Daniel Perez ’13 The Lord Memorial Scholarship Jennifer Lagundino ’13 The Virginia Brown Martin Scholarship Josiah Bania ’13 The Stanley R. McCandless Scholarship Benjamin Ehrenreich ’14 Oliver Wason ’14 The Alfred L. McDougal and Nancy Lauter McDougal Endowed Scholarship Fund Nicole Delhomme ’13 Kristen Robinson ’13 Benjamin Mordecai Scholarship for Theater Managers Jonathan Wemette ’13 The Kenneth D. Moxley Memorial Scholarship Karen Walcott ’13

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Reynaldi Lolong ’13, Michael Bateman ’13, Jonathan Wemette ’13, Jennifer Lagundino ’13, and Justin Taylor ’13.

Alumni and Faculty Honors and Awards

Outstanding Set Design, Resident Production

Outstanding Costume Design

Todd Rosenthal ’93 Winner, Red (Arena Stage)

Nominee, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Riccardo Hernandez ’92

Anita Yavich ’95

Nominee, Pullman Porter Blues (Arena Stage)

Nominee, Golden Child

Emily Rebholz ’06

Lee Savage ’05 (Faculty) Nominee, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare Theatre Company)

64th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards 2012 Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series

Dylan Baker ’85 Nominee, The Good Wife Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special

Alan Skog ’67 Nominee, New York City Ballet, George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series

Robert M. Klein ’65

Outstanding Costumes for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special

Chrisi Karvonides-Dushenko ’90 Nominee, American Horror Story

Outstanding Costume Design, Resident Production

David Gropman ’77

Jennifer Moeller ’06

Nominee, Life of Pi

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture—Comedy or Musical

Sheila Nevins ’63 (Executive Producer)

Nominee, Hope Springs

Nominee, The Weight of the Nation Outstanding Nonfiction Special

Meryl Streep ’75, DFAH ’83 Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Sigourney Weaver ’74 Nominee, Political Animals

Nominee, Bobby Fischer Against The World

29th Annual Helen Hayes Awards 2013

Outstanding Nonfiction Special

Sheila Nevins ’63 (Executive Producer)

Sheila Nevins ’63 (Executive Producer) Nominee, Gloria: In Her Own Words Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking

Sheila Nevins ’63 (Executive Producer) Nominee, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

Nominee, The Merry Wives of Windsor (Shakespeare Theatre Company)

Achievement in Production Design

Outstanding Children’s Nonfiction, Reality or Reality-Competition Program

Sheila Nevins ’63 (Executive Producer)

Chuan-Chi Chan ’10

Thom Weaver ’07

70th Annual Golden Globe Awards 2013

Outstanding Nonfiction Series

Winner, Invisible Man (Studio Theatre)

Eugene Lee ’86

85th Annual Academy Awards 2013

Winner, A Civil War Christmas

Shane Rettig ’99

Mary Louise Geiger ’85

Nominee, The Servant of Two Masters (Shakespeare Theatre Company)

Nominee, Saturday Night Live

Scott Zielinski ’90 Outstanding Sound Design

Outstanding Art Direction for Variety or Nonfiction Programming

Nominee, Saturday Night Live

Nominee, The Weight of the Nation for Kids: The Great Cafeteria Takeover

Outstanding Lighting Design, Resident Production

Outstanding Lighting Design

Nominee, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare Theatre Company)

19th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards 2013

Nominee, Detroit ’67

Jane Shaw ’98 Nominee, Jackie

67th Annual Tony Awards 2013 Best Play

Christopher Durang ’74 (Playwright) Winner, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Richard Greenberg ’85 (Playwright) Nominee, The Assembled Parties Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play

Kristine Nielsen ’80 Nominee, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play

Sigourney Weaver ’74

Winner, Lucky Guy

Nominee, Political Animals

Courtney B. Vance ’86 Tony Shalhoub ’80

28th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards 2013

Nominee, Golden Boy Best Scenic Design of a Play

John Lee Beatty ’73

Outstanding Lead Actress

Winner, The Nance

Sharon Washington ’88 Nominee, Wild With Happy

Santo Loquasto ’72

Outstanding Director, Resident Play

Outstanding Featured Actress

Christopher Bayes (Faculty)

Da’Vine Joy Randolph ’11

Michael Yeargan ’73 (Faculty)

Nominee, The Servant of Two Masters (Shakespeare Theatre Company) Outstanding Choreography, Resident Production

Rick Sordelet (Faculty)

Nominee, The Assembled Parties

Nominee, What Rhymes with America

Nominee, Golden Boy Best Scenic Design of a Musical

Outstanding Scenic Design

Scott Pask ’97

Louisa Thompson ’98

Nominee, Pippin

Nominee, Detroit ’67

Best Costume Design of a Play

Nominee, Sucker Punch (The Studio Theatre)

Catherine Zuber ’84

Outstanding Art Direction for a Single-Camera Series

Nominee, Golden Boy

Adam Scher ’93 Nominee, Boardwalk Empire

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Honors and Awards Best Costume Design of a Musical

Sam Norkin Off-Broadway Award

William Ivey Long ’75

Maruti Evans SRF ’10

Winner, Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella Best Lighting Design of a Play

Donald Holder ’86

79th Annual Drama League Awards 2013

Nominee, Golden Boy

Distinguished Performance Award

Jennifer Tipton (Faculty)

Kristine Nielsen ’80

Winner, The Iceman Cometh (Goodman Theatre)

Todd Rosenthal ’93 Nominee, Clybourne Park (Steppenwolf Theatre Company) Nominee, Red (Goodman Theatre)

Walt Spangler ’97

Nominee, The Testament of Mary

Nominee, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Nominee, Time Stands Still (Steppenwolf Theatre Company)

Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre

Tony Shalhoub ’80

Lighting Design—Large

Nominee, Golden Boy

James F. Ingalls ’75

Courtney B. Vance ’86

Nominee, Camino Real (Goodman Theatre)

Ming Cho Lee (Faculty)

58th Annual Drama Desk Awards 2013 Outstanding Play

Christopher Durang ’74 Winner, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Richard Greenberg ’85 Nominee, The Assembled Parties

Amy Herzog ’07, YC ’00 Nominee, Belleville

Richard Nelson (Former Faculty) Nominee, Sorry Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play

Tony Shalhoub ’80 (Board of Advisors) Nominee, Golden Boy Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play

Laila Robins ’84 Nominee, Sorry Outstanding Director of a Play

Lynne Meadow ’71 Nominee, The Assembled Parties Outstanding Set Design

Santo Loquasto ’72 Nominee, The Assembled Parties

Michael Yeargan ’73 (Faculty) Nominee, Golden Boy Outstanding Costume Design

William Ivey Long ’75 Winner, Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella Outstanding Lighting Design

Scott Zielinski ’90 Nominee, A Civil War Christmas Outstanding Projection Design

Wendall K. Harrington (Faculty) Nominee, Old Hats

Nominee, Lucky Guy

63rd Annual Outer Critics Circle Awards 2013 Outstanding Set Design (Play or Musical)

John Lee Beatty ’73 Nominee, The Nance

Costume Design—Large

Jacqueline Firkins ’00 Nominee, In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play (Victory Gardens Theater)

44th Annual Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards 2012 Costume Design

Ellen McCartney ’87 Winner, The Treatment (The Theatre @ Boston Court) Writing

David Ives ’84 Nominee, New Jerusalem, The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation, Amsterdam, July 27, 1656 (West Coast Jewish Theatre at Pico Playhouse)

Connecticut Critics Circle Awards 2012–13 Outstanding Director of a Play

Shana Cooper ’09 Nominee, American Night: The Ballad of Juan José (Yale Repertory Theatre)

Scott Pask ’97 Nominee, Pippin

Michael Yeargan ’73 (Faculty) Nominee, Golden Boy Outstanding Costume Design (Play or Musical)

William Ivey Long ’75 Winner, Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella Nominee, The Mystery of Edwin Drood Outstanding Lighting Design (Play or Musical)

Paul Gallo ’77 Nominee, Dogfight

Donald Holder ’86 Nominee, Golden Boy Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play

Tony Shalhoub ’80 Nominee, Golden Boy Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play

Kristine Nielsen ’80 Winner, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

44th Annual Jeff Equity Awards 2012 New Adaptation

Oren Jacoby ’85 (Adapter) Winner, Invisible Man (Court Theatre) Scenic Design—Large

Kevin Depinet SRF ’06

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Christopher Durang ’74, playwright, with his Tony Award for Best Play for Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Photo by Anita and Steve Shevett.

Rebecca Taichman ’00

Outstanding Set Design

Nominee, Marie Antoinette (Yale Repertory Theatre)

Alexander Dodge ’99

Outstanding Leading Actor in a Play

Paul Giamatti ’94, YC ’89 Nominee, Hamlet (Yale Repertory Theatre) Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Play

Jeanine Serralles ’02

Winner, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder and Twelfth Night (both Hartford Stage)

Wilson Chin ’03 Nominee, Tartuffe (Westport Country Playhouse) and Abundance (Hartford Stage)

Riccardo Hernandez ’92 Nominee, Marie Antoinette (Yale Repertory Theatre)

Winner, Tartuffe (Westport Country Playhouse)

Michael Yeargan ’73 (Faculty)

Outstanding Ensemble (member of)

Nominee, The Dining Room (Westport Country Playhouse)

Chris Henry Coffey ’99

Honors

Winner, The Dining Room (Westport Country Playhouse)

Outstanding Sound Design

Eric Bryant ’09 Laura Esposito ’09

Nominee, Hamlet (Yale Repertory Theatre)

Keri Klick ’13

Winners, Almost, Maine (TheaterWorks)

LeRoy McClain ’04 Nominee, Clybourne Park (Long Wharf Theatre) Outstanding Costume Design

Dan Perez ’13 and Dr. Bernhard R. Works at the awards reception during the USITT 2013 Annual Conference and Stage Expo. Photo by USITT/Daryl Pauley.

Linda Cho ’98 Winner, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder and Twelfth Night (both Hartford Stage)

Ilona Somogyi ’94 (Faculty) Nominee, Tartuffe (Westport Country Playhouse) Outstanding Lighting Design

Philip Rosenberg ’59 (Former Faculty) Winner, The Year of Magical Thinking (Westport Country Playhouse) and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Hartford Stage)

Christopher Akerlind ’89 Nominee, Marie Antoinette (Yale Repertory Theatre)

Matthew Richards ’01 Nominee, Tartuffe (Westport Country Playhouse)

Jennifer Tipton (Faculty) and Yi Zhao ’12 Nominees, In a Year With 13 Moons (Yale Repertory Theatre)

Jennifer Tipton (Faculty) Nominee, Man in a Case (Hartford Stage)

Robert Cotnoir ’94 won a 2013 Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing: Short Form Musical in Television from the Motion Picture Sound Editors for Smash.

Amnon Kabatchnik ’57 was honored with a Silver Medal in the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association for his book Blood on the Stage, 1975–2000: Milestone Plays of Crime, Mystery and Detection.

Neil Mazzella ’78 (Former Faculty) was honored in 2013 by the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) for Distinguished Achievement in Technical Production.

Dan Perez ’13 was awarded the 2013 Frederick A. Buerki Golden Hammer Scenic Technology Award from USITT. Erich Stratmann ’94, yc ’93 won a 2013 Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing: Music in a Feature Film from the Motion Picture Sound Editors for Life of Pi. On May 3, 2013, David Toser ’64 was honored with the Theatre Development Fund Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award.

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In Memoriam Actor Julie Harris Theatre critic Walter Kerr once said of Julie Harris ’47, dfah ’07 that she was born “without the natural gifts of a star.” Julie Harris herself remarked on her childhood: “I looked so plain—bands on my teeth, bird legs, mouse face, hair that couldn’t curl.” As an adult, she was slim, small and red-haired, a delicate, elfin beauty. Her public personality was humble and self-effacing. She claimed that she had taken up acting because of a lonely and self-conscious youth. “Acting is always an adventure, and a struggle, and a quest to find the truth,” she said.

Hers was a career teeming with character roles, from her first success playing 12-year-old Frankie Addams in Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding—she was 24 at the time—to her startling transformation the following season as Sally Bowles, she of the long cigarette holder and green nail polish, in I Am a Camera.

After she made East of Eden with James Dean, Director Elia Kazan ’33, mah ’59 wrote this about her: “I doubt that Jimmy would ever have got through East of Eden except for an angel on our set. Her name was Julie Harris, and she was goodness itself with Dean, kind and patient and everlastingly sympathetic. She would adjust her performance to whatever the new kid did. Despite the fact that it had early on been made clear to me that the studio wished I’d taken a ‘prettier’ girl. I thought Julie beautiful; as a performer she found in each moment what was dearest and most moving. She also had the most affecting voice I’ve ever heard in an actress; it conveyed tenderness and humor simultaneously. She helped Jimmy more than I did with any direction I gave him.”

Throughout her career she continued to act in films and television, but the stage was where she shone. More than any other performer of her era and her elevated stature, Julie owed her stardom and reputation to the stage. “The stage!” she once said. “I knew it was where I wanted to be. I loved it all. It became this great source of nourishment, spiritual nourishment, for me. I found everything in life there.” She was nominated 10 times for the Tony Award and won five—for I Am a Camera, The Lark, Forty Carats, The Last of Mrs. Lincoln, and The Belle of Amherst—and one for lifetime achievement, a record yet to be surpassed; three Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and the National Medal of Arts. Yet she spoke of acting as a craft for which the challenge of presenting a character is itself the reward, not the finished result or the applause.

When she followed Member of the Wedding with I Am a Camera, she established herself as a transformative actor, one who confronted her limits, and then surpassed them. Versatility would remain a hallmark of her career as she triumphed in one-woman shows, Restora­ tion comedy, French farce, light comedy, historical drama, and even a musical. Unlike many other actors of her stature, she was eager to take shows on the road, touring in The Belle of Amherst, Lettice and Lovage, Driving Miss Daisy, and The Gin Game.

Julie Ann Harris was born on December 2, 1925, in Grosse Pointe,

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Michigan, an affluent suburb just east of Detroit. Her father was an investment banker, her mother a socialite. She was sent to a finishing school in Providence, Rhode Island, but persuaded her parents to enroll her instead in The Hewitt School, a girl’s school in Manhattan that offered drama classes. In summers she trained at an acting camp in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where her mentor, Charlotte Perry, encouraged her to apply to Yale School of Drama. She was accepted at the School at age 19 but left a year later to make her Broadway debut in a comedy that quickly closed. She spent the next five years in a variety of Broadway productions, trying to get noticed, until 1950 when she opened in The Member of the Wedding. Her success was absolute.

“At its best, the theatre is a balm for hurt minds,” she said in a 2000 interview. “It unites us as human beings, gives us a home, brings us together. You say: That’s what it means to be alive, to be human, to feel your heart beat. That’s what it means. Theatre does that.” When asked what she’d do today if she learned the world would end tomorrow, “I’d go to the theatre,” she said.

Julie Harris died on August 24, 2013, in West Chatham, Massachusetts. She is survived by her son, Peter Gurian.

A scholarship in Julie Harris’ name has been established at YSD by her friends and colleagues.

Co-founder, Yale Repertory Theatre Jeremy Geidt Jeremy Geidt (Former Faculty) taught acting at Yale School of Drama from 1966 to 1980 and helped Robert Brustein ’51, mah ’66 (Former Dean) found Yale Repertory Theatre. He appeared in Yale Rep productions including Tales from the Vienna Woods, Mahagonny, Buried Child, The Seagull, As You Like it, Ghost Sonata, The Wild Duck, Julius Caesar, Christopher Durang’s ’74 The Idiots Karamazov, and many others.

In 1980, he left Yale with Brustein to co-found the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University, where he acted in nearly 100 productions, becoming one of the most recognizable faces on stage in the Boston area. He also taught at Harvard College and at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute and was a mentor to many of the actors he taught.

Jeremy was born in London in 1930, the younger of two children.

His grandfather was a physician who tended to the royal family.

Dyslexic as a youth, he dropped out of school and at the age of 16 auditioned at The Old Vic. After completing training there, he was offered a film contract, but turned it down in favor of acting with a classical repertory company. For years he acted on stage and in television productions and with a satirical ensemble called The Establishment.

He married and soon divorced the actress Patricia Kneale. While on tour in the United States with The Establishment, Jeremy met Jan Graham in Washington, DC, and she became his second wife.

In addition to acting with Yale Rep and A.R.T., Jeremy acted on and Off-Broadway, at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, and at the Lincoln Center Festival. He lectured on Shakespeare in India and at the Netherlands Theatre School, and received the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Boston Actor and the Jason Robards Award for Dedication to the Theatre.

Ten years ago his career was placed in jeopardy when, during chest surgery, his right vocal cord was paralyzed. He was the fortunate beneficiary of a new surgical approach that moved the paralyzed cord a few millimeters closer to the healthy one so the cords closed together to produce speech. After he recovered, Jeremy continued to act at A.R.T. In 2000, Jeremy was diagnosed with cancer but continued teaching and acting. He died on August 6, 2013, of a heart attack at his home in Cambridge. He is survived by his wife, Jan, their daughters Sophie Geidt and Jennifer Holmwood, a daughter from his first marriage, Lucy Durman of Mayfield, England, and five grandchildren.

Robert Brustein remembers him: Jeremy was a mainstay and backbone of two companies where, starting in 1966, he served as a founding member—the Yale Repertory and American Repertory Theatres. Englishborn and trained, he adapted easily to nonprofit American collectives, not only waving the professional flag, but passing on its aspirations through his teaching and training of conservatory students and undergraduates alike. No one better embodied the ideals of this movement than Jeremy. His death represents a grievous loss to the American theatre, as well as to all who knew and loved this precious man.

Recalling his early decision to turn down a film offer, Jeremy said in a 1988 interview: “If you dream of doing something with your art or talent, then I was not foolish. You can’t go into this business to make money, because if you put money first, you aren’t going to put this first.” And here he placed his hand over his heart. “And this is what counts.”

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In Memoriam He was also well known for having a very short fuse, often letting loose with a string of epithets to express his displeasure. A series of small strokes slowed him down a bit and made him impatient with himself, but didn’t curb his salty tongue and often harsh words for his students. No one seemed to mind.

Ian Dunn, the School’s operations associate for facilities, worked with Hunter on the train exhibit at the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, Connecticut, when he was 13 years old. Ian remembers: Hunter treated it like his own little world. He was very proud of little details. He’d take a photo of a tree and want to reproduce it down to the apple lying on the ground. So we’d take glue and red paint to reproduce a fallen apple. He would swirl a paint brush around, and even though the painting was three inches tall, he put such detail into it. I learned all sorts of techniques in scene painting, making found bits of foliage look like huge trees. I also learned how to wash a paint brush.

Hunter was very fussy about that. He’d say: “A paint brush isn’t clean unless you can suck on it.” He enjoyed being in control and watching us kids grow. Our small size was useful to him because we could reach places he couldn’t. He had us for dinner a few times as we got older. He cooked southern dishes that took four days to make. The man was a real cook. I kept up with him as I grew up. He was a good guy.

Born on October 19, 1934, Hunter Spence died on January 12, 2013.

He is survived by his son, Charles Haywood Spence.

Critic Stanley Kauffmann

Prop Master Hunter Nesbitt Spence Was there anything in the theatre that Hunter Nesbitt Spence (Former Faculty) couldn’t make by hand? In an era of advanced technology, Hunter used and taught techniques as old as the theatre itself. As a lecturer in technical design and production at Yale School of Drama, Hunter built props for Yale plays and created theatrical illusions that ranged from masks and fake fish to Shakespearean dream scenes and Yiddish folktale shtetls. He wove baskets, made dragonfly wings out of wicker, and even did upholstery and needlework.

While a teenager in Virginia, Hunter learned taxidermy through a correspondence course and taught himself to use oil paints. He began painting ducks on burlap and could churn out three waterfowl scenes in a day, frame them in wormy chestnut, and sell them for $25 each. (These were skills that came in handy at YSD, notably in his construction of Chekhov’s seagull.)

Hunter started college but left to join the Navy. He ultimately earned a degree in theatre at Richmond Professional Institute, then worked as an assistant technical director and set designer at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre. Hunter began as a carpenter for Yale Repertory Theatre in 1970. He married and had a son, Charles Hunter.

When the marriage ended when Charles was seven. Hunter raised him, with the help of, more or less, the entire School.

While students in the technical design and production department received instruction in operating high-tech machinery, from Hunter they learned small-scale, old-fashioned artisanship, including the design and construction of theatre props, mask-making, basketry, upholstery, casting, scene painting, and floral design. He was justly celebrated for the highly detailed masks he created for numerous Yale Rep shows.

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by Charles McNulty ’93, dfa ’95 Stanley Kauffmann (Former Faculty) will be remembered for his intellectually rigorous, neatly manicured film reviews—the meditative yin to Pauline Kael’s ecstatic yang. But as a drama critic, I’m especially grateful for his equally acute body of theatre criticism, which is a tonic to read in this age of trumped-up enthusiasms and attention-grabbing pans.

Persons of the Drama, one of Stanley’s collections of essays, can usually be found in a pile on my desk with anthologies of theatre reviews by his friends and colleagues Robert Brustein ’51, mah ’66 (Former Faculty), Gordon Rogoff yc ’52 (Faculty) and the late Richard Gilman (Former Faculty), all of whom and helped educate generations of critics, myself among them.

