YSD Annual Magazine 2012

Annual Magazine of Yale School of Drama 2012–2013

YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA

THE COSTUME SHOP CREATES THE WINTER’S TALE CURTAIN UP ON THE BINGER CENTER FOR NEW THEATRE FROM THERE TO HERE AND BACK: YSD INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

From the Dean Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theatre

Six weeks ago, my wife, Anne Tofflemire, took me into our backyard —where we host an annual barbecue for faculty, staff, and students —to show me a spider web some eight feet across, strung between our roof line at about eleven feet high to our patio table at about 30 inches high and three feet from the house. (I count on Anne to show me things like this, which I can often miss in the hustle of the workaday world.)

Looking at the web, I couldn’t decide which was more amazing: its scale and location, or the fact that it was made by a spider (resting peacefully at the time) measuring less than an inch from toe-to-toe. It hardly seemed possible that such a small creature could have spun such an encompassing creation.

Similarly, reading this magazine, I cannot decide which is more impressive: the beautiful web of the myriad world-wide achievements of faculty, staff, students, and alumni of the School of Drama that are retold in these pages, or the fact that so much cultural impact has been accomplished by so few people.

How do such seeming miracles happen? Well, in the case of the spider’s web, it turns out that all that work to create the web is a really efficient way to get fed: The sticky silk catches the all-important dinner. Even more remarkable, after the stickiness wears off, it is common for a spider, at the end of the day, to eat her own web in order to store up energy for the next day’s spinning.

So, too, the web of our work—whether in the theatre or other media, in journalism or the academy, in public policy or many related endeavors —is how we support ourselves and our families. In addition, each year, I find that spending time reading in these pages feeds me like the spider gobbling up her web: Reading about your accomplishments and hearing your voices in these pages gives me greater inspiration to work harder tomorrow, and to add my voice to yours, in service of our culture.

With the advance of technology (a.k.a., the other “web”), and thanks to the leadership of Deborah Berman, Director of Development and Alumni Affairs, and our dedicated staff, we are able to communicate more regularly and fully with you than ever before in the School of Drama’s history—our quarterly electronic newsletter is about to enter its second year, and the overwhelming majority of you have given us your e-mail address, which we are pleased to use to inform you of major developments at the School. (If you haven’t yet been able to pass that e-mail along, we hope you will soon!)

But the fact that we are more often in touch with more facts also allows us to shift our focus away from the “news” about the School of Drama, to the ideas, feelings, and spirit of the School, as represented by students, faculty, and staff, and alumni. I appreciate that difference, which may be as subtle and silky as a spider’s web, but is still to be observed and admired. My thanks to all of you who have contributed to this edition of the Alumni Magazine, and I sincerely hope that you’ll let us know how you are doing in time for next year’s, or visit us on campus before too long!

Sincerely,

James Bundy

4

YSD 2011–12

James Bundy ’95 Dean, Artistic Director Victoria Nolan Deputy Dean/Managing Director

Yale School of Drama Board of Advisors John Beinecke yc ’69, Chair John Badham ’63, yc ’61, Vice Chair Jeremy Smith ’76, Vice Chair Amy Aquino ’86 John Lee Beatty ’73 Sonja Berggren Lynne Bolton Clare Brinkley Sterling B. Brinkley, Jr. yc ’74 Kate Burton ’82 Lois Chiles Patricia Clarkson ’85 Edgar (Trip) M. Cullman III ’02, yc ’97 Scott Delman yc ’82 Michael Diamond ’90 Polly Draper ’80, yc ’77 Charles S. Dutton ’83 Sasha Emerson ’84 Heidi Ettinger ’76 Terry Fitzpatrick ’83 Marc Flanagan ’70 Donald P. Granger, Jr. yc ’85 David Marshall Grant ’78 Ruth Hendel Catherine MacNeil Hollinger ’86 Ellen Iseman yc ’76 David Johnson yc ’78 Asaad Kelada ’64 Mark Linn-Baker ’79, yc ’76 Sarah Long ’92, yc ’85 Donald Lowy ’76 Elizabeth Margid ’91, yc ’82 Neil A. Mazzella ’78 Drew McCoy Tarell McCraney ’07 David Milch yc ’66 Arthur Nacht ’06 Carol Ostrow ’80 Amy Povich ’92 Liev Schreiber ’92 Tony Shalhoub ’80 Michael Sheehan ’76 Ed Trach ’58 Courtney B. Vance ’86 Henry Winkler ’70

Bundy photo by Harold Shapiro

Dear Alumni,

Contents

2012–2013

10 The Costume Shop

46 Honors

18

22

Ron Van Lieu

Viva FromLas There Vegas to Here and Back

Features

Departments

10

24

The Costume Shop

Placing Artists at the Center

32 The Season in Review

By Maya Maria Cantu ’10, dfa cand.

By Tanya Dean ’11, dfa cand.

41 Alumni Events

3

On and Off York Street

44 Graduation

18

30

46 Honors and Awards

From There to Here and Back

Mark Linn-Baker: The Work’s the Thing

49 The Art of Giving

By Meg Miroshnik ’11

By Alex Trow ’12, yc ’09

22 The Second Life of Ron Van Lieu

By Bryce Pinkham ’08

52 In Memoriam 58 Bookshelf 59 Alumni Notes 84 Contributors

From the Editor

Dear Friends, It is a natural part of my work in the Development Office to crow about the School’s artistic activities, and yet working in close proximity to everything that happens here makes our students’ achievements seem like the normal course of events. One of our playwrights has a play onstage in New York and a screenplay being produced in Hollywood, and I think, “Of course!” A recently graduated actor gets a Tony nomination for her performance in a new Broadway musical, and it seems natural. A South American playwright goes home and teaches a playwriting course, the first of its kind ever given in his country: good show.

The costume shop, under the leadership of Tom McAlister, consistently operates at the highest level of creativity and skill. Once again, Tom and his team outdid themselves with a spectacularly dressed production of The Winter’s Tale, directed by Liz Diamond (Faculty), designed by Jennifer Moeller ’06, and we felt it was a perfect vehicle to show step-by-step just how the shop operates.

There are also fascinating and important things being done by our graduates both behind the scenes and on stages around the world. Meg Miroshnik’s ’11 story on international students spotlights both the students from other countries who have brought their training back home, and those who have stayed and made their careers in America. The values and artistry of Yale School of Drama are felt in venues in every part of the globe!

And add to this, as you will read in Tanya Dean’s ’11, dfa cand. article, the Robina Foundation gave Yale School of Drama $18 million to endow the Binger Center for New Theatre. The effect of this gift on the creation of new American plays will be felt for years to come.

And of course there is the ongoing work of our alumni and faculty: a profile of the varied career of actor Mark Linn-Baker ’79, yc ’76, written by Alex Trow ’12, yc ’09, and a revealing conversation between Chair of Acting Ron Van Lieu and former student Bryce Pinkham ’08.

Yale School of Drama has had an extraordinary year, but it doesn’t surprise me at all.

ANNUAL MAGAZINE YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA Fall 2012, Vol. LVII

Editorial Staff Deborah S. Berman Editor Barry Jay Kaplan Associate Editor Belene Day Managing Editor Laura J. Eckelman ’11 Consulting Editor Susan Clark Editorial Coordinator

Contributors Christopher Bayes (Faculty) Lileana Blain-Cruz ’12 Amy Boratko ’06 Maya Cantu ’10, dfa cand.

Tanya Dean ’11, dfa cand.

Ethan Heard ’13, yc ’06 Amy Herzog ’07, yc ’00 Ilya Khodosh ’14 Jake Jeppson ’12 Martyna Majok ’12 Katherine McGerr ’14 Caroline McGraw ’12 Meg Miroshnik ’11 James Mountcastle ’90 (Faculty) Bryce Pinkham ’08 Louisa Proske ’12 Paul Pryce ’13 Alexandra Ripp ’13 Jessica Rizzo ’14 Matthew Suttor (Faculty) Alexandra Trow ’12, yc ’09 Jessica Wolf (Faculty)

Design Jack Design, jackdesignstudio.com

deborah.berman@yale.edu On the Cover

Luke Robertson ’09, Adina Verson ’12, and Sheria Irving ’13 in Yale Repertory Theatre’s 2012 production of The Winter’s Tale, photo by Joan Marcus

On and Off York Street

News fromYale School of Drama

“The Adoration of Hiroshima,” an antinuclear mas procession by Peter Minshall, Washington, D.C., 1985, photo by Ernesto Bazan

Bats, Blue Devils, and Fancy Sailors I can vividly recall, as a boy growing up in Trinidad, the spontaneous magic of the Carnival. I remember being mesmerized by a performance by Peter Minshall, whose dancing sculptural mobiles and his living canvases of 3,000 people wearing intricately designed costumes, explored both fantasies and controversial issues.

This year, on the Yale stage, with only a handful of projected slides for support, Peter gave a deeply moving account of the events that marked his career, beginning with his early days as a young boy discovering the vitality of the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, followed by his time at London’s Central School of Art and Design, where he studied set design, and his subsequent successes in the London art scene, to his return to Trinidad to design and construct a little costume for a piece called From the Land of the Hummingbird for his adopted sister—a move that would alter the trajectory of his life and career.

Minshall is a “masman,” an artist who specializes in the street theatre of the Trinidad Carnival, locally referred to as “mas.” His work transcends mere ritualistic performance because he applies con-

ventional forms of theatre and design to the intuitiveness and immediacy of the traditional art form of “mas-making” to create some of the most exhilarating and contemporary works of art of the twentieth century. Having been enraptured by Trinidad’s traditional Carnival characters—the Bat, the Blue Devil, and the Fancy Sailor—at an early age, Minshall discussed how these characters became indelible blueprints that would inform his future works.

“Mas” is visceral and experiential in nature, Minshall explained. It relies on human kinetic energy to exist. The masquerader is not just the performer but is, in fact, a co-creator of the work along with the “Masman.” Without him there is no art. Minshall’s keen understanding of this symbiotic relationship is what sets him apart from his contemporaries and makes him a unique artist. For example, River (1983) depicts the rise of globalization at the expense of the environment; Rat Race (1988) is a satire on political corruption in government; and one of Minshall’s earliest works, Paradise Lost (1974), pays homage to Milton’s epic.

To me what makes his art resonate so

YSD 2012–13

profoundly is not that his work reflects the world in which he lives, but that he is brave enough to comment unapologetically on that world. This truth is what has allowed him to travel from the streets of Port of Spain to the arena stages of the Barcelona, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City Olympic Games as artistic director of their opening ceremonies.

The power of Minshall’s work has seeped into my subconscious, just as the Bat, the Blue Devil, and the Fancy Sailor seeped into his as a young boy, and his work— more than any other artist—continues to inform my own sense of identity and individuality.

Minshall inspired the young YSD audience members to trust their expression and to always persevere toward attaining their dreams, quoting the legendary Martha Graham: “There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time. This expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost.”

