SPUNK, Yale Rep, October 2025

YALEREP.ORG

Yale Repertory Theatre, the internationally celebrated professional theater in residence at David Geffen School of Drama, has championed new work since 1966, producing well over 100 premieres—including two Pulitzer Prize winners and four other nominated finalists—by emerging and established playwrights. Seventeen Yale Rep productions have advanced to Broadway, garnering more than 40 Tony Award nominations and ten Tony Awards. Yale Rep is also the recipient of the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. Established in 2008, Yale’s Binger Center for New Theatre has distinguished itself as one of the nation’s most robust and innovative new play programs. To date, the Binger Center has supported the work of more than 70 commissioned artists and underwritten the world premieres and subsequent productions of more than 30 new plays and musicals at Yale Rep and theaters across the country.

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Chinna Palmer, Brandon E. Burton, and Elizabeth Stahlmann in a scene from Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, newly adapted and directed by Yura Kordonsky. Yale Repertory Theatre, March 7-29, 2025. Photo © Joan Marcus.

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A NOTE FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Welcome to Yale Repertory Theatre and Zora Neale Hurston’s Spunk—which reaches the stage for the first time 90 years after it was written! Perhaps best known as a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist, Hurston was also a prolific playwright. Spunk, adapted in 1935 from her own earlier short story, was filed for copyright that same year with the Library of Congress.

In 2001, a Congressional librarian uncovered the script amidst a tranche of Hurston’s unpublished papers and shared it with Catherine Sheehy, Chair of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at David Geffen School of Drama and Resident Dramaturg at Yale Rep. Catherine has championed Hurston’s transcendent play with music—here at Yale and in the field—ever since. This first production began to take shape four years ago when she shared the script with Tamilla Woodard, then newly-appointed as Chair of Acting at the Geffen School and a Resident Director at Yale Rep.

Since then, Tamilla; Catherine, production dramaturg alongside Eric M. Glover; composer, arranger, and music supervisor Nehemiah Luckett; and choreographer nicHi douglas have endeavored to bring Hurston’s wondrous, life-affirming fable about the triumph of love to life with care and infectious enthusiasm. It is a privilege to share with you what they have created together with an astonishing company of actors and artistic and management collaborators.

This production has been made possible in part through the generosity of The Roy Cockrum Foundation. The Foundation—which previously supported our 2022 production of Between Two Knees by The 1491s—spontaneously reached out and offered us a grant in the amount of $30,000 to replace the monies that were rescinded by the National Endowment for the Arts earlier this year. We are deeply grateful for their magnanimous support of not-for-profit theater.

Next up (Nov 28–Dec 20), is Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, translated from the Norwegian by Paul Walsh, which I will direct. The new year will bring ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, created and performed by Julia Masli, directed by Kim Noble (Jan 20–Feb 7); Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros staged by Resident Director Liz Diamond (Mar 6–28); and Furlough’s Paradise by a.k. payne, directed by abigail jean-baptiste (Apr 24–May 16). A Yale Rep subscription is a good deal any year, and at its best right now: through November 21 only, you can apply the cost of today’s ticket to the package of your choice.

As always I look forward to hearing your thoughts on today’s performance or any of your experiences at Yale Rep. My email address is james.bundy@yale.edu.

Thank you for joining us today—I look forward to seeing you again soon!

Sincerely,

James Bundy

OCTOBER 3–25, 2025

YALE REPERTORY THEATRE

James Bundy, Artistic Director | Florie Seery, Managing Director

PRESENTS

NEW SONGS, ARRANGEMENTS, AND MUSIC SUPERVISION BY Nehemiah Luckett

CHOREOGRAPHY BY nicHi douglas DIRECTED BY Tamilla Woodard

Music Director

John Bronston

Scenic Designer

Karen Loewy Movilla

Costume Designer

Kristen Taylor

Lighting Designer

Gib Gibney

Sound Designer

Justin Ellington

Projection Designer

Ke Xu 许可

Hair Designer

Matthew Armentrout

Production Dramaturgs

Eric M. Glover and Catherine Sheehy

Technical Director

Tom Minucci

Fight and Intimacy Directors

Kelsey Rainwater and Michael Rossmy

Vocal Coach

Julie Foh

Associate Director

Stephanie Rolland

Casting Director

Calleri Jensen Davis

Stage Manager

James Mountcastle

Development and production support for Spunk are provided by Yale’s Binger Center for New Theatre.

Production support for Spunk is provided by The Roy Cockrum Foundation.

Yale Repertory Theatre gratefully acknowledges our 2025–26 season funders:

CAROL L. SIROT

SEASON SPONSOR:

Cast in alphabetical order

Mrs. Watson ........................................................................................Jeannette Bayardelle

Willie Joe/Ensemble ...................................................................................... Shawn Bowers

Teazie/Ensemble Tyler Clarke

Blue Trout/Ensemble ............................................................................... Alaman Diadhiou

Maggie Mae/Ensemble Amahri Edwards-Jones

Daisy/Ensemble ........................................................................... Janiah-Camile François

Hodge Bishop/Ensemble ...................................................................... Charlie Hudson III

Spunk J. Quinton Johnson

Jim Bishop/Ensemble ........................................................................... Naiqui Macabroad

Ruby/Ensemble Kimberly Marable

Boss/Captain Hammer Christian Pedersen

Nunkie/Nixon/Ensemble ............................................................................ Isaiah Reynolds

Evalina Kimber Elayne Sprawl

Admiral/Ensemble........................................................................... Matthew Elijah Webb

Oral/Ensemble Correy West

Understudies

Spunk ....................................................................................................... Christian Brailsford

Ruby.......................................................................................................................... Tyler Clarke

Jim/Admiral/Nunkie/Nixon/Blue Trout/Willie Joe Mikey Corey Hassel

Evalina ............................................................................................. Janiah-Camile François

Daisy/Teazie/Maggie Mae/Mrs. Watson Victoria Price

Oral.................................................................................................................... Isaiah Reynolds

Boss/Captain Hammer ................................................................................ Michael Saguto

Dance Captain ................................................................................................... Victoria Price

Fight Captain Matthew Elijah Webb

Conductor Sub.................................................................................................. Hedwyn Lamy

Assistant Stage Managers .......................................................................... Thomas Nagata .............................................................................................................. ty ruwe

There will be a 15-minute intermission.

Setting

A Black-incorporated town in central Florida, 1935

Content Guidance

Spunk contains profanity, racial slurs, violence, depictions of ritual practices, and brief moments of intimate contact. There are gunshots, loud noises, fog, haze, and the use of theatrical puff cigarettes which produce a fake, powder-based smoke.

The Music of Zora Neale Hurston’s SPUNK

Considered a pioneer in ethnomusicology, Zora Neale Hurston documented the music and oral traditions of Black communities in Florida through fieldwork, recordings of work songs, spirituals, and other folk music. The surviving text of Spunk, which she registered for copyright with the Library of Congress in 1935, includes song titles and some lyrics but no written score. Over the last four years our creative team has been using this script, along with their own research, as a roadmap to develop the musical score that we believe is closest to what Hurston intended. The play includes several songs from the early 20th century, many of which are now in the public domain, as well as new songs and arrangements by Composer and Music Supervisor, Nehemiah Luckett.

Act 1

Let’s Shake It

Shove It Over

This Old Hammer

John Henry Was a Little Baby

Polk County (Instrumental)

Shove It Over (Reprise) †

Cold Cornbread and Molasses

Sing You Sinners**†

The Saw*

Polk County (Instrumental, Part Two)

Toe Party (Instrumental)*

Baby Chile (Hey, Yeh, Lollie, Lou)*

Halimuhfack †

Let the Words of My Mouth †

Bishop’s Conjure†

Bishop’s Conjure (Reprise) †

*New Songs by Nehemiah Luckett

Act 2

Please Don’t Drive Me Because I’m Blind*

I Rode Some †

(Gonna Loose This) Right Hand Shackle †

I Rode Some (Reprise) †

She Used to Rock Me*

Weeping Willow †

Gethsemane*

Evalina †

Hark From the Tomb a Doleful Sound †

Stand By Me Lord

Evalina (Reprise) †

Me With Flowers in My Hand

Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior Leaning on the Everlasting Arms*†

** Written by Sam Coslow, W. Franke Harling

† New Arrangements by Nehemiah Luckett

Musical Instruments:

Alto Saxophone: Charlie Hudson III; Trombone: Correy West; Harmonica: Isaiah Reynolds, John Bronston; Djembe/Percussion: Alaman Diadhiou; Shakers: Amahri Edwards-Jones; Spoons: Isaiah Reynolds, Alaman Diadhiou; Tambourine: Jeannette Bayardelle; Washboard: Shawn Bowers; Piano: John Bronston, Janiah-Camile François; Concertina: Tyler Clarke; Violin: Kimberly Marable; Bass: Matthew Elijah Webb; Banjo: Alaman Diadhiou, Naiqui Macabroad; Guitar: J. Quinton Johnson, Kimber Elayne Sprawl, Jeannette Bayardelle, Christian Pedersen; Accordion: Janiah-Camile François

Your Eyes Are Watching Comedy: How a Genre Reveals Itself on Stage

Asked to define comedy, the average person will offer, “It’s funny.” “It has a happy ending.” “There’s a wedding.” All of these are typical facets of the form, but no one of them is strictly necessary to the taxonomy of the comic play. Pushed further, they might resort to Justice Potter Stewart’s hedging about obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” Fortunately, Drama comoedicus is not a difficult species to identify; it’s largely a matter of orientation. Portrait or landscape?

The terminology, of course, is taken from art (or printer paper). A portrait painting is commonly taller than it is wide and dominated by a single figure whose point of view affects

and effects our reception of the work. Landscape turns the canvas 90 degrees, its meaning created by the viewer’s synthesis of details from across different sectors of the canvas.

A comic play is like a landscape; it rewards stepping back to view the pattern of the whole. As opposed to tragedy—a study in what sets a character apart from their society— comedy lavishes its focus on that society: what fractures or threatens it, how it is made whole again—often around a handsome young couple whose union offers the promise of a harmonious future—and what it does with the malcontents who ruptured the fellowship in the first place. Does it expel them? Does it reclaim them?

Zora Neale Hurston’s Spunk is a comedy, not just because it has its author’s keen wit and a charismatic pair of lovers—(as for the happy ending…I wouldn’t spoil it for you)—but because Hurston asks her audience to take in the whole rich canvas of this town. She constellates a vibrant community around her lodestar couple: elders and young folks, fun-loving and bitter, superstitious, ornery, gossipy, brave and scared, none of them angels and no cartoon villains. How they bask in or get burned by the blazing love of Spunk and Evalina gives this play its genre.

Spunk went unpublished during her lifetime and then forgotten after her death, indeed lost, until the Library of Congress uncovered it in their files in 1997, so Hurston never got to see her characters come to life as you are tonight. But she left a clue about her priorities, a sketch in the typescript. It’s the ground plan for the scene where Spunk and Lina meet (reproduced below). Notice that she envisions the lovers sitting in their boat at the upstage right corner, far from the footlights. And all that real estate between them and the audience where her townsfolk cavort? Sit well back and take a broad view; you’ll see, that’s where the comedy comes from.