Stanley was born in Manhattan on April 24, 1916. He studied drama at New York University and graduated in 1935. He wrote short plays during his time at school and began writing novels in the 1940s; his first, The King of Proxy Street, was published in 1941. His 1944 children’s play, Bobino, was produced at Manhattan’s New School for Social Research and moved to Broadway, memorable for featuring Marlon Brando in his first professional performance.

In the 1950s, in addition to writing two more novels—A Change of Climate (1954) and Man of the World (1956)—Stanley worked as an editor at Ballantine Books and Knopf, where he demonstrated the exacting aesthetic sensibility that would make him famous as a critic.

During his time there he acquired modern classics including Ray

Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, which went on to win a National Book Award in 1962.

Stanley’s calm, consistent, carefully measured voice found an ideal home at The New Republic, where he remained the film critic for more than five decades. He also contributed theatre reviews to the magazine, a more hospitable environment for his sober style of criticism than The New York Times, where he was the theatre critic for less than a year in 1966. In addition, he reviewed plays for Channel 13, New York’s Public Broadcasting System television station, and was part of a cultural movement in the 1960s that treated theatre as an art form worthy of rigorous critical engagement.

Like his predecessor at The New Republic, Eric Bentley, Stanley combined a sharp prose style with a demanding eye, a deep awareness of theatre history and an openness to new forms that was perfectly balanced by a healthy resistance to bandwagons. Trends weren’t his job to acclaim. His assignment was to assess individual works of art, and he performed this task with magisterial balance, his forensic intelligence leavened with a lancing wit and an indestructible love for what the stage at its best could be.

He was nothing if not self-possessed. Breathlessness wasn’t his custom. When he loved a production, he loved it with his whole mind, even those parts of it that couldn’t help casting doubts on the ardor. He was in this respect a true disciple of George Bernard Shaw, the comic playwright whose dialectical brilliance was equally on display in his dramatic criticism. Shaw was one of Stanley’s passions, along with opera, the two satisfying a sensibility that wasn’t afraid of titanic emotions but enjoyed the cool contemplation of them every bit as much as the feverish confrontation.

Stanley Kauffmann died in New York on October 9, 2013.

He was 97.

Ballantyne photo by Charles Siegel ’70

Playwright, Actor William Ballantyne William (Bill) Ballantyne ’70 was an actor, playwright, teacher, essayist, and amateur jazz pianist. Born in Montreal in 1945, he returned to Canada after graduating from Yale School of Drama, earned an MA in drama from the University of Toronto, and acted in regional theatres, in commercials, and on television. It was when Bill tried his hand at playwriting that he met with success, and writing soon became his focus. His first play was The Al Cornell Story, about an amateur jazz pianist who fears the changes in his life that would accompany success; it was published in 1982 and was nominated for a Chalmers Award, a Canadian prize for excellence in the arts.

His next play, Bat Masterson’s Last Regular Job, was first directed Off-Off-Broadway in 1985 by Charles Siegel ’70 and starred Don Chastain and Louise Shaffer ’65. A longtime friend, Siegel offers these memories of Bill: Bill was enormously talented, intelligent, terribly funny, incurably generous, a gifted wordsmith, and a good friend.

He was impatient with constraints, impulsive, and totally incapable of accepting authority. This didn’t always work well for him, but he always hurt himself much more than he ever hurt anyone else. About five years ago I was visiting him

in Toronto, driving him somewhere with the help of my GPS to guide me in a city I didn’t know well. Bill was deeply impressed with the GPS. He was fascinated by gadgets, though his own extravagances were limited to his BMW, his hi-fi to play his jazz recordings, and his piano. After a few minutes of amazement at the guidance we were getting from the GPS, Bill fell silent. As we were instructed to make yet another right turn, Bill suddenly burst out with, ‘You don’t have to do it, Charlie. You can resist! Don’t give in.’

Bill wrote more than 20 plays, including Bix, Birdwatching, Buster and Sam, Chechnya, Far Away, Spit in the Ocean, The Seventh Game, Turtles, and Goodbye, Tim Hardin. His work often juxtaposed human greatness with human flaws, telling stories of once-great men who end up in obscurity and misery. Bat Masterson’s Last Regular Job imagines the real-life Wild West gunslinger’s final years in a quiet job as a newspaper columnist. Bill often cited Samuel Beckett as an influence, and his play Buster and Sam depicts a discussion between Beckett and Buster Keaton about making a film, the production of which reaches a standstill thanks to greedy movie producers.

Bill also taught playwriting at Ryerson University in Toronto and for E-script, an online script and playwriting workshop. His essay “Writing a Play” became a favorite among playwriting students and was published in Scene4 Magazine. Part writer’s guide, part manifesto, the magazine states, “A good play makes no judgments, nor offers up solutions. There is no ‘solution’ to life. Life is strange and erratic and difficult and uncontrollable. Things rarely come out even. The purpose of drama is to remind us of that. We are all mortal, vulnerable human beings. The playwright airs problems, both universal and eternal, as they are insoluble. This acknowledgment will bring us peace.”

Bill died on October 3, 2012.

Civic Leader Gene Cuny Jr. Eugene S. “Gene” Cuny Jr. ’47, a fifth-generation Texan, was born in Houston, where he received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Houston. He then studied theatre at Colorado State University on a scholarship. In 1942 he married Charlotte Walser, moved to New York, and landed a job with the Broadway production of The Pirate, starring Lynn Fontanne.

It was while he was working as a stage manager at Radio City Music Hall that he ran into British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Evidently Gene had not been told that Churchill was going to be in the audience, so when the prime minister made his way up to the stage to meet the actors, Gene attempted to restrain Churchill from going any further. Security personnel grabbed him and asked if he had any idea who he was restraining. Gene was just doing his job.

Soon after, Gene became a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow to study directing at Yale School of Drama, and upon graduation returned with his wife to Houston. He was briefly the general manager for radio stations in Louisiana, then settled in Dallas in 1951, where he worked for 35 years at KRLD-TV (now KDFW-TV) as a program director, national sales manager, and director of community affairs.

When he retired in 1986, Gene volunteered as a court-appointed special advocate for neglected or abused children, and delivered

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In Memoriam Meals on Wheels well into his 90s. Gene also did international relief work for CARE with his son Fred Cuny. After Fred died while on a 1995 relief mission in Chechnya, Gene raised his grandson, Craig Cuny, as a son.

Gene died on February 13 at the age of 97 at his home in Heath, Texas. In addition to his wife, Charlotte, he is survived by two sons, Eugene Cuny III of Austin and Phillip Cuny of Dallas; eight grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Actor Anne Wallace Shropshire Hyde Born on August 27, 1917, Anne Wallace Shropshire Hyde ’49, a native of Bourbon County, Kentucky, attended Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia, then earned a master’s degree in English from the University of Kentucky. She received her MFA from Yale School of Drama in 1949 and embarked on an acting career that would last for 50 years and include stage, television, and film work.

Immediately after graduation Anne performed in the 1949 production of Strindberg’s The Father at the historic Provincetown Playhouse, produced and directed by fellow Yale School of Drama graduates. She went on to work steadily in Off-Broadway shows and at regional theatres, including Actors Theatre of Louisville and Cincinnati Playhouse; and in Canada, in Winnipeg and Montreal, where she played the title role in Driving Miss Daisy.

Anne made her Broadway debut in Look Homeward, Angel with Anthony Perkins in 1957. Her other Broadway credits include The Gang’s All Here with Melvyn Douglas in 1959, and The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1967. In the 1970s Anne started working in television and film, appearing in popular soap operas, which eventually led to a recurring role on As the World Turns from 1991 to 1992. In the 1980s and 1990s she appeared in the romantic comedies Tootsie, Green Card, Something to Talk About, and The First Wives Club.

Anne married George Winfield Hyde in 1962 but continued to use Shropshire as her professional name. She is survived by her sister, Kenney Shropshire Roseberry, five nieces and nephews, and five grandnieces and grandnephews. Eugene Shewmaker ’49, a friend and classmate of Anne’s in the YSD acting department, wrote to say, “I, like many others, knew her as a lovely lady, a brilliant actress, and a treasured friend. We all will miss her greatly.”

Anne died on May 1, 2013, at the age of 95.

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Actor, Voice Teacher Donald Dudley Knight Donald Dudley Knight ’65 was widely recognized as a pioneer in the field of voice, speech, and dialect instruction, as well as an acclaimed actor, an inspiring teacher, and a beloved friend. He remained professor emeritus of drama at the University of California–Irvine and retired 10 years ago, resettling in Easton, Pennsylvania. He returned to Irvine in early June 2013 to play King Lear at the New Swan Shakespeare Festival and died there on June 27.

Dudley was born in 1939 in Rochester, Minnesota, and grew up in Middletown, Connecticut, graduating from Haverford College in 1962 and Yale School of Drama in 1965. He was one of the founders of Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, and during his long career acted with many theatre companies—including the Old Globe Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, American Conservatory Theater, Magic Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival— and in major Hollywood films. He also flourished as a voice actor in hundreds of radio plays and documentaries.

His academic career included teaching at the University of California–Los Angeles, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts/West, and the University of Southern California. For 20 years he served on the faculty of the University of California–Irvine, where he was also vice chair of drama and head of acting at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts.

Dudley’s work as a voice coach and dialect director put him in great demand at theatres and schools and made him a leading figure in the field. He developed a unique technique of voice and dialect training at a time when the approach to speech training for actors emphasized “proper” diction. Dudley believed actors ought to master the full range of sounds produced in world languages, so that they could make any sound a role required. Believing that in a multicultural society actors should keep their own voices, he fought the prevailing practice of using upper-class white speech patterns as the norm. Out of this belief he and Philip Thompson developed the Knight-Thompson Speechwork technique and a comprehensive textbook, Speaking with Skill, which is regarded as one of the finest books on the subject written in the last 50 years.

After his retirement he continued to act and served as editorin-chief of Voice and Speech Review. Dudley was 73 years old when he died. A commemoration of his life and career was held in Irvine on August 24. He is survived by his wife, artist and sculptor Marta Whistler, his brother Charles, and three stepdaughters.

Director Stephen Porter

Teacher Thomas Snyder Turgeon

In a 1976 piece for The New York Times, critic

by Wendy MacLeod ’87 Walter Kerr called him “one of the most Thornton Wilder yc ’20 was very good friends acutely intelligent, almost compulsively conwith Gertrude Stein. After she died, he wrote centrated, directors available to us at the moa letter of condolence to her partner, Alice B. ment.” Stephen Porter ’48, yc ’45 was born on Toklas, in which he said: “Wasn’t it wonderful to have known and July 24, 1925, in Ogdensburg, New York. Upon graduation from Yale loved her? What fun! What goodness! What loveableness…”

College and Yale School of Drama, he became an assistant professor So let’s begin by saying, wasn’t it wonderful to have known and of English at McGill University in Montreal, while directing plays for loved Tom Turgeon dfa ’68. Tom never saw anything “mere” about the Montreal Repertory Theatre. “mere entertainment” and he approached every play with both a From the beginning of his career, Stephen specialized in directing sense of fun and a scholarly thoughtfulness. He wrote a brilliant the classics. The first Broadway show he directed was the Association book called Improvising Shakespeare, taught the first-ever film class for Producing Artists (APA) Phoenix Repertory Theatre’s producat Kenyon College, and wrote lively, playable adaptations of Molière tion of Pirandello’s Right You Are, If You Think You Are, starring Helen and Marivaux. Tom directed close to 50 productions at Kenyon, and, Hayes and Donald Moffat, after which he remained in New York, as an actor, took on some of the great roles in Othello, Who’s Afraid directing and producing several Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, of Virginia Woolf, and Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre. He also won the including The Country Wife, Mister Roberts, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, well-deserved Trustee Teaching Excellence Award. Former student The Matchmaker, Inherit the Wind, Auntie Mame, Room at the Top, and John Weir, a novelist, now asks his own students the question that Richard Wilbur’s translation of The Misanthrope.

Tom once asked him: “Does anybody ever walk across a room for no From the 1950s to the 1990s Stephen directed more than 125 reason?” Tom taught him that people move toward things, they do plays on and Off-Broadway, and was part of the growing regional thenot just move toward. They cross the room to get something, to see atre movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1960, he became the direcsomething, to find something. Tom taught him to “pick a want, and tor of APA at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, where not a big want, like, ‘I want world peace,’ but a local, personal want he directed such plays as Right You Are, King Lear, Twelfth Night, that you can actually accomplish.”

The Alchemist, Antigone, Caligula, Galileo, and Julius Caesar. In 1962, I wish I could explain to those of you who don’t make theatre while the artistic director of Cincinnati’s Playhouse in the Park, he how Tom’s imaginative intelligence worked. One of my classmates commuted to New York to direct for the Phoenix Repertory Theatre at Kenyon, Tammy Thornton, described it very well when she said and subsequently directed three successful Broadway revivals: that his classes were “like a big treasure hunt, going from clue to clue, The Wild Duck, The Show-Off, and The Misanthrope. He also directed to find the ultimate prize.” As his colleague, I still love to follow the Krapp’s Last Tape, King Lear, Twelfth Night; and the Broadway revivals clues. We would all have seen the same senior thesis production and of Private Lives and Harvey. yet during the orals, which were ostensibly for the student’s benefit, During the 1970s Stephen received considerable acclaim, and he I would invariably discover something I had missed. Tom would be received Tony Award nominations for Best Director of a Play for The able to articulate the exact moment when an actor needed to make School for Wives and Chemin de Fer, as well as nominations for Drama a turn that he or she hadn’t made. But he never wanted to hurt anyDesk Awards for Outstanding Director of a Play for They Knew What body’s feelings or make actors feel they’d failed. Instead he would They Wanted and Man and Superman. gently take students through the story, until they stumbled upon the Throughout his career, he remained highly regarded by, and often missing moment themselves. worked with, first-rate actors—including Philip Bosco, Carole Shelley, Tom was the person I’d e-mail when I’d stumble upon a line like Mildred Dunnock, John Wood, Rosemary Murphy, and Victor Garber. this in a student paper: “Ibsen may have been motivated to theatriHe was well respected and well liked by the casts of his plays, who cally present the incommunicable reality of a syphilitic Sweden...” admired his command of the material, his easy manner combined To which he e-mailed back: “Or a poxy Poland, or a flatulent France, with his firm resolve, his sense of humor, and the success of his proor a gum-boiled Germany, or a rheumatic Russia, or an anorexic ductions. Theodore Mann, the founder of Circle in the Square, wrote America…” in his autobiography that Stephen Porter was “a very solid director As a teacher he loved to offer up certain choice dark quotes like who knows his plays inside out and casts beautifully.”

“Count no man happy until he is dead.” Or “As flies to wanton boys Stephen died at his home in New York City on June 11, 2013, at are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.” Nobody knew better age 88, survived by Arnold Somers, his partner of 53 years. than this scholar of Greek theatre how cruel the gods could be. But on balance, he had what can only be called a good life. Good in the Christian sense, good in the Aristotelian sense, in that he was so effective at what he did. He was a good husband, a good father, a good grandfather, and he had a good time doing what he loved. And boy, did he show us a good time.

Wasn’t it wonderful to have known and loved him?

Tom died at his home outside Gambier on January 9, 2013.

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In Memoriam Producer Eugene V. Wolsk When Eugene V. Wolsk ’51 enrolled in college, he had intended to go into physics. But after his friends at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, introduced him to the drama department, he “had an epiphany,” as he wrote in his unpublished memoir. “Theatre became what I wanted.” He went on to become a theatre manager and producer with 39 Broadway credits to his name.

Eugene enrolled in the directing department at Yale School of Drama in 1949 but stayed for only a year and a half, realizing that he wanted to take a different path. He joined the army and fought in Korea before being discharged in 1953. Upon his return to the United States, Eugene gained experience in company management with temporary jobs until 1962, when he was hired by David Merrick, one of Broadway’s biggest producers, as company manager for the play Tchin-Tchin. In 1964 he moved up to general manager for Ready When You Are, C.B.!, then left Merrick’s office in 1966 to co-produce

The Lion in Winter on Broadway, starring Rosemary Harris, Robert Preston, and Christopher Walken. That same month Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain Tonight! —which Eugene co-produced—also opened on Broadway and went on to become one of the longest-running shows in American theatre history.

Eugene served as general manager with various partners for dozens of Broadway musicals, from the 1968 premiere of George M! to the 1981 revival of Fiddler on the Roof, which he also co-produced. His last Broadway production, in 1989, was Mastergate by Larry Gelbart, a play that satirized Washington politics. Before retiring, he had one final hit with the musical revue Forever Plaid!, which ran for more than 1,000 performances Off-Broadway and has since been produced around the world.

Eugene retired to Montauk, New York in the early 1990s with Laura Stein, his wife of 30 years and the author of the well-known cookbook, The Bloomingdale’s Eat Healthy Diet, who survives him.

Montauk newspapers have noted Eugene’s enthusiastic involvement in the community, from flipping burgers at town barbeques to organizing litter pickups.

He died on May 2, 2013, at the age of 84.

Farewell William K. Atlee ’41 10.15.2008

Laila Sylvia Dahl ’65 9.2.2012

Carol V. Hoover ’59 11.28.2010

John R. Robb ’65 10.18.2012

Jack Ellis Ayers ’56 8.16.2012

John J. Dolan ’55 4.13.2013

Virginia Weaver Russell ’39 1.11.2011

William J. Ballantyne ’70 10.3.2012

Russell S. Doughten Jr. ’54 8.19.2013

Stanley Kauffmann (Former Faculty) 10.9.13

Cynthia Lula Mae Barksdale ’82 3.5.2013

William F. Dowling ’52 9.1.2012

Ronald John Bazarini ’55 7.19.2011

Rachel Mehr France ’67 4.17.2013

Jack W. Belt ’53 11.6.2011

Jeremy Geidt (Former Faculty) 8.6.2013

Louis Charles Berrone ’63 9.27.2012

Julie Harris ’47, dfah ’07 8.24.2013

Virginia A. Blakeslee ’48 11.30.2012

William G. Hayes ’67 8.29.2011

Edward Marcus Cohen ’63 5.25.2013 Eugene S. Cuny ’47 2.13.2013

John N. Hefti ’60, yc ’52 5.9.2013 Ralph Herrod ’55 1.27.2013

W. Alan Kirk ’67 6.13.2013 Dudley Knight ’65 6.27.13

Hunter Nesbitt Spence (Former Faculty) 1.12.2013

Lauren J. Kurki ’97 5.21.2013

Albert Tarbell ’35 12.26.2012

Joseph S. Kutrzeba ’56 1.23.2013

James W. Thompson ’52 7.22.2009

David H. Locklin ’57 (Former Faculty) 9.22.2012

Thomas Turgeon dfa ’68 1.9.2013

Wallace S. Moore ’57 4.16.2013 Don Moreland ’60 2.5.3013 Stephen W. Porter ’48, yc ’45 6.11.2013

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Anne Shropshire Hyde ’49 5.1.2013

Thomas Victor ’57 2.7.1989 Richard Kent Wilcox ’61 11.15.2011 Eugene V. Wolsk ’51 5.2.2013

Bookshelf

Publications by and about Yale School of Drama Alumni

Words of Love: Quotations From the Heart

By Allen Klein ’62 and Gregory Godek Viva Editions 2012

Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof

By Alisa Solomon ’81, DFA ’95 Metropolitan Books 2013

John Badham on Directing: Notes From the Set of Saturday Night Fever, War Games and More

By John Badham ’63, YC ’61 Michael Wiese Productions 2013

London Bridge in Plague and Fire

By David Madden ’61 University of Tennessee Press 2012

The Blue Vein Society

By Sam Kelley ’90 Xlibris 2013 Under the Bridges at Arroyo Del Rey

By Carol Soucek ’67 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2012

Show Networks and Control Systems

By John Huntington ’90 Zircon Designs Press 2013

The Chamber Plays of August Strindberg Translated and with a foreword by Paul Walsh (Faculty) EXIT Press 2013

The World of Rae English

By Lucy Rosenthal ’61 Black Lawrence Press 2013 Mom’s the Word: The Wit, Wisdom and Wonder of Motherhood

By Kate Hopper and Allen Klein ’62 Viva Editions 2013

All Gone

By Alex Witchel ’82 Riverhead Books 2013

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The Art of Giving Assuring the Future

Esme Usdan yc ’77

The Dwight/Edgewood Project, in which young people from inner-city neighborhoods in New Haven write, develop, and produce original plays under the mentorship of Yale School of Drama students, has enriched many lives over the years. The program helps these youngsters to develop critical thinking as well as reading, writing, and communication skills through their participation in the making of theatre. They emerge from the experience with a sense of pride in having their work presented before an audience, a sense of accomplishment and empowerment.

Esme Usdan yc ’77 believes Dwight/Edgewood is an important link to continued achievement as these young people mature. “To be a successful adult, you need to feel that you’ve had some success as a child,” she says. “If the children who are involved in the Dwight/Edgewood Project experience that success, they can go forward with a more confident sense of themselves.” Esme’s recent gift of $250,000 has ensured that the Project continues well into the future.

Esme grew up in Manhattan and studied art history at Yale.