Paul Pryce ’13

3

On and Off York Street Advice to a Young Actor: Keep the Faith

(Left to right) Catherine Sheehy ’92, dfa ’99 (Faculty), Katherine Roth, Harold Gessner, Jessica Wolf (Faculty), James Bundy ’95 (Dean), and Anne Tofflemire at the Great Wall

Yale Goes to China In January 2012, James Bundy ’95 (Dean), Wendall Harrington (Faculty), Catherine Sheehy ’92, dfa ’99 (Faculty), and I were invited to present our work at the 2012 Winter Institute conference hosted by the Shanghai Theater Academy in China, and to explore the possibilities of future collaboration with our Chinese counterparts.

James Bundy gave workshops in Acting Chekhov and Theatre Season Planning; Wendall Harrington taught Projection Design; Catherine Sheehy lectured on How Dramaturgs Help Playwrights Develop Their Plays and Comic Theories; I led a series of workshops on the Alexander Technique. Our students were a mix of undergraduate and graduate actors, playwrights, directors, and designers from China and America.

We had the opportunity to see group improvisational pieces developed by the students based on The Analects of Confucius, ten-minute plays that explored traditional philosophies and parables. We also saw a performance in the style of the Beijing Opera of Strindberg’s Miss Julie in an abridged adaptation by William Sun, vice president of the Shanghai Theatre Academy. In all of these performances we observed vigorous physical training, stylized movement, and sophisticated vocal work.

From Shanghai we went to Beijing, met with the president of the Central Academy of Drama, and toured the new campus and its stateof-the-art theatres, rehearsal space, and large sunlit classrooms. Each year 6,000 actors apply to the Academy, out of which 300 are admitted; one third major in musical theatre, another third in traditional Beijing opera, and a final third in Western-style drama. The day’s entertainment was a rehearsal of the Gershwin musical Crazy for You with a cast of 30 musical theatre majors, the highlight being “I’ve Got Rhythm,” sung in Chinese. Although many cultural differences still separate us, that piece on that day brought us together.

Jessica Wolf (Faculty)

4

YSD 2012–13

Thirty students gathered in the third-floor lounge of the University Theatre to have a conversation with Rob Campbell ’91 and Susannah Schulman, who were appearing in The Winter’s Tale at Yale Rep. Rob and Sarah, as Beinecke Fellows, took their talent and experience out of the rehearsal room and off the stage into informal conversations with Yale School of Drama students. The third-floor lounge, with its easy chairs and sofas, was certainly informal, but student interest was intense and the answers to their questions were frank and ultimately, inspiring.

“What’s really important when you begin your career?” one student asked.

Rob nodded, as if he had once asked himself the same question. “We actors want our first movie, our first Broadway show,” he said. “But once you’ve done them, you wonder what’s next, and if it’s not about getting famous, then you wonder if you still want to do this and not make tons of money. That transition is a struggle. For me it was clear: I loved acting. That’s the moment when you realize the ‘calling’ is much deeper, and if it’s your deepest, most passionate love, you’ll stick with it.”

Another student asked, “But what about having a personal life, too?”

Susannah ruefully admitted that life and career can be a difficult fit: “My husband’s an actor, too,” she said. “At the end of April he goes to Dublin for three months. Sometimes you’re in different places. You have to realize we chose this life.”

At that moment, visiting alumnus John Rothman ’75 chimed in. “I graduated from here in 1975,” he said. “Other

Beinecke Fellows Rob Campbell ’91 and Susannah Schulman

News from Yale School of Drama

than a few times being a waiter, I’ve been an actor. I’ve done commercial theatre, television, movies, and felt lucky. But it’s important to find a way to do a great role even if you haven’t been cast in a production. I’m doing workshops with Ron Van Lieu (Faculty) to stay in touch with that part of my passion. I have two kids, and I’ve been helped by the fact that my wife isn’t an actor. But she had to be on board with it because you can go months without working, and then the very day you need to be with your family you get a job.

It’s stressful.”

“If you have a choice between roles,” a student asked, “what makes you choose one over the other?”

“For me, there are loyalty issues,” Susannah said. “If someone asks me to do a job and then something better comes up, I usually stay with the first one because of loyalty. Work leads to work, and you don’t know how.”

Rob shook his head in agreement, adding, “You can have as rich an experience in an off-off-Broadway play that nobody’s paying attention to as you can on Broadway. Decide how much you can afford to invest in projects that will help you grow and keep your passion alive.”

“What if you don’t agree with the director?” someone asked, and there were murmurs in the room as if everyone had had this experience.

Susannah nodded as if to say she’d had it too: “Don’t always assume the director’s opinion is right just because you’re young,” she said. “It’s okay for there to be moments of conflict in the rehearsal room over important issues. Just make sure to take the time before rehearsals to work on your role, to bring some ideas to the director and the rest of the company.”

As the question-and-answer session was coming to a close, Rob had this to say: “Understand that this is a ‘calling.’ The passion within you is real. You have to accept that and stay with it. Never keep your day job. Keep your faith in your choices, your career, yourself.”

The Accidental Career “Mine was an accidental career.”

This statement was hard to reconcile with the performance by De’Adre Aziza in Christina Anderson’s ’11 Good Goods at Yale Rep. How could such a compelling performer have just stumbled into her career? A Beinecke Fellow, De’Adre explained her circuitous route to Broadway.

While working toward her MFA in Acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she dreamed of working for George C. Wolfe. She’d seen Wolfe’s productions of Jelly’s Last Jam, Angels in America, and Measure for Measure, and in addition to being thrilled by them, she was very impressed by one other fact: “He was black!” she said, “and there weren’t many black actors around back then. In fact, there were only two of us in my class at NYU.” After her graduation from NYU, she became an intern at The Public Theater, working in the production office and stage managing. But because she had a son when she was 23 and needed to earn a living, she started working in restaurants, a detour from acting that lasted five years.

“One day The Public pulled my headshot Beinecke Fellow De’Adre Aziza in Good out from some dusty pile and asked me Goods, photo by Joan Marcus to audition for something in Palo Alto.” It turned out to be the Broadway-bound musical Passing Strange, by singer-songwriter Stew and collaborator Heidi Rodewald.

De’Adre’s singing career had its fits and starts in her school days. Her mother thought she was too young for the music business and that the content of songs was too racy for a teenager. “I thought my deep singing voice was weird and not marketable. A lot of us in the cast weren’t musical theatre actors. We approached it with that in mind, that it

“

One day The Public pulled my headshot out from some dusty pile and asked me to audition for something in Palo Alto.

”

De’Adre Aziza

was not a musical, just something with a lot of music. And that’s how Stew was about it, too. We were all like teenagers. Passing Strange was my first regional, off-Broadway, and Broadway production, all rolled into one. I didn’t know what to expect.”

After Passing Strange closed, De’Adre didn’t work for a year. “I thought my career would go a certain way and it didn’t,” she said. “My agent would come to me with workshops and I’d turn them down, until I finally realized that I had to do workshops because they could become plays, and I wasn’t going to get anything unless I took one.”

So she took one and it became Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which put her back on Broadway.

Janice Muirhead, Emalie A. Mayo, and Chris Bannow ’14

YSD 2012–13

5

On and Off York Street Neil Mazzella, Titan At the 11th annual meeting of the Board of Advisors of Yale School of Drama, Neil Mazzella ’78 announced his plans to step down as chair. Neil was the first chair when the Board, originally called the Leadership Council, was formed ten years ago. The founding membership consisted of Neil, John Badham ’63, yc ’61, Ed Trach ’58, and John Beinecke yc ’69.

In his ten years as chair, Neil helped to recruit YSD and Yale College alumni as well as friends to become members of the Board. A dedicated advocate for the School, he also served on the Yale Tomorrow campaign committee. But his involvement has been even more direct over the years: As owner of Hudson Scenic Studio—a 120,000-square-foot facility in Yonkers, NY and one of the most successful providers of sets, automation, and painted backdrops in the entertainment industry—Neil has hired many Technical Design and Production alumni to work at his company. Hudson Scenic is responsible for lowering the New Year’s Eve ball in Times Square and for most of the sets for shows on Broadway and tours around the world. Hudson also works on corporate and industrial events, international cruise lines, and major theme parks.

At the meeting, James Bundy ’95 (Dean) said of Neil, “His generosity and fearlessness are amazing, including attendance at countless University meetings where he stood up and said, ‘But what about the Drama School?’ He is a titan, and it’s great that he’s staying on the Board.”

The School of Drama remains very close to Neil’s heart. In his remarks to the Board, which were typically modest, Neil said, “I’m stepping down, not leaving. But it’s time for new leadership. I wanted to say thank you to everyone. My whole industry depends on this interaction. It’s something that has mattered to me. I’m proud and grateful to be part of that, and of this school.”

Neil Mazzella ’78 on his As his last official duty, Neil turned the meeting over to last day as chair of the YSD the new chair, John Beinecke, who had previously been Board of Advisors with serving as one of the Board’s vice chairs. As Neil sat down, James Bundy ’95 (Dean) all the Board members rose to their feet to give him a welldeserved standing ovation.

Post-show grins

Welcome Back, Janice Muirhead Filling the post of senior associate director of development requires expertise in fund-raising, grant-writing, donor stewardship, staff development, internal and external relations, special events, and Janice Muirhead strategic planning.

Development Director Deborah S. Berman felt certain from their first meeting that Janice Muirhead was the right person for the job. “Her qualifications were impeccable,” Deborah said, “and her love of theatre made her the perfect choice.”

Janice comes to the School with significant experience in institutional leadership, management, and development at major arts organizations, as well as successful planning and implementation of complex projects in tightly constrained financial environments with critical deadlines.

Her extensive résumé includes: director of institutional giving at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, artistic manager and interim executive director at Westport Country Playhouse, director of production at Long Wharf Theatre, and interim executive director for Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA. Janice has also acted as a consultant for various arts organizations, including Pilobolus Dance Theatre and the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center. In addition to all that, she was a guest lecturer at Yale School of Drama for eight years.

“I’m glad to be back,” Janice says.

And the department is glad to have her.

David Alan Grier ’81 joined YSD students and alumni on the stage of the Richard Rodgers Theatre following a matinee performance of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess on June 3, 2012. Grier was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical for his performance as Sporting Life.

Photo by Flordelino Lagundino

6

YSD 2012–13

News from Yale School of Drama

A Woman of Many Talents It’s only been a year since Kate Krier ’07 was appointed head of the Office of Undergraduate Production (OUP) at Yale, but her preparation for such a role has taken years.

Back in 2006, when Emily Carson Coates yc ’06, grd ’11 wanted to hire Kate as production manager for the World Performance Project (WPP), the response was wholeheartedly enthusiastic: “Our hiring timeline fell sooner than the completion of Kate’s MFA work. Everyone I spoke to at YSD told me, ‘Kate is worth waiting for.’ Kate flourished in that position, Coates said, adding, “She went on to lend considerable organizational heft not only to WPP but also to Theater Studies, the Yale Baroque Opera Project, and Shakespeare at Yale.”

“I’ve long been interested in a variety of fields of production and design, and that has prepared me well for my new job with the OUP,” Kate says. Indeed, while a student she sought out diverse opportunities and enjoyed serving as an assistant costume shop manager for Black Snow at Yale Rep and sound en-

gineer for Attempts on Her Life at the School, as well as more traditional TD&P gigs, such as assistant props master for Sara Ruhl’s Eurydice and master electrician for Brundibar, both at Yale Rep. “Kate is one of only a handful of Drama School students to complete an MFA in less than three years of residency,” reflects her mentor, Ben Sammler ’74

Kate Krier ’07

(Faculty). Kate is matter-of-fact about it: “I saw that it could be done.”

