In Memoriam

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01 Eva Marie Vizy ’72

02 Gary Waldhorn ’67

Eva Marie Vizy

Director, Dramaturg, Educator

Eva Marie Vizy ’72 passed away peacefully in her native city of Budapest on September 21, 2021, at the age of 84.

An intelligent and versatile theater maker, Vizy was one of the early artistic directors of Yale Cabaret, where she directed dark, absurdist comedies by the

likes of Ionesco. She simultaneously served as the artistic director for Sunday Experiments, a monthly series of “new works in search of production,” from 1970 to 1972.

Born in 1937, Vizy immigrated to the U.S. at age 19 to escape the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. With her bachelor’s in acting from the Hungarian National Repertory in hand, she enrolled in the University of Miami’s newly formed graduate directing program, where she directed plays by Genet, Saroyan, and Williams on her way to earning an MA.

After performing and stage managing in summer stock, Vizy arrived in New Haven to refine her protean talents. She appeared in the Rep’s 1968 production of Three Sisters as the Prozorov’s elderly nurse Anfisa. The following year she directed a production of Hughie, splitting the character of Erie in Eugene O’Neill’s heavily one-sided twohander among three actors: Henry Winkler ’70, Charles Turner ’70, and Douglass M. Everhart ’70. She also participated in a panel discussion with

Gordon Rogoff YC ’52 (Faculty Emeritus)

and the Living Theatre’s Judith Malina, among others, which was printed in the Spring 1969 volume of volume of yale/theater (now Theatre) magazine.

After Yale, Vizy dedicated herself to teaching. She chaired the theater department at Wheaton College in the 1970s, later teaching at Wells College and Walnut Hill School for the Arts. Returning to her homeland in 1999, she joined the faculty of the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest and dramaturged at the National Theatre of Hungary. She is survived by her son, A. Dylan Vizy, his wife, Linda “Roxanne,” and three grandchildren.

Gary Waldhorn

Actor

Gary Waldhorn ’67 passed away of natural causes on January 10, 2022, at the age of 78. Best known for his performance as the stuffed-shirt local politician and parish leader David Horton on the BBC’s The Vicar of Dibley, Waldhorn was a versatile performer who, in the words of his son, 01 02 Josh, “leaves a legacy of

In Memoriam

entertainment that saw him frequent the boards of Broadway, the West End, and our living rooms on the telly.”

Waldhorn was born in London in 1943 to Liselotte and Siegfried Waldhorn, Austrian Jews who escaped to England in 1938. He received his bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University in 1962 and performed with summer stock theaters in the Midwest before moving to New York City.

At Yale, Waldhorn met his future wife, director, choreographer, and author Christie Dickason ’67. The two appeared in a 1966 student production of Peer Gynt. That October, Dickason directed Waldhorn in a workshop of Pinter’s The Birthday Party. Dickason and Waldhorn married in 1967. They welcomed their son in 1970.

“Gary was in his third year when I was in my second; he was what I wanted to be. He had that Richard Burton voice and rakish good looks and a kind a raffish charm and sense of humor,” shares David Ackroyd ’68. “I remember his performance as Macheath in The Beggars’ Opera. It was in the Ex, and I was part of the stage crew. I watched every performance in complete awe of his talent and charisma. He was just so damned delightful to watch.”

A noted Shakespearean, Waldhorn performed regularly with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He appeared in the RSC’s 1982 Broadway transfer Good by C.P. Taylor. His other credits include numerous productions at the National Theatre, the Old Vic, and theaters throughout the West End. Few genres escaped his abilities.

Waldhorn lent his vocal talents to national ad campaigns for quintessential British brands like Marmite and the pickled chutney Branston. He appeared in several classic British sitcoms, such as Brush Strokes and the sketch show French and Saunders, from the late 1960s to 2020. Waldhorn is survived by his wife, his son, and two grandchildren, Cooper and Bayley.

Geoffrey Johnson

Casting Director

Geoffrey Johnson ’55, an acclaimed Broadway casting director whose credits include Cats, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, Dreamgirls, and many more, passed away on November 26, 2021. He was 91.