After graduation she earned a degree in interior design from Parsons School of Design. Having grown up in a family that stressed the importance of education and philanthropy, Esme

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is no stranger to either. Her first exposure to this combination came more than 40 years ago, when her grandfather endowed the Usdan Center for Creative and Performing Arts, the nation’s preeminent not-for-profit summer arts day camp. Today Esme sits on the board of Lincoln Center Institute, the education wing of Lincoln Center, which brings the arts to public schools.

She is also on the board of Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

Her philanthropy at Yale began with a gift to the Yale Child Study Center to fund a therapy program. “I have a child who is on the autistic spectrum, and that was my motivation to give,” Esme says. She then turned to the education and outreach programs at the School of Drama. In her philanthropy Esme, like her grandfather, is a believer in endowment funding, so that the program is assured of continuing. “I believe all children should have the opportunity to feel special and nurtured, of being the center of attention and feeling good about themselves. Things like that make children feel they can achieve. And when that happens, it makes me happy.”

Thanks to Esme Usdan’s thoughtful generosity, the Dwight/ Edgewood Project is guaranteed a long future.

Alumni Notes

40s

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Joan Kron ’48 is still covering cosmetic surgery for Allure magazine. In December 2012 she was profiled in the Style section of The New York Times and in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. Her most recent work is a two-part blog on Allure.com about Liberace’s plastic surgeon (timed to coincide with the release of the HBO film Behind the Candelabra). In her spare time Joan is developing a documentary film. She is having fun applying what she learned as a designer at Yale to other disciplines. They’re all interrelated.

50s

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Still happily teaching at Suffolk University and the A.R.T. Institute, Robert Brustein ’51, mah ’66 (Former Dean) continues writing plays and books, as well as articles for The Huffington Post. The final play in his Shakespeare trilogy, The Last Will, has received productions by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company and Suffolk University in Boston, and by the Abingdon Theatre in New York. It was then invited to the Wuzhen Festival in China, where Robert served as honorary chairman. He is also working with Hankus Netsky on a new Klezmer musical called King of the Schnorrers.

Peter Nelson ’53 majored in acting and then became a writer. He recently completed a romantic comedy screenplay, Mike’s Body Works. His agent loves it, so what could be better? Four years ago, Peter lost his dear wife, Rissy Burke ’53, and that indeed could be better. As Nina says in The Seagull, “What matters is to endure.”

Though he has retired from television, Michael Onofrio ’53, yc ’50 continues as member of the Directors Guild of America.

He also interprets at Kykuit, the Rockefeller Estate in Pocantico Hills, New York. Michael writes that “there is an interactivity between guests and museum docent similar to the relationship between performer and audience: keeping it fresh, honest, and engaging.”

Michael finds it all very rewarding.

Joan Kron ’48

Joy Carlin ’54 played Mag in The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Marin Theatre Company.

She directed Amy Herzog’s ’07, yc ’00 After The Revolution at Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley this fall and then Storefront Church

by John Patrick Shanley at the San Francisco Playhouse at Christmastime.

Mary Aley Wilkinson’s ’54 experience at Yale School of Drama equipped her to enjoy a lifetime of teaching at many levels, from secondary through community college to university and English as a second language. She writes, “I have also enjoyed acting in community college and summer theatre productions.

The acting techniques I learned at Yale have enhanced my communication skills, so that I can effectively prepare others to achieve their desires. This has resulted in great personal happiness. I would encourage anyone who plans to work as a teacher, attorney, doctor,

Submit Class Notes Please submit your news and photos to: ysd.alumni@yale.edu or Office of Development and Alumni Affairs Yale School of Drama PO Box 208244 New Haven, CT 06520-8244

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sales executive, or politician to study acting as an indispensable tool for success.”

Lucile Lichtblau’s ’56 play The English Bride had its world premiere in November 2012 at Theatre Exile in Philadelphia, where it was nominated for a Steinberg/ATCA Award.

It had another performance at Centenary Stage in Hackettstown, NJ, where it won the Susan Glaspell Prize. This production opened at 59E59 Theaters in New York in October.

The play also received the Israel Baran Award, given annually by Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, CA, where it had a reading in 2011. Lucile’s play The Hemings Diary was nominated for a Weissberger Award by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, where it had a reading in May. Both The Hemings Diary and The Interview were read at Luna Stage, the latter directed by Bernie Kukoff ’57. Bernie is also directing Lucile’s short play, The Introduction, at the Hudson Opera House for the theatre’s Play by Play series.

George Morfogen ’57 appeared OffBroadway as Freud in Freud’s Last Session at New World Stages, as Shabelsky in Ivanov at Classic Stage, as Rossini in Golden Age at Manhattan Theatre Club, and most recently as Harry in A Picture of Autumn at Mint Theater. On June 24 the Mint honored George at its annual benefit at the Cosmopolitan Club in New York.

Gordon Micunis ’59 and Jay Kobrin ’61 are New York City residents again and hope to get back in touch with old classmates.

Philip Rosenberg ’59 scouted locations in Puerto Rico and Miami with British director Julian Gilbey for the film Trouble in Paradise.

The film is set in Cuba just prior to Fidel Castro’s rise to power.

60s

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Bold Strokes and Finesse: The Stage Designs of John Ezell ’60 is a traveling retrospective exhibition that began at the University of Wyoming’s Museum of Fine Art. Another stop on the national tour is the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis.

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Alumni Notes Michael Rutenberg ’60, dfa ’65

In 2012, Michael Rutenberg ’60, dfa ’65 received Brooklyn College’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In April 2013, Michael took first prize for his play A Miracle in the Sixth Annual International Short Play Competition sponsored by the West Boca Theatre Company in Florida. Michael has taught in the Department of Theatre at Hunter College in New York City for the past 45 years and has no plans to retire. He is listed in the 2012–2013 editions of Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World.

Branching out from his book, Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light (Counterpoint Press, Berkeley), David Burke ’61, yc ’58 has created a series of walks called Writers in Paris Walking Tours.

Though based in Austin, TX, Raymond Carver ’61 has been touring in We Had a Grand Time, Didn’t We, Kid?, a musical retrospective of his work.

Following the publication of his 13th novel, London Bridge in Plague and Fire, David

David Madden ’61

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Madden’s ’61 third collection of stories, The Last Bizarre Tale, will appear next spring. At the age of 80, Dave is deep into seven books and a screenplay, including a memoir, My Intellectual in the Army.

Judy McMahon ’61 appeared as Florence in Leading Ladies at the Cider Mill Playhouse in February, and as Mrs. Warwick in An Unexpected Guest with the Cortland Repertory Theatre in June. Judy is also in the sixth season of a library program she began called The Hungry Ear, in which the group reads short stories for adults once a month.

John Badham’s ’63, yc ’61 new book, John Badham on Directing, was published in September 2013 and released at the same time as an audio book on Audible.com. John continues to direct episodes of Nikita for the CW Network while also teaching filmmaking

Raymond Carver ’61

at Chapman University.

In addition to teaching critical thinking about mass media to undergraduates at Long Island University, Abby Bogin Kenigsberg ’63 is teaching adults about the theatrical values in the plays of William Shakespeare.

A good portion of Ann Farris’s ’63 week is devoted to the San Francisco Opera (SFO). As a former staff member and now a volunteer, Ann was invited to oversee the organization

Increasingly Diverse Ike Schambelan ’64, dfa ’67 is a force to be reckoned with. The artistic director of Theatre Breaking Through Barriers (TBTB), an Off-Broadway theatre company dedicated to advancing actors and writers with disabilities, has boundless energy when he speaks about his life’s work. When founded in 1979 under the name Theatre by the Blind, the company featured low-vision, blind, and sighted actors. Twenty-nine years later, in 2008, the company expanded to include actors, stage managers, and writers with physical disabilities.

The name was changed to TBTB to reflect this new inclusiveness. “We are a very fundable project,” Ike says.

“There is nobody else who operates on our level of artistry and professionalism who has our mission.”

This mission of the company grew out of Ike’s love for his grandmother, who was blind and lived with his family when he was a child. “Growing up, I always associated art, love, and blindness,” Ike says. As an adult, he recognized a niche that needed to be filled in the theatrical community and took it upon himself to do so. (He admits that starting TBTB also supported his directing addiction.) During the early years of the company, Ike continued to work as a freelance director at such theatres as Long Wharf Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, and George Street Playhouse. He also worked at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA, which produced integrated shows, in which patients and non-patients worked and acted together.

Although theatres have become much more accessible to patrons with disabilities, Ike says that there is a kind of acceptance on the stage that still has a long way to go. “I never thought of myself as a persistent person or a groundbreaking person but I kept at it. I love it. And that is my story.” He takes his role of promoting integration within the theatre seriously. His goal for TBTB is for patrons to see the play and not the disability of the actor. “We do a play because we like the play and we like the writer and that’s what we want an audience to experience.”

Ike admits that before the company became as well known as it is today, audiences mostly consisted of patrons with disabilities and their families. However, as the company has grown and the reputation of the work has spread, audiences have become more diverse. He acknowledges that the best performances happen when the audience is a mixture of people.

“Those with disabilities give the able-bodied permission to laugh,” Ike says.

Molly Hennighausen ’15

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of the group’s archives. Most of the materials are stored in hidden spaces throughout the Opera House. Valhalla, a locked space behind standing room off the top balcony, is a major catchall at the moment. Ann is confident the volunteers will have lots of goodies for an archivist to take over when the company has a budget. She is sharing this news in the hopes that any YSD graduate who may have worked for SFO will contact her with photos or other memorabilia that would enhance the archives.

It’s still difficult for Michael Price ’63 to believe that it was 50 years ago that he and three other YSD students—David Toser ’64, Ray Kurdt ’64, and Clayton Karkosh ’64— drove from New Haven to East Haddam to work on the inaugural season of the Goodspeed Opera House. It is even more improbable to Michael that he is still at the helm, and that David will join him to celebrate a half-century of a “Yale-run” theatre.

Peter Sargent ’63, long the dean at Webster University, is one among many who have designed and built the musicals produced at Goodspeed.

Thomas Atkins ’64 took a sabbatical leave in the spring of 2013 and spent three weeks in London doing research at the British Library and other venues in the UK with his wife, Mary Ellen O’Brien Atkins ’65. Mary Ellen is working on a book on acting. Tom’s novel

John Badham ’63, yc ’61 directs episodes of Nikita for the CW Network.

The Bay Road, set in Alabama in 1946, was published in January for Amazon’s Kindle.

The novel was described by reviewers as “gripping and moving” and “beautifully written.”

Gaye-Darlene Bidart de Satulsky’s ’64 375-page, full-color anthology of the poetry and art of the Honduras Bay Island archipelago was published by the Ministry of Art and Culture of Honduras. The publication was recognized and funded by UNESCO as a study in local creativity and identity. Hijas de la Serpiente (Daughters of the Serpent) has made its way into the Humanities Division of the Latin American Collection of the New York Public Library. After the volume’s successful first edition, the Honduran government is now printing a second.

William Boardman ’64, yc ’60 writes regularly for ReaderSupportedNews.org and collects his articles on RebelMouse.com and Panther Productions. It’s mostly political, but sometimes about the politics of commercial theatre.

“My past caught up with me this year,” writes Robert Cohen dfa ’64. The Möbius Twist, a play he wrote and produced in 1971, has been translated into Romanian and had its premiere at the Cluj-Napoca National Theatre in Cluj. He also revised and updated his 1978 book, Acting Power, which was subsequently published in London by Routledge Press. In addition, the 10th edition of his Theatre text, created in 1980, is being published by McGraw-Hill. Robert concludes: “It’s time for me to work on something new!”

Ike Schambelan ’64, dfa ’67 had lunch with Carol Bretz ’64 last year and they chatted as if it hadn’t been 50 years since they first met. Ike writes: “We started with health but then, I’m proud to say, we were able to move on to other topics.” Ike did another short play festival last June at Theatre Breaking Through Barriers (TBTB), with Julius Novick dfa ’66 again the dramaturg, and Russ Treyz ’65 again directing.

In 2013, Raymond Barry ’65 completed his fourth and last season of FX’s Justified, in which he played the role of Arlo.

For the second year in a row, Julius Novick dfa ’66 is the dramaturg for the annual festival of short plays mounted by TBTB, the artistic director of which is classmate Ike Schambelan ’64, dfa ’67. After spending his working life as a critic and teacher, writing and talking about theatre from the outside, Julius is honored to be part of a working professional theatre.

Continuing to design in semiretirement,

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Gaye-Darlene Bidart de Satulsky ’64 Dwight Richard Odle ’66 did the sets and clothes for the West Coast premiere of Pinkalicious at MainStreet Theatre Company in Rancho Cucamonga, CA, and the Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach. Also at the Playhouse, Dwight designed the costumes for the world premiere of Tickled Pink, a bio-comedy based on the book by Rita Rudner and starring the author. Dwight continues to own and operate The Collection Ltd., a costume rental resource serving Southern California.

He also helped produce Ragtime for Fullerton College’s centennial celebration in October 2013. So much for retirement!

Bill’s Mountain, a documentary by Dyanne Asimow ’67, was released on Amazon in July, 2012. The film, 13 years in the making, was shown at film festivals from Singapore and Bangkok to Los Angeles and Florida. It got a thumbs-up from Dyanne’s film teachers, Michael Roemer and Bob Young, who, many years ago, taught her about cinéma vérité.

Since May 2012, as a member of Sun.Ergos, Robert Greenwood ’67 has toured Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, India, Tunisia, Chichen Itza

Robert Greenwood ’67

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Alumni Notes

Roger Hendricks Simon ’67 (left) with Martin Kushner ’68 in Richard Pellegrino’s Marginalia. and Tulum in Mexico, in all places performing and teaching dance and visual arts to children and young adults. The company went on to tour Canada and accepted an invitation to visit Romania in October 2013. Robert is now celebrating his 67th year in the theatre, writing a book of poetry, and continuing to draw and paint.

Frederick Marker dfa ’67 is sad to report that Lise-Lone Marker, his wife and the coauthor of most of their books, passed away in March 2013.

The Diamond Eater by Carrie Robbins ’67 was chosen by La MaMa to be part of the company’s 2012–2013 Concert Reading Series, curated and directed by George Ferencz in January 2013. The play was also chosen for the 2013 Midtown International Theatre Festival. Carrie’s new play, Sawbones, was selected by TACT–The Actors Company Theatre (The Wall Street Journal’s 2012 Company of the Year) to lead off its third annual newTACTics Festival. Sawbones featured veteran actors Cynthia Harris, Terry Layman, and Forrest McClendon, and was directed by Pamela Hunt. Carrie also designed the clothes for The Loves of Mr. Lincoln, produced by GAYFEST NYC at the June Havoc Theatre in the Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex in June 2012.

Simon Studio, founded by Roger Hendricks Simon ’67, celebrated its 35th anniversary on June 20, 2013, with Bard at the Bar, an annual performance that Roger directed at the historic Players Club in New York. Roger has had a busy year teaching, directing, and acting at his studio and elsewhere. In November 2012 he acted in and directed Richard Pellegrino’s new play, Marginalia, funded by the Baptist Health Foundation. In March 2013 he directed Jill Eikenberry ’70 in Bill C. Davis’s new play,

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Household Accounts. In April he directed A Tennessee Evening (work by Tennessee Williams) and wife Sarah Levine Simon’s new play, Pearlman, Provider, Purveyor of Light for the Half Moon Theatre in Poughkeepsie, NY. Roger has been acting in a number of web series episodes for filmmaker son Dan Simon and Eric Schaeffer. He has also been co-producing, directing, and acting in Sarah Levine Simon’s Bread Today film series, as well as doing promotions for Emerging Pictures’ Opera-in-Cinema live telecasts of La Scala and other international opera productions in United States movie theatres.

Jeff Bleckner ’68 recently directed the Hallmark Hall of Fame production Remember Sunday, starring Alexis Bledel and Zachary Levi. It aired on ABC in April 2013.

Howard Pflanzer ’68 had a reading in October 2012 of his play Poetry Class With Serial Killer—Ted Bundy in a poetry class—as part of the Experiments series at La MaMa, directed by George Ferencz. Howard directed a reading of Lucy Parsons: Anarchist as part of LaborFest 2012 in San Francisco, and again in February 2013 as part of the Shadow Festival at La MaMa for Black History Month. La MaMa has invited Alien (2011 Malta International Theatre Festival), Howard’s collaborative theatre piece with Teatr Palmera Eldritcha, to appear in New York. He has read his poetry at La MaMa, KGB, the Yippie Cafe, Saturn Series at Revival, and other venues over the last year.

The Romance of Magno Rubio by Lonnie Carter ’69, which won eight Obies for its first production by the Ma-Yi Theater Company in 2003, has been performed all over the United States and several times abroad. Its most recent showing was in Singapore last December. Trim, Lonnie’s Tiger Woods whatif play, written with Walter (Mac) Davis, had

Howard Pflanzer ’68

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Stefan Rudnicki ’69 a workshop production in March at the American Theater Company in Chicago. Trim portrays Tiger with the ghost of porn star Marilyn Chambers and other luminaries.

Bronzeville, commissioned by First Stage in Milwaukee, will have its premiere there in January 2016.

Linda Fisher ’69 is still working occasionally at the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York.

The independent film Sky People, by Shanti Thakur, features Gayle Landers ’69. The film has won several awards, including Best Experimental Film in the 2012 LA Shorts Fest.

Gayle became a grandmother in September.

Stephen Leventhal ’69 is spending his retirement as an immigration officer for the US Citizenship and Immigration Service.

James Metzner ’69 has worked mostly as a radio producer, crafting and voicing Pulse of the Planet, heard by over one million listeners every week. James reports that it was a pleasure to work a few years ago with Roger Hendricks Simon ’67, Charles Turner ’70, and Melissa Leo on the radio play Passover Dreams: the Seder at the End of the Universe. It aired on Public Radio International and won a Gabriel Award.

In November 2012, Richard Olson ’69 intermittently talked to the audience and danced to five tracks of music he had never heard before. This was part of Movement Research’s Open Performance Series at The Space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. In March 2013 he directed Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera, Curlew River, at the Church of the Transfiguration (the Little Church Around the Corner) in Manhattan. He is currently writing a new collage theatre piece.

wife, Jenny Aldrich. The couple recently played Fanny and Gardner Church in Painting Churches for the Banyan Theater Company in Sarasota, FL. Last season Donald directed the Banyan’s productions of A Lesson from Aloes and Time Stands Still.

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Donald Walker ’69 in 1776 at the Asolo Repertory Theatre, Sarasota, FL.

The past 12 months have been especially hectic for Stefan Rudnicki ’69. His production company, Skyboat Media, which specializes in audiobook production, reached a milestone in 2012 with 190 titles produced. As a director, Stefan worked with a host of top actors, including Dustin Hoffman, Diane Keaton, Annette Bening, Tim Curry, and Hilary Swank. The peak was winning a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album as co-producer, director, and engineer of Janis Ian’s autobiography, Society’s Child, narrated by the author. As a narrator himself, Stefan received the highest honor the industry bestows, a Golden Voice from AudioFile magazine. He is also a Hugo Award finalist this year as co-editor of Lightspeed magazine. Even with all this activity, he managed a couple of trips abroad to England, Scotland, Ireland, and Iceland, as well as various locations in southeast Asia. Most recently he met in London with dear friend Yannis Simonides ’72, yc ’69 to rehearse his one-man show, Socrates Now. Donald Walker ’69 enjoyed the good fortune of being directed by Frank Galati as Lyman Hall of Georgia in 1776 and as the foreman of the jury in Twelve Angry Men, both at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, FL. After 1776, Donald played an aging Lothario in Theatre Odyssey’s Ten Minute Play Festival; the mustachioed villain in The Drunkard; and a frustrated husband in Missing Pieces, a short film shot in Shreveport, sharing the screen with favorite co-star and

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Marc Flanagan ’70 attended the YSD Board of Advisors meeting last December at New York’s 21 Club, hosted by Clare and Sterling Brinkley yc ’74. Marc enjoyed seeing longstanding members and meeting those who have recently joined the group. He also attended the YSD Holiday Party, where he spent much of the evening talking with classmates Charles Turner ’70 and Roger Hendricks Simon ’67. Currently spending much of the year between Ireland and California, Marc is involved in a few TV projects in Dublin and continues as a board member of an Irish film festival in the Dingle Peninsula. He recently dined in Los Angeles with Henry Winkler ’70 and saw Jill Eikenberry ’70, as he usually does, when he passed through New York. Marc reports that the theatre scene in Dublin is vibrant. He frequents The Abbey Theatre and The Gate, as well as a pub or two in the neighborhood.

Alan Marlis ’70 has three books for sale at McNally Jackson Books in New York City: John Garfield, Moravia: Home of the Lost Ark, and Trieste: Sacred City of Three Worlds.

After almost 40 years in the business, from master carpenter to artistic director and almost everything in between, George Moredock ’70 (Former Faculty) thought it was time for a change. After three more years

James L. Brooks, Barnet Kellman ’72, and acting coach Larry Moss at a workshop for directing comedy at University of Southern California.

Photo by Carell Augustus.

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Mark Travis ’70

Gathered at a birthday celebration at Bill Baker’s home on Long Island this past August (left to right) Roger LaVoie ’73, Bill Baker ’73, David Conte ’72, and Jerry Limoncelli ’84.

of higher education he emerged with a new direction. He took his new MS in counseling seriously and is now providing mental health therapy for families and their teenage children who seem to have lost their way.