Even for the calmest heads, the OUP is quite an undertaking. This past year OUP supported 173 productions in a variety of performance spaces, comprising 74 plays, 49 sketch comedy and improv shows, 18 dance shows, 12 a cappella concerts, 8 cultural shows, 7 music events, 4 poetry readings, and 1 fashion show. This sort of schedule is not for the faint of heart, but Kate welcomes new challenges.

“In her new position Kate is excited to grow the OUP as a resource center for students, staff, and faculty for both curricular and extracurricular performances of all descriptions,” says Susan Cahan, associate dean for the arts. Before starting her new job, Kate helped organize an open workshop for stage combat with YSD Lecturer and Fight Director Mike Rossmy.

What’s important to Kate? “That members of the Yale community understand not only why the office exists, but also how it can collaborate to lift the arts at Yale.”

Sometimes the right person really does get the right job.

Matthew Suttor (Faculty)

The Freedom Theatre On October 5, 2011 Yale School of Drama hosted representatives from The Freedom Theatre. Based in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin, The Freedom Theatre is currently the only professional venue for theatre and multimedia arts in the West Bank.

Freedom Theatre company members spoke to a large group in the Yale Repertory Theatre lounge, responding to questions from students, faculty, staff, and community residents. Those in attendance were treated to some stirring video footage of the company’s past productions of Alice in Wonderland and an adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, but the best gifts offered were the stories that Freedom Theatre company members shared. One young woman described the experience of being the first girl ever to dance onstage in the Jenin Refugee Camp.

Others spoke of their theatre as an oasis of color, of joy, and of play in a desert of fear and deprivation.

Following the death of their beloved teacher and charismatic founding artistic director, Israeli film star Juliano Mer Khamis, The Freedom Theatre finds itself unmoored and in a precarious position, both financially and politically. The company explained that the purpose of their visit to America was twofold; they hoped not only to communicate their people’s plight by sharing work and engaging in intercultural dialogue, but also to learn from top American conservatories about successful actor-training models. While at YSD, company members were also able to participate in a number of acting classes and get to know students and faculty in a variety of informal settings.

Jessica Rizzo ’14

A scene from a Freedom Theatre production, photo courtesy of The Freedom Theatre

YSD 2012–13

7

On and Off York Street The Realistic Joneses Get Real The cast of Will Eno’s The Realistic Joneses— Glenn Fitzgerald, Parker Posey, Tracy Letts, and Johanna Day, all Beinecke Fellows— ascended to the third-floor lounge of the University Theatre, where lunch and a room packed with students awaited them. The students were eager to hear everything they knew about acting, the play in particular, and the profession in general. The actors, who spoke in a manner unique to the world of Will Eno when onstage, sounded remarkably different in their own voices. The first subject discussed was the ways in which acting approaches and techniques change as the actor moves between stage and screen.

“There’s a difference in the acting process for different media,” said Parker, an actor in many independent films and television shows who has only done four stage plays.

“When you work on television, there is a pace and particular style. You have to crunch the dialogue. You can’t bring your humanity.

You have to adapt to the tone of the medium.

Theatre, on the other hand, is where you get a workout.”

A New York-based actor who appears regularly off-Broadway, Glenn also keeps an apartment in Los Angeles, where he does the occasional guest spot on various series.

“Technically, television is more intimate,” he said. “It takes less energy, less voice. You have to do all the preparation yourself. You mostly get no help. And there’s not much room for spontaneity.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (August: Osage County) Tracy said, “Television is too technical. You don’t know anyone. It’s a drag.

I audition. I get it. Then I do it, and I hate it.”

Tracy lives in Chicago where, he added, “You can’t make any money but can always get good work.”

Johanna is a theatre actor who admits to not having a lot of control over her career but manages “to keep it sacred.” She described herself as the poorest actor she knows. She is even wary of being in a hit, afraid that “if you’re in a play seen by a lot of people, you could get stuck in that role and have people only think of you in that one way.”

Will Eno’s play is both stylized and realistic, and the challenge for the actor is to have a natural conversation onstage and still play

8

Johanna Day, Glenn Fitzgerald, Tracy Letts, and Parker Posey at YSD, photo by Joan Channick

the stylized theatricality of the script. In rehearsals the cast would spend a week in “the style,” then the director would ask them to sound more like real people, then he’d ask them to get back into the style. Tracy said that ultimately it was like walking the line between “talking to each other” and “wearing the style suit.”

The script didn’t lend itself to simple interpretations. Just as its effect crept up on the audience, so it did for Glenn, who found himself coming up against his own harshness and limitations as a human being. “The play was more about love,” he said, “but I kept fighting the material.” A balance had to be reached in deciding how much and how little to project outward. “Productions on Broadway often spoon-feed the nuances to the audience,” he said. “In this play, the audience had to lean in just a bit to hear them.”

Glenn talked about how his natural animation as an actor had to be restrained, and he found that the tension between his innate urge to indicate and the character’s innate urge to communicate nothing added to his characterization.

YSD 2012–13

Rehearsals were exhausting, the cast agreed. “Creativity doesn’t come easy,” Johanna said, and the others nodded. She admitted that she didn’t always do the big emotional scenes full out because “you just can’t do it every day in rehearsal. You need to keep it to yourself sometimes and eventually you let it go.” Even once the play opened, the actors found that their days were constructed around the performances; when they were together, an enormous amount of their conversation was about how well or poorly they’d slept.

Finally, this disparate group had some last-minute advice for their YSD audience: “Do a lot of play readings. Get to know playwrights. Ask for help from your community of actors. Stay interested. Read fiction.”

Barry Jay Kaplan

News from Yale School of Drama

(left) Tanzanian acrobats from the Babawatoto Center; (right) Dan O'Brien ’14, Margot Bordelon ’13, Lauren Dubowski ’14, Eliza Simon, Justin Taylor ’14, Fay Simpson (Faculty), Maulid Mohamed

Theatre for Social Justice, Year Two In July and August, Yale School of Drama continued its program—founded by Gamal Palmer ’08—on creating social justice through music, theatre and religion. The goal, according to Gamal, is “to bring lasting transformation to the African communities that witness the public theatre piece we create, as well as inspire the Yale students to the extent they continue working on theatre for social justice in their lives at home.”

Like last year, the program was facilitated

by Gamal and Fay Simpson (Faculty), joined

by Myra Melford, a professor of improvisational music at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley. Training before the trip included Fay’s Lucid Body physical acting technique, practical skills in creating theatre for social change with members of Gamal’s company, In the Cypher, and postcolonial theory as it relates to contemporary life in East Africa.

Zachary Enumah yc ’11, a student in Yale’s African Studies ma program, also gave a crash course in Swahili.

The group—Lauren Dubowski ’14, Margot Bordelon ’13, Elia Monte-Brown ’14, Justin Taylor ’13, and Dan O’Brien ’14— flew to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Once there, they followed Mgunga Mwa Mnyenyelwa to the Babawatoto Center which he founded and has directed since 2006, in Mburahati kwa Jongo, Kinondoni district. They were welcomed there by Tanzanian artists Oliver John, Mkude Kilosa, Neema Maganga, Maulid Mohamed, Ian Mwaisunga, and Eliza Simon, who had been selected by Mnyenyelwa to train with them in Behavior-Change Process (BCP) for creating theatre for social action, based on Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. The group went into the neighbor-

hoods and interviewed their citizens, including children, parents and grandparents, and local government officials. The research they gathered was filtered through the Lucid Body technique and the BCP process to create a theatre piece about the pressing issues identified in the community.

Two outdoor performances were given in Mburahati and a nearby community, which provided the people living there with a forum to engage in discussion. The questions and suggestions offered by those community residents in attendance had great resonance for everyone. Justin Taylor was particularly struck by the look on a young boy’s face as he spoke into the microphone and held the character of the father responsible for going out and getting drunk instead of being at home with the family. For Justin, this response solidified one of theatre’s great powers: “to make our ills public, both the harmful behavior being ignored and the voices ready to speak out. I will never forget that kid.”

In addition to this project, Fay and Gamal facilitated student engagement in other elements of Tanzanian life and culture, from a public performance of tribal dances by several Tanzanian artists to lecture-demonstrations on traditional taarab music and the history of theatre for social change in East Africa. The group celebrated its collaboration at the Babawatoto Center with a closing Iftar—breaking of the Ramadan fast—with religious leaders, government officials, artists, and members of the Mburahati community.

All the participants in the program returned to New Haven not only with practical skills in creating art that is socially engaged

YSD 2012–13

and community-conscious, but with a new perspective on and hope for what life at Yale and in New Haven can be.

Gamal put the impact of this program this way: “By the completion of our intense weeks abroad, participants expressed how deeply compelled they are to share their experiences with the Yale community. Those who have spent any sizable amount of time working

Maulid Mohamed and audience member in the developing world know how challenging it can be to share the specifics of that experience because it is so multifaceted in the events and the vast range of emotions one goes through in such a short period of time.

What I can say is how proud I am as a lecturer and social justice activist to witness the birth of five new extraordinary leaders in the movement for social change.”

Lauren Dubowski ’14

9

Collaboration at the cutting table: Costume Designer Jennifer Moeller ’06 examines a delicate bolt of fabric as Costume Shop Associate Manager Robin Hirsch crafts one of many ikat robes.

the costume shop Fabricating The Winter’s Tale: A Look Behind the Scenes

By Maya Maria Cantu ’10, DFA cand.

Photos by Bob Handelman 10

YSD 2012–13

“He hath ribbons of all colors i’ th’ rainbow,” says a servant to the Clown in The Winter’s Tale. The quote also applies to the rogue peddler Autolycus, who dazzles the shepherds of Bohemia with his array of fabrics and fashions. A twenty-first-century bard might write similarly of the Costume Shop on the second floor of the University Theatre, where each year Costume Shop Manager Tom McAlister and a close-knit team of artisans create the clothes for a varied spectrum of Yale Repertory Theatre and Yale School of Drama productions.

The Winter’s Tale is among their most opulent and ambitious undertakings to date.

While designs may change from show to show, the costume team always plays a vital role in theatrical storytelling, from sketch to swatch to stage.

YSD 2012–13

11

Drawing upon long relationships, strong teamwork, and individual strengths, the costume shop team forms a “second family,” according to Mary Zihal. Here’s a closer look at the people and what they do . . .

MEET THE TEAM IN THE COSTUME SHOP Tom McAlister

The heart and soul of the whole operation, Costume Shop Manager Tom McAlister has shepherded more than 250 YRT/YSD productions since 1984. Tom is the shop’s organizational lynchpin. He oversees the production of every show, assigns each show’s workload, and is responsible for coordinating the details of budgetary needs, the designer’s vision, and the artisans’ craft.

CONTINUE ON OPPOSITE PAGE f

12

YSD 2012–13

Where to begin? Liz’s vision thrilled Jennifer, a longtime lover of the art of ikat. To locate the distinctively dyed textiles, Jennifer looked no further than the virtual Silk Road of the Internet, arriving at the site of Jonali, an Uzbek vendor. “To Jonali’s delight,” Jennifer says, “I bought out half of his inventory.”