—Catherine Sheehy, Production Dramaturg

“Our Correct Amount of Zora Neale Hurston Creates

Spunk shows how Zora Neale Hurston valued and constructed community in stranger wanders into town, he’s a figure of curiosity and gossip, until they fold society, seeing to their enforcement—what to punish, what to forgive. And a play together, pray together, and party together. Below is a crazy quilt of the

Toe Party

A Hurston character describes this community fun, “Well, they hides all de girls behind a curtain and you stick out yo’ toe. Some places you take off yo’ shoes and some places you keep ’em on, but most all de time you keep ’em on. When all de toes is in a line, sticking out from behind de sheet they let de men folks in and they looks over all de toes and buys de ones they want for a dime. Then they got to treat de lady dat owns dat toe to everything she want. Sometime they play it so’s you keep de same partner for de whole thing and sometime they fix it so they put de girls back every hour or so and sell de toes agin.” 1

Music

Music is a constant presence in Spunk. The play is shot through with work songs, popular songs, hymns, and folk ballads; there is also music in the very way the characters speak. Hurston’s ear for music and her anthropologist’s zeal for collecting authentic cultural expression enrich the piece. Her original typescript mentions titles and scraps of lyrics that the creative team has rooted out from Hurston’s own recordings in the Library of Congress, old records, internet video, yellowing sheet music, clips of historical performance preserved on YouTube, and our own community’s collective knowledge.

of Fun”: Creates Community

her work. Here, everyone knows everyone (and their business). When a fold him into the fabric of the place. The people write their own rules of big part of the social glue is constant togetherness. The folks of Spunk all the fun-and-games pastimes that strengthen their common bond.

Croquet

Hurston described her childhood town of Eatonville, Florida, as “the city of five lakes, three croquet courts, three hundred brown skins, three hundred good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools, and no jailhouse.” A lawn game that was enormously popular at the time the play was written, croquet requires players to hit their wooden balls through bent-wire wickets stuck in the grass. Like Pitch it encourages team play and may reward, or crush, individual aggression. If, when a player hits his ball, it comes to rest touching his opponent’s ball, that player can “roquet” it by placing his foot on his own ball as he strikes it sending the other ball far off course, maybe even “to Diddy-Wah-Diddy.”

Pitch

This is a card game also known as High-Low-Jack. Its rules and scoring are charmingly complicated—part Bridge, part Spades—as players take tricks based on hands dealt from only 24 cards out of the deck, requiring both team and individual strategies. Listen for how Mrs. Watson delights in her perfect hand, “High, Low, Jack and the bendwood tosser. Roasting ears ripe and the corn’s et offa.”

Ring Play

In scene 2, after the toeparty, Oral announces a game, “We fixing to play Baby Child.” As the dancers move around a series of individual soloists in the middle of the ring, “each dancer gets the opportunity to show off. … Accompanied by hand clapping and syncopated drums, this introduction dance usually gets the crowd going.” 2

Written by Her Selves

To those who want to institute the Negro theatre, let me say it is already established. It is lacking in wealth, so it is not seen in the high places. A creature with a white head and Negro feet struts the Metropolitan boards. The real Negro theatre is in the Jooks and the cabarets.

Self-conscious individuals may turn away the eye and say, “Let us search elsewhere for our dramatic art.” Let ’em search. They certainly won’t find it. Butter Beans and Susie, Bo-Jangles and Snake Hips are the only performers of the real Negro school it has ever been my pleasure to behold in New York.

—Zora Neale Hurston, “Characteristics of Negro Expression” (1934)

Entrée

Hurston was born January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and raised in Eatonville, Florida, the fifth of eight children, to John and Lucy Hurston. The misogynoir that governs life remains the exact same misogynoir that governs art. Together with the white supremacist antitheatrical prejudice in the disciplines of African American studies, anthropology, English, history, music, and religion, people know Hurston, if people come to know her expressive culture at all, through her ethnographies of folkways, novels, and short stories.

Adagio

Hurston was a Black protowomanist anthropologist motivated by a desire to write musicals of her own and change the theatrical representation of the folk. Hurston worked as a Gilbert and Sullivan northern traveling troupe’s maid in 1916, joined the Howard Players in 1920 and the Krigwa Players

in 1925, and she and J. Rosamond Johnson wrote the musical Meet the Mamma (1925) that offered “evidence of Hurston’s early interest in exploring Negro life in musical theater” according to Hurston biographer Valerie Boyd. For over a decade, beginning in February 1927, Hurston collected oral history in central Florida and, not one to be done in by ambition, she wrote four sketches; performed in Fast and Furious (1931); and produced, choreographed, designed, and performed in The Great Day (1932) on Broadway, each more ambitious than the other.

Variations on a Theme by an AnthropologistNovelist-Playwright

Hurston was wholly unconcerned with making her multihyphenate artistry legible to all—the girls that get it, get it; the girls that don’t, don’t. Hurston’s New Negro Renaissance colleagues alleged she reinforced primitivisms about rural Black people

Selves

in the South, but in her ethnographic research in the 1920s and 30s, she exorcised stymieing notions by representing the race. Hurston acted, danced, played musical instruments, and sang, not only to caretake and superintend her kith, but also to prevent and cure self-abnegating kin. The folk opera to Hurston was not escapist entertainment but a laboratory for gesture and speech in which she experimented with Black people’s angularity, dialect, exaggeration, foolafuckaniggatry, humor, mimicry, ostentatiousness, and playfulness. Hurston studies scholar Lynda Marion Hill noted, “While endowed with the dynamism and inventiveness associated with these new musical styles, the early black [sic] musicals broadened the scope of characterizations theretofore seen on commercial stages.” The folk opera was the perfect culmination of Hurston’s genius for ethnographic research and the perfect vestibule as she shook among and between forms.

1935, during the Great Depression in the U.S. and the rise of Fascism in Europe, was also serendipitous because of six events that occurred. New Havenite John McLinn Ross, the first Black degree-seeking student to enroll in the Department of Drama in the School of the Fine Arts at Yale University, graduated with his master’s degree successfully. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal created the Works Progress Administration for immediate economic relief, and Hallie Flanagan directed the Federal Theatre Project. Langston Hughes’s melodrama Mulatto,

HURSTON (1891-1960) CIRCA 1935–1943.

the longest-running play by a Black writer before Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959), opened on Broadway, and Hurston’s ethnography Mules and Men went into print. The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway exactly two weeks before Mulatto and just as the Black musical qua Black musical nevertheless obsolesced.

In July 1926, nine years before The Theatre Guild produced the Gershwins’ “American folk opera in three acts” on Broadway to standing-roomonly audiences’ delight, Hurston and Hughes proposed their own folk opera with plans to recruit and retain the actor Paul Robeson in the leading role along with the violinist Clarence Cameron White as the composer. Hurston and Hughes were repulsed by the interwar period, thinking that blackface minstrelsy ghosted Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures (1930), Paul Green’s In Abraham’s Bosom (1926), Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (1920), and Ridgely Torrence’s Plays for a Negro Theater (1917), seeking to “lift the general level of the black [sic] musical” and reclaim the genre according to Hughes biographer

Arnold Rampersad. Hurston and Hughes, quoting Hurston, proposed the real Negro art theater, seeking to represent their community good, bad, and ugly in blues and jazz.

Hurston and Hughes’s concept for a folk opera never came to fruition because personal and professional differences changed the course of Black theater history. When Hughes pitched the folk opera to Theresa Helburn of The Theatre Guild in April 1930 initially, she responded by calling it “too grimly earnest” and recommended a comedy of Black life. Hurston and Hughes heeded Helburn’s advice and pivoted together to Mule Bone, which was based on Hurston’s short story “The Bone of Contention” (1929). Hurston, with their rough draft in hand by May-June 1930, next began to submit to production companies without Hughes’s by-line, and when he was told what was occurring, “[t]his play was never done because the authors fell out” according to his unpublished typescript’s title page in his papers at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript

Notable Works

Meet the Mama: AMusical Play in Three Acts (copyrighted 1925) with J. Rosamond Johnson

“Spunk” in Opportunity magazine (1925)

Cold Keener: A Review (copyrighted 1930) (also known as Jungle Scandals) with Porter Grainger

Fast and Furious (New Yorker Theatre, New York City, 1931) with others

Library. Anthea Kraut in her book Choreographing the Folk: The Dance Stagings of Zora Neale Hurston (2008) noted that Hughes removed Hurston from the producorial and choreographic record as a result perhaps intentionally.

Coda

Hurston was at her best—according to Jean Lee Cole and Charles Mitchell, editors of Zora Neale Hurston: Collected Plays (2008)—when she did her ethnography as and in stage work: “One of the strengths of the play [Spunk (1935)] is the way in which Hurston weaves together song, story, and ethnography, retaining the fundamental dramatic structure of the story’s plot while also incorporating cultural practices such as the toe party, croquet matches, lining songs, voodoo rites, and of course, the idiomatic expressions for which Hurston is best known.” However, Hurston’s work as an anthropologist, Mules and Men, and Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) have eclipsed her work as a musical theater writer.

—Eric M. Glover, Production Dramaturg

The Mule-Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts (copyrighted 1931; produced posthumously by Lincoln Center Theater, Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York City, 1991) (also known as De Turkey and de Law) with Langston Hughes

The Great Day: A Program of Original Negro Folklore with a Choral and Dramatic Cast (John Golden Theatre, New York City, 1932)

Spunk (copyrighted 1935; produced posthumously by Yale Repertory Theatre, University Theatre, New Haven, 2025)

Polk County: A Comedy of Negro Life on a Sawmill Camp with Authentic Negro Music in Three Acts (copyrighted 1944; produced posthumously by Arena Stage, Fichandler Stage, Washington, DC, 2002) with Dorothy Waring

OPEN HOUSE CELEBRATING ZORA NEALE HURSTON

Sunday, October 26, 2025

1PM–4PM

Beinecke Library

121 Wall Street New Haven, CT 06511

Please join us for an open house celebrating Zora Neale Hurston at Beinecke Library, in honor of the run of Hurston’s play Spunk at Yale Repertory Theatre. Objects on view in Beinecke’s reading room will include manuscripts donated by Hurston to Yale, letters from Hurston to Langston Hughes, Carl Van Vechten, and other friends, portraits of Hurston, first editions of Hurston’s books, and more.

CAST

in alphabetical order

Biographies are submitted by the artists and edited for common house style by Yale Rep.

Jeannette Bayardelle* (Mrs. Watson) From the Bronx to Broadway and beyond, Tony nominee Jeannette Bayardelle has traveled to over fifty countries throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and the Caribbean, sharing her gift. She is the founder and CEO of Broadway to Wall Street. Jeannette wrote and starred in SHIDA the Musical and the web series I Take Thee Zoe Broadway: & Juliet (Angelique), Girl from the North Country (Mrs. Neilsen), Hair (Dionne), The Color Purple (Celie). Off-Broadway: The Harder They Come, Girl from the North Country (The Public Theater); Rock of Ages (New World Stages); SHIDA (Ars Nova). National Tours/Regional: Gun and Powder (Paper Mill Playhouse), The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical (La Jolla Playhouse), The Color Purple, Deaf West’s Big River, Rent. Film: Walt Disney’s The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning.

Shawn Bowers** (Willie Joe/Ensemble) is a second-year M.F.A. candidate at David Geffen School of Drama. Yale Rep: The Inspector (understudy).