Truthfully, theatre and therapy share more than just a similarity of alphabetic characters.

Most recently, Nahma Sandrow dfa ’70 wrote an opera libretto based on the novel Enemies, A Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

After workshops and abbreviated productions at Center for Contemporary Opera, Kentucky Opera, and Palm Beach Opera, Nahma and composer Ben Moore look forward to a major production in 2015. The two

Andrew Carson ’79 is a part-time custom recumbent bicycle builder.

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Alumni Notes musicals for which Nahma wrote the books, Kuni-Leml (winner of Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Book and Best Musical) and Vagabond Stars, still get revived occasionally.

Nahma’s books, Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater; God, Man, and Devil: Yiddish Plays in Translation; and Surrealism: Theater, Arts, Ideas are still in print, and two more collections of play translations—some of which have been performed—are under way. Nahma has written about theatre and other subjects for The New York Times and other publications and has taught English at CUNY and NYU. She has also lectured about Yiddish and other genres of theatre at universities and institutions around the country and abroad. Her husband, William Meyers, is a photographer who reviews gallery and museum shows of photographs for The Wall Street Journal. Their daughter is an intelligence analyst for the New York Police Department and a happy newlywed. Sadly, Nahma and William lost their son in 2008.

Carol Schlanger ’70 looks forward to the launch of her memoir, Far Out, which chronicles life and loves on a wilderness commune.

Carol has enjoyed reading and telling her stories in venues throughout Los Angeles. She has also done a few guest television appearances and is an artist-in-residence for the Jewish Women’s Theatre.

Last winter Charles Siegel ’70 directed a production of Euripides’s Hecuba in a new version by Nicholas Kilmer for the United Players of Vancouver. The text will be published in the journal Arion.

Creator of the Travis Technique Mark Travis ’70 teaches directors how to direct the character, not the actor, in order to create authentic performances that translate to the screen under any schedule and on any budget.

Ralph Redpath ’75

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Mark has taught his technique for the last 20 years in over 50 film schools and institutions internationally. He is also a directorial and script consultant for Mark Rydell, Art Seidelman, Randal Kleiser, George Tillman, Asaad Kelada ’64, Jan Eliasberg ’81, John Badham ’63, yc ’61, Cyrus Nowrasteh,

and others.

Barnet Kellman ’72 continues to teach directing at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he initiated Comedy@SCA, the nation’s first emphasis for students wanting to specialize in comedy. Last fall Barnet produced Comedy@SCA’s second Comedy

The Key to Making Art Anne Cattaneo ’74 stood over a giant color-coded matrix of directors, actors, designers, and plays spread on her office floor. She had just finished the last pairings for the 2013 Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, a developmental program for early career directors. The Lab, which began in 1995, is Anne’s brainchild, and its list of past participants—both emerging and master artists— is full of notable names. Anne’s stories, too, are brimming with the theatrical luminaries she has worked with and the celebrated projects she has worked on throughout her inspiring and groundbreaking career.

This year marks Anne’s 25th as the dramaturg at Lincoln Center Theater where she has collaborated with Jack O’Brien, Tom Stoppard, Mark Lamos, and Robert Falls, photo by Sara Krulwich among others; and has worked on numerous productions, including The Coast of Utopia, Mule Bone, and Measure for Measure. She’s also served on staff at Second Stage Theatre, The Acting Company, The Phoenix Theatre, and ACT; worked on additional productions at the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Shakespeare Festival; taught at Juilliard, Columbia, UC San Diego, and NYU; served three terms as the president of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America; and expanded the Directors Lab into three sister programs in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Toronto.

It’s not just what she’s done, of course, but the way she’s done it.

Anne’s theatrical career is a testament to her belief in dramaturgy. “Ours is a creative profession—one that requires as much flexibility and invention as acting, directing, and design. You have to be able to look at a text in an original way and know how to communicate your ideas to your collaborators.” During her studies at YSD in the ’70s, Anne notes, dramaturgy was unknown in the Dramatic Literature and Criticism program. After a stint living in Germany—the birthplace of dramaturgy—Anne had an inkling that this might be a way for her to participate in theatre without being onstage. She asked then Associate Dean Howard Stein if she could work on a production of Cock-a-Doodle Dandy by Sean O’Casey, which was soon to begin rehearsals. Nervous, she met the director outside the rehearsal hall on the first day, where he said to her, “Darling, Howard told me all about this, and I’m thrilled. What a great idea! Why don’t you run off to Sterling Library and find out everything about the play and come back and see me on opening night!”

Much has changed in the profession since then, and Anne has been at the forefront of advocating for the dramaturg’s involvement in the production process from its early stages. It is a standard she upholds in her own work. Before rehearsals began for The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard’s expansive trilogy about nineteenth century Russian revolutionaries, she spent a month talking with each member of the cast, passing along research carefully tailored to each actor’s needs. It’s a highly personal approach that she learned from two of the great Schaubühne dramaturgs, Botho Strauss and Dieter Sturm. “At the first ‘meet and greet’ of a play, there should be more than one actor who will run across the room and hug you, because they know that together you can take them higher,” Anne says.

As another Directors Lab gets underway, Anne creates the conditions for emerging artists to discover collaborators who thrill them. “Ultimately, you have to try to do creative work with creative people. Controlling your life so that you’re able to work with the people you love as opposed to just being assigned to the people you like is the key to making art. At least as far as I can tell.”

Dana Tanner ’14

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Joel Polis ’76

Elizabeth MacKay ’78 leads communications operations for the Toronto 2015 Pan American/ Parapan American Games Organizing Committee.

Festival. Among the three days of events in November was the presentation of the Jack Oakie Award for Life Achievement in Comedy to James Burrows ’65.

Marty Lafferty ’72 was elected commander of the United States Power Squadrons District 5. D/5, which serves the mid-Atlantic Region and Chesapeake Bay with more than 3,000 members in 33 squadrons, is the largest district in the national boating organization.

As president and founder of Clicking In, Lani London Click ’73 has just completed the third season of Clicking In Forums on thought leadership and idea exchange at the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach, FL. Robert Gainer ’73 devised a performance response by 16 students in a course entitled “Jonestown Reconsidered” for Bucknell University’s Griot Institute for Africana Studies. The final presentation was a multimedia, Brechtian meditation on the tragic 1978 event in Guyana.

Ralph Redpath ’75 continues his 43-year association with the Flat Rock Playhouse in North Carolina, where he appeared in The Odd Couple and Deathtrap this year. He also played Willie Clark in The Sunshine Boys at Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre.

Joel Polis ’76 had the great pleasure of working with Yalies Jane Kaczmarek ’82 and Steve Robman ’73 in the world premiere of Kathy Graf’s The Snake Can at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble in West L.A. Joel also

directed his fourth play in two years, Allen Barton’s Years to the Day, at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.

This year Patricia Quinn ’76 has been leading an Enterprise Ireland Business Development initiative with top media companies in Ireland. Along with clients Philip McGovern and Jane Kelly of Ireland’s Big Mountain Productions, she developed an American version of their successful RTE series The Genealogy Roadshow. The format is being produced with Krasnow Productions and premiered on PBS on September 23, 2013.

After 10 years as assistant superintendent in Singapore for the world’s largest international American school on a single campus (4,000 kids in preschool through high school), Mark Boyer ’77 and his wife Marianne are retreating to a village south of Guadalajara to be writers for a number of commissioned works and freelance projects. Mark will dedicate three months of every year to consulting with schools interested in developing global education programs and is already booked for a year in advance. His educational blog is dreamtimeleaders.blogspot.com.

The first American woman to direct a feature for the domestic market in China, Dennie Gordon ’78 just wrapped production on a Chinese-language production of My Lucky Star, the prequel to the Chinese blockbuster Sophie’s Revenge. My Lucky Star is a multi-city romance containing elements of mistaken identity and an international crime caper, in which a specific Hollywood style was brought to a Chinese feature. Dennie moved to Shanghai in July to start another

Nicholas Hormann ’73 as Mr. Bennet in the national tour of Pride and Prejudice for L.A. Theatre Works.

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Thomas Bruce ’79, yc ’75 film, Go Lala, based on a popular book, a Chinese Bridget Jones’s Diary. On the TV side, Dennie directed an episode of Hell on Wheels for AMC and was impressed with Calgary crews and their deep knowledge of period westerns.

The Toronto chapter of YSD alumni has grown with the arrival of Elizabeth MacKay ’78. She joins fellow alumni Larry Mirkin ’72, yc ’69 and John McAndrew ’72.

Elizabeth’s YSD theater management degree has transferred to many places—theatre, radio, television, news, and sports. She now heads up communications operations for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games organizing committee. She is learning a lot about her new home and the amateur sporting world in the Americas and the Caribbean.

Elizabeth writes: “I would never have imagined 222 York Street leading me here, but I think of my YSD time and my cohorts fondly.

Be sure to let me know if your travels bring you to Toronto!”

Patricia Norcia ’78 continues her work with equestrian theatre, directing the Iberian Extravaganza at Mount Holyoke College last summer. It included quadrilles, pas de deux, and an antique carriage ride. Patricia also directed the Iberian performance at Equine Affaire at the Eastern Region Expo in Massachusetts.

Cape May Stage, where Roy Steinberg ’78 is the producing artistic director, celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. Roy also created the National Playwrights Symposium, featuring Lee Blessing, John Pielmeier, William Mastrosimone, and Stephen Adly Guirgis. This season Roy played Saunders in Lend Me a Tenor and directed the premiere of Shawn Fisher’s How to Make a Rope Swing as

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Alumni Notes well as Freud’s Last Session, Boeing Boeing, and The Santaland Diaries.

This year Walter Klappert ’79 produced two play readings for Yale Cabaret Hollywood.

The Cabaret’s first reading this year was Mike and Mary by James Gleason, read at Joe Reynolds’s ’97 M Bar in Hollywood, directed

by Nicholas Hormann ’73, featuring Fred Sanders yc ’77. The second play was Day of the Dead, a one-act play by Dyanne Asimow ’67.

The cast included Obi Ndefo ’97, yc ’94.

Walter also raised funds and attracted an

audience for Barbara Bragg’s ’87 play, Tales of the Old West, at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, which featured Brian Wescott yc ’93.

Elizabeth Norment ’79 plays Nancy Kaufberger in House of Cards, the new political thriller from Netflix. She has enjoyed running into YSD pals Reg E. Cathey ’81 and Jayne Atkinson ’85 on the set and is now filming season two. Elizabeth also loved doing Trains Running as part of the American Song series at The Flea, recruited by Carol Ostrow ’80 and directed by Jim Simpson ’81.

Thomas Bruce ’79, yc ’75 is still working on open access to legal information, most recently with metadata architecture projects for the Library of Congress and House of Representatives, as well as some policy advice for the European Commission. Recently, Thomas started going through some old prompt books to help out a theatre historian working on early Peter Sellars opera productions. “Blocking notes,” he writes, “do not get more legible with age.”

80s True to Himself Upon graduation from Morehouse College, Walter Dallas ’71 knew he had an interest in and a talent for directing, as well as a drive to create a theatre company and training program. He came to New Haven with one goal in mind: to glean as many brilliant ideas as he could, graduate from Yale School of Drama, land a job somewhere, and put them all together. He wanted to create a space where African American actors could take roles other than the maids and butlers that were available to them then.

“The three years I was at Yale were really exciting as the only black directing student at the School during the Black Arts and Black Power movements. During the photo by Stan Barouh day I was doing Chekhov and at night I was doing LeRoi Jones for the Black Panther Party. I was helping them to raise money for the children’s programming and the Free Breakfast for Children program. I was in both worlds. It got me excited. I felt bilingual: a part of two worlds, parallel universes, with textured, layered points of view.”

After graduating from YSD, Walter worked as a freelance director and producer before founding the Proposition Theatre Company and training program in Atlanta. It was there that his initial goal came to life. Proposition Theatre Company gained acclaim in Atlanta for a production of Chekhov’s The Seagull with an all-black cast and gained the attention and support of the managing director of the Alliance Theatre. Walter’s career continued to gain momentum. He created and served as director of the School of Theatre at the University of the Arts in 1983. He left there in 1992 to become the artistic director of the Freedom Theatre in Philadelphia, the oldest African American theatre in Pennsylvania, where he remained for 16 years. During that time period, Walter directed 25 world premieres.

Walter is also an accomplished photographer whose work is part of the online gallery of National Geographic Magazine. He finds that his photography and directing are interconnected.

“In theatre I spend four weeks with an actor trying to get an emotion, trying to get at truthfulness, and with photography I capture that truthful moment. Photography does not tell a story as much as it captures a telling; a moment in the telling of the story. That moment when the shutter snaps is a moment of truth, honesty, fear, anger, and beauty that didn’t take three weeks of rehearsal to get to. I can look at the photographs and be reminded of what I am shooting for as I direct, and as I direct I can be reminded by the photographs of what I am shooting for with the actors.”

Walter acknowledges the School as a foundational element in his directing career. “My time at YSD was a turning point. It was there that I realized I had something. I can still hear Nikos Psacharopoulos’s ’54 (Former Faculty) voice. He would talk in terms of what you were trying to do as opposed to what he thought you should have been trying do. He would evaluate your work on your terms and it was always to try to make your work better. It’s a technique that I use in everything I do,” Walter says. “He instilled in me a belief in me. I just had to be truthful to myself and believe in my own vision.”

Stephanie Rolland ’15

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Waiting for Pessoa, with originally composed music and choreography by Eileen Fischer ’80, dfa ’81, was selected for the New York International Fringe Festival last August. In 2014 the play will be produced in Lisbon.

Eileen continues to teach at New York City College of Technology, a branch of the City University of New York.

Allan Havis’s ’80 second opera libretto with composer Anthony Davis, Lear on the 2nd Floor, which was developed at Princeton in 2012, had a full premiere in March at Conrad Prebys Music Center on the campus of UC San Diego (UCSD). The 90-minute chamber piece was available on-demand on UCSD’s TV website. Allan’s new play, The Landlady, was read at the Lark Play Development Center in New York in June 2012. An updated version of his Haitian play, Haut Gout, had a second publication with Broadway Play Publishing. On June 15, Lewis Black ’77 was the commencement speaker at UCSD’s Thurgood Marshall College, where Allan has been provost for seven years.

Allan writes that the college hopes to give Lewis a doctorate in Anger Management/ Political Wit. Still on the drama faculty of the University of Michigan, Kate Mendeloff ’80 directed the premiere of a new play about the 1967 Detroit riot, Spirit of Detroit. The play was also produced at the National Arts Club in Manhattan in June. The writer of the play, Mercilee Jenkins, is a former collaborator from Kate’s theatre in San Francisco. Kate continues to do environmental productions of Shakespeare— this year Much Ado About Nothing in the university’s Nichols Arboretum and The Cherry Orchard in the conservatory of the Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

John Gould Rubin ’80 has revived The Private Theatre with Travis Preston ’78, Chris Barreca ’83, and Royston Coppenger

Eve Gordon ’81 in You Can’t Take It With You, Antaeus Theatre Company, December 2012.

Photo by Karianne Flaathen. ’84, dfa ’98 on the board. They started the company a few years ago with a site-specific Hedda Gabler, adapted by Royston and designed by Chris. John did a production of Strindberg’s one-act, Playing With Fire, also site-specific, last summer at The Box, deconstructed and adapted by Royston; The Seagull last winter at the Harold Clurman Laboratory Theater, adapted by Royston; The Caucasian Chalk Circle at Stella Adler Studio, lit by Chuan-Chi Chan ’10; and Double Indemnity in July at The Old Globe with Chris doing sets and Steve Strawbridge ’83 (Faculty) doing the lights. John also workshopped Ximena Escalante’s bilingual version of Electra, called Elektra Despierta, at CalArts. John’s relations with old and new Yale School of Drama friends continue unabated.

Eve Gordon ’81 had a wonderful time meeting the actors of the class of ’13 at Sasha Emerson’s ’84 brunch in May, alongside Amy Aquino ’86 and Tony Shalhoub ’80. Eve recently completed a recurring role on ABC’s Don’t Trust the B in Apt 23, a rare rewarding “mom” part. She is also getting more involved in Los Angeles theatre. She took home awards for Peace in Our Time, enjoyed playing Penny in You Can’t Take It With You at Antaeus Company, and has been teaching as much as possible. Her daughters are almost grown, life is good, and Eve loves seeing old Yale friends everywhere and in these pages.

Alisa Solomon ’81, dfa ’95 is still teaching at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, where she directs the MA concentration in arts & culture.

Eugene Leitermann ’82 (Faculty) is still at Theatre Projects, the global theatre design

consultancy, and is now president of the US office, his seventh title in 18 years. The Connecticut office has moved to new permanent quarters after Hurricane Sandy flooded its former space. His colleagues John Tissot ’81 and Tony Forman ’83 are busy planning performing arts facilities around the country.

Jonathan Pellow ’13 is also working with them, bringing the number of YSD alumni to four, just edging out intra-office rival Florida State, which is holding steady at three.

Frances McDormand ’82 and Joel Coen are proud to announce that their son, Pedro McDormand Coen, has graduated from high school and begun 12-month course of study at Boulder College of Massage Therapy in Colorado, with plans to attend Ithaca College, where he has been accepted for the athletic training program. Frances and Joel are very excited about his decision. Other than that, Frances has produced a couple of projects this year: Every Secret Thing, a feature film directed

by Amy Berg and co-produced by Anthony Bregman, for which location scouting was her favorite part; and Olive Kitteridge, which began filming in August as a four-hour miniseries for HBO, written by Jane Anderson, directed by Lisa Cholodenko, in which Frances will perform as Olive. She is also part of a new project with The Wooster Group based on an audio recording of the last surviving Shakers in Maine. It is called Early Shaker Spirituals, or: I Don’t Want to Be Remembered as a Stick of Furniture. Frances gets to sing in this one. She has also been touring museums with

Suzanne Bocanegra’s conceptual art piece entitled Bodycast, in which she performs an art lecture as Suzanne.

Cecilia Rubino ’82 directed for The Moliere Festival in June at the Jerome L. Green Performance Space at WNYC, New York City’s NPR station. She was delighted to have three Yale Drama grads in her casts for School for Husbands and Imaginary Cuckold: Reg Rogers ’93, Laura Gragtmans ’12, and Brian Wiles ’12. From the Fire, which Cecilia wrote and directed, with music composed by Liz Swados, continues to be developed. She also continues to teach in the undergraduate theatre program of Eugene Lang College at The New School. Cecilia had the privilege of collaborating with Fay Simpson (Faculty) on The New School production of As You Like It in April.

Geoff Cohen ’83 is working as the executive director of Shen Wei Dance Arts.

Having finished a second year as executive director of George Mason University’s Hylton Performing Arts Center, Rick Davis ’83, dfa ’03 is keeping busy on other fronts as well. In May he gave a TED talk at his undergraduate alma mater, Lawrence University, called “A Midsummer Night’s Dreamliner, or, Shakespeare Saves the 787,” on how the practice of collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking that characterizes the rehearsal process can be the cornerstone of liberal education and a way to do things better across all disciplines, including designing and building airliners. Last year Rick directed a double bill, Love and Money, for Washington, D.C.’s In

Sabrina LeBeauf ’83 (second from left) with the Delaware Theatre Company cast of Love, Loss and What I Wore, March 2013.

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Alumni Notes Series, which included Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. He also had a chapter, “A Prince in Pittsburgh: Recasting a Contemporary Staging of The Constant Prince,” accepted for a forthcoming book on new ways to translate and stage the drama of the Spanish Golden Age. The YSDGeorge Mason theatre community continues strong with Clayton Austin ’86 and Kristin Johnsen-Neshati ’92, dfa ’02 holding forth in their respective areas of technical production and dramatic literature/dramaturgy, while Rick teaches on a somewhat reduced basis due to the administrative assignments that come his way.

In March 2013, Sabrina LeBeauf ’83 was in the cast of Love, Loss and What I Wore at the Delaware Theatre Company. She also did a production of the same play at the Westside Theatre in New York and reunited with Dawn Wells in the Scottsdale cast in June 2013.

With their children Tim and Amelia in high school, James Bender ’85 and wife Rhodessa Bender adopted a toddler. Brandon turned 2 on May 31 and is a joy to the other four Benders.

Perfecting Your English Pronunciation, by Susan Cameron ’85, was published as a book, DVD, and CD by McGraw-Hill last year; it is a tool for accent reduction for non-native speakers of English. Susan’s methodology involves using hand positions to sync the tongue to the hands and find the exact physical placement of sound, even if the student can’t hear it. She was just awarded a trademark for the Cameron Method of accent reduction. The book and DVD are available as apps for Apple and Android and they will be translated into seven other languages and released globally.

Jim Sandefur ’85 is working as the resort set designer for the Club Med-Turkoise in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos. It is a sort of “one man band” of set design. Jim designs, builds, paints, sets up, tears down, acts as his own TD, and does all that needs to be done from a visual point of view. Luckily the water truly is turquoise and the views are so lovely that no one pays much attention to his efforts.

There are greatly limited resources, so everyone shares one ladder, one staple gun, and one standard-size domestic broom. It is a challenge getting things done sometimes, but he is learning to go with the flow and lower his standards a bit.