Designing for A Winter’s Tale Taking place over 16 years and ranging from Sicilia’s icy courts to Bohemia’s summer revels, The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s most expansive plays. Its scale and diversity excited Director Liz Diamond (Faculty), who envisaged designs that would realize the polarity between imaginary Liz Diamond worlds. A decision was made to make the court at Sicilia cool and formal, while in contrast Bohemia would feature loose shapes and natural fabrics, reflecting, as Liz said, “youth, joy, and the fertility of life.” Inspiration struck Liz when, browsing online photo archives, she struck gold: a series of colorized photographs of life in Samarkand (in present-day Uzbekistan), circa 1910. Beguiled by the shepherds’ and villagers’ ikat robes, patterned in the brilliant colors of the Silk Road, Liz rushed to share her ideas with Costume Designer Jennifer Moeller ’06. f COSTUME TEAM (CONTINUED)

Robin Hirsch

A virtuoso of tailoring, Robin has worked as associate costume shop manager since 1984. Specializing in men’s clothing and craftwork, she was “Bohemia Central” for The Winter’s Tale’s men.

Mary Zihal

As senior draper, Mary devises cutting patterns, fits actors, and builds costumes.

Mary is a “sartorial sculptress,” according to Tom McAlister, who praises Mary for “her skill at changing the actor’s physical stature” to fit the needs of story, history, and character.

Planning and Sketching With fabrics on the way, and kolpaks (fur hats) ordered from a vendor in Kyrgyzstan, Jennifer sketched with a careful eye toward historical accuracy. In contrast to Bohemia’s bold brightness, she designed sleek Edwardian silhouettes—“like icicles,” she says—for Sicilia.

YSD 2012–13

13

f COSTUME TEAM (CONTINUED)

Deborah Bloch ’06

Deborah is Mary’s first-hand and her collaborative “sewing sister,” with whom she also shares draping duties. For The Winter’s Tale, this versatile team built Sicilian and Bohemian costumes for seven actors.

Seth Bodie ’14

Assistant costume designer to Jennifer Moeller, Seth, a YSD design student, handled a variety of Winter’s Tale projects, including craftwork, coordinating accessories, and locating and dyeing fabrics.

Jennifer Moeller ’06

Fabrics and patterns As they tumbled from two giant bales, the ikats and

Returning to a shop whose team she describes as “very near and dear to me,” Jennifer balanced epic sweep and fine detail, talents honed during her student days on such YSD productions as King John.

kolpaks seemed to Robin Hirsch to evoke the feeling of “an exotic bazaar.” Using cutting layouts from one of Jennifer’s books—and in consultation with Jennifer—Robin ultimately constructed twenty men’s pieces, including chapans (outer robes). Harry Johnson (above) worked on the men’s costumes.

14

YSD 2012–13

From the Page to Materiality (left) Clarissa Wylie Youngberg, draper, executed Hermione’s statuary gown in silk faille. (above) Costume Assistant Seth Bodie ’14 molded and glazed horns for a satyr dance.

Fast and furious With building underway on what Tom McAlister called a “very big show,” Jennifer and the drapers went to work on fittings for the Winter’s Tale’s actors. Measurements were taken and muslin mock-ups created. Further adjustments were made to fit the actors, and the costumes were completed. While many of the 70 different outfits hewed remarkably close to Jennifer’s detailed sketches, the production called for some quick adjustments during the show.

16

YSD 2012–13

Finally, Opening Night By the time the show was in previews, the costume shop had worked its magic. Jennifer praised the team’s hard work and collaborative spirit. “They were just 110 percent,” she says. “It was such a gift to be there. We really took this journey together.” Pictured are Adina Verson ’12, Richard Ruiz, Luke Robertson ’09, and Sheria Irving ’13, photo by Joan Marcus.

f COSTUME TEAM (CONTINUED)

Harry Johnson

Clarissa Wylie Youngberg

Greta Schmitt ’12

Senior First Hand, Harry built the courtly 1910s costumes of Sicilia’s men and sewed alterations on their 1920s looks.

As a draper and tailor, Harry worked heavily from historical pattern books called “drafts.”

A passionate costume historian, Clarissa has been a draper at the Costume Shop for fifteen years. With her careful handling of delicate fabrics, Clarissa created the period-specific costumes for Sicilia’s women.

A technical intern, Greta created Perdita’s colorful Bohemia looks. Greta considers her work on The Winter’s Tale to be “an amazing opportunity to do a featured piece.”

YSD 2012–13

17

YOUNG THEATRE ARTISTS COME TO YALE FROM C AROUND THE WORLD AR SOME STAY IN TO STUDY. S STATES TO WORK; THE ST OTHERS BRING WHAT OTHE THEY LEARNED BACK TO THEIR COUNTRY.

In May 2011, just a week after graduating from Yale School of Drama, I had the great fortune to participate i i in a new play workshop at the Moscow Playwright and Director Center. Though I’d lived in Moscow Mo before attending Yale and had a fairly comfortable knowledge of Russian, the experience of working on my play in translation—in a process completely unlike the American new-play development model I’d become accustomed to—was utterly foreign territory. To the workshop “sketch” the director added musicians, shots of vodka, and a stage filled with debris. He took a free hand to the text, cutting and pasting, even writing new sections of dialogue. In addition, he seemed reluctant to have a playwright present in rehearsal, explaining that directors were not accustomed to showing unfinished work. It was a fascinating and highly instructive experience, and it gave me a greater appreciation for the strengths of the American model, while offering new possibilities for the new-play process.

But this was only a fleeting experience, a sort of theatre-making tourism. For students who travel to Yale School of Drama from abroad, the commitment to train in a new and unfamiliar theatre culture is a much longer journey—at least three years. And for those who choose to stay on in the United States and make their homes and careers in this country, the trip can last a lifetime.

18

YSD 2012–13

HOW THE INITIAL DECISION IS MADE Yale School of Drama is recognized around the world. For many international students it’s a chance encounter with an alumnus or affiliated professional that first plants the seed of an idea to apply. “I knew it by name, mostly through Meryl Streep ’75, dfah ’83, my favorite actress,” says Seoul-native Walter Byongsok Chon ’10, dfa cand.

Gonzalo Rodríguez Risco ’09 had been working as a professional playwright for ten years in Lima, Peru and was considering graduate school in a Spanish-speaking country when he sat down for coffee with his mentor, famed Peruvian playwright and director Alonso Alegría ’66, yc ’64. By the end of their conversation Gonzalo was determined to be “the second Peruvian to go to Yale School of Drama.”

After directing an opera at Cambridge University, United Kingdom native Anna Jones ’06 was unsatisfied with her work process. “I felt like I knew what to do when things went well, but when they didn’t and I was going back into the rehearsal room, I didn’t know what tools to take in with me.” She saw few options for formal directing training in the UK until she sought the advice of a friend’s father, director Mark Wing-Davey. He pointed her toward Yale.

A grant from the Asian Cultural Council offered Philippines native Barbara Tan-Tiongco ’13 the opportunity of an internship at the 2002 American Dance Festival in North Carolina, where she marveled at the efficiency of the processes employed. “Ground plans! There are some lighting designers or technical directors in the Philippines who would work in a theatre without ground plans!” She was also impressed with the high safety standards.

Co-workers in the Philippines took photographs of her because they thought she looked so funny in the goggles and earplugs she brought back from the United States. She also learned about the work of legendary YSD design professor Jennifer Tipton (Faculty). Seven years later, while working in Manila, TanTiongco sent Tipton an e-mail asking to observe her at work. To Tan-Tiongco’s surprise, Tipton invited her to sit in on her YSD classes. A year later she applied to the Technical Design and Production Program.

After graduating from Wesleyan, Rio de Janeiro native Roberta Pereira ’08 moved to New Haven with a friend before ever contemplating graduate school, where current Long Wharf Theatre Managing Director Joshua Borenstein ’02 took her under his wing. “By that time I had already started doing some producing, even though I didn’t know that’s what I was doing,” she says. Borenstein gave her a job in the Long Wharf box office and encouraged her to think about pursuing an MFA. For Dublin native Tanya Dean ’11, dfa cand., the epiphany occurred when she came across an article about dramaturgy in a back issue of Irish Theatre Magazine. “I remember thinking, ‘This is a job?’ Being excited about theatre and critiquing it constructively? Offering thoughts and notes and an outside eye with a view to making this piece of theatre the strongest it can be with what it has? The article mentioned Yale School of Drama, and I started digging!”

(right) Jennifer Lim ’04; (below) Roberta Pereira ’08;; (bottom) Gonzalo Rodríguezz Risco ’09 (right) in rehearsal with Patricia McGregor ’09 and Paula Vogel (Faculty) for The French Play during the 2009 Carlotta Festival of New Plays

THE DRAW OF A PROFESSIONAL CONSERVATORY PROGRAM Many international students say they were drawn to the School on the strength of its professional conservatory training. They describe as unique the convergence of emerging practitioners in design, technical design and production, stage management, acting, playwriting, theatre management, and directing at Yale. Anna Jones was looking to broaden her theatrical horizons: “The fact that at Yale you got to take classes in all the other departments— you got to take acting classes and design classes and producing classes—I thought that was really exciting.”

Several alumni cited this exposure to other fields of study as creating a more collaborative and democratic model of theatre making than the one in which they’d grown up. Lighting Designer Marie Yokoyama ’10 observed that in Japan, theatre “is very rigid and hierarchical. When you watch a Kabuki performance, you will never see the name of the lighting designer in the program.

Only the ‘backstage people’ will know who it was, because the designer is also ‘backstage people.’ Most of the time just a lighting entertainment company will be credited.”

As a playwright in Peru, Gonzalo Rodríguez Risco tended to shy away from rehearsal rooms. “It’s typical,” he reports, “for

YSD 2012–13

19

writers to drop off a draft before the first day of rehearsal and then not be heard from again until opening night.”

And although students note that multidisciplinary conservatory programs are beginning to pop up closer to home, many still sought out instruction abroad in the belief that these younger institutions lacked some of the rigor, intensity, and caliber of instruction found at YSD. Several international students and alumni also mention YSD’s generous financial aid packages as an important draw. Travel to New Haven from distant locales can ratchet up living expenses, as can the attorney fees that many international graduates who choose to stay in the United States face later on. Educational debt is a burden for any artist, but even more so for a non-US citizen.

Says Marie Yokoyama: “The idea of being in debt, plus paying the additional fees just to stay in the States—and at the same time building a career from scratch in an unfamiliar environment? Not an ideal option.”

THE LANGUAGE ISSUE As part of the YSD application, students who do not speak English as a first language or who have graduated from a non-Englishspeaking institution must submit Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) scores to prove fluency. Still, a few alumni worried that the TOEFL or even an oral interview was not a sufficient test of how proficient a student might be in the language, especially in the context of the demanding YSD schedule; they were concerned about the struggle to read texts and complete assignments in a timely manner, at the same time balancing production assignments and work study.

Difficulties with the challenging curriculum shouldn’t always be chalked up to language barriers, according to Walter Byongsok Chon. He reassures the non-native speakers in the Drama 6 Theatre History section he leads, “If you don’t understand Hamletmachine, it’s not because of the language . . . it’s because it is a hard play.”

