SEPTEMBER 27–30, 2023
DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE
James Bundy, Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean
Florie Seery, Associate Dean
Chantal Rodriguez, Associate Dean
Carla L. Jackson, Assistant Dean
PRESENTS FALL PROJECT B
Translated by Constance Congdon
Directed by Mary Lou Rosato
Creative Team
Assistant Director
Whitney Andrews
Production Dramaturg
Austin Riffelmacher
Stage Manager
Hannah Louise Jones
Assistant Stage Manager
Caileigh Potter
Cast in alphabetical order
Acaste
Samuel Douglas
Éliante
Janiah-Camile François
Oronte
Karl Green
Clitandre
Lucas Iverson
Philinte
Malik James
Setting: Paris, France. In the not so distant past
There will be a 10-minute intermission.
Arsinoé
Karen Killeen
Alceste
Max Monnig
Basque/Du Bois/Guard
Kamal Sehrawy
Célimène
Amelia Windom
This production is supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.
Production
Associate Safety Advisor
Steph Burke
Associate Production Manager
Katie Chance
Technical Supervisor
Lilliana Gonzalez
Properties Manager
Steven Blasberg
Production Crew
Destany Langfield
Run Crew
Nakia Shalice Avila
KT Farmer
Administration
Associate Managing Director
Jake Hurwitz
Assistant Managing Director
Ramona Li
Management Assistant
Joy Chen
House Manager
Maura Bozeman
Production Photographer
Maza Rey
David Geffen School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year.
Adam Taylor Foster
Yale acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.
We also acknowledge the legacy of slavery in our region and the enslaved African people whose labor was exploited for generations to help establish the business of Yale University as well as the economy of Connecticut and the United States.
The Studio Productions are designed to be learning experiences that complement classroom work, providing a medium for students at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale to combine their individual talents and energies toward the staging of collaboratively created works. Your attendance meaningfully completes this process.
FUND, established by a graduate of the School, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982–1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Program from 1993 until his death in 2005.
Masks will no longer be required at David Geffen School of Drama productions beginning in the 2023–24 season. Of course, audience members who wish to mask up during their attendance are welcome to do so.
The taking of photographs or the use of recording devices of any kind in the theater without the written permission of the management is prohibited.
Front image by Janiah-Camile François
The 17th-century court of King Louis XIV was familiar with seeing the same group of actors appear in different plays. Our performance of Molière’s 1666 The Misanthrope is no different (minus the presence of a few nobles, French or otherwise). The Fall Studio Acting Project at David Geffen School of Drama is a safe space for the actors to exercise their training in the classics. Given the constraints of the Kondoleon, it is also a performance that is quite raw and intimate, which can be exposing for them. This project requires a group of players with great respect for and trust in one another. This performance is, then, not just for us but for them, and few plays could be better suited to them.
The Misanthrope is a play for actors, written by Molière with the strengths of his Troupe de Monsieur in mind. Indeed, the playwright was the world’s first Alceste. This play references recognized caricatures of the French bourgeoisie and then deepens them, generating a more complex and universal human ethos. With director Mary Lou Rosato, the cast has mined this incredibly challenging play to find the truth hidden inside the verse. Though a very funny play, The Misanthrope is ultimately a serious drama, a tragedy even, in each character’s rancor and ruse. If any of the figures portrayed were merely “stock” characters, unable to provide
a challenge to talented actors, the play would have faded from memory by now. The play only works if our jeune premier, our raisonneur, and our farceurs all commit to the same story.
This cast almost entirely comprises members of the fourth-year acting class at the start of their final year at the school. Like 17th-century French actors, these performers have watched their profession undergo many changes in a short time. They arrived in the middle of a pandemic, during which calls for social change in our country found their way into intuitional reform across theaters nationally. Now, as they complete their training, their peers in the industry fight for the recognition that what they do isn’t merely a hobby, it’s a livelihood. The status of actors in France was equally as challenging: just 25 years before the first performance of The Misanthrope Louis XIII issued a proclamation stating that actors couldn’t be criminalized so long as they performed to the standards of decency upheld by the Roman Catholic church.
Extraordinary times create extraordinary art—which can only be made by extraordinary people, like the nine artists you are about to see perform a truly great play.
—Austin Riffelmacher, Production Dramaturg