The Huntsmen, Quincy Long’s ’86 play with songs, was produced by Portland Playhouse in January. Kathleen Dimmick ’85 directed, and Mead Hunter ’88 was the dramaturg.

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Susan Jonas ’87, dfa ’90

Tina Navarro ’86 recently finished teaching a class in theatre design at Our Lady of the Lake University. OLLU is undergoing some radical changes—a new president and the termination of several academic programs, including theatre—but with new leadership perhaps some of these departments can be saved. Tina continues to work with Dr. Arnulfo T. Carrasco and his video program. He has developed a game show, which he shares with a live audience in his new TV studio.

Tina assisted with the scenic elements and hopes to be designing scenery and costumes for a fall production of ’night, Mother at OLLU. Adam Versényi ’86, dfa ’90, yc ’80 delivered the keynote address at the Drama Translation in the Age of Globalisation Symposium at the University of Salford in Manchester, England, where he described the genesis and continuing work of the journal he founded and edits, The Mercurian: a Theatrical Translation Review. Adam continues to teach dramatic art at the University of North Carolina. He also serves as senior dramaturg for the school’s professional company, PlayMakers Repertory Company, where he was dramaturg for Molière’s Imaginary Invalid in a newly commissioned translation/ adaptation by David Ball, directed by Dominique Serrand; and Cabaret, directed by PlayMakers’ Producing Artistic Director Joe Haj. Tales of the Old West, written by Barbara Bragg ’87 and directed by Corey Madden (former associate artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum), opened at the Autry Museum of the American West to sold-out audiences.

The production had its first reading with the Association of Yale Alumni in Los Angeles.

It was a busy year for Michael Chybowski ’87.

He did the lighting for three new pieces for the Mark Morris Dance Group, Kammermusik #3 for Pacific Northwest Ballet, As You Like It for the Acting Company’s national tour, and Fallaci, a new play by Lawrence Wright, at

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Berkeley Rep. Michael also taught at University of Connecticut and as of this fall is the new head of lighting at UConn’s Department of Dramatic Arts.

Bill Clarke ’87 recently made forays into production design for film and TV. He just wrapped a sitcom pilot called Today’s Special and a short feature film called The Master Cleanse. Bill designed the sets for Glengarry Glen Ross at Merrimack Repertory Theatre, and sets and costumes for The Submission, a play whose characters include two YSD graduates, at the Olney Theatre near D.C. Susan Jonas ’87, dfa ’90 is back in the Big Apple after teaching in upstate New York for two years. She is the founder and director of the Legacy Project, which is dedicated to restoring the contribution of women in theatre to history, the canon, and the living repertory. Susan is also spending more time writing for and about the stage, editing a new anthology on dramaturgs that looks at the widest applications of their work in theatre and without. Susan is also looking at the evolution of the field since the 1997 publication of Dramaturgy and American Theatre, which she co-edited.

McCarter Theatre Center continues its mission of commissioning, developing, and producing new plays, and the highlight of

Cheryl Mintz ’87 and Christopher Durang ’74, on opening night of the world premiere of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Photo by McCarter Theatre.

Sharon Washington ’88 in the world premiere of Wild With Happy at The Public Theatre in 2012.

Photo by Joan Marcus.

Cheryl Mintz’s ’87 22nd season as resident production stage manager was the world premiere of Christopher Durang’s ’74 Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, starring David Hyde Pierce yc ’81, Sigourney Weaver ’74, and Kristine Nielsen ’80. Led by director Nicholas Martin, the rehearsal process was a joyous one, and Cheryl was proud to see the production move from the McCarter Theatre to Lincoln Center Theater before settling into a successful Broadway run. Cheryl continues to be fulfilled by the successes of her stage management interns and staff as they take on theatre work both in the New York area and throughout the country. Cheryl also salutes Actors’ Equity Association’s centennial and is proud to be featured as part of the Narrative Project and in the publication Performance of the Century: 100 Years of Actors Equity Association and the Rise of Professional American Theater.

David Moore ’87 continues to serve as trustee for the Walker Art Center and co-chair of its Producer’s Council. In 2012–13 the council assisted a number of projects— including Cynthia Hopkins’s This Clement World and Elevator Repair Service’s Fondly, Collette Richland, scripted by company member Sibyl Kempson and directed by John Collins. For the Guthrie, the council provided support for its world premiere of Nice Fish, based on poetry by Louis Jenkins; the play was written by, directed by, and featured Mark Rylance.

Deborah Reissman ’87 is living in Los Angeles with her husband and 16-year-old son. “I think I hated high school when I was 16,” she writes, “but as a parent I hate it even more!”

Tim Saternow’s ’87 paintings of New York City were shown this past summer at the George Billis Gallery in New York. His Joshua Tree/High Desert paintings will be shown at

the George Billis Gallery in Los Angeles and Culver City. Tim’s paintings were also recently shown in California at the Christopher Hill Gallery in St. Helena, and at BoxoPROJECTS in Joshua Tree.

While vacationing in Italy and California, Rick Butler ’88 enjoyed the release of Peeples, the Lionsgate feature for which he did production design, starring David Alan Grier ’81. Rick returned as production designer for the upcoming season of Person of Interest on CBS, and finds time in between to teach at Brooklyn College. His recent designs for independent features include A Case of You, which opened at the TriBeCa Film Festival 2012, and The Longest Week, with release planned in 2014. After living for many years in the Hudson River Valley, Rick has moved to Soho.

In 2011, Terry Frankenberger ’88 retired from private wealth management and took on the role of director of development for the College of Arts and Science at New York University. The transition has been relatively seamless, and Terry is enjoying his new role in higher education. Of greater importance, after 23 years together, Terry and his partner David were married in December 2012.

On May 31, 2013, with his partner Steve, James Magruder ’88, dfa ’92, grd ’84 (Former Faculty) left to spend a year in Kampala, Uganda. He will continue his work running clinical trials to prevent HIV

Wendy MacLeod ’87. Photo by Lyn Hughes.

YSD 2013–14

Walker Jones ’89 with fans of Wicked. infection in mother/baby pairs and intends to complete another novel and host Americans who have had their shots. One of James’s goals for his year in Africa is to learn how to see again, to notice, to observe, to take in.

His story collection, Let Me See It, is scheduled to come out next year from TriQuarterly Books, and he has finished a new version of Giraudoux’s The Madwoman of Chaillot for A.C.T. in San Francisco, to be directed by Mark Rucker ’92.

Sharon Washington ’88 completed a run of Wild With Happy by Colman Domingo at TheatreWorks in California in June. Sharon was thrilled to be nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actress for performing the same role in the world premiere production of the play at The Public Theater in 2012. Sharon is adapting the manuscript of her book about growing up in an apartment inside a New York Public Library into a one-woman show. She hopes to workshop the solo piece at a theatre in 2014.

Sharon also did a workshop of a new play, Luce, by J.C. Lee at the Cape Cod Theatre Project, directed by May Adrales ’06 (Faculty).

In July 2013, Wendy Rolfe Evered ’89 co-produced the short film Out with Ordi­ nance 14, written and directed by Charles Evered ’91 and co-starring Josh Fardon ’91.

Last summer they were all represented at the Saturn Awards with their feature A Thousand Cuts, which was nominated alongside five other genre films whose budgets averaged $12 million or more. Wendy is working on her book Too Much, written and painted for the toddler crowd and the people who buy books for them.

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Alumni Notes Living in Portland, ME, Judy Gailen ’89 is still designing for regional theatre and opera and is teaching part-time at Bowdoin College.

Husband Michael is still performing and is about to head to Europe and China again.

Their son Gabe just graduated from high school and is attending the University of Vermont.

As a member of the second national tour of Wicked, Walker Jones ’89 plays the Wizard of Oz. The company, a supporter of Broadway Cares, is also working to support Helpusadopt.org, a nonprofit grant program providing qualified couples and individuals— regardless of race, ethnicity, marital status, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or disability—with grants of up to $15,000 toward their domestic, international, foster, or special needs adoption expenses.

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In February, Charles Bartlett ’90 and his wife Carol flew from their home in Oxnard, CA, to New York, where Charles sang at Carnegie Hall. Charles was among 289 other singers selected from half a dozen choirs from around the USA and Great Britain. They sang a glorious new piece by Carol Barnett called “The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass.” From his hotel at 49th and Broadway, Charles could see the Ambassador Theater, where he did his first Broadway show—Story Theatre, directed by the late Paul Sills—and the Winter Garden, where he did Much Ado About Nothing, directed by the late A.J. Antoon. He could also see Manhattan Theatre Club, where he had done several shows: the first, a comedy

George Tynan Crowley ’90

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written by Tony Scully and directed by Lynne Meadow ’71. A memorable trip.

Along with Sean Cullen ’90, George Crowley ’90 completed his role in Gretl Claggett’s short film, Happy Hour, a cautionary tale about child molestation, and understudied three roles in Richard Nelson’s (Former Faculty) Nikolai and the Others, directed by David Cromer at Lincoln Center.

Last summer George shot a feature-length film based on his own original script Cleopatra Backstage, about an offbeat romantic triangle at a regional theatre during a run of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. George had the pleasure of being seated next to Lynn Nottage ’90 (Faculty) to witness The Public Theater triumph of Sharon Washington ’88 in Wild With Happy during Hurricane Sandy weekend in New York City.

Marilyn Salinger ’90 currently works for Paramount Pictures in Hollywood in the Home Media Division. She and her family enjoy the screenings at the Paramount Theatre and look forward to seeing Yale classmates on screen. Marilyn and her husband Ross have two children. One is making stopaction movies and the other is competing in Irish dance competitions, so they are definitely the children of actors. Marilyn and her family will be making the move back east; they look forward to the seasons but will miss sunny L.A. Martin Blanco ’91 continues to produce, write, and perform in The Flagpole Radio Café show in Newtown, CT. The show returned to the stage on May 18 with guest artist Christine Lavin after a long hiatus brought on by the massacre at Sandy Hook. In the wake of the tragedy, Martin assisted Peter Yarrow and his Operation Respect Foundation with producing A Family Concert of Caring, Healing and Togetherness at the Ridgefield Playhouse. The concert featured Peter Yarrow, Bethany & Rufus, Dar Williams, and the ensemble of The Flagpole Radio Café. Brief highlights were recently aired on Moyers & Company and the concert was broadcast on PBS in July.

The psychological thriller A Thousand Cuts, starring Academy Award nominee Michael O’Keefe and directed and co-written by Charles Evered ’91, was nominated for a Saturn Award. Charles will direct the short film Out, starring classmate Josh Fardon ’91 in 2014. Charles was also named the artistic director of the theatre department at the University of California–Riverside, where he was recently promoted to full professor. He continues to divide his time between Joshua

YSD 2013–14

Linda (Sithole) Kuriloff ’91 and Greg Horton in Chasing Heaven at the 2013 Wall to Wall Harlem Resonance Festival.

Tree, CA, and Princeton, NJ, where he lives with Wendy Rolfe Evered ’89, his daughter Margaret, 13, and son John, 12.

Joshua Fardon ’91 directed a workshop of his play Julia Arbuck at the Brand Studio Theatre in Los Angeles in April. He and the cast and crew are hoping to take the production to Toronto. Joshua has also been busy directing the world premiere of The Time Machine Musical by Steve Altman at The Lillian Theatre in L.A. Michael Kinghorn ’91 recently completed a play commission for History Theatre of St. Paul, MN, about actor Lew Ayres, with the working title The Dreamy Boy. This past year, James Van Bergen’s ’91 projects included the NYC Ballet at Lincoln Center, Broadway’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Chris Cronin ’96, and mixing monitors for Barry Manilow on Broadway. As a producer, Jim and his wife Annette Jolles yc ’91 (who won her fourth Emmy last year) produced David Mamet’s The Anarchist on Broadway, The Boy From Oz in South America, and most recently The Scottsboro Boys at the Young Vic in London.

Linda Kuriloff ’91 reprised her role as Lolly Kibbins in an excerpt of Chasing Heaven, a play by Leah Maddrie which was performed in the 2013 Wall to Wall Harlem Resonance Festival at Symphony Space.

Lisa McGahey Veglahn ’91 has just finished her 18th year as a senior program officer for Hospice Foundation of America (HFA), a nonprofit educational organization focusing on end-of-life care and bereavement. She has been pleased to incorporate theatre back

into her work and life in a few ways. HFA recently became the licensing agent for a trilogy by Bryan Harnetiaux, several of whose plays focus on end-of-life care, decision-making, and family conflicts. Hospices and other healthcare organizations partner with local theatres to produce the plays as educational or fundraising productions. Lisa also joined the board of The Coterie, a family theatre in Kansas City, whose upcoming season features the ongoing Dramatic Health Education Project, an award-winning collaboration with local medical schools to educate teens about the transmission and prevention of STDs. Lisa has also become a stage mom: her 10-year-old daughter was in the cast of the Kansas City Repertory Theatre/Living Room production of Carousel, has performed with a radio theatre company called Right Between the Ears, and was in the Kansas City Rep’s production of A Christmas Carol last fall.

Lisa’s 13-year-old son is more into debate than theatre and plays goalie on his lacrosse team.

In her spare time, Lisa tries to fight against the encroaching right-wing tide taking over the Kansas legislature.

Lisa Wilde ’91, dfa ’95 continues to work as the resident dramaturg at Rep Stage in Columbia, MD, where she also teaches undergraduate courses in literature and theatre.

She was excited to return to Yale this summer for the writing workshops.

Jim Kleinmann ’92 expanded the San Francisco-based playwright incubator, PlayGround, to Los Angeles this past season, where he connected with Marya Mazor ’92, Rafeal Clements ’90, and Becca Wolff ’09 at the monthly short play staged reading series at the Zephyr Theatre. Other alumni involved in PlayGround’s Northern California operation this year included Board Chair Regina Guggenheim ’93, Gala Honorary Chair Jonathan Moscone ’93, Gala Honoree Lynn Nottage ’89 (Faculty), and Joy Carlin ’54. Jim recently directed his 100th work for PlayGround and is preparing for the compa-

Brendan Corbalis ’93

Christopher Weida’s ’95 children (left to right): Emily, Danny, Alex, and Connor. ny’s 20th anniversary in 2014.

Marya Mazor ’92 directed Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest at the Open Fist in L.A., with costumes by Sara Ryung Clement ’05. She also enjoyed doing Overlooked by Brian Nelson yc ’80, who wrote the film Hard Candy. Marya is spending the year as a visiting professor at Pepperdine University. This fall she directed Donald Margulies’s (Former Faculty) Time Stands Still. Eve Ensler’s Necessary Targets, her next directing project, will open in January 2014. Marya and E.J. Freedman ’93 celebrate their 20th anniversary this year and remain busy with Asa, 16, and Zelda, 14.

Designer Lynne Chase ’93 did the lighting for The Arabian Nights at Fairfield University last spring. It was directed by Jesse Jou ’10, with sets by Chien-Yu Peng ’11 and sound design and original music by Chad Raines ’11.

After one year at Villanova University’s School of Law, Brendan Corbalis ’93 worked as a legal intern at Philadelphia’s Mazzoni Center, the only nonprofit provider of legal services to indigent and low-income members of the Pennsylvania LGBT community. In addition to helping clients navigate the judicial system, the firm is committed to furthering the legal battle for equality and justice for all LGBT Americans.

Julie Lawrence-Edsell’s ’93 independent film Concussion was in competition at Sundance and won the Berlin International Film Festival Teddy Award/Special Jury Award. The film also stars Robin Weigert, Maggie Siff, Jonathan Tchiakovsky, Emily Kinney, Daniel London, Ben Shenkman, and Laila Robins ’84, with casting by Anne Davison ’01. Concussion was acquired by

YSD 2013–14

Radius-TWC at Sundance and had its North American release in October.

Robert Cotnoir ’94 has been working steadily as one of New York City’s top motion picture music editors, with credits including Damages, Borgia, and Smash—for which he was awarded the Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Award for Best Music Editing for a Television Musical. Robert currently serves on the board of the IATSE Local 700 Motion Picture Editors Guild–Eastern Region. In addition to his motion picture and television work, Robert, with writing partners K. Shawn Muldoon and Philip J. Caporaso, Jr., mixed the musical creation 1031 under the band name Grapefruit Sound Lab. 1031 is a 25-minute Halloween-themed sixpart electronica opus, and had a fall 2013 release.

In his third season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Al Espinosa ’94 played Cloten in Cymbeline. Last season he was seen as Trigorin in The Seagull and MacDuff in Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella.

Al Espinosa ’94 (right) as Trigorin with Nell Geisslinger as Nina in The Seagull at Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

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Alumni Notes

A self-portrait by Marshall Williams ’95, part of his final project while earning a Certificate in drawing and painting from Rhode Island School of Design.

Sarah Knowlton ’94 got a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University in 2011, and is currently completing her marriage and family therapist intern hours working in sex addiction treatment at the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles.

Fritz Schwentker ’94 was sorry to have missed catching up to friends and colleagues at the YSD reception at USITT in March, but things were just too busy this year. Fritz has been working as a theatre consultant in Texas for almost eight years, and next year will celebrate 20 years since moving to Austin. Fritz says there are a few TD&P folks in the area, including Jim Larkin ’96 and Scott Braudt ’03, and asks that if others are in the area, to be in touch.

Erich Stratmann ’94, yc ’93 was the music editor on Life of Pi, for which he won several awards, including an award from the Motion Picture Sound Editors for Best Music Editing on a Feature Film. His classmate, Robert Cotnoir ’94, also won an MPSE. The two hadn’t seen each other since graduation almost 20 years ago.

Christopher Weida ’95 still serves as the operations manager at Derse, a national faceto-face marketing company based in Milwaukee. He managed to catch up with Ben Sammler ’74 (Faculty) and Alan Hendrickson ’83 (Faculty), along with Narda Alcorn ’95, David Boevers ’96, and Kevin Hines ’95 at the USITT Conference this spring in Milwaukee. Between all that

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and raising four kids, Christopher and wife Rosanne don’t have much more time for anything else! Alex is now 13, Connor 11, Emily 9, and Danny, 6.

In the spirit of continuing studies, Marshall Williams ’95 has just completed a new degree—a Certificate in drawing and painting from Rhode Island School of Design.

Marshall loves this new endeavor and also continues theatre work—acting and dramaturgy—at the Barker Playhouse in Providence, as well as writing for Rhode Island newspapers.

Stella Grace was born to Jennie Israel ’96 on June 22, 2012. Stella joins her brother Liam, age 5. Jennie is teaching Advanced Shakespeare Acting at Emerson College, where Craig Mathers ’93 is a full-time faculty member. Jennie writes that the theatre company she founded in 2004, The Actors’ Shakespeare Project, is about to enter its 10th season.

In March, Elizabeth Bennett ’97 began work as the manager of institutional giving at the Park Avenue Armory. She loves the innovative work being done in that unusual space.

Elizabeth continues to work as a freelance dramaturg and hang out in Greensboro, NC as Preston Lane’s ’96 cheerleader and artistic partner in crime.

Karen Lordi-Kirkham ’92, dfa ’97 is the new artistic executive director of Pendragon Theatre in Saranac Lake, NY. Karen is still teaching at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, where she was just made a full professor.

David Henry Hwang ’83 was in residency there last fall.

Paul Niebanck ’97 just finished a production of Much Ado About Nothing for Theatre for a New Audience. Paul also appeared in the Mint Theater Company production of A Picture of Autumn, by N.C. Hunter, along with George Morfogen ’57. Jane Shaw ’98 did

Julius Galacki ’98 (left) directing a scene from his screenplay All Things Chicken. Photo by Swati Srivastava.

YSD 2013–14

James Shanklin ’97 in a recurring role as Aaron Hatch in AMC’s Hell on Wheels.

sound design. Paul adds that his wife Jessica is the new general manager of Lincoln Center Theater!

James Shanklin ’97 has been in Calgary, filming a recurring role in AMC’s western series, Hell on Wheels, about the building of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s.

Earlier this year, James worked with Eddie Murphy in the pilot for Beverly Hills Cop and traveled to North Carolina to do a recurring role on NBC’s Revolution.

After a busy year teaching, it was pure pleasure for Robert Schneider ’94, dfa ’97 to rig up a hammock in the back yard of his house in New Haven. Getting back to the endodontist, Robert writes, will be just the opposite.

Robert’s new comedy about the generation gap is called Daughters of Waterloo. Napoleon and Wellington are characters, as are Edith Wharton and Robert’s teaching assistant from Illinois.

Julius Galacki ’98 just completed directing a 35-minute short film, All Things Chicken, based on the play of the same name (which was first produced as a CWP at the School of Drama). Julius’ short play, Processing in the Park, was produced at the Electric Lodge in Venice in April and at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in June. Finally, another short—A Man of No Importance—was the featured 10-minute play at Atlantic Stage’s Festival of New Plays, and was directed by Marj Mitchell ’97.

On April 1, Dominica Plummer ’93, dfa ’98 became executive director of Revels North, a community arts organization based in Hanover, NH. Dominica quotes from their website: “Revels North produces Christmas and summer performances and outreach events to encourage understanding and appreciation of traditional music, dance, ritual and

other art forms through the medium of participatory theater and communal celebration.”

Their production this year will have an Appalachian theme, so plan a trip to see the show at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College in December. In other news, Dominica is now the parent of a college freshman. Her Yale baby, Faraday, is studying cognitive science at Hampshire College, and Faraday’s younger sister Austen Janna, also a Yale baby, is a freshman in high school.