Many of the students who came from countries in which English is not the official language had extensive experience speaking it nonetheless, having attended international high schools or undergraduate institutions, or lived with an English-

speaking relative before arriving in New Haven. The difficulties they encountered were not so much with language as with cultural differences. They found the emphasis on self-expression and extroversion at YSD jarring. Students from all over the world mentioned that they felt far more reserved and less used to voicing their opinions than did their American counterparts.

During her first year at YSD, Jennifer Lim ’04 found that her conservative upbringing in Hong Kong had not prepared her to be “on her voice,” which means speaking with full vibration and tone; being off your voice signifies a lack of commitment to what an actor is saying. “Politeness and respect for elders were very much ingrained in who I was until that point,” she says. This instinct to defer to authority had the effect of not only preventing her from chiming in during class, but also causing her, literally, to speak softly. The YSD Acting Program “helped me find my voice,” she declares, “both metaphorically and technically.”

ACTING AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN CULTURES Some international students decide to root their careers and lives permanently in the United States, while others opt to return home to their countries of origin; the ultimate goal for many international alumni is to create work that crosses political borders. Walter Byongsok Chon says, “In the long run I would like to serve as a bridge between the two cultures. I think that can be my strength, my contribution.”

The ways in which YSD students and alumni build these bridges vary greatly. For Chon, who considers the United States to be his home theatrical culture, a position as an academic at an American institution is the goal, but he’d also like to continue translating texts with the aim of introducing contemporary Korean plays to American audiences and vice versa. His translation into English of Walkabout Yeolha by Samshik Pai was recently produced as an MFA thesis production at Columbia University, directed by Kon Yi. In turn, Yi brought a workshop of Chon’s Korean translation of Charles Mee’s True Love to Seoul.

Conversely, for Gonzalo Rodríguez Risco, returning home seemed the best way to employ the tools he gained at the School of Drama. Rodríguez Risco, who will soon begin teaching a year-long playwriting course at the Aranwa Teatro in Lima— the first training of its kind in Peru—plans to encourage his student playwrights to attend rehearsals of their work. After his experiences at YSD, he believes that a draft is not “done” on the first day of rehearsal, that in order to refine his work, the playwright relies upon the experience of seeing the play on its feet with actors. This is the hope for a new generation of Peruvian playwrights, as word of his presence in the rehearsal room is spreading quickly. Gonzalo was recently approached by a famous (from left) Marie Yokoyama ’10 from Japan; Dubliner Tanya Dean ’11, dfa cand.; Seoul native Walter Byongsok Chon ’11, dfa cand. in rehearsal with Min Sun Jung ’09 for Electra: Korean Mask Play at the Yale Cabaret in 2008

20

YSD 2012–13

Peruvian director with an offer to collaborate. “I told him: ‘This is how I work,’ and he said, ‘That’s exactly why I want to work with you.’”

To ease her eventual transition back to Ireland, Tanya Dean has made a point of staying informed about Irish theatre while at YSD and hopes to crosspollinate that knowledge with the best theory, plays, and practices learned at Yale. The very difference and diversity that drew her to Yale, however, may pose a bit of a challenge in securing a job back home. “The DFA is a very different program from the PhD,” Dean notes. As she enters the homestretch of her degree, she’s tailoring her work to address this fact: “I have to create a strategy right now of how to make myself attractive to an Irish institution.”

Barbara Tan-Tiongco’s path back to the Philippines included a stop in Singapore last July; there she was in residence at the Esplanade Technical Theatre Training (a program founded by Cheng Heng Lee ’99), partly to research her MFA thesis and partly with an eye to the eventual creation of a technical training school at home. She views her plans to return as “a responsibility. Yale has provided me this opportunity. And there are no conditions to it.

But when I accepted it, I told myself, this is not something anyone can just play with—it is a responsibility.”

And for some YSD graduates, making work that spans the globe also means traveling it. Because her post-graduation visa did not allow her to work in Equity theatres, Jennifer Lim spent her first years in New York acting in non-union productions with such directors as Young Jean Lee and Richard Schechner, in shows that often toured abroad, including Schechner’s Mandarin-language Hamlet, in which Jennifer played Ophelia.

Anna Jones has made the goal of bridging cultures an explicit part of the mission statement of the theatre company she cofounded in 2010 with her husband, actor Jamel Rodriguez ’08.

Its name, NYLon, is a nod to the cities—New York and London— where she’s worked since leaving Yale. Though she moved to New York City immediately after graduation, she’s now London-based, having met more internationally trained collaborators there.

A NON-CITIZEN ARTIST As with all things related to non-citizen artists in the United States, immigration status comes into play with the ability to work around the world. Jennifer Lim received a green card two years ago on the strength of her status as an internationally recognized theatre artist, the result of years spent touring abroad when work options in the United States were limited. This documentation came just in time for her to originate the role of Xi Yan in David Henry Hwang’s ’83 Chinglish at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and then on Broadway, where her performance earned a Drama Desk nomination for Best Actress.

Paradoxically, attaining more permanent status in the United States can make returning home to work easier. Roberta Pereira, who is always on the lookout for American musicals to recommend to her producer friends in Brazil and is developing a project with a multinational theatre collective, observes, “If I wanted to go and work in Brazil for a year, I’d basically have to give

(clockwise from above) TD&P student Barbara Tan-Tiongco ’13 weighting a lineset in the University Theatre; Jamel Rodriguez ’08 acts in a research and development workshop of Tally Ho at The Roundhouse Studio, produced by NYLon Productions, photo by Stefan Lacandler; Anna Jones ’06, photo by Stefan Lacandler

up my current visa. Until I have a green card, I won’t have that flexibility, because if I leave now, it’s much harder to come back.”

LOOKING AHEAD This greater international visibility of and interest in Yale School of Drama is a point of pride for many students and alumni. Several alumni remarked to me about how many of the students who come to YSD from abroad are flourishing in their chosen fields within and beyond our borders. This upturn in numbers also suggest that the School will continue to welcome new students from around the world. To them, Anna Jones offers the following advice: “Keep hearing your own voice. Be reflective about the fact that you’re bringing in a lot of experience that those around you may not understand. Hold on to that and be proud of it, but also be open to all the outgoing new people you’ll be meeting!”

As Jennifer Lim sees it, embracing the multilingual, international background that made her stand out from a crowd is exactly what helped her land a meaty, complicated, stereotypedefying Broadway lead: “It will always be special, because it was a chance for me to bring to the table something that I’m not sure an American actor could have brought. Not because I’m better than them, but because of circumstance, because I didn’t grow up American.” Y YSD 2012–13

21

The Second Life of Ron Van Lieu

By Bryce Pinkham ’08

(above left) Ron Van Lieu (Faculty) in the 1970 Milwaukee Repertory Theater production of Waiting for Godot; (above right) Ron teaching a class at YSD, photo by Joan Marcus

Ron Van Lieu’s (Faculty) elegant frame is ensconced in the vintage lounge chair I have reserved for him at the Bowery Hotel in Lower Manhattan. It was only seven years ago that this man, one of the most revered acting teachers of his generation, was interviewing me for a coveted spot in his incoming class of actors at Yale School of Drama. Now, nearly five years after I have graduated, it’s my turn to ask the questions.

Like many of his students—myself included—Ron’s addiction to the theatre began at an early age.

He first appeared onstage in the basement of a primary school run by Dominican nuns in Wooster, Ohio, impersonating Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, a religious leader in the 1950s with his own television show. Ron recalls the discovery that acting “could get you attention, could make you feel important.”

In high school, cast as the bumbling yet brave clown-valet Passepartout in Around the World in 80 Days, Ron threw his otherwise “shy and recessive” self into the part with “reckless abandon.” “I guess you could say that I first saw acting as a road to popularity.”

Ron’s mother was cautious about her son’s interest in theatre, especially his potential portrayal of any morally dubious characters. His father, however, though not directly encouraging, was supportive of Ron’s inclination toward the stage, never missing a show and quietly observing audience reactions at intermission so he could report back to his son afterward. Ron recalls fondly, “It was probably the nicest relationship we had, because I was no good at sports or any of the traditional things that sons and fathers do together.”

After several failed attempts to stay off the stage and stick to the “secure” plan to become a high school English teacher, Ron says he finally listened to the parade of “important” voices— teachers like Bowling Green State’s F. Lee Miesle, Vassar’s Norris Houghton, and eventually Lloyd Richards mah ’79 (Former Dean) and Olympia Dukakis—telling him “that I could really do something in the theatre.” Thinking back on these crucial moments in his development, Ron muses that “at some point every young actor needs to hear someone say ‘come on in, you belong in the room.’ Then you start to believe in yourself.” It was from these teachers that Ron discovered that acting “wasn’t all showing off.” He learned that “being an actor required discipline and standards.”

He recounts becoming “rigorous in my responsibility onstage.” It was during this time in his life, under the wings of his teachers, that Ron felt both tremendous fear and exhilaration in discovering himself as an actor. He notes: “I was a prime example of somebody who wasn’t obvious material to be an actor. I had what I perceived as many deficits. I think it’s because I got so much help

22

YSD 2012–13

overcoming those obstacles when I was When I ask Ron at what point it a student that I felt like I could give dawned on him that he was getting something to people who wanted to good at this teaching thing, he smiles be actors. I could give back to them the and concedes that he’s only now getting kind of things that were given to me.” close to thinking that. He laughs as he Drawing on his personal experience, continues, “It’s ridiculous, since ‘trust both in school and eventually as a yourself’ is one of the messages I’ve been professional actor in New York and at trying to impart to actors since 1976.

Milwaukee Rep, Ron went on to teach for It’s now 2012, and I’m just beginning to over thirty years at NYU’s Tisch School consider that maybe I can afford to trust of the Arts before coming to Yale in 2005 myself.” and attempting to pass on his gifts to Ron describes his move to Yale as eager young show-offs like me. an “unanticipated second life” and an Ron admits that at the beginning of opportunity to discover who he was his teaching career he was quite bluntly outside the context of nearly thirty years imitating his mentor, Olympia Dukakis: at NYU. Since coming to Yale, Ron has “I had the hand gestures, the face, the made it his goal to choose and graduate Ron in the 1960 Bowling Green State University producemphasis. I didn’t know how to do it actors who have what he refers to as tion of The Admirable Crichton myself, I needed a character who knew a “generosity of spirit. I want actors how to teach, and that was Olympia.” As who graduate from Yale to be omnitime went on, Ron was able to find his own vocabulary, as well as to competent and flexible, to exchange ‘I don’t work that way’ for ‘let learn from his mistakes. “When I first started teaching, I just wanted me try’ in the rehearsal room. I want them to be resilient,” he says. to help everybody. I lacked discretion about who the individual in “I want them to bounce. They’ll be on the ground a lot, and I want front of me was. In my zeal I would tell them everything I noticed them to be able to get up and do it again.” Ron understands that his right away, thinking I was starting them on the path to achievement contribution to Yale School of Drama’s imperative to foster leaders when what I really had done was paralyze them.” in their field does not mean, “Train actors who will become the most In my experience, Ron’s success with actors in the rehearsal famous,” but rather, “Train actors who set good examples when room comes from his ability to pinpoint specifically the keystone of they go to work, who bring something special into the room so that a given student’s struggles. Ron advises me that as a teacher, “you’re people want to work with them.” While he was teaching at NYU in after self-discovery, not prescription.” Rather than dole out acting the 1970s, he felt his job was to provide structure and organization panaceas to the entire room of students at once, Ron views his job for actors, most of whom were resistant to the idea that rules existed. as helping to remove the precise obstacles that stand in the way of Today, he plays the opposite role: “I see young actors so desirous to what a given actor is capable of doing. I’ll never forget the day, nearly fit in, that I have to mess them up a bit,” he says. “There’s a certain

Rather than dole out acting panaceas to the entire room of students at once, Ron views his job as helping to remove the precise obstacles that stand in the way of what a given actor is capable of doing. all the way through my first year, after a particularly gnarly scene rehearsal in class that Ron told me: “Bryce, maybe it’s time you relieve yourself of the burden of trying to become the best actor that’s ever come out of Yale School of Drama and see if you can content yourself with just being a good actor.” This one small provocation was utterly revelatory for me. What I realized in that moment was that I had been so concerned with how I was doing that I had neglected the character I was playing and the story I claimed I was serving, more concerned with my performance than with the character’s life. That one comment from Ron—coupled with him dubbing me “New Haven’s hardest-working actor”—changed my attitude throughout the rest of my time at Yale, my approach to acting in general, and my idea of the type of career I wanted. Self-discovery indeed!

attraction to a type of conformity that I feel I have to break up and destroy.”