Broadway: Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations

Off-Broadway: Jelly’s Last Jam (City Center Encores), The Harder They Come (The Public Theater). Additional

credits: Ragtime, Rent, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Smokey Joe’s Cafe, After Midnight. Film: Rio Uphill (musical adaptation). Television: Tony Awards and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with the original cast of Ain’t Too Proud. He would like to thank his family and friends for their continuous love and support.

Tyler Clarke (Teazie/ Ensemble/understudy for Ruby) is a third-year actor at David Geffen School of Drama, where her credits include Macbeth, Ain’t No Mo’, and rent free. She also understudied Eden at Yale Rep. @Tylerl_clarke

Alaman Diadhiou* (Blue Trout/Ensemble) is a singer, dancer, songwriter, and entertainer from Leimert Park, Los Angeles. Alaman aspires to be one of the world’s premier live performers, carrying the traditions of legendary artists who precede him while innovating with his own voice. Trained at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, Alaman is a 2019 Presidential Scholar in the Arts (tap dance) and a 2023 graduate of Yale College (B.A., comparative literature). Recent features include starring as Young Jelly in Jelly’s Last Jam (New York City Center) and guest-starring as Damian in ABC’s High Potential National Tours: MJ/Michael Standby

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. **Appears by permission of Actors’ Equity Association.

in MJ the Musical. Regional: Twist (Pasadena Playhouse), 3 Summers of Lincoln (La Jolla Playhouse), Anything Goes (The Muny).

Amahri EdwardsJones* she/her (Maggie Mae/ Ensemble) is ecstatic to be making her Yale Rep debut! Her credits include the first National Tour of TINA—The Tina Turner Musical, Duckling Donna in the National Tour of Summer: The Donna Summer Musical. Regional: Goodspeed Opera House (Gypsy), Denver Center for the Performing Arts (Little Shop of Horrors), Virginia Musical Theatre (Freaky Friday, Mamma Mia, Chicago), Virginia Stage Company (Matilda). All thanks to God, her lovely parents, Bloc, family and friends for their unconditional support! @amahri_e_j

Janiah-Camile François* (Daisy/ Ensemble/understudy for Evalina) is ecstatic to be back at Yale Rep, where she was most recently a part of the company of The Salvagers. Broadway: McNEAL (L.C.T.). Regional: Thumbelina: A Little Musical (A.R.T.) Janiah-Camile was also seen in Furlough’s Paradise at David Geffen School of Drama, where she received her M.F.A. B.A., Harvard University. Janiah-Camile dedicates this performance to the loving memory of her classmate, Malik James, DRA ’24.

Charlie Hudson III* (Hodge Bishop/ Ensemble) Broadway: A Raisin in the Sun. OffBroadway: Nollywood Dreams (MCC Theater), (A) Loft Modulation (American Vicarious), Hurt Village (Signature Theatre). Regional: Welcome to Matteson (New Jersey Repertory); King Hedley II, A Raisin in the Sun, Seven Guitars (Two Rivers Theater); Detroit ’67 (Playmakers Rep); The Mountaintop (Northern Stage); Father Comes Home From the Wars Parts 1, 2 & 3 (American Repertory); Clybourne Park, Beneatha’s Place (Baltimore Centerstage); The Piano Lesson (Yale Rep); ‘Master Harold’…and the boys (Portland Stage Company); Fly (Crossroads Theater); Richard III, All the King’s Men, Cyrano de Bergerac (Trinity Rep); Mother Courage and Her Children (The Public Theater/NYSF); The Threepenny Opera (Williamstown Theatre Festival). Television: Archive 81 (Netflix); Daredevil: Born Again (Disney); Manifest, Shades of Blues (NBC); The Night Of (HBO); NCIS: Hawaii, The Good Fight, Unforgettable, The Rosa Parks Story (CBS); Forever (ABC); and A Raisin in the Sun Revisited: The Raisin Cycle at Center Stage (PBS). Film: Roxanne, Roxanne; A Complete Unknown; Twelve; Newlyweeds; Lillian. Training: Alabama State University and Brown University/ Trinity Repertory Consortium. I would like to thank my family for their love and support.

in alphabetical order

J. Quinton Johnson* (Spunk) is a multihyphenate from the small town of Athens, Texas. He studied musical theater at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was discovered by Richard Linklater for the film Everybody Wants Some!! He also appeared in Linklater’s Last Flag Flying. Other screen credits: ABC’s Dirty Dancing, The Son, We Can Be Heroes, and The Summoned JQ made his Broadway debut in Hamilton as the first replacement for Hercules Mulligan/James Madison. He was in the Tony-nominated play Choir Boy and productions of Footloose and In the Heights at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. JQ combined many of his musical passions in Alice’s Wonderland when he cowrote the music, book and lyrics, the orchestrations, and produced the tracks for licensable productions.

Naiqui Macabroad* (Jim Bishop/Ensemble) is an actor, writer, musician, and graduate of Howard University, where he obtained his B.F.A in acting. Stage/Screen: I Am Delivered’t (Irma P. Hall Award nomination), Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Long Way Down, Power (STARZ), Timeless (NBC), Start-Up (Netflix). Spunk marks Mr. Macabroad’s Yale Rep debut and he thanks his family and friends for all their support.

Kimberly Marable* she/her (Ruby/ Ensemble) recently starred as the iconic Velma Kelly in Chicago on Broadway. Additional Broadway credits include Hadestown (original company), The Lion King, and Sister Act. International and North American Tours include Hadestown (Persephone), Sister Act (Deloris van Cartier), The Book of Mormon, Dreamgirls, Hairspray, and The Wedding Singer. Television/streaming: FBI, Bull, Netflix Anime’s Cannon Busters (Lorelai), NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series, and promo voice for various networks. Kimberly co-founded Broadway Serves, which connects theater professionals with community service opportunities. Love always to Fam, CLA Partners, and MA. Salaams! kimberlymarable.com @misskimizzo

Christian Pedersen* (Boss/Captain Hammer) is thrilled to be making his Yale Rep debut. He most recently appeared in Boeing Boeing and Dial M for Murder at Peterborough Players in New Hampshire. Earlier this year, he was seen at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Hamlet and Ken Ludwig’s Sherwood: The Adventures of Robinhood. Other recent credits include Florida Repertory Theatre, Cleveland Play House, Workshop Theatre of Nantucket, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in San Francisco. He made his Broadway debut in Ohio State Murders opposite Audra

McDonald at the James Earl Jones Theatre. Television credits include This Is Us, SEAL Team, The Offer, Superstore, The Good Wife, and One Life to Live. Graduate of the University of Richmond and The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.

Isaiah Reynolds* (Nunkie/Nixon/ Ensemble/understudy for Oral) is excited to be making his Yale Rep debut.

Isaiah has had the privilege of traveling all over the country performing. Some favorite credits include Beautiful: the Carole King Musical (Paper Mill Playhouse), Sweeney Todd (Portland Center Stage), Choir Boy (Speak Easy Stage), Five Guys Named Moe (The Fulton), Buddy (Cape Playhouse), and Hairspray (Theater Aspen). B.F.A., Boston Conservatory. He would love to thank his friends, family, and DGRW for their love and support. @Isaiahreynolds55.

Kimber Elayne Sprawl* (Evalina) most recently played Emilia in Othello on Broadway (Joe Callaway Award recipient). Additional Broadway credits: Marianne Lane in Girl from the North Country (OBC); Nessarose in Wicked (20th anniversary cast); Jane in A Bronx Tale, Home (Roundabout); Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. National Tour: Sarabi in Disney’s The Lion King. Regional: Zoe in The Niceties (Milwaukee Rep).

Television appearances include East New York (CBS), That Damn Michael Che (HBO Max), Inside Amy Schumer (Paramount +).

Matthew Elijah Webb* (Admiral/ Ensemble) Detroit native who seeks to tell the stories that matter. Through acting, writing, and building new work, Matthew aims to change the world even if only a little bit. Broadway: Fat Ham and Our Town. Off-Broadway: Fat Ham. For Malik James. @matthewelijahwebb

Correy West* (Oral/ Ensemble) Broadway: Ain’t Too Proud, Nice Work If You Can Get It, and Lincoln Center Theater’s South Pacific. National Tours: Love Never Dies (first national U.S. premiere), Anything Goes (first national), 42nd Street. New York: The Radio City Christmas Spectacular (Chicago/Toronto), PBS Great Performances Season 50: Celebrating 50 Years of Broadway’s Best (Live from Lincoln Center), Showboat (New York Philharmonic/Live from Lincoln Center). Regional: The Ballad of Johnny and June (La Jolla Playhouse, Citadel Theatre); American Prophet (Arena Stage Company); Mary Poppins, Primary Trust (Hope Repertory); Beautiful (Theatre Aspen, the REV); Oliver! (Virginia Stage Company); The 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee (Arkansas Repertory); Kiss Me, Kate (Cape Playhouse); Guys and Dolls

UNDERSTUDIES

order

(Barrington Stage Company); Paint Your Wagon (Pioneer Theatre Company); Shrek (North Shore Music Theatre).

Christian Brailsford* (understudy for Spunk)

Broadway National Tour: Pretty Woman (David Morse, Happy Man u/s, Alfredo u/s). OffBroadway: Oratorio for Living Things, Cleopatra, Francois & the Rebels, Songs of a Serpent. Television: The Beast in Me (Netflix). International: Scar in Hong Kong Disney’s The Lion King. Regional: Oscar Clifton in A Complicated Woman (Goodspeed), Preacher/Sheriff in Bonnie & Clyde (Pioneer Theatre Company, Mayor Joe in May We All (The REV), Benny in In the Heights (WPPAC, The Gateway), Andrew Gaines in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical (The Gateway).

Christian is ecstatic to be making his Yale Rep debut in Spunk. He thanks his family and friends for their unwavering love and support.