Johnson was born in New York City in 1930 and raised in Larchmont, New York. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and received his MFA from the School of Drama in 1955. His original plan was to act, and he made his Broadway debut in the 1956 production of Shaw’s Saint Joan. Acting was not to be his final theatrical calling, however, and his talents in other areas were soon recognized. He became a highly regarded stage manager and worked on the Broadway shows Oliver!, Cactus Flower, and I Do! I Do!. In 1961, Noël Coward hired him to manage the musical Sail Away. It was the beginning of a professional friendship that would last until the playwright’s death in 1973. Johnson later served as a trustee of the Noël Coward Foundation.

In 1975, Johnson and his business partner, Vincent Liff, formed what would become one of the most successful casting agencies on Broadway. Over the following 25 years, Johnson-Liff was responsible for the casting of more than 150 Broadway productions and touring companies, among them some of the biggest hits in Broadway 03

03 Geoffrey Johnson ’55

In Memoriam

04 A collage of show posters from a selection of casting director Geoffrey Johnson’s ’55 Broadway credits.

05 Gil Wechsler ’67 04

history. In addition to those mentioned above, they managed the casting for The Wiz, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Guys and Dolls, Sunset Boulevard, and The Producers, as well as the plays Equus, The Elephant Man, Amadeus, and The Dresser. The company worked frequently with Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Cameron Mackintosh, Trevor Nunn, and Harold Prince. In 2003, Johnson and Liff received a Tony Award for Excellence in Theatre and a Drama Desk Award for Career Achievement.

Alan Brodie, Chair of the Noël Coward Foundation, recalled, “Geoffrey loved his time at Yale. He said it changed his life, and though he realized early on that he wouldn’t make it as an actor, it was the School of Drama that cemented his love of theater and gave him the foundation to become a hugely successful casting director.” He added, “It was Geoffrey’s love of Yale, and the importance he placed on the education of young people, along with his dedication to Noël Coward, which led to the gift for teaching a series of Noël Coward master classes at Yale, which the Foundation was very proud to support.”

“When Geoffrey approached me about donating his cherished collection of Noël Coward paintings to the School, with the goal of establishing a scholarship for actors,” said Deborah Berman, Director of Development and Alumni Affairs, “I was touched by his heartfelt generosity. Through this gift he expressed his deep and abiding love for the School and how he wanted to pull the most important parts of his life together to ensure that others had the chance to pursue a career in the theater.”

Geoffrey Johnson was predeceased by his partner, Jerry Hogan; his brother, Alfred; sister, Patricia Johnson Friedman; and nephew Craig. He is survived by many loving nieces and nephews and friends throughout the industry.

Gil Wechsler

Lighting Designer

Lighting designer Gil

Wechsler ’67

passed away on July 9, 2021. He was 79. Gil was the Metropolitan Opera’s first resident lighting 05 designer, and during his 20 years at the Met he created lighting designs for over 112 productions, including iconic performances of La Bohème, Carmen, Turandot, Tosca, and The Marriage of Figaro, as well as many televised “Live from the Met” broadcasts.

Gilbert Wechsler was born in 1942 in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before transferring to New York University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in theater. In 1967, he received his MFA from the School of Drama.

After graduation, Gil went to work for the well-known lighting and set designer Jo Mielziner. Among Gil’s Broadway credits

In Memoriam

were lighting for Charles Dryer’s Staircase and George Feydeau’s There’s One in Every Marriage. Before joining the Met in 1976, he designed lights for the Guthrie Theater, the Harkness Ballet, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Stratford Festival in Ontario.

At the Met, Gil was responsible for a number of innovations—things we take for granted today. He created a precise log of lighting plots and cues for each opera so that productions could be easily restaged, and he also installed the Met’s first computerized light board.

Gil’s designs produced dramatic effects— moonlight, fire, falling snow—but his idea of design was more than just technical wizardry. In a 1978 New York Times article, Gil shared his viewpoint: “The basic idea,” he said, “is that the performing arts are cooperative enterprises. A single person’s contribution should not make or break a show.” His last production at the Met was Verdi’s La Forza del Destino in 1996.

Gil had a passion for travel, and after retirement, he made his way around the globe with his husband, artist Douglas Sardo—from parasailing in Tahiti to crossing Drake’s Passage to Antarctica. Wherever they went, Gil’s indomitable spirit of adventure lighted the way.

Gil is survived by Doug, and a brother, Norman.