The list of professional actors who have had the benefit of Ron Van Lieu’s guidance is long and it’s continuing to grow, yet Ron remains ever the humble workman: “I really resist being defined as someone who has any significant importance, it just makes me uneasy. I don’t think I’m the reason people become actors, but I am happy to have been their partner of some sort on their way.”

Listening to my teacher describe his life in the theatre brings me an indescribable joy. After we say our goodbyes, I head off to teach a class of my own. I have no doubt that today, whether they know it or not, my students will be learning from my best imitation of Ron Van Lieu. Y

YSD 2012–13

23

Placing Artists at the Center

By Tanya Dean ’11, DFA cand.

A gift of $18 million from the Robina Foundation — established by James Binger YC ’38 — to the Center for New Theatre confirms Yale Repertory Theatre’s leading role in the development of new work in the United States. The Robina Foundation made its first grant to Yale Rep in 2008 to establish the Center, which underwrites Yale Rep’s commissions of new plays and musicals and supports their production at Yale and at other theatres across the United States.

James C. and Virginia Binger had a long history of dedication to the theatre, investing in companies all over the country and establishing Jujamcyn Theatres—named for their children Judith, James, and Cynthia—which today owns and operates five Broadway theatres. With this latest gift to Yale Rep, the newly named Binger Center for New Theatre is now permanently endowed. “The investment from the Robina Foundation presented us with the opportunity to formalize and deepen our commitment to develop new theatre at Yale,” notes Jennifer Kiger, Yale Rep’s associate artistic director and director of new play programs, who oversees the new play activities of the Center.

From the start, the organizing principle of the Center has been flexibility. “We examined the current climate for artists and envisioned how our programs could have a long-term impact on the field.” Jennifer explains.

The Center’s work with artists is based on some key tenets.

First, there is a commitment to meaningful compensation for writers, including both time to work and reasonable financial incentive to make live theatre. Yale Rep’s commission fees are among the most generous in the country. Yale Rep Literary Manager Amy Boratko ’06 explains, “We are in an ongoing dialogue about the standards of pay in the field and asking questions about what constitutes fair and competitive compensation for playwrights in the American theatre.”

Secondly, the processes are always artist-focused: The order and scale of readings, workshops, residencies, and other events are organized on a case-by-case basis in response to each playwright’s creative approach and time requirements. “Each artist and project has its own needs and rhythms,” says Amy. “We want to respond to those, but also to keep up with changes in the field.

24

YSD 2012–13

The resources we offer the artists—be it workshops, residencies, dramaturgical support—can change at any moment.”

Thirdly, the Center offers commissioned artists significant opportunities for production, including the mounting of works of great scope, such as musicals and plays with large casts, at Yale Rep and other leading American theatres. Since its inception, the Center has supported 40 commissioned artists (playwrights, composers, directors, and ensembles) and has underwritten 11 world premieres at Yale Rep, including last season’s Belleville by Amy Herzog ’07, yc ’00, Good Goods by Christina Anderson ’11, and The Realistic Joneses by Will Eno; as well as this season’s Marie Antoinette by David Adjmi, Dear Elizabeth by Sarah Ruhl, and Bill Camp and Robert Woodruff’s (Faculty) stage adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film In a Year with 13 Moons.

Among the Center’s programs, a key component is its Production Enhancement Fund, which provides financial support for productions at other theatres of works commissioned by and/or first produced by Yale Rep, such as the 2010 West Coast premiere of Notes From Underground at the La Jolla Playhouse and the subsequent production at Theatre for a New Audience in New York; the world premiere of On the Levee by Marcus Gardley ’04, Todd Almond, and Lear de Bessonet at Lincoln Center’s LCT3; and the Pittsburgh’s City Theatre production of Maggie-Kate Coleman and Anna K. Jacobs’s POP!. The fund is a unique tool of the Center that leverages the impact of the work created at Yale and encourages its continued life in the American theatre.

Director and commissioned artist Robert Woodruff describes how the Center’s Production Enhancement Fund secured a wider audience for Notes from Underground: “Yale’s support was instrumental in getting the work out to a larger audience.

YSD 2012–13

25

It was a high-risk venture for La Jolla to bring that kind of work to their audience and only the support of the Fund allowed them to make that leap. Theatre for a New Audience—a muscular but underfunded institution—also needed all the resources Yale brought to the table to bring this work in to New York.”

The Center also offers commissioned artists multiple venues and forums for interaction with Yale Rep and YSD, including classes, retreats, readings, workshops, residencies, and productions that bring working playwrights, composers, and directors together at every stage of professional development. One thing is clear: The Center is not a place of bricks and mortar. It finds its incarnation in the dedication of Yale Repertory Theatre to support the voices of artists. “We invest as much in the process with our commissioned artists as we do in the final product,” Jennifer explains. “We listen to what challenges and interests them and then we design a process to fit where they are in relation to that work.”

the YSD faculty, is clear about the merits of working with YSD students at the School and at Yale Rep: “You must present your best self,” he says. “The community is about bravery and openness in pursuit of something. If you are asking for a student’s soul in his work you can offer no less.” Bill agrees, “The Rep has access to pretty smart individuals in the process of discovery and thinking openly, namely the students at the School of Drama. The room is always open for students to sit in and watch and speak up in response to what they observe. They bring a certain fearlessness that is vital to the process.”

Matt Gould and Carson Kreitzer Composer Matt Gould and playwright Carson Kreitzer yc ’91 are effusive about the positive impact that the Center for New Theatre has had on their collaboration, Lempicka, a new musical based on the life of Polish art deco painter, Tamara de Lempicka.

Bill Camp and Robert Woodruff Notes from Underground, a new adaptation of the Dostoyevsky classic created in collaboration between director Robert Woodruff and performer Bill Camp, was the first production to receive support from the Center. “The production was supported by the Center in every way from the first day on,” explains Bill. “Yale Rep acquired the rights of the translation from Knopf that we used; provided us with amazing technical support, unparalleled dramaturgical support, and use of the creativity that exists in the studentry. They gave us a little extra time in the rehearsal room as well. That went a long way for us. The Rep allowed us to take on a challenge like Notes, trusting that it could be made into an exciting, rigorous piece of theatre for people to experience. That is huge support in itself.” Robert agrees: “Everything we did before rehearsal was fully integrated into the life of the institution, which was an enormous aid.” The Center’s continued support after the run ended allowed the production to deepen and evolve even further, with the Production Enhancement Fund allowing Notes reach a wider audience, both in La Jolla and in New York.

“The development of the work was remarkable in performance,” Robert adds.

“It was much more fleshed out. Bill’s performance grew away from the anger that stamped his initial go at it, into a multifaceted jewel.

After the two months in San Diego and New York, the company was like a brilliant jazz trio, improvising around each other every evening.”

Bill Camp and Robert Woodruff Robert, who is also a (Faculty), photo by David Cooper lecturer in directing on

26

YSD 2012–13

Matt Gould

Carson Kreitzer yc ’91

One of the greatest boons the Center has offered them is the chance to work together in the same zip code. With Carson based in Minneapolis and Matt in Los Angeles, Lempicka is the offspring of a long-distance relationship. Matt and Carson have, to date, done four residencies in New Haven, where both artists were housed in Yale Rep’s company housing and were provided with a private rehearsal space, a piano, and a printer, as well as the services of a musical director. “We feel so well taken care of here,” says Carson. “It’s a home. It creates the cocoon where the work can happen.”

Both are particularly excited about the community aspect of their residencies. “We had a martini with Paula Vogel (Faculty)!”

Carson exclaims. “And then, at one in the morning, she came back to our rehearsal space and we played her a few songs! They’re not just staff or faculty here, they’re mentors,” she adds. “Everyone at Yale Rep and YSD is so supportive, and there is such a sense of community, in a way that is sorely lacking in commercial theatre.”

Grateful for an atmosphere that allows them to work at their own pace and does not curtail their vision or the scope of Lempicka, Matt says, “Jennifer always emphasizes that it’s not just about meeting deadlines; it’s about respecting your own process.”

Carson concludes, “Our relationship, as well as this musical, has benefited beyond words from the Center, from how it nurtures work and artists. We have grown so much as a team. This is the place where we can write our vision. Nowhere else do you get this.”

X The cast of 2009 world

premiere musical POP! at Yale Repertory Theatre, book and lyrics by MaggieKate Coleman, music by Anna K. Jacobs, directed by Mark Brokaw ’86, photo

by Joan Marcus

T Gilbert Owuor ’07, Maria Dizzia, and Greg Keller in the 2011 world premiere of Belleville by Amy Herzog ’07, yc ’00, directed

by Anne Kauffman, photo by Joan Marcus

S Bill Camp and Merritt Janson in the 2009 world premiere of Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground, adapted by Bill Camp and Robert Woodruff (Faculty), directed by Robert Woodruff, photo by Joan Marcus

S Stephanie Beatriz and Onahoua Rodriguez in the 2009 East Coast premiere of Octavio Solis’s Lydia, directed by Juliette Carrillo, photo by Joan Marcus

S Jenn Gambese and Alexandra Socha in the 2010 world premiere musical We Have Always Lived in the Castle, book and lyrics by Adam Bock, music and lyrics by Todd Almond, based on the novel by Shirley Jackson, directed by Anne Kauffman, photo by Joan Marcus

YSD 2012–13

27

Alice Tuan

S Ella Joyce and Francesca Choy-Kee in the 2010 world premiere of Kirsten Greenidge’s Bossa Nova, directed by Evan Yionoulis ’85, yc ’82 (Faculty), photo by Joan Marcus

“When I first got the commission, I was thrilled,” says playwright Alice Tuan, head of writing for performance at CalArts. “And I immediately started thinking, ‘What might a Yale Rep play be?

How do I please the benefactors?” She goes on to explain that she was pleasantly surprised at how “the Binger Center simply said, ‘We want to commission a play from you that you want to write.’