Mikey Corey Hassel* (understudy for Jim, Admiral, Nunkie, Nixon, Blue Trout, Willie Joe)

A proud native—and Duke—of Paducah, Kentucky, Mikey is fresh off the National Tour of Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations and is proud to join the company of Spunk. National Tours: Mean Girls, TINA—The Tina Turner Musical (Australian Premiere), Hairspray (Australia and U.S.). Regional: Joseph

(Joseph), Ronnette (Little Shop of Horrors), Pepper (Mamma Mia!), Richie (A Chorus Line). Mikey dedicates his performance to his mother, Crystal, and his voice teacher, Michael. Ball State University. HCKR Agency. Black Lives Matter. Philippians 4:13 @mikeycorey

Victoria Price* (understudy for Daisy, Teazie, Maggie Mae, Mrs. Watson) is completely overjoyed to be joining the cast of Spunk at Yale Rep. National Tour: Escape to Margaritaville, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Regional: Summer: The Donna Summer Musical (Gateway); The Pirates of Penzance (Park Square Theatre); The Wiz, Mamma Mia! (Weathervane); Hairspray, Leap of Faith (Tent Theatre). Television/film: PAW Patrol Live at Home (Nickelodeon/ Paramount +). As of 2022, Victoria is a proud breast cancer survivor and advocate, working to spread breast cancer awareness to young people, especially young Black women. Victoria also works full time as a social media manager, so yes, it’s giving young, gifted, and Black, and also busy, but most importantly, blessed. Glory to God, endless love to my beautiful family and gratitude to Hudson Artists. For you, Dad. @__victoriaprice

Michael Saguto** (understudy for Captain Hammer and Boss) is a third-year actor at David Geffen School of Drama, where his credits

include Silence/The Village, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tragedy of Coriolanus, Charity, as well as The Royale and The Day the Butcher Shop Closed (Yale Cabaret). Other select theater credits include The Misanthrope (HERE Arts); Lobby Hero (Florida Rep); London Wall, Men Should Weep (Griffin Theatre); A Christmas Carol (Goodman Theatre). Select television and film credits include Easy (Netflix), Tour Bus Legends (pilot), and the series Play by Play. B.F.A., NYU Tisch School of the Arts. michael.saguto.com

CREATIVE TEAM

Matthew Armentrout (Hair Designer) Broadway: Redwood, A Wonderful World, The Mother Play, Paradise Square (Drama Desk nominee), Birthday Candles, Flying Over Sunset, The Sound Inside, Bernhardt/Hamlet. Off-Broadway: The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse (The New Group); The Gardens of Anuncia (Lincoln Center Theater); Dear World (NYCC Encores!); Suffs, The Visitor (The Public); Merrily We Roll Along (Roundabout); Othello (NY Stage and Film). National Tour: Jitney. Regional: The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical (Signature Theatre); The Inspector, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Yale Rep); 3 Summers of Lincoln (La Jolla Playhouse); Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (The Goodman Theatre); Gatsby (A.R.T.); A Transparent Musical (Center Theatre Group); Ava: The Secret Conversations (Geffen Playhouse); Bliss! (The 5th Avenue). Television: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Emmy Nominee).

John Bronston (Music Director) served as Music Direction Fellow, rehearsal pianist, and sub Key II player on TINA— The Tina Turner Musical on Broadway. Off-Broadway he was the musical director on The Harder They Come (The Public Theater) and associate music director for A Man of No Importance (Classic Stage). Additional New York credits include developmental work at Roundabout Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, and Prospect Musicals. Touring credits include Hair, Five Guys Named Moe, and Ain’t Misbehavin’ Favorite regional credits include Macbeth in Stride (Yale Rep), Smokey Joe’s Café (Long Wharf), and The Color Purple (Goodman Theatre).

Calleri Jensen Davis (Casting Director) is a creative casting partnership among James Calleri, Erica Jensen, and Paul Davis of over 20 years. They began their collaboration with Yale Rep in 2023 with Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles and the ripple, the wave that carried me home. Broadway credits: The Piano Lesson, Topdog/Underdog, for colored girls..., Thoughts of a Colored Man, Burn This, Fool for Love, The Elephant Man, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Of Mice and Men, Venus in Fur, A Raisin in the Sun, 33 Variations. Television: Love Life, Queens, Dickinson, and The Path, to name a few. callerijensendavis.com

nicHi douglas (Choreographer) is an OBIE Award–winning, Brooklyn-based experimental theater and dance maker who is interested in leading community care-centered creative processes. you can refer to her/them/him/us using any pronouns said with Respect. nicHi

CREATIVE TEAM

in alphabetical order

is currently a resident artist at HERE Arts Center in NYC. her work has been developed and/or produced at MacDowell, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, The Shed, and The National Black Theater, among others. they are an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU/Tisch where they teach dance and movement methodologies. Additional awards include Lucille Lortel Awards for Best Director and Best Musical, the Callaway Award for Choreography, an AUDELCO Award for Choreography, and a Princess Grace Award for theatermaking. Upcoming: RECONSTRUCTING at BAM. mynameisnichi.com

Justin Ellington (Sound Designer) is an award-winning composer and sound designer whose work spans Broadway, Off-Broadway, film, and radio with credits both nationally and internationally. He is the recipient of an OBIE Award, an AUDELCO Award, the Henry Hewes Design Award, and multiple Tony Award nominations. Broadway: Pass Over, Other Desert Cities, Othello, Our Town, McNeal, Topdog/Underdog, Clyde’s, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, and Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. Off-Broadway: Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Playwrights Horizons); The Rolling Stone, Pass Over, and Pipeline (Lincoln Center Theater); Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie (Ars Nova); The House That Will Not Stand and Fetch Clay, Make Man (New York Theatre Workshop); He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box and The Winter’s Tale (Theatre for a New Audience). He has worked with renowned

regional and international theaters such as Steppenwolf, Goodman Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Alliance Theatre, Guthrie Theater, The Stratford Festival (Canada), The Royal Shakespeare Company, and The Old Vic. Ellington has also been recognized by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and the Grammy Foundation for his work in the recording industry. He received a Cinema in Industry Award for his original score to MOVE ACT FREE, an exhibit at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta.

Julie Foh she/her (Vocal Coach) is a voice, text, and dialect coach and Associate Professor Adjunct of acting at David Geffen School of Drama. Previous coaching credits include falcon girls, Escaped Alone, and the ripple, the wave that carried me home (Yale Rep); Hurricane Diane, Romeo and Juliet, All My Sons, The Winter’s Tale (Hartford Stage); The Woman in Black (Weston Theater Company); A View from the Bridge (Long Wharf Theatre); Julius Caesar, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Measure for Measure, Henry V, Twelfth Night, Coriolanus (Next Chapter Podcasts); A Christmas Carol, Sense and Sensibility, As You Like It, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, A Man for All Seasons, And a Nightingale Sang, The Caretaker, A Child’s Christmas in Wales (Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey); Belfast Girls (Irish Rep); Mlima’s Tale (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and Westport Country Playhouse); Ride the

Cyclone: The Musical, Sleuth (McCarter Theatre Center); Wolverine: The Lost Trail (Marvel podcast); As You Like It, King Charles III (Colorado Shakespeare Festival); Sherwood (Cleveland Play House); Pygmalion (BEDLAM); Familiar (Woolly Mammoth); Trans Scripts, Cardenio (American Repertory Theater); The Tallest Tree in the Forest (Tectonic Theater Project); and others. She is an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework, a Master Teacher of Knight-Thompson Speechwork, and co-author of Experiencing Speech: A Skills-Based, Panlingual Approach to Actor Training.

Gib Gibney (Lighting Designer) is a third-year M.F.A. candidate at David Geffen School of Drama, where his credits include Silence/The Village, Metamorphoses, and Measure for Measure. Other select credits include Into the Woods and Blood at the Root at Penn State Centre Stage as well as associate lighting designer on Invasive Species at the Vineyard Theatre and Chiaroscuro at The Flea Theater (NBT). Originally from Long Island, he is a graduate of SUNY Suffolk and Penn State University.

Eric M. Glover he/him (Production Dramaturg) is an Associate Professor Adjunct at David Geffen School of Drama and a Faculty Fellow in the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration. Glover was also a production dramaturg for Ain’tNo Mo’ at the Geffen School and The Salvagers, Choir Boy, A Raisin in the Sun (canceled due to COVID-19), and

the ripple, the wave that carried me home, at Yale Rep. Glover is the author of African American Perspectives in Musical Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2023), “1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston’s Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented” (Journal of American Drama and Theatre, 2021), and “Joy and Love in Zora Neale Hurston and Dorothy Waring’s 1944 Black Feminist Musical Polk County” (TDR, 2021). Glover is an At-Large Member in the International Society for the Study of Musicals and the Secretary of the American Society for Theatre Research.

Karen Loewy Movilla she/her/ella (Scenic Designer) is a Colombian multihyphenated artist and a third-year set designer at David Geffen School of Drama, where she designed Kilele and Macbeth. Select design credits include S’Mores (Yale Cabaret), Aya Ogawa’s Meat Suit (Mercury Lounge), New England Summer Storms (Columbia University), Our bodies like dams (Mabou Mines, The Brick), and The Night Alive (Chain Theatre). Assistant credits: Uncle Vanya (the Geffen School), Ogawa’s Nosebleed (Lincoln Center), Zoetrope (Abrons Arts Center), Rubalee (New Ohio Theatre), Kiss (Wilma Theatre). She was part of Ars Nova’s 2021 ANT Fest, The Tank’s Core Productions in 2023 with Tía Talk, and an Object Movement Puppetry Residency in 2023.

CREATIVE TEAM

in alphabetical order

Nehemiah Luckett he/him (Composer, Arranger, Music Supervisor) is a composer working at the intersection of sacred and secular music. For over 30 years he has been performing, composing, musicdirecting, and conducting, creating works that range from pop/rock songs to choral and orchestral pieces as well as musical theater works and music for plays. From an early age he connected his deep love of music to the transformative power of building community by singing with family and friends. He has been a featured soloist at the National Cathedral, Carnegie Hall and has performed on six continents. Projects in development include Love Out of Time, a queer Bible-based Afrofuturist opera; Brick by Brick with Ross Wade; Triple Threats with Tracey Conyer Lee; Risk Hallelujah with Orion Johnstone; and A Burning Church with Zhailon Levingston and Alex Hare. Nehemiah is the Founder and Chief Dreaming Officer of Dreaming The Future Together and a member of ASMAC, ASCAP, and The Dramatists Guild. He lives in the Bronx with his husband and an evergrowing collection of plants. Visit NehemiahLuckett.com for more info.

Tom Minucci he/him (Technical Director) Originally from New Jersey, Tom is a third-year M.F.A. candidate at David Geffen School of Drama, where his credits include The Carlotta Festival (2024, co-production electrician), Kilele (properties manager), and Hamlet, princessa de Dinamarca (properties manager). He was also technical director for falcon girls and

assistant technical director for The Salvagers, both at Yale Rep. Prior to Yale, he served as the Technical Director for DeSales University and Barrington Stage Company. Other credits include Technical Director for the Berkshire Theatre Group, Assistant Technical Director for the Virginia Opera Association, and an engineering intern at Hudson Scenic. B.F.A., Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey.

James Mountcastle* (Stage Manager) has been at Yale Rep since 2004, where he has stage managed productions of Wish You Were Here, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Girls; An Enemy of the People; Scenes from Court Life, or the whipping boy and his prince; Arcadia; A Streetcar Named Desire; American Night: The Ballad of Juan José; Three Sisters; The Master Builder; Passion Play; Eurydice; and the world premiere of The Clean House. Broadway credits include Damn Yankees, Jekyll & Hyde, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Boys from Syracuse, The Smell of the Kill, Life (x) 3, and Wonderful Town, as well as A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden. National Tours include City of Angels, Falsettos, and My Fair Lady. He was Production Stage Manager for Damn Yankees starring Jerry Lewis for both its National Tour and at the Adelphi Theatre in London’s West End. In addition, Mr. Mountcastle has worked at the Kennedy Center, Center Stage in Baltimore, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and elsewhere. M.F.A., David Geffen School of Drama, 1990.

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

Thomas Nagata* he/they (Assistant Stage Manager) Selected credits include The Inspector, Eden (Yale Rep); Sort, Fucking A, Uncle Vanya, Cactus Queen, Tempt Me (David Geffen School of Drama); The Tempest, it’s not a trip it’s a journey, Quixote Nuevo (Round House Theatre); King Lear (Shakespeare Theatre Company); Ain’t No Mo’, The Nosebleed, Incendiary, Rose: You Are Who You Eat (Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company); In the Heights, Annie, Proof (Olney Theatre Center); All the Way, The Roommate, The Yoga Play (South Coast Repertory). Thomas received their B.A. from Wheaton College, Massachusetts.