“Once you graduate YSD,” according to Ed Blunt ’99, “you have a foundation—if you use it—that will evolve for the rest of your life!” Ed recently led leadership and wealth training for 1,200 people in South Africa, and then again for 7,500 in the Nashville Municipal Auditorium. He also travelled to Israel and Greece. Ed thanks the School for giving him the foundation and tools to impact lives around the world.

As Kathryn Calnan ’99 finished her third season as director of development at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI, the theatre hosted its 17th Annual Pell Awards Gala fundraiser. The awards honor the legacy of the late Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell, who was a supporter of the arts throughout his lifetime. The honoree this year was Kate Burton ’82, who was presented with the Pell Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

Joanna Glushak ’99 feels fortunate to be continually acting, either on the road with national tours, in regional productions, or in New York. When not performing, she is back

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Geoff Zink ’99, Michael Parrella ’00, Chris Darland ’95, and Stephen Lars Klein ’99 (in the iPad) have joined Arup, a global engineering and consulting practice for the built environment. home on the Upper West Side.

This year brought Michael Goodfriend ’96 into the cast of a blood-soaked production of Dracula at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, where he had the pleasure of reuniting with fellow alum Amy Morse ’00, who played Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet on the mainstage. Michael is now performing in the premiere of Lucile Lichtblau’s ’56 new play The English Bride at Centenary Stage and is looking forward to continuing when it moves to

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New York’s 59E59 Theatres. Michael is also enjoying his first job as a professor of theatre, teaching acting at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn. He continues to write and produce Left Jab for Sirius XM Radio.

Wrapping up his sixth season as managing director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., Jeffrey Herrmann ’99 has also been teaching in the graduate arts management programs at George Mason and American Universities.

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Robert Schneider ’94, dfa ’97 with his wife Francoise.

Joanna Glushak ’99 Jennie Israel ’96 with her daughter, Stella Grace, born on June 22, 2012.

Ed Blunt ’99 Jonah Drew Herrmann, son of Jeffrey Herrmann ’99 and his wife Sarah, was born on December 11, 2012.

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Alumni Notes

Esther Chae von Zielbauer ’99 presenting her solo performance So the Arrow Flies in South Korea in 2012.

More importantly, on December 11, 2012, Jeff and his wife Sara welcomed their first child.

Raymond Kent’s ’99 company, Sustainable Technologies Group, moved into their new Cleveland office in Playhouse Square’s Hanna Building, where Ben Strange ’11 joined Raymond as an audiovisual designer.

Raymond continues to work on sustainability in the arts and soon will be chairing an international effort to develop an ANSI/ISO standard of sustainable operations for live and performing arts in conjunction with Green Broadway Alliance, Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CA), Julie’s Bicycle (UK), USITT, and InfoComm International.

Raymond was also recently named commissioner of the Architecture Commission for USITT and was awarded the 2012 Sustainable Technology Award by InfoComm International.

Stephen Lars Klein ’99 reports that four Yale School of Drama technical design and production graduates have joined Arup, a global engineering and consulting practice for the built environment. In addition to Lars, Geoff Zink ’99, Michael Parrella ’00, and Chris Darland ’95 are pleased to announce that Artec Consultants Inc. (their former consulting practice) has joined forces with the acoustics, audio-visual, and theatre consulting practices of Arup. Geoff, Michael, and Chris join the New York team led by Raj Patel, while Lars joins the San Francisco team led by Josh Cushner. The integration of the two firms strengthens Arup’s ability to provide clients and their projects with whole-life

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relationships. From cultural master planning, project inception, and concept development, through design, construction, and post-opening, their comprehensive services provide facilities that support owners, operators, and users in delivering the best performances to their audiences.

Recent projects for Sarah Lambert ’90 include No Need for Seduction at Dixon Place in New York; a series of workshops for Spill at Wesleyan, NOCCA, and LSU, with further development in New York, Chicago, and at LSU planned for 2013–14; as well as a workshop of The Scutley Papers in New York and a reading of Yaghistan as a part of a class at Cornell University.

Dw Phineas Perkins ’90 spent the last couple of years on contract as the owner’s rep technical director for the new Antarctica realm at SeaWorld Orlando. Before that project opened, he was already consulting on a number of other theme park projects in China.

Graham Shiels ’99 announces the beginning of his acting teaching endeavors in Los Angeles. He started his own studio in November 2012 with one class of three students and now, seven months later, has two classes of nine students each. Graham writes: “It’s been a blessing to pass on lessons learned at YSD.” This past season Kris Stone ’98 has been doing mainly new work, and finds as a set and projection designer that the worlds marry beautifully, thanks to Wendall Harrington (Faculty), James Bundy ’95 (Dean), and David Biedny (Faculty). Recent escapades include: Troublemaker, or The Freakin Kick-A Adventures of Bradley Boatright,

by Dan LeFranc, directed by Lila Nuegerbauer; Blood and Gifts by J. T. Rogers at La Jolla Playhouse, directed by Lucie Tiberghien and lit by Matt Richards ’01; Upright Grand by Laura Shellhardt at TheatreWorks, directed

by Meredith McDonagh; Jesus in India by Lloyd Suh at St. Clements, directed by Daniella Topol with original punk rock music

by Shane Rettig ’99; Sleeping Rough by Kara Manning at the Wild Project/Page 73, directed

by Sam Buntrock; a new musical with director Anne Kaufmann in San Francisco at Encore Theatre workshopping this summer; followed by Title and Deed by Will Eno in L.A. this winter. Kris is looking forward to designing a new musical called Dog and Pony to begin at the Old Globe in May 2014.

The Arts Council of Korea invited Esther Chae von Zielbauer ’99 to be a keynote speaker for their 2012 International

YSD 2013–14

Shannon Flynn ’02 with her children Molly, Jack, and Nora.

Performing Arts Professional Series. Esther performed her solo performance So the Arrow Flies, taught workshops in acting, and presented a public symposium. All the proceeds from the show were donated to the International Disabled Art Organization.

Esther continued her journey westward, visiting the astounding Wadi Rum (aka Valley of the Moon) in Jordan before flying back home to Santa Monica, CA.

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Kraig Blythe ’00 and his wife Leigh are thrilled to announce the arrival of twin boys, Jack and Josh, last January. Kraig was recently asked to lead both the technical and production teams for Shanghai Disney Resort’s opening entertainment program, slated to open in 2015/2016. He is also the portfolio executive

Susan Finque ’03 (right) with a transgender performer in Cuzco, Peru.

producer for the Disney Cruiseline entertainment program for Walt Disney Imagineering.

Cindy Brizzell-Bates ’00, dfa ’07 won the 2013 Excellence in Mentoring Award presented by Empire State College.

Neveen Mahmoud ’00 is working on The Book of Mormon Jumamosi Tour. (If you’ve seen the show, you know that Jumamosi is Swahili for “Guard!”)

Rio Puertollano’s ’01 Broken Wings won the Golden Ace Award for short films at the Las Vegas Film Festival. He is writing screenplays, one of which is set in space.

It’s been an amazing year for Shannon Flynn ’02. She worked with many YSD alumni on various television and film projects: Marya Mazor ’92 and Heather Mazur ’03 on Nickelodeon’s Marvin Marvin, and Patrick Kerr ’87 and Robert Picardo yc ’75 on Disney Channel’s Jessie. Furthermore, Shannon directed a short piece for Stefani Cvijetic Tomczak ’04, with art direction by Carlos Tesoro ’04, and performances by Jennifer Lim ’04, Heather Mazur ’03, and Brie (Castellini) Guercci ’04. Other shows she worked on this year include Disney Channel’s Good Luck, Charlie and Austin and Ally, and Nickelodeon’s How to Rock and The Haunted Hathaways. Shannon notes a special thanks to the late Ben Mordecai (Former

Lola Grace Musslewhite will be joining her mother Jackson Gay ’02 in New Haven next year when Mom will be directing the world premiere of These Paper Bullets at Yale Repertory Theatre.

Eric Scott Gould ’98 and Anthony Mark Barrow in Athol Fugard’s Blood Knot, directed by Nathanael Johnson ’03, and scenic design by Sidney Erin Johnson ’12.

Managing Director, Associate Dean) who introduced her to some directors who were more than willing to take her calls, meet with her, and let her shadow them when she first came back to Los Angeles. She thanks Asaad Kelada ’64, James Burrows ’65, Steve Robman ’73, Steve Zuckerman ’74, and Tom Moore ’68 for their time and encouragement.

Shannon’s husband Kelly was accepted as an artist-in-residence by the Angels Gate Cultural Center, the first writer to receive this distinction. Molly, 7, loves yoga and drawing.

Jack, 5, has started ballet. And Nora, 4, is a singer and emerging drummer. The family still lives in Long Beach.

Along with her 8-year-old daughter, Lola Grace Musslewhite (or Lola Bean as her mom calls her), Jackson Gay ’02 is looking forward to being at Yale in February 2014, when she’ll be directing These Paper Bullets, an adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing by Rolin Jones ’04 with songs by Billie Joe Armstrong. The design team includes Jessica Ford ’04, Paul Whitaker ’02, and Daniel Baker ’04. The set designer is Michael Yeargan ’73 (Faculty).

Jeanine Serralles ’02 is the leading lady.

Derek Milman ’02 appears in the The Wolf of Wall Street with Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Martin Scorsese. Derek is revising the first book he’s written in a new young adult fantasy series entitled The Gray Light Chronicles, and has two screenplay projects in the works.

YSD 2013–14

Susan Finque’s ’03 doctoral studies took her to Cuzco, Peru, this year, where she lived for three months with a local woman and studied Spanish, Quechua, and processional performance. She still happily lives in Seattle with her partner, Maria, and their poodles Zannzy, 10, and Koda, 6. Susan directed several plays in Spanish this year, including the classic Chilean comedy by Sergio Vodanovic, El Delantal Blanco.

Nathanael Johnson ’03 produced and directed Athol Fugard’s Blood Knot in Los Angeles, with fellow alumnus Eric Scott Gould ’98 as Morris and scenic design by Sidney Johnson ’12. He also served as a guest resident artist for Willamette University in Salem, OR, where he performed as the Duke

Michael Banta ’03 and Sandra Goldmark ’04 with their sons Luke and Eric.

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Alumni Notes

Adam O’Byrne ’04, yc ’01 and Brendan Hughes ’04 on the set of Chronicles Simpkins Will Cut Your Ass, a short film based on the short play by Rolin Jones ’04.

in Measure for Measure and taught a course on acting Shakespeare.

In May, Sarah Bartlo ’04 accepted the position of general manager at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. One of the oldest continuously operating theatres in the United States, the National is experiencing a renaissance under new management—facility management company SMG, with Broadway producer and tour promoter Jam Theatricals—and has launched its first Broadway subscription season in over 10 years with the pre-Broadway world premiere of If/Then starring Idina Menzel. The production is a Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey project and is directed by Michael Greif. With events like this and other renewed and expanded programming, plus a major refurbishment, Sarah will work with the board of trustees to

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revitalize this historic institution known as the “Theatre of the Presidents.”

This year, Sandra Goldmark ’04 has done designs ranging from Shakespeare in the Berkshires to opera in California to new plays in New York, all while continuing to teach design at Barnard College. Sandra and Michael Banta ’03 welcomed their second son, Eric, last November. Michael continues as production manager at Barnard College and spent some time in the summer of 2012 working at a medieval construction site in France. In June, Sandra and Michael launched Pop-Up Repair, a four-week experimental repair shop which challenges the cycle of useand-discard consumer goods. Staffed by theatre artists and technicians, including several Yale grads, the shop employs the art and craft that people use every day, applied here to the real world problems of over-consumption and waste. The venture also asks the question, “Can we as theatre artists create social change not only with the theatre that we make, but with the way we make theatre—by hand?”

In March 2012, John Hanlon ’04 was in New York for the hotINK festival at the Lark Play Development Center, where his translation of Aleksey Scherbak’s Colonel Pilate was given its premiere. That script was recently published in Asymptote, an online international journal dedicated to literary translation. In August, John played Richard Hannay in the remount of Off Square Theatre Company’s production of The 39 Steps, and hosted Kevin Rich ’04 during his Shakespeare festival road trip. John’s

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Julyana Soelistyo (left), Nadia Gan (middle), and Jennifer Lim ’04 (right) in Golden Child

by David Henry Hwang ’83 at the Signature Theatre.

translation of Maksym Kurochkin’s Vodka, Fucking and Television received productions in Austin, Texas, and Melbourne, Australia. And in May 2013 he directed Crime & Punishment for Off Square in Jackson Hole, WY. Brendan Hughes ’04 directed and Adam O’Byrne ’04, yc ’01 produced a short film based on one of Rolin Jones’s ’04 short plays called Chronicles Simpkins Will Cut Your Ass, about three 9-year-old girls who dominate their school tetherball court. The film is currently making the rounds of film festivals throughout the country. Pre-production on a follow-up has begun. In March, Brendan and his wife Emily Topper, a cinematographer

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1 May Adrales ’06 (Faculty). Photo by Chad Batka for The New York Times.

2 In March 2013, David Byrd ’06 was appointed managing director of the Clarence Brown Theatre at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

3 Brian McManamon ’06 with Susan Louise O’Connor in the world premiere of Bodega Bay at Abingdton Theatre, NY. Photo by Kim Sharp.

4 Janann Eldredge ’06 receiving her Master of Science degree from Regis University, Denver, CO in 2012.

5 Amanda Cobb ’05 with Jason Heil in Clybourne Park at San Diego Repertory Theatre, 2013. Photo by Daren Scott .

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who shot the film, welcomed a baby boy named Oscar Henry.

Jennifer Lim ’04 was featured in the Signature Theatre’s 2012 production of Golden Child by David Henry Hwang ’83, directed by Leigh Silverman, along with Christie Evangelisto ’03, Anita Yavich ’95, and Matt Frey ’96 (Faculty).

Kevin Rich ’04 joined Illinois State University as assistant professor of acting and artistic director of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. Highlights of his first year include launching a new play initiative to nurture contemporary verse plays, redesigning the MFA acting program with a strong focus on civic engagement, and writing/directing an interactive play for young audiences.

On August 3, 2012, Tijuana Ricks ’04 married Anthony Pirro of Huntington, NY, an assistant principal at PS 503 in Brooklyn.

They were thrilled to have so many Yalies make it down to New Orleans for the wedding and the legendary amount of partying that went down afterward. After the wedding Tijuana went to work on episodes of 666 Park Avenue, Deception, The Big C, Blue Bloods, Law and Order: SVU, and The Carrie Diaries. Besides enjoying marital bliss, the new Mrs. Pirro shot the Jerry Bruckheimer film Beware the Night with Eric Bana.

Amanda Leigh Cobb ’05 had a great time in 2012 playing Sibyl in Private Lives at The Pittsburgh Public Theater, and then two characters—both pregnant—in Clybourne Park in San Diego. Amanda has also started pitching and producing television shows.

As of April 2013, Christopher Sanderson ’05 has been working on sending actors into space and remounting his long-running environmental production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with his New York City company, Gorilla Rep. He is also producing I Hope They Serve Beer on Broadway, by Tucker Max. May Adrales ’06 (Faculty) is looking forward to an exciting 2013–14 season. She directed the world premiere of Luce by J.C. Lee at Lincoln Center Theater (LCT3), and will next direct a co-production of David Henry Hwang’s ’83 Chinglish at Portland Center Stage and Syracuse Stage, and Daniel Beaty’s Breath and Imagination at the Cleveland Play House.

Last April, as part of the 2013 Mentor Project season, the Cherry Lane Theatre produced a workshop of Nastaran Ahmadi’s ’06 Exile.

Kia Corthron mentored, Stephanie Ybarra ’08 produced, and Lisa Peterson yc ’83 directed.

Nastaran’s play is about an Iranian-American video game developer whose new project

YSD design department romance leads to nuptial spectacle: Kate Cusack ’06 and Burke Brown ’07 were married June 23, 2012, in Brooklyn, NY. (front) Joanna Romberg ’07, Sarah Bierenbaum ’05, yc ’99, Nelson T. Eusebio III ’07, Kate Cusack ’06, Burke Brown ’07, and Cat Tate Starmer ’06. (back) John Starmer ’06, Thom Weaver ’07, Ola Braten ’08, Zane Pihlstrom ’06, Christina Bullard ’07, and Michael Walkup ’06, dfa ’11.

At the wedding of Tijuana Ricks ’04 and Anthony Pirro, August 3, 2012: Carlos Tesoro ’04, Rey Lucas ’04, LeRoy McClain ’04, Christie Evangelisto ’03, Casey Reitz ’03, Tijuana Ricks ’04, Anthony Pirro, Stefani Tomczak ’04, Vicki Shaghoian (Faculty), and Elena Whittaker ’03.

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Alumni Notes about a post-nuclear apocalypse blurs the line between cyberspace and reality.

In March of 2013, David Byrd ’06 assumed duties as managing director of the Clarence Brown Theatre at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. David was previously the director of marketing at Westport Country Playhouse.

While continuing to love living in Denver, Janann Eldredge ’06 enjoys the many opportunities to see YSD alumni who pass through the Mile High City, both onstage and off. She has turned her attention from theatre to arts advocacy, and was recently appointed to the Denver County Cultural Council.

Tommy Russell ’07, Alex Major ’08 (in mask), and Caitlin Clouthier ’08 in Seventy Scenes of Halloween, directed by Joseph Cermatori ’08, at Vaudeville Park in Williamsburg (Brooklyn, NY).

Photo by Alyssa Blumstein.

Drew Farrow ’06 and Jo McInerney Farrow ’08 welcomed Evan Olivia Farrow on April 14, 2013.

Drew Farrow ’06 continues working in the design and engineering department at Showman Fabricators and finished his third semester as an adjunct assistant professor at New York City College of Technology in the entertainment technology department. Jo McInerney Farrow ’08 has kept busy on the Off-Broadway circuit. Drew and Jo have also welcomed the newest addition to the Farrow family. Evan Olivia Farrow was born on April 14, 2013, in Manhattan at 8 pounds 12 ounces and 22 inches long. She looks forward to meeting all of her YSD family.

Brian McManamon ’06 originated three roles in the world premiere of Bodega Bay by Elisabeth Karlin at the Abingdon Theatre in New York. Brian is also in ongoing rehearsals with Christianna Nelson ’05 and Joe Tapper ’06 for Imagining the Imaginary Invalid, a new piece for Mabou Mines conceived in collaboration with Ruth Maleczech and Clove Galilee, scheduled to open in October 2014.

This spring, a number of YSD alumni and friends, including Carrie Van Hallgren ’06, collaborated on the world premiere of Something About a Bear at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The play was produced in partnership with Theatre Novi Most (the company founded and run by Lisa Channer ’00) and Vladimir Rovinsky (who

studied at YSD as a part of a Russian exchange program). Collaborators included Martin Gwinup ’88, who serves on the faculty of the University of Minnesota with Lisa and Carrie.

Nelson Eusebio ’07 was at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2012 as the Phil Killian Directing Fellow, assisting Libby Appel and Bill Rauch on The Seagull and Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella. Then he went back to New York to direct his first short film and produce two others. Nelson also produced Leviathan Lab’s mainstage show in New York, then went on to PlayMakers Rep in North Carolina to direct It’s a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play (with lighting design by Burke Brown ’07) and finally screened all the films at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. At the beginning of the year Nelson stepped down as artistic director at Leviathan, then went on to direct an educational tour of Twelfth Night for the Old Globe and Clare Barron’s play Solar Plexus for Ensemble Studio Theatre’s marathon of new plays.

Jesse Hill ’07 is associate artistic director of terraNOVA Collective in New York, where she founded and curates the annual Ground­ breakers Playwrights Group. This year she returned to YSD to direct Wintertime by Charles L. Mee for the spring acting project.

It has been a blessed and fulfilling year for

(from left) Carrie (Van Deest) Van Hallgren ’06, Constance Congdon (Former Faculty), Lisa Channer ’00, and Vladimir Rovinsky at opening of Congdon’s new play, Something About a Bear, at University of Minnesota.

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Rachel Myers ’07. She worked with Malcolm Darrell ’07 and Joe Hamlin ’07 on the Los Angeles Stage Alliance Ovation Awards, for which Malcolm was producer and Joe technical director. Short Term 12, a feature production which Rachel designed, won the SXSW Narrative and Audience Choice Awards.

Rachel has been doing a lot of design work for series, film, and new media and was nominated for a Streamy Award for Production Design on Video Game High School.

For his start-up company, IndigoH2O, as well as for his work with charities that help children in Third World countries obtain access to fresh water, Yuri Cataldo ’08 was selected as one of St. Joseph County (Indiana) Chamber of Commerce’s 40 Under 40 business leaders. Yuri recently became an adjunct professor of scene design at Indiana University, South Bend.

For the past few years, while working on his PhD at Columbia University—he swears he’s almost finished—Joseph Cermatori ’08 has been living in Manhattan and working in his spare time as a freelance dramaturg and critic, an assistant editor at PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, and a teacher of an undergraduate theory seminar in the theatre division of The New School. In October 2012, Joseph endeavored to bring a little taste of the Yale Cabaret’s YSD Night to Brooklyn by directing Jeffrey Jones’s 1980 play Seventy Scenes of Halloween at the Williamsburg arts venue Vaudeville Park. The production starred Tommy Russell ’07, Caitlin Clouthier ’08, and Alex Major ’08, and

Yuri Cataldo ’08 was selected as one of St. Joseph County (Indiana) Chamber of Commerce’s 40 under 40 business leaders.