James O. Barnhill

Professor, Actor, Director

James O. Barnhill ’54, YC ’47, Professor Emeritus at Brown University, passed away on October 16, 2021, at the age of 99. Kate Burton ’82 remembers this extraordinary teacher and man of the theater.

At Brown, Professor James O. Barnhill was always known as “The Great JO.” A magnificent teacher of acting and a great listener, he was a man of a few crystalline words. He had a profound influence on his theater students and shepherded many to Juilliard, Tisch, and UCSD, as well as to his beloved alma mater, Yale. Always imparting starkly true advice, his standard response when we told him of our acceptance to the Drama School was, “Well, how about that!”, implying that it was a true accomplishment and hard won and should never be taken for granted. We also knew that he was fiercely proud of us and that his impact as a teacher had helped us get in. Director and professor

Rob Barron ’83 quotes Jim as saying during a rehearsal, “We have all the words, now let’s get them in the right order!”…so, here we go.

Jim became my first acting teacher when I took his legendary foundational acting class, Theater Arts 23/24. He guided me through Blanche DuBois in class, directed me as Sara Melody in A Touch of the Poet, played my father in The Rainmaker, allowed me to assist him when he directed, and finally gave me the honor of directing his brilliant performance as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Through all these experiences, he created a powerful world of theatrical invention with his constructively critical and unsentimental eye.

Jim was born in rural Mississippi in 1922 and in 2020, at age 98, was honored for his

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06 James O. Barnhill ’54, YC ’47 teaching at Brown University in 1979. Photo by Nina Jacobson.

07 James O. Barnhill performing on stage.

In Memoriam

Navy service in WWII. After receiving a BA in International Relations from Yale College in 1947, he returned to Yale in 1952 to attend the Drama School, planning on a career in the professional theater. He then went to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, for what he thought was a short stint and remained for 30 years.

According to his lifelong friend, Brown Professor Emeritus John Emigh (Former Faculty), Jim “was the heart, soul and guiding force for theater at Brown, championing the study of arts as an engine for creativity.” Some of his many accomplishments at Brown include spearheading the creation of the Department of Theater, Speech and Dance, serving as its first chairperson, forging a link with Tougaloo College, recruiting George Bass to found Rites and Reason Theatre, and acting as one of three original incorporators of the thenfledgling Trinity Repertory Company. The late Don Wilmeth, another colleague at Brown, once said, “Jim’s vision of what was possible, and his equanimity and resourcefulness when obstacles to that vision arose, were essential.” After retirement, Jim pursued his passionate interests in the fine and performing arts, never stopped mentoring his students, and continued to lecture all over the world. His home at 81 Transit Street was always an unmissable stop on our returns to Providence.

Often coming to see me perform in Boston and NYC, Jim reported to me (in his unflinching style) on my Hedda Gabler: “You were relaxed, and you were true; I had not expected that!” Actress Eve Gordon ’81 reports that he would often travel long distances to see her and never stopped giving her notes. One of my treasured moments was going to see my son Morgan Ritchie in A Lie of the Mind at Brown and making out the form of my beloved JO in the darkness watching Morgan, too…saying to me afterward, “Isn’t he something?”

Treasuring his meticulously handwritten notes, Rob and Eve and I are just a few of the legions of Jim’s students who thank him silently every time we step on stage or direct a play or design a set or teach our students. Other Brown students in Jim’s life who came to Yale include James Naughton ’70, John Lee Beatty ’73, Paul Moser ’84, and Sasha Emerson ’84. That we would follow in his footsteps and go to his beloved Yale School of Drama was yet another thread to bind us to him. We are all immensely richer because of Jim.

Melissa Yandell Smith

Actor, Professor by David Keith ’82

I met Melissa Smith ’82, YC ’79 at the Xerox machine on the second floor of the Drama School the first week of school in the fall of 1979. I was doing a work study job in the registrar’s office down the hall. I thought this young woman was very special, but our first date didn’t occur for another several weeks when I invited her to join me at a Yale Film Society showing of one of my favorite films. I had lived in New York City for seven years before drama school and frequented the small, downtown movie theaters where films like this one, Pink Flamingos, directed by John Waters, were popular. About 20 minutes into the movie, Melissa leaned into me and whispered, “Is this really your favorite film?” After that experience, either baffled, curious, or just willing to throw herself off a cliff, she continued to go out with me for another 42 years.