To be grappling with this amount of freedom in what I want to write . . . it’s amazing.”

The commissioned play that Alice is currently working on—Private Rivals, a Shanghai-centric spin on Noel Coward’s Private Lives —came about from her initial interpretation of what a commission was. “When I think of Yale, I think of the 1930s,” she says. “I think of things that are old in a modern way. So the first draft was launched with a kind of gimmick; it was tethered pretty loyally to Coward’s play.” She began to be more and more comfortable with the support offered by the Center. “I felt so full of gratitude,” she says. “But I was also so excited and intimidated by the challenge of ‘what do I want to write?’ that it just broke open the whole idea of writing a play. Once I had familiarized myself with the elements of Private Lives, I could Alice Tuan explode it into what Private Rivals wants to be.”

During Alice’s writing residency in New Haven, the Center organized an informal reading of Private Rivals with the Center staff. “I loved the staff readings,” she says. “As non-actors, they weren’t covering the script with a performer’s polish, which is not helpful to a playwright.” The residency also offered Tuan the opportunity to reinvigorate other pieces of her work, beginning with a reading by YSD playwriting students of her play Cock’s Crow. “It is psychically addictive to sit around a table and listen to playwrights. You’re dealing with minds and language in a very intense, distilled way. There was such a great sense of ‘verbal satisfaction.’ When readers love language, you can tell. It goes from a pulse to a heartbeat.”

Alice is also very enthusiastic about Paula Vogel’s Boot Camp, which she participated in while a student at Brown in 1997 and again this year at Yale. “There’s so much richness in the room that Paula builds,” Alice says. “It’s a great magnet to attract all sorts of minds and ideas, smart theatre people thinking toward the future, thinking from their rawest impulses. And it’s such a treat to meet people through their work.”

Paula Vogel S Rebecca Henderson, Merritt Janson (at piano) and Candy Buckley in the 2011 U.S. premiere of Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, directed

by Robert Woodruff (Faculty), photo by Joan Marcus

28

YSD 2012–13

Paula Vogel’s annual YSD playwriting Boot Camp is indeed one of the most popular opportunities for professional development.

Lead by the award-winning playwright and Eugene O’Neill Professor (Adjunct) of Playwriting, Boot Camp is an artistic

W Mandy Patinkin in the 2010 world premiere of Compulsion by Rinne Groff yc ’90, directed by Oskar Eustis, photo by Joan Marcus

“We feel so well taken care of here. It’s a home.

It creates the cocoon where the work can happen.” Carson Kreitzer melting pot in which MFA playwrights and directors come together with several commissioned Yale Rep artists for a weeklong exploration of playwriting. “There’s a synergy that exists in the room during Boot Camp, a mentorship,” Paula muses. “The YSD students and the Rep artists go back to basics, but they’re also challenged. At the end of the week people leave inspired. It is a circle that Yale Rep creates with a community of artists, a circle forged around a table of younger and older artists.”

As the proud leader of Boot Camp, as well as commissioned artist, YSD faculty member, and resident playwright of Yale Rep, Paula has a unique, multifaceted relationship to the Center.

Currently she is collaborating on a co-commission from Yale Rep and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with director Rebecca Taichman ’00, entitled Rehearsing Vengeance—a new work inspired by Sholem Asch’s 1907 Yiddish play, The God of Vengeance. The Center has been providing Rebecca and Paula with dramaturgical support in the form of historical research on Asch’s work, including the context in which it was written and produced and the controversy surrounding its performances in the early twentieth century, which involved accusations of immorality and antiSemitism. “I don’t know if people appreciate how much dramaturgy matters,” Paula says. “The phrase ‘new play dramaturgy’ doesn’t even Paula Vogel (Faculty) begin in any way to capture the fluid energy and the conversations and obsessions and late-night coffees and the early one-on-one reviews and collaborations involved.” Speaking in particular of this new collaboration, she adds: “This is a project written on an incredibly ambitious canvas. It’s so big that I couldn’t do it without the particular resources of the Center and Yale. Working solo and doing all the research myself would take a decade from my life. But having the Center and those resources allows us to dare; that’s the greatest gift. Bless the Binger Center!” Y

S Tracy Letts, Parker Posey, Glenn Fitzgerald, and Johanna Day in the 2012 world premiere of Will Eno’s The Realistic Joneses, directed by Sam Gold, photo by Joan Marcus

S Clifton Duncan, Angela Lewis, De’Adre Aziza, and Marc Damon Johnson in the world premiere of Good Goods, by Christina Anderson ’11, directed

by Tina Landau yc ’84, photo by Joan Marcus

YSD 2012–13

29

Mark Linn-Baker

The Work’s the Thing

By Alex Trow ’12, yc ’09

We’re sitting at a front table at the West Bank Café in Manhattan. The hostess calls Mr. LinnBaker by his first name, as does our waiter when he casually informs us they’re out of the cheese plate. It is clear that “Mark” is much more than a regular customer at this theatre district staple, and there’s a good reason.

Mark Linn-Baker ’79, yc ’76, Julie Kavner, Nina Roth, and Steve Guttenberg in Woody Allen’s Honeymoon Hotel, photo by Joan Marcus

30

YSD 2012–13

YALE, AND YALE AGAIN Mark Linn-Baker ’79, yc ’76 grew up in a family that knew how to make theatre from scratch. His parents held day jobs but were performers at heart; in the 1960s Mark’s father founded the Open Stage Company in Hartford, CT. Young Mark came of age running technical elements for the theatre and watching his father and others perform.

After high school Mark attended Yale College and, like his dad, started making his own work. He majored in Theater Studies (his senior project was a production of Belgian playwright Michel de Ghelderode’s little-known work Pantagleize—yes, there is a copy in Sterling Memorial Library, no, I did not read it) and continued on to Yale School of Drama.

“At that time,” Mark says, “the School of Drama was focused on training artists for the regional theatre, which was the place for doing new and exciting work. Theatre was part of the national consciousness and was covered in Time magazine, in Newsweek. Regional theatre was a place for ideas to be staged and was part of a national dialogue.” Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, by the time Mark graduated—having appeared in the Yale Rep productions ’dentity Crisis by Christopher Durang ’74, Brecht’s Mahagonny, and Shakespeare’s As You Like

He continued, “There are plenty of places where being successful is important, and of course we want to succeed artistically, financially, but there are fewer and fewer places left where the consequence of failure isn’t way too severe.”

One of those places is Powerhouse Theater, the producing venue of New York Stage and Film, THE BIG BAD (SAFE) WORLD which Mark co-founded with Upon graduating, Mark landed Max Mayer and Leslie Urdang in a world where theatres were ’81 in Poughkeepsie, New York, not incubating new work, and on the campus of Vassar College. commercial venues in New York At Powerhouse such playwrights were . . . well . . . commercial. He as John Patrick Shanley found a and a small group of YSD alumni, creative sanctuary, one removed including Lewis Black ’77 and from the pressures of commercial Joe Grifasi ’75, took matters into success and the crippling influence their own hands, creating an of New York critics. In speaking environment in which exploration about Powerhouse, Mark says, and failure were okay. Mark and “The value there is doing the work. company took over the downstairs That’s the place I helped create, space at the West Bank Café, and that’s what I value.” in this tiny black box managed to While maintaining a career cultivate a community, not just “There are plenty of places in movies and television, Mark an audience. In a phone interview where being successful is important . . . continues to appear on the stage.

Lewis Black—comedian, pundit, In 2011 he starred in his sixth actor, and, oh yes, alumnus of but there are fewer and fewer Broadway production, one of three the YSD Playwriting program— places left where the consequence of one-act plays in Relatively Speaking, summed up the experience: “It was Honeymoon Hotel by Woody Allen. basically an opportunity to get failure isn’t way too severe.”

(Other Broadway appearances some good work done with nobody include Doonesbury, A Funny Thing bothering us.” Late at night, when Happened on the Way to the Forum, nothing else was going on, the 100A Year with Frog and Toad, Romantic Poetry, and Laughter on the 23rd seat Laurie Beechman Theatre became the New York City version Floor.) of “YSD Night” at the Yale Cabaret; Joe, Mark, and Lewis wrote and produced hundreds of short plays for an audience eager to see what ADVICE Like any soon-to-be graduate I finish the interview these friends had created. The shows—put on in the wee hours by trying to wheedle some advice out of Mark. After all, he’s had and with great regularity—were often sold out. It was a formative and is having an extremely successful career as an actor, no small period of growth and community building, and, after Mark’s 1982 feat for anyone. He mentions how grateful he is for the life he break-out film role in My Favorite Year and his seven-year stint on has led—decades of performance, plus raising a family and the television sitcom Perfect Strangers, he returned to the Laurie making a living in an extremely volatile and inconsistent business.

Beechman and became a part-owner of the theatre space.

Yet, despite this success, after each bit of advice he insists: Speaking about those early years, he insists: “There was a real “Remember, these are opinions, I don’t have any idea what I’m community, real dedication.” I asked where he thought that could talking about.” It’s a very humble statement but one that can be found nowadays, and Mark said he wasn’t sure. As a member of only be made by a person who’s aware of the importance of nowadays, I felt depressed. But I was relieved when he said he was work-in-progress. Mark leaves me with a quotable opinion: sure about one thing, the theme that makes him most proud of so many of his endeavors: “The important thing is just doing the work. “Theatre is a process. Don’t decide where you’re going. Doesn’t have to be finished, don’t finish, just follow the process, and do Some of it will work, and some it will die. But you should be able to the work.” Y find out whether or not something works without consequence.”

It, among others—it was too good to be true. The very theatres Mark was looking to were becoming increasingly worried about pleasing their audiences (and preventing bankruptcy), so work was becoming less challenging and risky.

YSD 2012–13

31

Yale Repertory Theatre

The Season in Review

YALE REPERTORY THEATRE’S 2011–2012 SEASON

What does a director do to help an actor be funny? How do dramaturgs contribute to the realization of a play? Where do playwrights get their confidence? How does a sound designer pick just the right notes? How does a stage manager maintain the necessary level of engagement in a long run? What criteria are used in play selection for Yale Rep? We asked James Mountcastle ’90 (Faculty), Amy Herzog ’07, YC ’00, Chris Bayes (Faculty), Alex Ripp ’13, Matthew Suttor (Faculty), and Amy Boratko ’06—each of whom was involved in a Yale Rep show of the 2011–2012 season—to give us their perspective.

BELLEVILLE Maria Dizzia and Greg Keller in the world premiere of Belleville by Amy Herzog ’07, yc ’00, directed by Anne Kauffman, photo by Joan Marcus

The Playwright AMY HERZOG ’07, YC ’00 BELLEVILLE

Of all my plays, I had the longest and most tortured process writing Belleville, so it was crucial that I have the patience and support of Yale Rep’s staff and of the Center for New Theatre. I believe I would have given up on the play if the artistic leadership of the Rep had not lent its gentle encouragement. When I was in the throes of selfdoubt about the play, I was invited to come to Yale for a week and attend Paula Vogel’s famous Boot Camp. Having been out of school

32

YSD 2012–13

for two years at that point, it was invigorating to spend time with Paula and a roomful of thoughtful, energized fellow writers.