Palmer Hefferan ’13 and Drew Lichtenberg ’08 are engaged.

featured the design talents of Ji-Youn Chang ’08. Halloween antics ensued, and much fun was had by all.

Now in his second season as literary associate at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., Drew Lichtenberg ’08, dfa ’11 has been dramaturg for over a dozen shows there, including Servant of Two Masters, directed by Christopher Bayes (Faculty); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (with design by Lee Savage ’05 (Faculty) and Jen Moeller ’06); Strange Interlude (with sound by Fitz Patton ’01); and Coriolanus, directed by David Muse ’03, yc ’96. Over the past year Drew has been fortunate to serve as a guest teaching artist at Carnegie Mellon University, the ACTF Festival at the Kennedy Center, and George Washington University. Most importantly, in the first minutes of 2012 he became engaged to Palmer Hefferan ’13. They met while working on a show together in 2010 at the Yale Cabaret, became deep friends during Drama 6 in the spring of 2011, and fell in love that summer while traveling together to Berlin (for Drew’s DFA research) and Prague (for Palmer’s exhibit in the Quadrennial.)

On the heels of the premiere of Grace, or the Art of Climbing at the Denver Center Theatre Company this winter, Lauren Feldman’s ’08 other plays received workshops throughout New York over the summer: Fill Our Mouths (Drama League New Directors/New Works Program), A People (OPEN: The Festival of New Jewish Theatre), and The Egg-Layers (Stable Cable Lab Co.). Lauren worked on her new play, Amanuensis, in between. In a strange turn of events, she also graduated from New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA), completing a year-long professional program in the physical circus arts.

Still at Columbia University en route to his PhD in theatre, Jason Fitzgerald ’08 also continues as dramaturg for the Writing Fellows Group at The Playwrights Realm. BackStage

YSD 2013–14

magazine decided to end its theatre and film reviews, but Jason still sees lots of theatre and seeks out ways to write about it. He spent part of his summer at Harvard’s Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research, along with Brian Valencia ’10, dfa cand., yc ’05, and Walter Chon ’10, dfa cand.

Continuing her career in commercial theatre, Roberta Pereira ’08 has been working with Bisno Productions on shows such as War Horse (Lincoln Center and US tour) and Annie (Broadway). In addition she was associate producer of Grace on Broadway (starring Paul Rudd and Michael Shannon) and Merrily We Roll Along in London, which garnered more five-star reviews than any musical in West End history.

Veronika Vorel ’08 has relocated to Los Angeles from Washington, D.C. She continues to design sound and compose music for theatre locally and across the country while creating a theme park in Jordan with RGH Themed Entertainment, alongside Nicola Rossini ’07 and Becca Wolff ’09. In addition, she produced TEDx Culver City, and is continuing her involvement with the Prague Quadrennial in 2015.

In Los Angeles, Alex Knox ’09 saw the premiere of his one-man play, No Static At All, developed and directed by Becca Wolff ’09.

The play, which debuted at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, took audiences on a journey through Alex’s search for spiritual significance in the music of ’70s supergroup Steely Dan. Timothy Mackabee ’09 recently designed

Alex Knox ’09 in his one-man play, No Static At All, developed and directed by Becca Wolff ’09, at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.

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Alumni Notes Luce at Lincoln Center Theater (LCT3), directed by May Adrales ’06 (Faculty); American Hero by Bess Wohl ’02, art ’98, directed by Leigh Silverman; and Oliver! at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Timothy’s other recent credits include The Elephant Man with Bradley Cooper and Patricia Clarkson ’85 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival (expected to transfer to Broadway in 2014), and Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth on Broadway, directed

by Spike Lee. Timothy was associate designer for the Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Exile by Nastaran Ahmadi ’06, directed

by Lisa Peterson; the world premiere of the opera Paul’s Case by Greg Spears, with costumes by Amanda Seymour ’09; The Odd Couple at Dallas Theater Center; and Shipwrecked at Triad Stage, directed by Jen Wineman ’10 with lighting design by Jesse Belsky ’09. He was also assistant art director for the second season of Smash on NBC. Upcoming projects for Timothy include sets and projections for Chinglish at Portland Center Stage and Syracuse Stage, also directed

by May Adrales; and associate designer for the national tour of Broadway’s Evita.

It has been an exciting season of theatre and year of life for Patricia McGregor ’09. The season began with the fall 2012 production of Spunk! at Cal Shakes. Patricia then directed the world premiere of Holding it Down: the Veterans’ Dreams Project with Vijay Iyer at Harlem Stage, followed by Mountaintop at Philadelphia Theatre Company. The spring brought an exciting workshop of the new musical Stagger Lee at Dallas Theater Center, as well as a production of Becky Shaw at Round House Theatre. Patricia worked at Williamstown the summer of 2012, developing a new musical about the Loving vs.

Aaron Epstein and Rebecca Phillips ’09 were married in Westport, CT on July 6, 2013.

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Robert Shearin ’12, Rebecca Rindler ’09, som ’09, Christopher Mirto ’10, and Kiernan Kelly ’87 at The Studio Theatre’s Mad Hat Gala 2013.

Virginia Supreme Court case. Perhaps most importantly, she became engaged to Freedome Bradley and was married this fall.

It was a very busy summer for Rebecca Phillips ’09. On July 6 she married photographer Aaron Epstein in a small ceremony at Temple Israel in Westport, CT. The two met in 2009 through YSD alumna Jen Wineman ’10 while working on her production of The Erotic Diary of Anne Frank for Studio 42’s “unproducible” plays project in New York.

Rebecca and Aaron moved to Los Angeles together in the summer of 2011, and since then Rebecca has worked as an assistant in the television literary department at United Talent Agency in Beverly Hills, having started in the mailroom. She left the agency in midJuly to begin her new job working for the executive producer/show runner of CBS’s upcoming comedy series Bad Teacher, which began shooting in L.A. this fall.

In April 2013, Rebecca Rindler ’09, som ’09 joined the corporate strategy and development team at TIAA-CREF. She is delighted to return to both her roots in the nonprofit community and her hometown of New York.

On August 4, 2013, Alex Teicheira ’09 returned to New York City and married Rebecca Hite at the New York Botanical Garden’s Stone Mill. Shortly after, Alex enjoyed his Off-Broadway debut in Anthem, based on the novella by Ayn Rand, at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

YSD 2013–14

Michael Vandercook ’09 and Sandra Jervey ’11 are pleased to announce their engagement. Michael has recently accepted the position of director of production at the Raue Center for the Arts in Crystal Lake, IL, where the couple has relocated.

10s

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In February Michael Barker ’10, som ’10 and Heidi Hanson ’09 moved to the north San Francisco Bay area, where Michael began his tenure as the managing director of Marin Theatre Company. Heidi is getting back to her roots in live performance and spent last summer with Sarah Pearline ’09, traversing Italy with Opera Lirica. Michael was recently elected to the Yale School of Management Alumni Association Board and is pleased to have an excuse to get back to New Haven twice a year.

Valérie Thérèse Bart ’10 designed both costumes and scenery for the Off-Broadway premiere of Tina Packer’s Women of Will, directed

by Eric Tucker, with lighting design by Les Dickert ’97, which began a tour at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival after it closed in New York. Valérie also designed the costumes in collaboration with an all-Yale team on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant at the Lee Strasberg

Seamus Mulcahy ’12 in Killing Lincoln.

Film and Theatre Institute, directed by Louisa Proske ’12, with scenic and lighting design by Marie Yokoyama ’10 and sound design by Chad Raines ’11.

Whitney Estrin ’10 has recently moved to Brooklyn and is the new director of development at Theatre for a New Audience.

Ryan Retartha ’10 and Amy Jonas were married on June 22, 2013, in South Bend, IN. Brian Valencia ’10, dfa cand., yc ’05 and Chris Mirto ’10 recently did a workshop of Three Sisters, or The Dormouse’s Tale at the Signature Theatre in Arlington. In the cast were Adria Vitlar ’09 and Emily Trask ’11, as well as Felicia Curry and Darius Smith, who played the Dormouse and the piano. This was a developmental workshop that gave Brian and Chris the time and space to work on the score and the book. They’re hoping this newer draft will find a production somewhere soon.

After two bonus years in New Haven, Laura J. Eckelman ’11 is excited to be starting a new chapter in her life—as a professor! In August she joined the faculty of the drama department at Washington College in Chestertown, MD, where she now lives. Laura is still freelancing and looks forward to many weekends in Philly and D.C. visiting friends and going to the theatre.

Shakespeare on the Vine is a new theatre company devoted to the classics, working in partnership with wineries in Napa Valley, CA. Tara Kayton ’11 is the founder. The company’s first performance was in the Grand Barrel Room of Castello di Amorosa on Valentine’s Day. The evening of love scenes and sonnets was woven around an elegant four-course meal, paired with wines from the castle’s collection. Other members of the company included Elliot B. Quick ’12, Misty Day, Alex Teicheira ’09, Deanna Gandy, and Taylor Lambert.

Ali Pour Issa ’11 was admitted to Brown International Advanced Research Institute

(BIARI) in the category of “Theater and Civil Society,” co-convened by two Brown University faculty members—Patricia Ybarra and Erik Ehn. However, he was not able to attend the program because of the prolonged clearance procedure at the US consulate in Dubai, UAE. He has taught a graduate course, Survey of New Theories in Contemporary Dramatic Literature, to directing students in the theatre studies department at the University of Tehran; a Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism Workshop at Hozeh Honari of Tehran, some general English language courses at Tarjoman Oloum Institute; and dramaturgy and dramatic criticism workshops at Karnameh Institute of Arts and Culture. His short film, Cold Ground, has been selected in 10 festivals so far. After editing Farabi Quarterly Magazine for the special issue, “The Relationship of Theater and Cinema,” he began editing another special issue, “Drama­ turgy and Cinema: Script Development.” He also worked as a literary manager, selecting plays for the play reading series at Molavi Theater. More importantly, his translation of Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics was published in Tehran.

DeDe Jacobs-Komisar ’12 is working as the cultural arts manager at the Jewish Community Center (JCC) of Greater New

Haven in Woodbridge, where she is running film and literary festivals and founding a Jewish theatre company. Called JCC Theaterworks, it is dedicated to new work and exploring the concept of “Jewish theatre.”

Since DeDe came to the School to learn how to found and manage a theatre company, she is very excited as she plans the upcoming season. Her husband, Yaakov, is teaching middle school Judaics at Ezra Academy, and their son Nani, born during DeDe’s first year at YSD, turned 3 last January.

Caroline McGraw ’12 received the 2013 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship, a prize providing year-long comprehensive support to an early-career playwright.

Seamus Mulcahy ’12 played the character David Harold in the Ridley Scott and Tony Scott production of Killing Lincoln, narrated

by Tom Hanks, which aired on the National Geographic Channel.

Adina Verson ’12, Fisher Neal ’12, Laura Gragtmans ’12, William DeMeritt ’12, Brian Wiles ’12, Michael McQuilken ’11, Carmen Zilles ’13, Elia Monte-Brown ’14, Dan O’Brien ’14, Sophie von Haselberg ’14, and Maura Hooper ’15 have founded a New York–based theatre company called Old Sound Room. OSR had its inaugural production, Lear, in June of 2013. Y

Brian Valencia ’10, dfa cand., yc ’05, Felicia Curry, Christopher Mirto ’10, Adria Vitlar ’09, Emily Trask ’11, and Darius Smith during a developmental workshop of Three Sisters, or The Dormouse’s Tale, at Signature Theatre.

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Contributors Contributors to Yale School of Drama Annual Fund 2012/13 1940s Lawrence D. Amick ’49 Patricia F. Gilchrist ’44 Alfred S. Golding ’49 Joan Kron ’48 Mildred C. Kuner ’47 Pamela Stiles Roberts ’46 Eugene F. Shewmaker ’49 Yun C. Wu ’49

1950s Robert A. Baldwin ’55 Robert M. Barr ’52 Gloria B. Beckerman ’53 Ezekial H. Berlin ’53 Melvin I. Bernhardt ’55 Richard E. Bianchi* ’57 Joy G. Carlin ’54 Sami J. Casler ’59 Patricia J. Collins ’58 Forrest S. Compton ’53 Sue Ann Gilfillan Converse ’55 John W. Cunningham ’59 Jose A. Diaz ’52 Peter C. Donat ’53 Philip R. Eck ’59 Joseph Gantman ’53 Robert W. Goldsby ’53 James W. Gousseff ’56 Bigelow R. Green ’59 Albert R. Gurney ’58 Phyllis O. Hammel ’52 Marian E. Hampton ’59 Carol T. Hemingway ’55 Evelyn H. Huffman ’57 James E. Jewell ’57 Geoffrey A. Johnson ’55 Marillyn B. Johnson ’50 Donald E. Jones ’56 Amnon Kabatchnik ’57 James D. Karr ’54 Jay B. Keene ’55 Roger L. Kenvin ’59, dfa ’61 Bernard Kukoff ’57 Henry E. Lowenstein ’56 Paul D. Lukather ’53 Marvin M. March ’55 David R. McNutt ’59 Ellen L. Moore ’52 George Morfogen ’57

Marion V. Myrick ’54 Franklin M. Nash ’59 Kendric T. Packer ’52 Virginia F. Pils ’52 Gladys S. Powers ’57 Mary B. Reynolds ’55 David A. Rosenberg ’54 Philip Rosenberg ’59 A. Raymond Rutan ’54 Raymond H. Sader ’58 Stephen O. Saxe ’54 William T. Schneider ’56 Forrest E. Sears ’58 James A. Smith ’59 Kenneth J. Stein ’59 Pamela D. Strayer ’52 Edward Trach ’58 Fred Voelpel ’53 Phyllis C. Warfel ’55 William B. Warfel ’57, yc ’55 Betsy B. Watson ’53 Zelma H. Weisfeld ’56 Barbara M. Young ’53

1960s Richard J. Ambacher ’65 Leif E. Ancker ’62 Barbara B. Anderson ’60 Rita Aron ’69 Mary Ellen O. Atkins ’65 Thomas R. Atkins ’64 Robert A. Auletta ’69 James R. Bakkom ’64 Boris I. Baranovic ’61 Philip J. Barrons ’65 Warren F. Bass ’67 John Beck ’63 Jody L. Berger ’66 Roderick L. Bladel ’61 Jeffrey A. Bleckner ’68 Carol Bretz Murray-Negron ’64 James Burrows ’65 Raymond E. Carver ’61 Suellen G. Childs ’69 Katherine D. Cline ’60 Patricia S. Cochrane ’62 Robert S. Cohen dfa ’64 John M. Conklin ’66, yc ’59 Kenneth T. Costigan ’60 Peggy Cowles ’65

* deceased

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Stephen C. Coy ’63, dfa ’69 F. Mitchell Dana ’67 Michael David ’68 Mary Lucille DeBerry ’66 Ramon L. Delgado ’67 John Duran ’68 Robert H. Einenkel ’69 David Epstein ’68 Leslie D. Epstein dfa ’67, yc ’60 Jerry N. Evans ’62 John D. Ezell ’60 Ann Farris ’63 Richard A. Feleppa ’60 Linda K. Fisher ’72 Hugh Fortmiller ’61 Keith F. Fowler dfa ’69 David Freeman ’68 Richard D. Fuhrman ’64 Bernard L. Galm ’63 John E. Guare ’63 Ann T. Hanley ’61 Jerome R. Hanley ’60 Patricia Helwick ’65 Elizabeth Holloway ’66 John R. Hood ’61 Derek Hunt ’62 Peter H. Hunt ’63, yc ’61 Laura Mae Jackson ’68 John W. Jacobsen ’69, yc ’67 Asaad N. Kelada ’64 Abby B. Kenigsberg ’63 Carol S. King ’67 Marna J. King ’64 Richard H. Klein ’67 Donald D. Knight ’65 Robert W. Lawler ’67 Peter J. Leach ’61 Gerard Leahy ’67 Stephen R. Leventhal ’69 Irene Lewis ’66 Fredric A. Lindauer ’66 Janell M. MacArthur ’61 David Madden ’61 Richard E. Maltby, Jr. ’62, yc ’59 Patricia D. McAdams ’61 Peter L. McCandless ’64 B Robert McCaw ’66 Margaret T. McCaw ’66 Robert A. McDonald ’68 Bruce W. McMullan ’61

Banylou Mearin ’62 Donald Michaelis ’69 Karen H. Milliken ’64 H. Thomas Moore ’68 Robert B. Murray ’61 Gayther L. Myers ’65 David A. Nancarrow ’63 S. Joseph Nassif ’63 Ruth H. Newman ’62 Dwight R. Odle ’66 Richard A. Olson ’69 Thomas O’Martin ’68 Sara Ormond ’66 Joan Pape ’68 Howard Pflanzer ’68 Louis R. Plante ’69 Michael B. Posnick ’69 Brett Prentiss ’68 Barbara Reid ’62 H. Lisa Steele Roach ’65 Carolyn L. Ross ’69 Janet G. Ruppert ’63 Clarence Salzer, Jr. ’60, yc ’55 Janet M. Sarno-Dontzin ’63 Lucia C. Scala ’61 Isaac H. Schambelan dfa ’67 Carl H. Schiffman ’65 Georg Schreiber ’64 Talia S. Schwartzman ’69 Winifred J. Sensiba ’63 Paul R. Shortt ’68 E. Gray Smith ’65 Helena L. Sokoloff ’60 Mary C. Stark ’61 Frank J. Staroba dfa ’64 Louise Stein ’66 John W. Stevens ’66 John H. Thomas ’62 David F. Toser ’64 Russell L. Treyz ’65 Richard B. Trousdell ’67, dfa ’74 Joan van Ark ’64 Stephen F. Van Benschoten ’69 Ruth Wallman ’68 Steven Waxler ’68 Gil Wechsler ’67 Peter White ’62 Albert J. Zuckerman ’61, dfa ’62

Yale School of Drama Alumni Fund

1970s Sarah J. Albertson ’71 John Lee Beatty ’73 Judith H. Brown ’71 Michael W. Cadden ’76, dfa ’79, yc ’71 Ian R. Calderon ’73 Victor P. Capecce ’75 Lisa Carling ’72 Cosmo A. Catalano ’79 Lani L. Click ’73 David M. Conte ’72 Marycharlotte C. Cummings ’73 Julia L. Devlin ’74 Dennis L. Dorn ’72 Nancy R. El Bouhali ’70 Peter Entin ’71 Dirk Epperson ’74 Mary C. Estabrook ’76 Heidi Ettinger ’76 Femi Euba ’73 Douglass M. Everhart ’70 Marc F. Flanagan ’70 Lewis A. Folden ’77 Robert Gainer ’73 Ralph R. Garrow ’77 Michael E. Gross ’73 William B. Halbert ’70 Charlene Harrington ’74 Barbara B. Hauptman ’73 Jane C. Head ’79 Robert C. Heller ’78 Jennifer Hershey ’77 Nicholas A. Hormann ’73 Walton L. Jones ’75 Barnet K. Kellman ’72 Alan L. Kibbe ’73 Daniel L. Koetting ’74 Frances E. Kumin ’77 Mitchell L. Kurtz ’75 Thomas E. Lanter ’75 Stephen R. Lawson ’76 Charles E. Letts ’76 George N. Lindsay ’74 Jennifer K. Lindstrom ’72 Robert H. Long ’76 Donald B. Lowy ’76 William Ludel ’73 Patrick F. Lynch ’71 Elizabeth M. MacKay ’78 Lizbeth P. Mackay ’75

Alan M. MacVey ’77 Brian R. Mann ’79 Jonathan E. Marks ’72, dfa ’84, yc ’68 Peggy A. Marks ’75, yc ’71 Deborah Mayo ’73 Neil A. Mazzella ’78 John A. McAndrew ’72 Brian R. McEleney ’77 Caroline A. McGee ’78 Kate McGregor-Stewart ’74 Stephen W. Mendillo ’71 Jonathan S. Miller ’75 Lawrence S. Mirkin ’72, yc ’69 George E. Moredock ’70 James Naughton ’70 Richard Ostreicher ’79 Bill M. Peters ’79 Stephen B. Pollock ’76 Daniel H. Proctor ’70 William Purves ’71 Arthur I. Rank ’79 Pamela A. Rank ’78 Ronald P. Recasner ’74 William J. Reynolds ’77 Peter S. Roberts ’75 Steven I. Robman ’73 Howard J. Rogut ’71 Robin P. Rose ’73 John M. Rothman ’75 Robert Sandberg ’77 Suzanne M. Sato ’79 Joel R. Schechter ’72, dfa ’73 Michael D. Sheehan ’76 Charles E. Siegel ’70 Richard R. Silvestro ’76 Benjamin Slotznick ’73, yc ’70 Jeremy T. Smith ’76 Roy B. Steinberg ’78 Jaroslaw Strzemien ’75 Russell Vandenbroucke ’77, dfa ’78 Eva M. Vizy ’72 Carol M. Waaser ’70 David J. Ward ’75 Eugene D. Warner ’71 Lynda L. Welch ’72 Carolyn S. Wiener ’72 Stephen E. Zuckerman ’74