Kelsey Rainwater (Fight and Intimacy Director) is an intimacy and fight director, and actress based out of the ancestral lands of the Quinnipiac people. Kelsey’s work was recently seen in Liberation at Roundabout and Hell’s Kitchen on Broadway. Some of her other credits include Walden at Second Stage; Hot Wing King at Hartford Stage; In the Southern Breeze, Measure for Measure, Jordans, Manahatta, and Suzan-Lori Parks’s Sally and Tom and White Noise at The Public Theater; Blues for an Alabama Sky with the Keen Company; Notes on Killing..., The Inspector, Wish You Were Here, Between Two Knees, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles, and the ripple, the wave that carried me home at Yale Rep. Film and television: Baby Ruby, The Green Veil. She is a Lecturer in acting at David Geffen School of Drama, co-teaches stage combat and intimacy, and is a Resident Fight and Intimacy Director for Yale Rep.

Stephanie Rolland (Associate Director) is a director, curator, and Lilly Award-winning creative producer. Teaching Artist-in-Residence, the Film Over Gun Violence Program (CMCArts, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands); Director, SCC Redux (staged reading, New Black Fest); Associate Director, Our Town (Broadway); Assistant Director, Eden, Spunk workshops (Yale Rep); Visiting Director, “Collaboration Reloaded” led by Oskar Eustis and Suzan-Lori Parks (Tisch at NYU); Associate Director, Hamlet (The Public Theater). Select curating and producing credits include Theater Curator and creator/director/ producer of the Beyond the Red Door theatrical event series (August Wilson African American Cultural Center); Producing Fellow, Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Initiative; Producing Faculty (Why Not Theatre); 2018–20 WP Theater Producing Fellow; Co-Founder, Interfest. B.A., UPENN; M.F.A., David Geffen School of Drama.

Michael Rossmy (Fight and Intimacy Director) is a Resident Fight and Intimacy Director for Yale Rep, a lecturer in acting and stage management at David Geffen School of Drama. Broadway credits include Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Purpose directed by Phylicia Rashad, A Tale of Two Cities, Cymbeline, and Superior Donuts. Regional theater credits include The Public Theater, Roundabout, The Atlantic, Primary Stages, Westport Country Playhouse, Goodspeed Musicals, Paper Mill Playhouse, Asolo Rep, The Old Globe, TheaterWorks Hartford, Princeton University, The Acting Company, Soho Rep, the Geffen Playhouse, Long Wharf Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Kansas City

CREATIVE TEAM

in alphabetical order

Rep, People’s Light & Theatre, and others. He was nominated for a 2017 Drama Desk Award for The Public’s production of Troilus and Cressida and is a 2024 Barrymore Award nominee for Bonez at People’s Light. Recent work: The world premiere of Beau: The Musical. Upcoming: Purple Rain written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.

ty ruwe they/them (Assistant Stage Manager) is a third-year M.F.A. candidate at David Geffen School of Drama, where their credits include Silence/The Village, HellYouTalmBout Part 1, Pearl’s Beauty Salon, and Hamlet, princesa de Dinamarca, as well as My Six Therapists, The Aughts, seven methods of killing kylie jenner, and Witch at Yale Cabaret. Other credits include Memnon (Classical Theatre of Harlem); Macbeth in Stride (Yale Rep); The Pirates of Penzance (Cape Repertory Theatre); Fairview (Speakeasy Stage Company); honeyhole (MoonBox Productions, Boston New Works Festival); The HalfLife of Marie Curie, and Ada and the Engine (Central Square Theater). ty received their B.A. in psychology from Smith College.

Catherine Sheehy she/her (Production Dramaturg) is Resident Dramaturg at Yale Repertory Theatre and the Chair of the Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism program at David Geffen School of Drama. Her Yale Rep credits include Escaped Alone; Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3; Happy Days; Elevada;

These Paper Bullets!; In a Year with 13 Moons; The Winter’s Tale; Bossa Nova; POP!; Trouble in Mind; and The King Stag (which she also co-adapted with Evan and Mike Yionoulis). She’s a founding member of Rolin Jones’s Dwight Street Book Club and New Neighborhood. Her television work with Rolin includes HBO’s Perry Mason and AMC’s Interview with the Vampire. Her adaptation of Pride and Prejudice has been produced at Asolo Repertory Theatre and Dallas Theater Center. She has worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Public Theater, Yale Institute for Music Theatre, the Signature Theatre, O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Center Stage, and in New York and Ireland with the late Joseph Chaikin. For four seasons she was Festival Dramaturg at Shakespeare Santa Cruz. She is a former associate editor of American Theatre and a former editor of Theater magazine.

Kristen Taylor (Costume Designer) is from Celebration, Florida, and has a B.F.A. in costume design and technology from the University of West Florida. She is an M.F.A. candidate at David Geffen School of Drama, where her credits include Ain’t No Mo’. Other credits include Pride of Doves (Yale Cabaret Spring 2024), These Shining Lives (Studio Theatre Tierra Del Sol, 2023), and Xanadu (Emerald Coast Theatre Company 2022).

Tamilla Woodard (Director) is the Chair of the Acting program at David Geffen School of Drama and a resident director at Yale Repertory Theatre. Tamilla has directed at theaters nationally including at the Alliance Theatre, the Guthrie, Baltimore Center Stage, American Conservatory Theater, Folger Theatre, WP Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem, and Clubbed Thumb, among others. At Yale Rep: the ripple, the wave that carried me home. Tamilla is a proud board member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers and alumna of the Acting program at David Geffen School of Drama.

Ke Xu 许可 (Projection Designer) is a multidisciplinary theater designer. She graduated from Central Saint Martins (UAL) with first-class honors in product design and is currently a projection design M.F.A. candidate at David Geffen School of Drama, where her credits include Silence/The Village and Ain’t No Mo’. She was working professionally in China before coming to Yale and is passionate about exploring new theatrical language that integrates digital media with physical space. Recent credits include video and set design for Detective Zhao Gan’e (Beijing 77 Theater); projection design for And the Beetle

Hums and Can the Peruvian Speak? (Yale Cabaret); Miss Julie (Beijing Star Theatre); 10:59 (Off Broadway Theater). behance.net/kxu

Zora Neale Hurston (Playwright), 1891–1960, one of the foremost writers of the 20th century, was raised in Eatonville, Florida, one of America’s first incorporated Black townships. She was a major force in the Harlem Renaissance documenting African American life in the South. Hurston, an alumna of Howard University, co-founded the school’s historic newspaper The Hilltop; later, she became the first Black graduate of Barnard College. In 1939, she joined North Carolina Central University’s drama faculty. In 1997, the Library of Congress’s librarians found Hurston’s unpublished cache, including Spunk, in their holdings. Hurston co-wrote sketches, performed in Fast and Furious (1931), and choreographed The Great Day (1932) on Broadway. In 1936 she wrote her most famous work, the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston died in January 1960, consigned to an unmarked grave. In 1973, writer Alice Walker commissioned a gravestone for Hurston which now reads “Zora Neale Hurston: ‘A Genius of the South’: Novelist, Folklorist, Anthropologist.”

artistic

Assistant Choreographer

Sydnie L. Mosley

Tap Improvisation

Alaman Diadhiou

Assistant Music Director

Drew Bastian

Assistant Scenic Designers

Jessie Baldinger

Anthony Robles

Assistant Costume Designer

Carter King

Assistant Lighting Designer

Qier Luo 罗绮儿

Assistant Projection Designer

Wiktor Freifeld

Associate Sound Designer

Emilee Biles

Assistant Sound Designer and Engineer

Eun Kang 강은영

Wig Supervisor

Chynah Gayton

Costume Crafts

Rea J. Brown

Tricie Bergmann

special thanks

production

Associate Production Manager

Bekka Broyles

Assistant Technical Directors

Aaron Frongillo

Sam Kisthardt

Cat Slanski

Assistant Properties Manager

Meredith Wilcox

Production Electrician

David DiFabio

Projection Programmer

Bobby Marcus

Run Crew

Kate Baker, Anna Blankenberger, Katie

Chance, KT Farmer, Susan Gibbs, John Hardy, Ella Hough, Jay Korter, Skylar Linker, Alexandra Vásquez Dheming,

Run Crew Swing

Xi (Zoey) Lin 林曦

administration

Associate Managing Directors

Victoria McNaughton

Kavya Shetty

Assistant Managing Director

Kay Nilest

Management Assistants

Jenn London

Quinn O’Connor

Kiara Rivera

Company Manager

Gaby Rodriguez

Assistant Company Managers

Roberto Di Donato

Rethabile Headbush

Chanel Johnson

Ebonee Johnson

Jocelyn Lopez-Hagmann

House Managers

My Le

Rhayna Poulin

Production Photographer

Joan Marcus

Poster Art and Design

Paul Evan Jeffrey/ Passage Design

“Sing You Sinners” by Sam Coslow, W. Franke Harling.

Used by Permission of Famous Music LLC, Sony/ ATV Harmony. All rights reserved.

Melissa Barton and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library staff; Alice Birney at the Library of Congress; Barbara “Muzikaldunk” Duncan; Thomas Flippin; The Mercury Store; Anthony Mitchell of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Ms. N.Y. Nathiri, founder and curator of the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts in Eatonville, Florida; Zé Luis Oliveira; David Simms at Greenville Music Preservation; Eleanor Taylor; Yale School of the Environment.

Yale Repertory Theatre and David Geffen School of Drama Staff

Artistic Director/ Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean

James Bundy

Managing Director/ Associate Dean

Florie Seery

Associate Artistic Director, Director of New Play Programs/Associate Dean

Chantal Rodriguez

General Manager/ Assistant Dean

Carla L. Jackson

Assistant Dean of Student Life

Nancy Yao

Academic Programs

Chair, Acting Program

Tamilla Woodard

Associate Chair, Acting Program

Grace Zandarski

Co-Chair, Design Program and Head of Set Design Concentration

Riccardo Hernández

Co-Chair, Design Program and Head of Costume Design Concentration

Toni-Leslie James

Head of Sound Design Concentration

Jill BC Du Boff

Head of Projection Design Concentration

Wendall K. Harrington

Head of Lighting Design Concentration

Donald Holder

Chair, Directing Program

Liz Diamond

Associate Chair, Directing Program

Yura Kordonsky

Chair, Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism Program

Catherine Sheehy

Associate Chair, Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism Program

Kimberly Jannarone

Co-Chairs, Playwriting Program

Anne Erbe

Marcus Gardley

Chair, Stage Management Program

Narda E. Alcorn

Associate Chair, Stage Management Program

James Mountcastle

Chair, Technical Design and Production Program

Shaminda Amarakoon

Associate Chair, Technical Design and Production Program

Jennifer McClure

Chair, Theater Management Program

Joshua Borenstein

ARTISTIC

Yale Rep

Resident Artists

Playwright in Residence

Tarell Alvin McCraney

Resident Directors

Lileana Blain-Cruz

Liz Diamond

Tamilla Woodard

Dramaturgy Advisor

Amy Boratko

Resident Dramaturg

Catherine Sheehy

Set Design Advisor

Riccardo Hernández

Resident Set Designer

Michael Yeargan

Costume Design Advisors

Oana Botez

Ilona Somogyi

Resident Costume Designer

Toni-Leslie James

Lighting Design Advisors

Alan C. Edwards

Donald Holder

Projection Design Advisor

Shawn Lovell-Boyle

Sound Design Advisor

Jill BC Du Boff

Voice and Text Advisor

Grace Zandarski

Resident Fight and Intimacy Directors

Kelsey Rainwater

Michael Rossmy

Stage Management Advisor

Narda E. Alcorn

Associate Artists

52nd Street Project, Kama Ginkas, Mark Lamos, MTYZ Theatre/Moscow New Generation Theatre, Bill Rauch, Sarah Ruhl, Henrietta Yanovskaya