We enjoyed so many different experiences together at the Drama School, never anticipating how long our memories would resonate, nor how many of our classmates would continue to play such important parts in our lives. In class Melissa performed the role of a sickly village girl who was healed by the pastor, diligently played by myself; I directed her in an independent production of Wallace Shawn’s Summer Evening in a small space over the GPSCY Bar; we worked

In Memoriam

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together again in Shawn’s Marie and Bruce which succeeded in luring Mr. Shawn up from New York; and we entertained ourselves delightedly in the ample time we spent offstage in the Yale Rep’s production of Timon of Athens, featuring James Earl Jones HON ’82. I envied her aching radiance as Sonya in Uncle Vanya. We spent two glorious and hectic summers in Barnstable, Massachusetts, with the Atlantic Theater Company. We partied, danced, disagreed, picked raspberries together, hunted for lost car keys at the beach, tried our cooking out on each other, laughed, shared books, movies, life stories, music, and ourselves. We married, finally, in 1985. She was the one. She was always the one.

For Melissa, a life in New York City was inevitable. She had dreamed about it, predicted it as a child to her brother and sister. From the beginning, the reality of life in New York was thrilling for her; the possibilities, the energy, the freedom, and the drama of trying to achieve a life as a working actor. But that reality also included having her head split open by a burglar in the stairwell of our Bronx apartment, the denial of the gift of conception, and the facts of life living with a fantasist.

But Melissa was not one to escape from reality. She could look straight at it and find a route. She worked as a paralegal in a small legal office, taught acting to teenagers in Honolulu, stood naked in an Off-OffBroadway production of David Greenspan’s Dog in a Dancing School, fell off the stage and into the audience in a production of Dracula in Buffalo, New York, and graced two wonderful productions by Mac Wellman.

And we would move and move and move again until we found an ideal home in the West Village. And then the wonder of an infant son, Owen, was granted to us, born in Yale New Haven Hospital.

New responsibilities led Melissa to take on new challenges. She would not accept only being a recipient of circumstance. She insisted that change was possible, that despair was “only the weather, not the sky.” Her leadership of Princeton University’s Program in Theater and Dance led to an offer of the position of Conservatory Director at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco where she spent the next 25 years learning, refining, and inhabiting one of her greatest roles. She learned the gestures and costumes, the grace notes of humor and insistence, the entrances and finally, the exit.

Throughout her career as a teacher and administrator, Melissa continued to perform at Princeton University, Berkley Repertory Theater, Birmingham Repertory Theatre in England, the Barbican Centre in London, California Shakespeare Festival, and ACT. She especially treasured her work on the projects she dove into with her MFA students at the Conservatory. Her final performance was a memorable scene as Frances McDormand’s ’82 sister in the Oscar-winning film Nomadland.

Melissa made a definitive bourbon Manhattan.

Melissa smoked one cigarette a year.

Melissa made an exquisite oyster pie and a heavenly chess pie.

08 Melissa Smith ’82, YC ’79

In Memoriam

09 Andrei Belgrader (Former Faculty) (standing fourth from left) with the cast of Scapin at Yale Repertory Theatre. Photo courtesy of Walker Jones ’89.

In San Francisco after 20 years as Conservatory Director, with a home and a cabin in the woods, with the gift of an emerging, grown son and the same grateful husband, reality presented her with a diagnosis of cancer. She lived for another six years.

Several months ago, I flew back to Louisville, Kentucky, for a memorial service that had been organized by her family and friends. Melissa had left Louisville for Yale in 1975, and although she never lived there again, she carried Kentucky with her and was always ready to coach any willing soul in the proper pronunciation of her hometown: Loo-uh-vull.

As I tried to prepare some words that I could share at the service, I thought of all the geographic and psychic journeys Melissa had made in her life, confronting feelings of dislocation, of not belonging, of facing insurmountable obstacles, of living with a terminal illness, and I thought of how she was carried forward by her strength and determination. Melissa’s unforgettable smile and voice and laugh hid a powerful will. In her personal and professional life, she learned how to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. She thrived on the energizing force of change.

At the service, faces appeared before me with names I had heard all my life with Melissa, middle school and high school friends who still carried memories of her, imprinted by that smile and voice and spirit. She was so present in that space that I was stunned when someone handed me a program for the service and I read: In Memoriam: Melissa Yandell Smith (June 8, 1957-September 7, 2021).