1980s Michael G. Albano ’82 Sandra L. Albers ’89 Amy L. Aquino ’86 Clayton M. Austin ’86 Michael H. Baumgarten ’81 James B. Bender ’85 William J. Bletzinger ’83 Mark J. Bly ’80 Anders P. Bolang ’87 Sara Braun ’87 Mark Brokaw ’86 Claudia M. Brown ’85 William J. Buck ’84 Katherine Burton ’82 Benjamin Cameron ’81 Jon E. Carlson ’88 Anna T. Cascio ’83 Joan Channick ’89 Patricia D. Clarkson ’85 Donato J. D’Albis ’88 Gail A. Dartez ’88 Richard S. Davis ’83, dfa ’03 Kathleen K. Dimmick ’85 James D. Dobner ’87 Merle G. Dowling ’81 Anne J. D’Zmura ’89 Sasha Emerson ’84 Michael D. Fain ’82 Terry K. Fitzpatrick ’83 Joel C. Fontaine ’83 Anthony M. Forman ’83 Walter M. Frankenberger ’88 Randy R. Fullerton ’82 James H. Gage ’80 Judy Gailen ’89 Steven J. Gefroh ’85 Michael J. Giannitti ’87 Jeffrey M. Ginsberg ’81 William A. Glenn ’87 Charles F. Grammer ’86 Rob Greenberg ’89 Allan Havis ’80 James W. Hazen ’83 Roderick L. Hickey ’89 Donald S. Holder ’86 Catherine M. Hollinger ’86 Kathleen A. Houle ’88 Charles R. Hughes ’83 Thomas K. Isbell ’84

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Chris P. Jaehnig ’85 Michael D. James ’89 Walker Jones ’89 Jane Kaczmarek ’82 Jonathan F. Kalb ’85, dfa ’87 Carol M. Kaplan ’89 Bruce A. Katzman ’88 Edward A. Kaye ’86 Rik Kaye ’80 Patrick Kerr ’87 Colette A. Kilroy ’88 David K. Kriebs ’82 William Kux ’83 Edward H. Lapine ’83 Wing Lee ’83 Max H. Leventhal ’86 Kenneth J. Lewis ’86 Jerry J. Limoncelli ’84 Mark D. London ’89 Quincy Long ’86 Mark E. Lord ’87 Andi Lyons ’80 Wendy MacLeod ’87 Peter A. Marshall ’89, yc ’83 Thomas J. McGowan ’88 Katherine Mendeloff ’80 Isabell M. Monk-O’Connor ’81 David E. Moore ’87 Patrick S. Murphy ’88 Tina C. Navarro ’86 Regina L. Neville ’88 Thomas J. Neville ’86 Arthur E. Oliner ’86 Erik A. Onate ’89 Carol S. Ostrow ’80 Robert J. Provenza ’86 Carol A. Prugh ’89 Margaret A. Quinn ’81 Joan E. Robbins ’86, dfa ’91 Laila V. Robins ’84 Lori Robishaw ’88 Constance E. Romero ’88 Russ L. Rosensweig ’83 Cecilia M. Rubino ’82 Steven A. Saklad ’81 Kenneth Schlesinger ’84 Alexander Scribner ’80 Neal A. Stephens ’80 Mark Stevens ’89 Marsha B. Stewart ’85

Contributors

Mark L. Sullivan ’83 Bernard J. Sundstedt ’81 Courtney B. Vance ’86 Rosa Vega Weissman ’80 Craig F. Volk ’88 Jaylene G. Wallace ’86 Clifford Warner ’87 Darryl S. Waskow ’86 Geoffrey J. Webb ’88 Susan West ’87 Dana B. Westberg ’81 Robert M. Wierzel ’84 Robert M. Wildman ’83 Alexandra R. Witchel ’82 Carl Wittenberg ’85 Steven A. Wolff ’81 Dianah E. Wynter ’84 Evan D. Yionoulis ’85, yc ’82 Donald R. Youngberg ’83

1990s Bruce Altman ’90 Angelina Avallone ’94 Elizabeth J. Bennett ’97 Edward L. Blunt ’99 Debra Booth ’91 John C. Boyd ’92 Tom J. Broecker ’92 James Bundy ’95 Katherine D. Burgueño ’90 Kathryn A. Calnan ’99 Aaron Copp ’98 Robert C. Cotnoir ’94 Susan M. Cremin ’95 Laura Janik Cronin ’96 Sean J. Cullen ’90 Sean P. Cullen ’94 Scott T. Cummings ’85, dfa ’94 Sheldon Deckelbaum ’92 Michael L. Diamond ’90 Frances L. Egler ’95 Cornelia A. Evans ’93 Glen R. Fasman ’92 Donald S. Fried ’95 David W. Gainey ’93 Stephen L. Godchaux ’93 Naomi S. Grabel ’91 Constance M. Grappo ’95 Elisa R. Griego ’98 Regina S. Guggenheim ’93

Corin L. Gutteridge ’96 Jessica Gutteridge ’94 Susan Hamburger ’97 Alexander T. Hammond ’96 Scott C. Hansen ’99 Douglas R. Harvey ’95 James T. Hatcher ’94 Brian C. Haynsworth ’97 Jeffrey C. Herrmann ’99 John J. Hickey ’95 Christopher B. Higgins ’90 Shawn B. Hirabayashi ’92 John C. Huntington ’90 Raymond P. Inkel ’95 Clark Jackson ’97 Ann Johnson ’90 Elizabeth A. Kaiden ’96 Samuel L. Kelley ’90 Ashley York Kennedy ’90 Suttirat A. Larlarb ’97 Malia R. Lewis ’97 Patricia Lewis ’98 Chih-Lung Liu ’94 Sarah E. Long ’92, yc ’85 Suzanne R. Cryer Luke ’95, yc ’88 Elizabeth S. Margid ’91, yc ’82 Maria E. Matasar-Padilla ’99, dfa ’05 Craig P. Mathers ’93 William F. McGuire ’91 Paul S. McKinley ’96 Robert A. Melrose ’96 Marjorie C. Mitchell ’97 Richard R. Mone ’91 Daniel E. Mufson ’95, dfa ’99 Margaret L. Neville ’97 Martha J. New ’92 Steven Oxman ’91 David William P. Perkins ’90 Lisa J. Porter ’95 Amy J. Povich ’92 James W. Quinn ’94 Sarah G. Rafferty ’96 Lance S. Reddick ’94 Douglas R. Rogers ’96 Reginald H. Rogers ’93 Peggy Sasso ’99 Liev Schreiber ’92 Jennifer C. Schwartz ’97 Paul F. Selfa ’92 Thomas W. Sellar ’97, dfa ’03

* deceased

98

YSD 2013–14

James E. Shanklin ’97 Jeremy M. Shapira ’97 Jane M. Shaw ’98 Vladimir Shpitalnik ’92 Michael V. Sims ’92 Kris E. Stone ’98 Erich W. Stratmann ’94, yc ’93 Deanna J. Stuart ’94 David L. Sword ’90 Paul C. Tigue ’99 Deborah L. Trout ’94 Erik W. Walstad ’95 Richard G. Whittington ’98 Lisa A. Wilde ’91, dfa ’95 Marshall B. Williams ’95 Liza B. Zenni ’90

2000s Monica K. Achen ’06 Jocelyn May Adrales ’06 Paola Allais Acree ’08, som ’08 Alexander G. Bagnall ’00 Michael D. Banta ’03 Shira D. Beckerman ’06 Sarah E. Bierenbaum ’05, yc ’99 Ashley E. Bishop ’02 Frances A. Black ’09 Deborah H. Bloch ’06 Amy M. Boratko ’06 Joshua R. Borenstein ’02 Michael S. Broh ’00 Christina Bullard ’07 Jonathan Busky ’02, som ’02, yc ’94 Nicholas Carriere ’08 Claudia W. Case ’01, dfa ’07 Joseph P. Cermatori ’08 Aurélia F. Cohen ’09 Gregory W. Copeland ’04 Edgar M. Cullman ’02, yc ’97 Katherine M. Cusack ’06 Michael M. Donahue ’08 Janann B. Eldredge ’06 Jenifer Endicott Emley ’00 Kyoung-Jun Eo ’09 Miriam R. Epstein ’02 Dustin O. Eshenroder ’07 Kristan Falkowski Wells ’05 Andrew S. Farrow ’06 Alexandra J. Fischer ’00 Sarah M. Fornia ’04

Marcus D. Fuller ’04 Carter P. Gill ’09 Sandra Goldmark ’04 John J. Hanlon ’04 Caitlin M. Hevner ’07 Amy S. Holzapfel ’01, dfa ’06 James G. Hood ’05 David C. Howson ’04 Melissa Huber ’01 Heide L. Janssen ’08 Rolin Jones ’04 Peter Y. Kim ’04 William A. Logue ’07 Timothy R. Mackabee ’09 Jennifer Y. Moeller ’06 Elizabeth D. Morrison ’05 David R. Muse ’03, yc ’96 Rachel S. Myers ’07 Arthur F. Nacht ’06 Edward O’Blenis ’01 Erica R. O’Brien ’09 Grace E. O’Brien ’04 John B. O’Brien ’09 Maulik Pancholy ’03 Laura E. Patterson ’03 Jonathan A. Reed ’08 Kevin M. Rich ’04 Brian W. Robinson ’00 Thomas E. Russell ’07 Kathleen M. Scott ’06 Shawn B. Senavinin ’06 V. Jane Suttell ’03 Carrie E. Van Hallgren ’06 Arthur T. Vitello ’05 Elaine M. Wackerly ’03 Bradlee M. Ward ’05 Jennifer L. Wishcamper ’02, yc ’96

2010s Emika S. Abe ’15 Zachary S. Appelman ’10 Louisa Balch ’15 Michael Barker ’10, som ’10 Matthew A. Biagini ’11 Shawn Boyle ’15 Christopher P. Brown ’10 Prema R. Cruz ’14 Katherine A. Day ’10 Tanya Dean ’11 Laura J. Eckelman ’11

Yale School of Drama Alumni Fund

Anne S. Erbe ’11 Benjamin D. Fainstein ’13 Ethan Heard ’13, yc ’07 Caitlin M. Hannon ’14, som ’14 Shane Hudson ’14 Molly Hennighausen ’15 Jesse Y. Jou ’10 Hansol Jung ’14 Tara Kayton ’11 Sarah A. Krasnow ’14 Jennifer T. Lagundino ’13 Anh M. Le ’15 Kate E. Liberman ’13, som ’13 Reynaldi Lolong ’13 Peter A. Malbuisson ’10 Aaron P. Mastin ’11 Margaret E. Miroshnik ’11 Belina E. Mizrahi ’10, yc ’02 Jennifer H. Newman ’11 Meghan Moreland Pressman ’10, som ’10 Art Priromprintr ’11 Stephanie Rolland ’15 Blake A. Segal ’11 Hannah Shafran ’13 Alyssa Simmons ’14, yc ’09 Sonja Thorson ’14 Xaq Webb ’14 Jonathan Wemette ’13 Max F. Whitfield ’13 Sarah K. Williams ’15

Julie Harris Scholarship Fund The Loreen Arbus Foundation The Alec Baldwin Foundation Diana and David Jacobs Janice Johnson Mildred Kuner ’47 Michele Lee Donna Mills Fred A. Rappoport Jeremy Smith ’76 Joan van Ark ’ 64

Friends** Nina R. Adams grd ’69, nur ’77 and Moreson Kaplan Ameriprise Financial The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation Americana Arts Foundation

Yale School of Drama Legacy Partners We invite you to join fellow alumni and friends who have included YSD in their estate plans or made other planned gifts to the School. Through Yale School of Drama Legacy Partners you can directly influence the future of Yale. You are eligible for membership if you have named the School as a beneficiary of your will or trust, life income gift, IRA or other retirement plan, life insurance policy, or other planned gift.

To learn more about making a planned gift to Yale School of Drama, please contact Deborah S. Berman, Director of Development and Alumni Affairs, at (203) 432-2890 or deborah.berman@yale.edu.

2012–2013 ysd legacy partners Cynthia Kellogg Barrington *

George E. Nichols III ’41, yc ’38 * G. C. Niemeyer ’42 *

Donald I. Cairns ’63

Mary B. Reynolds ’55 Mark Richard ’57 *

Raymond Carver ’61 Elizabeth S. Clark ’41 *

Barbara Richter ’60 *

David M. Conte ’72

William Rothwell, Jr. ’53, grd ’53 *

Converse Converse yc ’57

Forrest E. Sears ’58

Sue Ann Converse ’55 Eldon J. Elder ’58 *

Eugene Shewmaker ’49

Peter Entin ’71

G. Erwin Steward ’60

Joseph Gantman ’53

Edward Trach ’58

Albert R. Gurney ’58

Carol Waaser ’70

Robert L. Hurtgen Joseph E. Kleno *

Phyllis C. Warfel ’55

Kenneth J. Stein ’59

Richard G. Mason ’53 *

William B. Warfel ’57, yc ’55 Wendy Wasserstein ’76 *

Dawn and Jim Miller

Zelma H. Weisfeld ’56

H. Thomas Moore ’68 Tad Mosel ’50 *

Edwin Wilson ’57

Arthur F. Nacht ’06 * deceased

* deceased

** donors who have made contributions to the

School of $100 and above

YSD 2013–14

99

Contributors

Deborah M. Applegate grd ’98 and Bruce Tulgan Darren Bagert Kirk Baird yc ’66 Robert L. Barth yc ’66 John B. Beinecke yc ’69 Sonja Berggren and Patrick T. Seaver yc ’72 Deborah and Bruce M. Berman law ’79 Debbie Bisno and David Goldman law ’76 Carmine Boccuzzi and Bernard Lumpkin Lynne and Roger Bolton Clare and Sterling Brinkley yc ’74 Donald Brown Mary L. Bundy Wil Cather Lois Chiles and Richard Gilder yc ’54, lhdh ’07 Susan C. Clark Roxanne Coady Converse M. Converse yc ’57 Jack R. Cooper Karen Cornelius and Carl Schecter The Noel Coward Foundation Bob and Priscilla Dannies David Davenport Scott M. Delman yc ’82 The Educational Foundation of America Christopher A. Faretta som ’03 Ruth M. Feldman Arthur F. Fergenson law ’72 Anita Pamintuan Fusco yc ’90 and Dino Fusco yc ’88 Karin Geballe Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Joseph Gordon Bruce W. Graham Donald P. Granger, Jr. yc ’85 F. Lane Heard III yc ’73, law ’78 Ruth and Stephen Hendel yc ’73 Rachel Hewitt Arthur and Mary Hunt Ellen M. Iseman yc ’76 Frederick J. Iseman yc ’75 Adrian yc ’87 and Nina Jones yc ’87 David G. Johnson yc ’78 Richard Lalli mus ’80 Tony Lolong

George A. & Grace L. Long Foundation Lucille Lortel Foundation Romaine A. Macomb Mrs. Romaine Macomb Jane Marcher Foundation Drew McCoy Deborah McGraw Frederick T. McGuire Maeve McGuire Carol Mihalik Dawn G. Miller George I. Miller grd ’83 Janice L. Muirhead James C. Munson yc ’66 Victoria Nolan and Clark Crolius Jane Nowosadko F. Richard Pappas yc ’76 Ginny Parker Andy Perkins James M. Perlotto yc ’78 and Thomas Masse mus ’91 Eva Price and Avram Freedberg Michael O. Rigsby med ’88 Robert W. Riordan yc ’66 Robina Foundation Linda Frank Rodman yc ’73, grd ’75 Fernande E. Ross Edward and Alice Saad Ruth Hein Schmitt Vicki Shaghoian Sandra Shaner Theodore P. Shen yc ’66, mah ’01 The Shubert Foundation, Inc. Matthew Specter Rosalie Stemer R. Lee Stump Thomas J. Thurston grd ’07 Trust for Mutual Understanding Suzanne Tucker Gregory Tumminio Sally and Cheever Tyler Kara J. Unterberg yc ’87 Esme Usdan yc ’77 Reginald Van Lee Patricia and Charles Walkup Paul Walsh Judith B. Washam Vera F. Wells yc ’71 David Willson

100 YSD 2013–14

In kind Clare and Sterling Brinkley Ellie and Edgar Cullman, Jr. Sasha Emerson Penelope Laurans Fitzgerald Terry Heinzmann Richard Jeter David Johnson Jane Kaczmarek Show Sage LLC Kara Unterberg

Contributions received from July 1, 2012 through June 30, 2013

Stay in Touch Please remember to send us your current email to ensure you receive invitations to alumni events as well as our quarterly e-newsletter.

Visit drama.yale.edu/alumni to read past issues.

Contact the Development and Alumni Affairs Office at ysd.alumni@yale.edu or (203) 432-1559.

From the Dean

I love rehearsals, but I particularly love first rehearsals. For me, they are about the excitement of seeing the whole company together for the first time, the magic of hearing a play read aloud by those actors who will actually perform it, the unfolding of the director’s and designers’ ideas to their colleagues, and the welcoming of new collaborators to the professional community of Yale Repertory Theatre and the School of Drama.

I recently had the pleasure of greeting the company of Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist on their initial day at Yale Rep —except that it was no one’s first day.

Every single person in the room had worked here before, in the School or at the Rep, and most of them more than once: the only time this has happened in my 12 years as dean and artistic director. In fact, in my three decades of professional experience, this was the sole occasion on which I attended a first rehearsal knowing everyone in the room beforehand.

The coziness of that particular first day warmed a late October week in which winter sent us warning messages of cold and wind. It was also a poignant reminder to me of how often, in our field, we find ourselves in unfamiliar surroundings, with new collaborators, and how vulnerable we often feel as we enter a new environment, undertake a new project, and meet new people.

Indeed, ours is an art form and a profession in which such beginnings are ritualized markers of evanescence. It is because theatre art passes from an anticipated future to a vital present and then a remembered past, that we feel its transforming energy. And paradoxically, every beginning contains the seeds of the closing night to come, because we all know that the work we are about to make will live vibrantly for some moments, and then pass into memory, the lasting engine of our cultural power.

You’ll see these rites of passage captured over and over again in this magazine, in part because our students and graduates are so often drawn to leadership, which requires them both to be vulnerable and to be agile, learning more, perhaps, than they imagined they would when they first contemplated training at Yale.

Their stories are vivid reminders of why it is important for the School to draw gifted young professionals to our community in New Haven; of what it means to become, in training, both stronger and more flexible; and of the new vistas that may open up for any of us at any time, anywhere in the world.

I am sure you will see your own learning and accomplishment reflected in these pages, and it is a privilege to share them with you.

Sincerely yours,

James Bundy

Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theatre James Bundy ’95 Dean, Artistic Director Victoria Nolan Deputy Dean/Managing Director

From the YSD Scrapbook Can you guess the cast from this photo of Interview by Jean-Claude van Itallie?

Hint: The production was part of the Yale Summer Cabaret, 1981. If you’re still stymied, turn the page upside down to see who’s who.

Yale School of Drama Board of Advisors John Beinecke yc ’69, Chair John Badham ’63, yc ’61, Vice Chair Amy Aquino ’86 John Lee Beatty ’73 Sonja Berggren srf ’13 Lynne Bolton Clare Brinkley Sterling B. Brinkley, Jr. yc ’74 Kate Burton ’82 Lois Chiles Patricia Clarkson ’85 Edgar (Trip) M. Cullman III ’02, yc ’97 Scott Delman yc ’82 Michael Diamond ’90 Polly Draper ’80, yc ’77 Charles S. Dutton ’83 Sasha Emerson ’84 Heidi Ettinger ’76 Terry Fitzpatrick ’83 Marc Flanagan ’70 Marcus Dean Fuller ’04 Anita Pamintuan Fusco yc ’90 Donald P. Granger, Jr. yc ’85 David Marshall Grant ’78 Ruth Hendel Catherine MacNeil Hollinger ’86 David Henry Hwang ’83 Ellen Iseman yc ’76 David Johnson yc ’78 Asaad Kelada ’64 Sarah Long ’92, yc ’85 Donald Lowy ’76 Elizabeth Margid ’91, yc ’82 Drew McCoy Tarell Alvin McCraney ’07 David Milch yc ’66 Arthur Nacht ’06 Carol Ostrow ’80 Amy Povich ’92 Liev Schreiber ’92 Tony Shalhoub ’80 Michael Sheehan ’76 Anna Deavere Smith Jeremy Smith ’76 Ed Trach ’58 Courtney B. Vance ’86 Henry Winkler ’70

James Bundy photo by Joan Marcus

Dear Alumni,

(clockwise from left) Charles S. Dutton ’83, Patterson Skipper ’83, Jonathan Krupp ’82, YC ’79, Susan Picillo, photo by Margaret Glover ’88, YC ’81.

Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage Paid New Haven, CT Permit No. 167

ANNUAL MAGAZINE Yale School of Drama P.O. Box 208244 New Haven, CT 06520

Annual Magazine of Yale School of Drama 2013–2014

Yale school f Drama

Yale school Annual Magazine of Yale School of Drama 2013 – 2014

Inside the Sideshow: Coney Island USA Projection Design: Poetry for the Eye William Ivey Long = Broadway