Artistic Administration

Production Stage Manager

James Mountcastle

Yale Rep Senior Artistic Producer

Amy Boratko

Yale Rep Associate Producer

Kay Perdue Meadows

Yale Rep Artistic Fellow

Hannah Fennell Gellman

Yale Rep Artistic Coordinator

Mithra Seyedi

Yale Rep Casting

James Calleri

Erica Jensen

Paul Davis

Editor, Theater magazine

Tom Sellar

Managing Editor, Theater magazine

Gabrielle Hoyt

Senior Associate Editor,

David Geffen School of Drama Alumni Magazine

Catherine Sheehy

Yale Repertory Theatre and David Geffen School of Drama

Senior Executive Assistant to the Artistic Director/Dean

Grace O’Brien

Interim Senior Administrative Assistant to the Associate Artistic Director/Associate

Dean Miguel Benitez

Senior Administrative Assistant for Directing, Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, Playwriting, Stage Management programs, and Theater magazine

Laurie Coppola

Senior Administrative Assistant, Design Program

Kate Begley Baker

Senior Administrative Assistant, Acting Program

Krista DeVellis

Library Services

Erin Carney

PRODUCTION

Production Management Director of Production

Shaminda Amarakoon

Production Manager

Jonathan Reed

Production Manager for Studio Projects and Special Events

C. Nikki Mills

Senior Administrative Assistant to Production, Theater Safety, and the Technical Design and Production Program

Rachel Zwick

Scenery

Technical Director for Yale Rep and Fall Protection Program Administrator

Neil Mulligan

Technical Directors for David Geffen School of Drama

Latiana “LT” Gourzong

Matt Welander (on leave, fall 2025)

Electro Mechanical

Laboratory Supervisor

Eric Lin

Metal Shop Foreperson

Matt Gaffney

Wood Shop Foreperson

Ryan Gardner

Lead Carpenters

Doug Kester

Kat McCarthey

Sharon Reinhart

Abigail Richard

Carpenters

Isaac Lau

Jacob Thompson

Carpentry Interns

Kai Hancock

Red Wehrmann

Painting

Scenic Charge

Mikah Berky

Lead Scenic Artists

Lia Akkerhuis

Nathan Jasunas

Paint Intern

Michaela Meyer

Properties

Properties Supervisor

Jennifer McClure

Associate Properties

Supervisor

Katie Pulling

Properties Craftsperson

Steve Lopez

Properties Associate

Zach Faber

Properties Stock Manager

Mark Dionne

Properties Interns

Lee Donegan

Susan Gibbs

Costumes

Costume Shop Manager

Christine Szczepanski

Senior Drapers

Susan Aziz

Clarissa Wylie Youngberg

Mary Zihal

Senior First Hands

Deborah Bloch

Patricia Van Horn

First Hand

Maria Teodosio

Costume Project Coordinator

Linda Kelley-Dodd

Costume Stock Manager

Jamie Farkas

Costume Technology Intern

Eli Oremland

Electrics

Lighting Supervisor

Donald W. Titus

Senior House Electricians

Price Foster

Linda-Cristal Young

Electricians

Aspen Rogers

Alary Sutherland

Electrics Interns

Toni Carton

Gabriel Landes

Sound

Sound Supervisor

Mike Backhaus

Lead Sound Engineer

Mariah Keener

Sound Interns

Jay Korter

Skylar Linker

Projections

Projection Supervisor

Anja Powell

Lead Projection Technician

Solomon Sheffield

Projection Interns

Naomi Rodriguez

Sarah Webb

Stage Operations

Stage Carpenter

Janet Cunningham

Lead Wardrobe Supervisor

Elizabeth Bolster

Lead Properties Runner

William Ordynowicz

Light Board Programmer

Sabrina Idom

Lead Front of House

Mix Engineer

Keirsten Lamora

ADMINISTRATION

General Management

Associate Managing Directors

Joy (Xiaoyue) Chen

Victoria McNaughton

Kavya Shetty

Iyanna Huffington Whitney

Assistant Managing Director

Kay Nilest

Senior Administrative

Assistant to the Managing Director, General Manager, and Theater Management Program

Sarah Masotta

Management Assistants

Kiara Rivera

Quinn O’Connor

Jenn London

Development & Alumni Affairs

Senior Director of Development and Alumni Affairs and Editor, David Geffen School of Drama Alumni Magazine

Deborah S. Berman

Deputy Director of Operations for Development and Alumni Affairs

Susan C. Clark

Senior Associate Director of Development and Alumni Affairs

Scott Bartelson

Associate Director of Development and Alumni Affairs

Claudia Campos

Assistant Director of Development and Alumni Affairs

Alesandra Reto Lopez

Alumni Affairs Officer and Senior Writer

Cayenne Douglass

Senior Administrative

Assistant to Development and Alumni Affairs

Jennifer E. Alzona

Development and Alumni Affairs Assistant

Ebonee Johnson

Finance, Human Resources, & Digital Technology

Director of Finance and Business Administration/Lead

Administrator

Nicola Blake

Human Resources Business Partner

Trinh DiNoto

Manager, Staff and Faculty Affairs

Malaika Green El Hamel

Director of Theater and Information Technology

Eric Lin

Director, Yale Tessitura Consortium, and Web Technology

Janna J. Ellis

Manager, Business Operations

Martha O. Boateng

Business Office Analyst

Shainn Reaves

Financial Analyst

Juliana Norman

Web Technology Assistant

Kenneth Murray

Business Office Specialists

Moriah Clarke

Karem Orellana-Flores

Digital Technology Associates

Edison Dule

Garry Heyward

Database Application Consultants

Ben Silvert

Erich Bolton

Financial Aid, Admissions, and Student Services

Director of Financial Aid

Andre Massiah

Registrar/Admissions

Administrator

Ariel Yan

Non-Clinical Counselor

Krista Dobson

Senior Administrative

Assistant to Financial Aid and Regsitrar/Admissions

Administrator

Laura Torino

Marketing, Communications, & Audience Services

Director of Marketing

Daniel Cress

Director of Communications

Steven Padla

Senior Associate Director of Marketing and Communications

Caitlin Griffin

Associate Director of Marketing and Communications

Taylor Ybarra

Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications

Jazzmin Bonner

Senior Administrative

Assistant to Marketing and Communications

Mishelle Raza

Marketing Assistant

Maya Simon

Publications Manager and Program Designer

Marguerite Elliott

Director of Audience Services

Laura Kirk

Assistant Director of Audience Services

Shane Quinn

Yale Repertory Theatre and David Geffen School of Drama Staff

Subscriptions Coordinator

Tracy Baldini

Audience Services Associate

Molly Leona

Customer Service and Safety Officers

Teo Baldwin

Ralph Black, Jr.

Kevin Delaney

Box Office Assistants

Pilar Bylinsky, Emma Fusco, Aaron Magloire, Diana Shyshkova

Accessibility Assistants

Abigail Murphy

Prentiss Patrick-Carter

Ushers

Mia Bauer, Maura Bozeman, Alex Brooks, Logan Carr, Jackie Cook, Gerson Espinoza Campos, Kelvin Esselfie, Anna Forbes, Saskia Globig, Isaac Kozukhin, Nat Lopez, Kristin Loughry, Bonnie Moeller, Sarah Ramos-Gonzalez, Eric Regis, William Romain, Jonathan Singleton, Nicole Stack, Kane Trundle, Julia Weston, Larsson Youngberg

Theater Safety and Occupational Health

Director of Theater Safety and Occupational Health

Anna Glover

Assistant Director of Theater Safety

Kelly O’Loughlin

Associate Safety Advisors

Mara Bredovskis

Tamara Morris-Thompson

Nat King Taylor

OPERATIONS

Director of Facility Operations

Nadir Balan

Associate Director of Operations

Brandon Fuller

Operations Assistant

Devon Reaves

Facilities Area Manager

Joey Adcock

Arts and Graduate Studies

Superintendents

Jennifer Draughn

Francisco Eduardo Pimentel

Custodial Team Leaders

Andrew Mastriano

Sherry Stanley

Facility Stewards

Ronald Douglas

Marcia Riley

Custodians

Tylon Frost, Willia Grant, Cassandra Hobby, Melloney Lucas, Shanna Ramos, Jerome Sonia

Yale Repertory Theatre and David Geffen School of Drama are supported by the work of over 200 faculty members.

For a complete faculty listing by program and department, please visit drama.yale.edu/about-us

Yale Repertory Theatre operates under an agreement between the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) and Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

The Scenic, Costume, Lighting, and Sound Designers in LORT are represented by United Artists Local USA-829, IATSE.

YOUTH PROGRAMS

WILL POWER! is Yale Rep’s annual educational initiative, designed to bring middle and high school students to see live theater. Since our 2003–04 season, WILL POWER! has served more than 20,000 Connecticut students and educators. This season we will offer programming centered on Zora Neale Hurston’s Spunk to New Haven Public Schools students and educators. In previous seasons, the program has included early schooltime matinees, free or heavily subsidized tickets, study guides, and post-performance discussions with actors and members of the creative teams. WILL POWER! is committed to giving teachers curricular support through free workshops and professional development about the content and themes of the plays.

THE DWIGHT/EDGEWOOD PROJECT (D/EP) is a community-focused, youth engagement program within David Geffen School of Drama and Yale Rep. Each year, middle school students from Barnard Environmental Studies Interdistrict Magnet School become playwrights and create original dramatic works through one-on-one mentorship from students at the Geffen School. The month-long project culminates in fully produced performances of each student’s play in front of an audience. Through its values of community care, joy, curiosity, empowerment, and equity, D/EP has helped to shape the minds of over 200 young people from the Dwight and Edgewood neighborhoods of New Haven since 1995.

Scan QR Code for Guided Tour Schedule

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4 at 8PM

MONDAY, OCTOBER 6 at 8PM

Post-Show Discussion

Join us in the August WIlson Lounge following the performance for a conversation about the show with Yale Rep artistic staff.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10 at 8PM

Black Theater Night!

Yale Rep joyfully invites Black theatergoers to experience Zora Neale Hurston’s Spunk in community. All are welcome, and a post-show community conversation will follow the performance.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15 at 1PM

Pre-Show Reception and Conversation

Please join us for refreshments in the August Wilson Lounge, where members of the creative team will hold a discussion about the play at 1:20PM.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18 at 2PM

Talk Back

Join us after the performance for a conversation about the play and its themes with members of the company.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 20, 5-7PM

Yale Rep @ NHFPL

Stetson Branch Library

197 Dixwell Avenue

Join members of the company of Spunk at NHFPL’s Stetson Branch Library for a discussion about the play and its themes.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 at 8PM

Spanish-Language Captioning

La presentación del 24 de octubre será subtitulada en español. This performance will be open-captioned in Spanish.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1PM–4PM

Zora Neale Hurston Pop-Up

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library 121 Wall Street, Reading Room

A sharing of materials related to Hurston. Free and open to the public.