In the last few months of her life, Melissa looked at her end squarely, honestly, with fear, but with curiosity as well. She was and is her most dazzling and lasting creation. Somewhere still near us. Still blazing away.

Andrei Belgrader

Director and Teacher

Andrei Belgrader (Former Faculty), an acclaimed theater director and distinguished teacher of acting, passed away on February 22, 2022, from lung cancer. He was 75.

Born in 1946 in Romania, Belgrader attended the Institute of Theatre and Film in Bucharest. In the late 1970s, he left then Communist-ruled Romania for New York,

where he took a job driving a cab to improve his English. His early theater productions were seen by Robert Brustein ’51, HON ’66 (Former Dean) who recruited him to direct at Yale Rep and teach at the School.

Belgrader served as a member of the faculty from 1979 to 1992 where he was beloved by the acting and directing students that he worked with. In a tribute to Andrei in American Theatre magazine John Turturro ’83 recalled, “The relaxing, imaginative, play-room atmosphere he created made the class completely different from our other classes and not at all competitive. He was a breath of fresh air, interested in who we were and what we could create.”

Belgrader’s innovative and often irreverent theater productions brought a unique perspective to the Rep. Among them were Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Ubu Rex

09

In Memoriam

by Alfred Jarry, What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton, Moon Over Miami by John Guare, featuring Tony Shalhoub ’80, and Troilus and Cressida, with Turturro. In 1991, he translated and adapted Molière’s Scapin with Shelley Berc ’83 and directed the production featuring Stanley Tucci in the lead role, with music and lyrics by Rusty Magee HON ’81.

After Yale, Belgrader taught at the University of California San Diego, the USC School of Dramatic Arts, and served as the head of the directing department at Juilliard. He worked in film and television, but is best known for his work as a director at some of the country’s leading regional theaters. In addition to the Rep, he directed at A.R.T., the Goodman Theatre, Seattle Rep, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at A.R.T. starred Mark LinnBaker ’79, YC ’76 as Vladimir and Tony Shalhoub in the role of Pozzo. He directed John Turturro opposite Dianne Wiest, in The Cherry Orchard at CSC in 2011, a production The New York Times called “heartbreakingly funny” and named as one of the 10 best plays of the year.

Belgrader’s impact on Yale Drama students continued long after his time at the School. Designer Michael Locher ’08 recalled: “Before attending Yale, I’d been an undergrad at UC San Diego in the late 90s, where Andrei was a fixture. Without a doubt his joyous, irreverent take helped shatter my preconception that theater was a stuffy, stale form that had no room for me.”

Andrei Belgrader is survived by his wife, Caroline Hall, daughter, Grace, and sister, Mariana Augustin.

Farewell

James O. Barnhill ’54, YC ’47 / 10.16.2021 Andrei Belgrader (Former Faculty) / 2.22.2022 Albert Brenner ’60 / 2.8.2020 Reverend Robert J. Donnelly ’64 / 10.24.2021 Sally (Bianchi) Foster ’53 / 1.11.2022 Neil Gluckman ’92 / 11.7.2021 Phillip Ward Hyde ’66 / 1.20.2021 Geoffrey A. Johnson ’55 / 11.26.2021 Roger L. Kenvin ’59, DFA ’61 / 11.8.2021 Mildred C. Kuner ’47 / 11.6.2021 Henry E. Lowenstein ’56 / 10.2014 Craig T. Martin ’71 / 12.2020 Donald Adams May ’53 / 1.28.2022 Ronald A. Mielech ’60 / 9.16.2018 Marion Villani Myrick ’54 / 3.5.2022 Frank D. Newman ’66 / 6.4.2021 Sara Ormond ’66 / 1.7.2021 Stephen O. Saxe ’54 / 4.28.2019 Forrest E. Sears ’58 / 1.26.2022 Bradford W. Smith ’87 / 10.22.2021 Melissa Yandell Smith ’82, YC ’79 / 9.7.2021 Eva Marie Vizy ’72 / 9.1.2021 Gary Waldhorn ’67 / 1.10.2022 Gil Wechsler ’67 / 7.9.2021 Alan J. Weiner ’83 / 12.26.2021 Stanley E. Wiklinski ’70 / 4.2021