All events are subject to change. Additional details at yalerep.org.

ACCESSIBILITY SERVICES

October 18 at 2PM

Touch Tour (at 1PM)

Prior to this performance, patrons who are blind or have low vision touch fabric samples, rehearsal props, and building materials to understand better what comprises the production design.

Audio Description

Pre-show description begins at 1:45PM

A live narration of the play’s action, sets, and costumes for patrons who are blind or have low vision.

October 18 at 8PM

American Sign Language

An ASL-interpreted performance for patrons who are deaf or have hearing loss.

October 25 at 2PM

Relaxed Performance

“Relaxed” theater etiquette supporting patrons who have sensory, communication. movement, and learning needs with a judgment-free audience experience.

Open Captioning

A digital display of the play’s dialogue as it’s spoken for patrons who are deaf or have hearing loss.

c2 is pleased to be the official Open Captioning Provider of Yale Rep.

Free listening devices, headsets, and neck loops, and sensory items as well as Braille and large print programs are available at the concierge desk in the theater lobby.

Yale Repertory Theatre gratefully acknowledges the Carol L. Sirot Foundation for underwriting the assistive listening systems in our theaters.

Plan Ahead!

Upcoming accessibility services for Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, translated from the Norwegian by Paul Walsh, directed by James Bundy.

Audio Description

December 13 at 2PM

Touch Tour

December 13 at 2PM

ASL

December 13 at 8PM

Open Captioning

December 20 at 2PM

For more information about our accessibility services or to provide feedback about your experience, contact Laura Kirk, Director of Audience Services: 203.432.1234 or laura.kirk@yale.edu.

ACCESSIBILITY TEAM

Juana Aguilar (ASL Interpreter) is a trilingual Spanish-English ASL interpreter from New York City. Passionate about creating inclusive environments, she is dedicated to working in spaces that embrace and uplift BIPOC and queer artists and creatives. With a commitment to accessibility, she ensures that every performance resonates with diverse audiences, bridging language barriers and fostering connection. When not interpreting, Juana enjoys exploring the world through immersive experiences in nature and food, always seeking new ways to connect with and celebrate culture.

Michelle Banks (ASL Coach), a native of Washington, D.C., is an awardwinning actress, writer, director, and producer. She is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Visionaries of the Creative Arts (VOCA). She is the 2022 recipient of the D.C. area Black Deaf Advocates Award for Outstanding Achievements in Theater for Deaf BIPOC Artists and the 2017 recipient of Gallaudet University’s Laurent Clerc Award for her contribution to theater. Acting credits include Girlfriends, Soul Food, Compensation (film), The C.A. Lyons Project (Alliance Theatre), Reflections of a Black Deaf Woman (one- woman show), and Big River (Mark Taper Forum, Ford Theater). Directing: Camellia For Camille (Deaf Spotlight’s Short Play Festival), Trash (JACK, IRT); ISM and ISM II (Atlas Performing Arts Center); and A Raisin in the Sun (Gallaudet University, Atlas Performing Arts Center). Michelle also served as Director of Artistic Sign Language (DASL) for The Music Man (Olney) and For Colored Girls... (Broadway).

David Chu/c2inc-caption coalition (Open Captioner) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit consultant and the leading provider of professional Live Performance Captioning (sm) for theatrical and cultural presentations. c2 members hold the distinction of being the very first to caption live theater (the Paper Mill Playhouse, NJ), the first to debut on Broadway and Off-Broadway, and have introduced open captioning in prestigious theaters across the country and in London. Captioning in theater has gained momentum and acceptance by theatergoers since its debut in 1996. It addresses the needs of a far larger audience of hard of hearing and deaf people, which includes those who do not use sign language, are late deafened, not self-identified with hearing loss, and those who simply might have missed a punch line.

Deidre Patterson (Audio Describer)

In Deirdre’s former life, she was a radio talk show producer and announcer with her own weekend jazz show. She is currently the box office manager and group sales coordinator for the Palace Theater in Waterbury, Connecticut She is also a multi awardwinning playwright and screenwriter with thirteen screenplays and seven stage plays under her pen, three of which are in her book, Ladies and Whores: Three Two Act Plays. She is honored to be a witness to and be a part this historic production of Zora Neale Hurston’s Spunk

Christopher Robinson (ASL Interpreter) has been a renowned ASL/ English performing arts interpreter for over 30 years. He was chosen to work on productions in the August Wilson canon at Boston’s Huntington

ACCESSIBILITY TEAM

Theatre, some alongside Mr. Wilson himself. Robinson’s extensive interpreting experience includes Hamilton (the Kennedy Center and the Boston Citizens Bank Opera House), Hadestown (Broadway), and other productions at Oregon Cabaret Theatre in Ashland, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Wheelock Family Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Rep, Pittsburgh Playhouse, Portland Stage Company, American Repertory Theater, and The Huntington Theatre Company. He co-founded Think Outside The Vox, an arts accessibility consulting company, and he has worked at Boston University Disability & Access Services since 1994. @think_outside_the_vox thinkoutsidethevox.org

Roger Ideishi he/him (Relaxed Performance Consultant) is Japanese American and the Program Director of Occupational Therapy and Professor of Health, Human Function, and Rehabilitation Sciences at George Washington University. His clinical and research work is focused on improving accessibility and inclusion in the arts including visitor services and employment. He has advised arts and cultural institutions around the globe including in Japan, Russia, Romania, and Ireland. In 2017, he received the Philadelphia Art-Reach Cultural Access Impact Award. In 2019, he received the Kennedy Center’s Excellence in Accessibility Leadership Award for his leadership in educating and advancing accessibility. In 2022, the Kennedy Center recognized him on their Next 50 honoree list for significant impacts on society through the arts.

DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA BOARD

OF ADVISORS

Julie Turaj YC ’94, Chair

Jeremy Smith ’76, East Coast Vice Chair

John Badham ’63, YC ’61, West Coast Vice Chair

Nina Adams MS ’69, NUR ’77

Rudy Aragon LAW ’79

Amy Aquino ’86

Pun Bandhu ’01

John B. Beinecke YC ’69

Sonja Berggren Special Research Fellow ’13

Frances Black ’09

Carmine Boccuzzi YC ’90, LAW ’94

Lynne Bolton

Lois Chiles

Patricia Clarkson ’85

Edgar M. Cullman III ’02, YC ’97

Michael David ’68

Wendy Davies Special Research Fellow ‘21

Sasha Emerson ’84

Lily Fan YC ’01, LAW ’04

Terry Fitzpatrick ’83

Marc Flanagan ’70

Anita Pamintuan Fusco YC ’90

David Alan Grier ’81

Sally Horchow YC ’92

Ellen Iseman YC ’76

David G. Johnson YC ’78

Sarah Long ’92, YC ’85

Cathy MacNeil-Hollinger ’86

Brian Mann ’79

Drew McCoy

David Milch YC ’66

Jennifer Harrison Newman ’11

Richard Ostreicher ’79

Carol Ostrow ’80

Maulik Pancholy ’03

Daphne Rubin-Vega

Tracy Chutorian Semler YC ’86

Michael Sheehan ’76

Anna Deavere Smith HON ’14

Woody Taft YC ’92

Andrew Tisdale

Edward Trach ’58

Esme Usdan YC ’77

Courtney B. Vance ’86

Donald Ware YC ’71

Shana C. Waterman YC ’94, LAW ’00

Kim Williams

Henry Winkler ’70

Amanda Wallace Woods ’03

Thank you to the generous contributors to David Geffen School of Drama and Yale Repertory Theatre

LEADERSHIP SOCIETY

($50,000+)

Anand S. Ahuja and Sonam A. Kapoor

Americana Arts Foundation

Anonymous

Sallie Baldwin Bam

John B. Beinecke

Sonja Berggren and Patrick Seaver

Lois Chiles

Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development

The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation

Estate of William J. Evans, Jr*

Anita Pamintuan Fusco and Dino Fusco

David Geffen Foundation

The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation

Steve Grecco

Estate of Elizabeth

Rhodes Holloway*

David G. Johnson

Sharon and Jim Lowe

Estate of Robert D. Mitchell*

Brian Ong

Talia Shire Schwartzman

Tracy Chutorian Semler

The Shubert Foundation

Stephen Timbers

Edward Trach

Julie Turaj and Rob Pohly

Esme Usdan

Donald R. Ware

GUARANTORS

($25,000–$49,999)

The Roy Cockrum Foundation

Wendy Davies

Sarah Long

Cathy MacNeil-Hollinger and Mark Hollinger

Neil Mazzella

The Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation

Jeremy Smith

Woody Taft

BENEFACTORS

($10,000–$24,999)

Nina Adams and Moreson Kaplan

Rudy and Jeanne Aragon

Ed Barlow

Carmine Boccuzzi and Bernard Lumpkin

Lynne and Roger Bolton

James and Deborah Burrows Foundation

Lily Fan

Ruth and Charles Grannick Jr. Fund at The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven

Mabel Burchard Fischer Grant Foundation

Burry Fredrik Foundation

Rolin Jones

Estate of Stephen R. Lawson*

Lucille Lortel Foundation

Tarell Alvin McCraney

Richard Ostreicher

Michael and Riki Sheehan

Carol L. Sirot

Trust for Mutual

Understanding

PATRONS

($5,000–$9,999)

Pun Bandhu

Eugene G. & Margaret M. Blackford Memorial Fund for the Blind, Bank of America, N.A.,Trustee

Santino Blumetti

Joan Channick

Michael S. David

Terry Fitzpatrick

Marcus Gardley

Howard Gilman Foundation

Sally Horchow

Tien-Tsung Ma

David and Leni Moore

Family Foundation

*deceased

James Munson

Jason Najjoum

NewAlliance Foundation

Carol Ostrow

PRODUCER’S CIRCLE

($2,500–$4,999)

Anonymous

John Badham

Nancy Bynum

Ian Calderon

Deborah Freedman and Ben Ledbetter

Will Gaines

Fred Gorelick and Cheryl MacLachlan

Lane Heard

Ellen Iseman

JANA Foundation

Ann Judd and Bennett Pudlin

Fran Kumin

Rocco Landesman

Pam and Jeff Rank

Bill and Sharon Reynolds

Abby Roth and R. Lee Stump

Daphne Rubin-Vega and Thomas Costanzo

Rosalie Stemer and Stuart Feldman

Amanda Wallace Woods

Nancy Yao

DIRECTOR’S CIRCLE

($1,000–$2,499)

Bruce Altman

Debby Applegate and Bruce Tulgan

Paula Armbruster

Karen BedrosianRichardson

Deborah S. Berman

Frances Black

Andrew Brolin

James Bundy and Anne Tofflemire

Anne and Guido Calabresi

Ramon Delgado

Deeksha Gaur

Melanie Ginter

Eric M. Glover

Betty and Joshua Goldberg

Naomi Grabel

Rob Greenberg

Barry and Maggie Grove

William Halbert

Judy Hansen

Andy Hamingson

Jane Head

James Guerry Hood

Pam Jordan

Elizabeth Kaiden

The Ethel & Abe Lapides Foundation

Charles Letts

George Lindsay, Jr.

Jennifer Lindstrom

Linda Lorimer and Charley Ellis

Brian Mann

Ed Martenson

John McAndrew

Maulik Pancholy

F. Richard Pappas

Ben Sammler

Mark Schmitt and Holly Yeager

Florie Seery

Shekar Shetty

Slotznick Family Fund, a charitable fund of The Foundation for Enhancing Communities

Shepard and Marlene Stone

Ann Trites

Courtney B. Vance

Chris Wall

Carolyn Seely Wiener

Kim Williams

PARTNERS

($500–$999)

Donna Alexander

Shaminda and Carole Amarakoon

Michael Barker and Heidi Hanson

Richard and Alice Baxter

Ashley Bishop

Josh Borenstein

James and Dorothy Bridgeman

Claudia Campos

Joy Carlin

The Leo J. & Celia Carlin Fund

Sarah Bartlo Chaplin

Bill Conner

Daniel Cooperman and Mariel Harris

Sean Cullen

Bob and Priscilla Dannies

Elwood and Catherine Davis

Kelvin Dinkins, Jr.

Caitlin Dutkiewicz

Sasha Emerson

Peter Entin

Jon and Karen Farley

LT Gourzong

Regina Guggenheim

Mark Haber

The Raul Yanes and Sara Hazelwood Foundation

Alan Kibbe

Matthew H. Lewis

Eric Lin

Chih-Lung Liu

Meg Miroshnik

Chiyo Moriuchi

Merle and Arthur Nacht

Victoria Nolan and Clark Crolius

Barbara and William Nordhaus

Janet Oetinger

Arthur Oliner

Louise Perkins and Jeff Glans

Jeffrey Powell and

Adalgisa Caccone

Alec Purves

Faye and Asghar

Rastegar

Karen Bedrosian

Richardson

Chantal Rodriguez

Cynthia Santos-DeCure

Matthew Sonnenfeld

Kyle Stamm

James Steerman

Neal Ann Stephens

Steven Strawbridge

David Sword

Tides Foundation

John Turturro and Katherine Borowitz

Vera Wells

Robert Wildman

Walton Wilson

Steven Wolff

Stephen Zuckerman

INVESTORS

($250–$499)

Narda E. Alcorn

Trent Anderson and Leandro Zeneti

Stephen and Judith August

Alexander Bagnall

Johannes Boeckmann

Susan Brady and Mark Loeffler

Tom Broecker

Aurélia Cohen

Bill Connington

Claire A. Criscuolo

Caitlin Crombleholme

Jane Crum

Rick Davis

Liz Diamond

Laura Eckelman

Susan S. Ellis

Deborah and Henry Fernandez

Marsha Finley

Marc Flanagan

Adam Frank

David Freeman

Shelley Geballe

Jennifer Hershey

Bruce Katzman

Abby Kenigsberg

Alan Kibbe

Mitchell Kurtz

Gabriela Lee

Irene Lewis

Katie Liberman and Eric Gershman

Suzanne Cryer Luke and Greg Luke

Jonathan Marks*

Thomas G. Masse and James M. Perlotto, MD

Pamela and Donald Michaelis

Kathryn Milano

David Muse

Jennifer Harrison Newman

Bruce Payne and Jack Thomas

Michael Posnick

Jon and Sarah Reed

Steve Robman

Nan Ross

Suzanne Sato

Kenneth Schlesinger

Paul Selfa

James Sinclair

Mark Stevens

Matthew Tanico

Katherine Touart

Harold Wolpert

Judith and Guy Yale

Yale-China Association

FRIENDS

($100–$249)

Melinda Agsten

Michael Albano

Alyssa Anderson-Kuntz

Michael Annand

Anonymous

David Armstrong

William Armstrong

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven

Nancy and John Babington

Katalin Baltimore

Dani Barlow

Warren Bass

William and Donna Batsford

Elana Bildner

Mark Bly

Amy Brewer

Amy Bowers

Linda Broker

Arvin Brown

Donald and Mary Brown

Stephen and Nancy Brown

Stephen Bundy

Michael Cadden

Kathryn Calnan

H. Lloyd Carbaugh

Sami Joan Casler

Kwan Chi Chan

Robert Channick

Cynthia Clair

Susan Clark

Ellen Cohen

Geoffrey Cohen

Leland Cole-Chu

Michael Connair

Caitlin E. Crombleholme

Alama Cuervo

John Cunningham

Eric Dana

Connie and Peter Dickinson

Derek DiGregorio

Melinda DiVicino

Dennis Dorn

Laura Eckelman

Fran Egler

Robert Einenkel

Nancy Reeder

El Bouhali

Janna Ellis

David Epstein

Dustin Eshenroder

Frank and Ellen Estes

Femi Euba

Connie Evans

Michael Fain

Ann Farris

Mark Fitzpatrick

Sarah Fornia

Hugh Fortmiller

Richard Freeman

Richard Fuhrman

David Gainey

Don and Margery

Galluzzi

Tobe Gerard

Barry Gladue

Martin and Cariole

Goldberg

Donna Golden

Melissa Goldman

Charles Grammer

Hannah Grannemann

Anne Gregerson

Michael Gross

Annabel Guevara

Dr. James L. Hadler

Alexander Hammond

Ann Hanley

John Harnagel

Michael Haymes

Ethan Heard

Steve Hendrickson

Jeffrey Herrmann

Allison Hoffman

Betsy Hoos

Nicholas Hormann

Kathleen Houle

David Howson

Melissa Huber

Evelyn Huffman

Charles Hughes

Derek Hunt

Jennifer Ito

Tracey Jaeger

Chris Jaehnig

Eliot and Lois

Jameson

Kim Jannarone

Elizabeth Johnson

Jean Jones

Jay Keene

Barnet Kellman

Jim Kenny

Peter Young Hoon Kim

Lawrence Klein

George Klug

Glenn Knapp

Chloe Knight

Steve Koernig

David Kriebs

Susan Laity

Marie Landry and Peter Aronson

Martha Lidji Lazar

Gabriela Lee

Sheree Levine

Elizabeth Lewis

Malia Lewis

Erik Lier

Annie Lin

Fred Lindauer

Sam Linden

Jerry Lodynsky

Robert H. Long II

Judith Loughry

Everett Lunning

Nancy F. Lyon

Wendy MacLeod

Edwin Martin

Sarah Masotta

Marya Mazor

Robert McCaw

Mary McCutcheon

Phyllis McGrath

James Meisner and Marilyn Lord

Jonathan Miller

Michele Millham

Lawrence Mirkin

Richard Mone

Sherry Mordecai

Frederick More

Michele Moriuchi

David Morgan

Leora Morris

Gwyneth Muller

Jan O’ Malley

Leah Ogawa

Jennifer B. Oliver

Richard Olson

Jacob G. Padrón

Joey Parnes

Lisa Rigsby Peterson

Michael Petrillo

Alan Plattus

William Purves

Sarah Rafferty

Mohamed A. Ramy

Michael Reiner

Deborah J. Reissman

Rachel Resnick

Lisa Richardson

Carolynn Richer

Felicia Riffelmacher

Joan Robbins

Katherine Roberts

Nathan Roberts

Peter S. Roberts

Lori Robishaw

Naomi Rogers

Erica Rooney

Miguel Rosadu

Robin Rose

Robert Rosenheck

Russ Rosensweig

Joseph Ross

Steven Saklad

Robert Sandberg

Sallie Sanders

Christopher Sanderson

Peggy Sasso

Arven Saunders

Joel Schechter

Rita Scheeler

Anne Schelling

Steven Schmidt

Jennifer Schwartz

Kathleen Scott

Alexander Scribner

Subrata K. Sen

Sandra Shaner

Jeremy Shapira

Catherine Sheehy

Kavya Shetty

Graham Shiels

Gilbert and Ruth Small

James Smith

Helena L. Sokoloff

Suzanne Solensky and Jay Rozgonyi

Ilona K. Somogyi

Mikayla Stanley

Howard Steinman

Sandra Stein

Marcus Stern

John Stevens

Mark Stevens

Mark Sullivan

Thomas Sullivan

Sy Sussman

Jean and Yeshvant

Talati

Jane Savitt Tennen

of Drama and Yale Repertory Theatre

John Thomas

Patti Thorp

David F. Toser

David and Lisa Totman

Katherine Touart

Julie Trager

Russell L. Treyz

Deb Trout

Adam Tucker

Lloyd Tucker

Shira Turner

Carrie Van Hallgren

Ariana Venturi

John Waldes

Adin Walker

Christine Wall

Jaylene Wallace

Paul Walsh

Erik Walstad

Emma Wang

David Ward

Steven Waxler

Jonathan Wemette

Dr. Robert White

Alexandra Witchel

Christopher Yurkovsky and Deborah

McArthur

Liza Zenni

Yuhan Zhang

Gifts In Kind

Disney Theatrical Group

ETC Lighting

EMPLOYER MATCHING GIFTS

Ameriprise Financial

The Benevity Community Impact Fund

Covidien

The Prospect Hill Foundation

Gifts to the For Humanity campaign and David Geffen School of Drama New Facility Fund

Anonymous (3)

Nina Adams and Moreson Kaplan

Amy Aquino and Drew McCoy

Rudy Aragon

John Badham

Pun Bandhu

Frances and Ed Barlow

John B. Beinecke

Sonja Berggren and Patrick Seaver

Frances Black and Matthew Strauss

Carmine Boccuzzi and Bernard Lumpkin

Reginald Brown and Tiffeny Sanchez

James Bundy and Anne Tofflemire

Nancy Bynum

Lois Chiles

Michael David and Lauren Mitchell

Wendy Davies

Scott Delman

Michael Diamond* and Amy Miller

Estate of Nicholas Diggs*

Estate of Richard Diggs*

Sasha Emerson

Lily Fan

Terry Fitzpatrick

Barbara Franke

Anita Pamintuan Fusco and Dino Fusco

David Marshall Grant

Gilder Foundation

The Hastings and Barcone Trust

Lane Heard and Margaret Bauer

Cheryl Henson

Sally Horchow

Ellen Iseman

David G. Johnson

David H. Johnson

Rolin Jones

Jane Kaczmarek

James and Sharon Lowe

Cathy MacNeil-Hollinger and Mark Hollinger

Brian Mann

Lara Meiland-Shaw

Jennifer Harrison Newman

Brian Ong

Richard Ostreicher

The Prospect Hill Foundation

Daphne Rubin-Vega and Thomas Costanzo

Julie Turaj and Rob Pohly

Tracy Chutorian Semler

Michael and Riki

Sheehan

Jeremy Smith

Woody Taft

Andrew and Nesrin

Tisdale

Ed Trach

Esme Usdan

Donald and Susan Ware

Shana C. Waterman

Amanda Wallace Woods and Eric Wasserstrom

Dr. Jessica WeiserMcCarthy and Timothy McCarthy

Henry Winkler

*deceased

These lists includes current pledges, gifts, and grants received from July 1, 2024, through September 1, 2025.

YALE REPERTORY THEATRE THANKS YALE SCHOOL OF THE ENVIRONMENT FOR THEIR SUPPORT OF SPUNK.