I began to see where I had gone wrong in my previous drafts of Belleville, and by the end of the week, I had the courage to start over. At every juncture along this difficult path, Yale Rep and the Center for New Theatre offered a new opportunity for me to find my way back to the play.

2011– 2012

Yale Repertory Theatre

THE WINTER’S TALE

Adina Verson ’12, Francis Jue yc ’86, Richard Ruiz, Adam O’Byrne ’04, and Sheria Irving ’13 in The Winter’s Tale,

by William Shakespeare, choreographed by Randy Duncan, directed by Liz Diamond (Faculty), photo by Joan Marcus

The Sound Designer MATTHEW SUTTOR (FACULTY) THE WINTER’S TALE

My first encounter with Shakespeare was nearly a quarter of a century ago. I had been asked to compose a score for live musicians without a conductor for an outdoor production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. From that experience composing for Shakespeare, I learned an invaluable lesson: The text of the play conducts the music.

Yes, the rich color and density of Shakespearean language is music itself. It has meter, counterpoint, and form; it is often unnecessary, but if a composer can find the right moment to add music, the effect is extraordinary. In the final scene of The Winter’s Tale, Paulina demands the miraculous: “Music, awake her; strike!” However, the task is not just to compose something wonderful for such a particular moment; the task is to create meaning in context, as if the play were a large-scale musical form itself. Even if one were to compose only transition music between scenes,

the sum of these short interstitial pieces would be symphonic in structure.

My challenge was to compose a score that really engaged live musicians on stage. The musical themes, in harmony with the many characters’ emotional journeys, become braided, woven, and layered by the twists and turns of the narrative, while the rhythm of exits and entrances creates vital shifts in energy and atmosphere.

In our production, the prologue opens with an idiosyncratic adaptation of Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin for clarinet, cello, and steel-tongue drum. The music is continually reinvented as we travel from Sicilia to Bohemia and back over the course of the play. The timbres of the musical instruments themselves tell a story: The same theme played on the flute sounds completely different when played on the cello later in the play. I love the way the text leads in this process, and I am always astounded when composing for Shakespeare.

YSD 2012–13

33

Yale Repertory Theatre

The Season in Review

GOOD GOODS

The Literary Manager AMY BORATKO ’06 THE REALISTIC JONESES

The Realistic Joneses was commissioned by Yale Rep and supported by the Center for New Theatre. The play is an example of something Yale Rep and the Center do well—allowing an artist to take risks. Will Eno set out to write a piece different from his other work and to apply his voice to a more realistic form of storytelling. It’s exciting to watch a playwright challenge himself and feel safe to experiment.

I first heard a partial draft of the play in July 2010, and over the following 18 months the Center supported several readings of subsequent drafts.

Through the development process I was able to build a relationship with Will and understand each step of the play’s evolution. As a dramaturg, I found it invaluable to understand the play’s history and have the time to forge a trusting and productive dialogue with a playwright.

Oberon K.A. Adjepong and Angela Lewis in the world premiere of Good Goods, by Christina Anderson ’11, directed by Tina Landau yc ’84, photo by Joan Marcus

THE REALISTIC JONESES

The Dramaturg ALEX RIPP ’13 GOOD GOODS

Good Goods can be described as a kind of collage or work of layering. Christina Anderson ’11 drew on an incredibly diverse collection of sources and inspirations in her writing and conflated all the years between 1961 and 1994 into a single time period. As dramaturgs, Amy Boratko ’06 and I brought information on these individual components to the rehearsal room to help the actors understand what made up the play. Director Tina Landau YC ’84 asked us to make an actor packet that broke down and explicated Christina’s sources and inspirations, from black comedy to general stores to spiritual possession to specific literary citations. Tina herself is a great dramaturg—she filled the rehearsal room with collages of pictures and brought in a great deal of research. I think that these dramaturgical offerings helped the actors understand the nebulous, provocative world in which their characters lived, a world that was both strange and familiar at the same time. In the rehearsal room we talked a lot about this very specific world that Christina had made. Christina was also really interested in having the town of Good Goods be mysterious, without an exact time, place, or identity.

As dramaturgs, we were watchdogs for clarity within the mystery that was so endemic to Christina’s creation, both in the script and in the production. And as with any production, we wanted to make sure the story was clear to the audience, but for this particular play, it was very important that mystery be preserved at the same time. The play lives in uncharted territory in many ways, and that’s what makes it so exciting.

34

YSD 2012–13

Parker Posey and Glenn Fitzgerald in the world premiere of The Realistic Joneses by Will Eno, directed by Sam Gold, photo

by Joan Marcus

2011– 2012

Yale Repertory Theatre

A DOCTOR IN SPITE OF HIMSELF

Julie Briskman, Jacob Ming Trent, and Liam Craig yc ’94 in A Doctor In Spite of Himself, by Molière, directed by Christopher Bayes (Faculty), photo by Joan Marcus

The Director CHRISTOPHER BAYES (FACULTY) A DOCTOR IN SPITE OF HIMSELF

In the fall of 2011 I had the great pleasure of beginning rehearsals for A Doctor In Spite of Himself at Yale Repertory Theatre. It was a piece that I had directed a year before at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle; it was based on an adaptation that I had written with my dear friend Steve Epp. At Yale we began with a hilarious version of the Molière text that we had built for the Seattle production and promptly proceeded to savage it mercilessly in search of the new joke or game or little sad song. Every day was a delight.

Well, not every day, but almost every day. “Dying is easy...

Comedy is hard,” as the old joke goes. I had tried to cast a company of actors that actually felt like a company—that is, people who had a trust and playfulness with each other and who also had a history. We had lots of different flavors in the room, many different and complementary talents, and some days I couldn’t help but say out loud, “We have the greatest job in the world!” It was a joy to work with all of the artists associated with this production, and we had the added pleasure of knowing that we would be re-mounting the show at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California in February . . . where we savaged the script once again in search of the new joke or game or little sad song.

THREE SISTERS

The Stage Manager JAMES MOUNTCASTLE ’90 (FACULTY) THREE SISTERS

I was happy to hear that we’d be opening the 2011–2012 season with a new version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters by Sarah Ruhl, a co-production of Yale Rep and Berkeley Rep in California.

The process of stage managing the second iteration of a co-produced piece of theatre turns out to be different in some key ways from stage management of a single production for a single theatre. First, instead of attending a design presentation where staging concepts are suggested and myriad questions are posed by director and designers, I flew out to California to watch the production we’d eventually do at Yale. The experience of seeing the show for the first time was nerve-wracking, very much like coming into a production as an understudy or replacement actor.

As I watched, I had so many questions about how we might eventually present this piece at Yale: How would we adapt the three-quarter thrust staging at Berkeley to the University Theatre’s proscenium setting? Would we lose some of the audience intimacy? I wondered also about the scene shifts, props, costumes. I thought about actor traffic in the wings and more staging through two tunnel-like entrances (voms) that I knew didn’t exist at the UT. Just how far downstage could we place Irina, Olga, and Masha and still create the stage picture we wanted at the end of the play? Since we didn’t have those voms the Berkeley auditorium has, could we at least create a reliable upstage crossover to get from one side of the stage to the other?

Though my mind was racing to stage manage the production that was to happen at Yale three months later, Anton Chekhov and Sarah Ruhl set my worries aside by telling a story. I watched the play that night and knew the entire journey was in good hands.

As stage manager for the production at Yale, I had the pleasure of watching it again and again from the booth, and I tried never to lose sight of the role I took on that first evening at Berkeley Rep: as an audience member. This is a part that a stage manager plays every single evening, a simple and important notion, I think, and a wonderful gift I received from that show.

James Carpenter and Heather Wood in Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, directed by Les Waters, photo by Joan Marcus YSD 2012–13

35

Yale Cabaret

The Season in Review

The Yale Cabaret’s 44th season included an inflatable-fish-as-love object, blood sucking and sad eyes, white-face and halos, an actress who wouldn’t speak, and featured audience sing-alongs, dance-alongs, laugh-alongs and embrace-our-wildest-imagingingsalongs. If you couldn’t be there, sorry, but here’s the family album.

CAB44 YALE CABARET’S 2011–2012 SEASON

BRAINSONGS ONE HUNDRED YEAR SPACE TRIP

Kate Attwell ’13 and Nina Segal in One Hundred Year Space Trip, written and directed by We Buy Gold

PERSONA

Gabriel Levey ’14 in Brainsongs, which he also wrote and directed, photo by Yi Zhao ’12

FUNNYHOUSE OF A NEGRO

(Above) Prema Cruz ’14, Miriam Hyman ’12, and Elia MonteBrown ’14 in Funnyhouse of a Negro by Adrienne Kennedy, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz ’12, photo by Yi Zhao ’12; (left) Laura Gragtmans ’12 and Monique Barbee ’13 in Persona

by Ingmar Bergman, directed by Alexandru Mihail ’12

36

YSD 2012–13

2011– 2012

Yale Cabaret

YIDDISH KING LEAR

Yiddish King Lear by Jacob Gordin, adapted by Whitney Dibo ’14 and Lauren Dubowski ’14; (left to right) Lauren Dubowski, Christopher Bannow ’14, Mamoudou Athie ’14, Tanya Dean ’11, dfa cand., Prema Cruz ’14, Alexandra Trow ’12, yc ’09, and William DeMerrit ’12, photo by Ethan Heard ’13, yc ’07

REWILDING DRACULA

(Above) Mikey Theis ’14 in Rewilding by Martyna Majok ’12, directed by Dustin Wills ’14, photo by Hansol Jung ’14; (right) Lucas Dixon ’12 in Dracula

YSD 2012–13

37

Yale School of Drama

The Season in Review

Playwrights talk about rewriting, the joys and terrors of rehearsals, the thrill of seeing their play brought to life. Directors discuss what their choice of a play means to them, and how they attempted to realize their vision.

YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA’S 2011–2012 SEASON

THE BACHELORS

PLAYWRIGHTS AND DIRECTORS DISCUSS THEIR PROCESS Bad Behavior. Misogyny.

The Dangers of Going All the Way. CAROLINE MCGRAW ’12 ON THE BACHELORS

The Bachelors, a play with a lot of bad behavior, follows three men in their early 30s through a night unlike any they’ve spent before. Alliances shift, inanimate objects are romanced, and the invisible presence of women hovers around the house that these characters have shared for years. This play is a departure of style for me, and filled with a lot of darkness; I was nervous to go into rehearsal with something that still felt like a raw, exposed nerve. I needn’t have wasted a worry; Alexandru Mihail ’12, my director, along with a stellar cast, consisting of Jack Moran ’13 as Laurie, Mickey Theis ’14 as Kevlar, and Mitchell Winter ’14 as Henry, made our rehearsal room both safe and dangerous. The danger came from the three profoundly committed, gifted actors exploring the crevices of destructive behavior and self-deception, and the safety came from the collaborative spirit that the company brought to the room each day. I honestly cannot remember a “hard day;” we talked about our lives, we worked moments to the bone, and we laughed a whole lot. On opening night I felt the calm that comes when you know your work is in the best possible hands.

Mitchell Winter ’14, Mikey Theis ’14, and Jack Moran ’13 in The Bachelors by Caroline McGraw ’12, directed by Alexandru Mihail ’12, photo by T. Charles Erickson

FOX PLAY

Brenda Meaney ’13 and Paul Pryce ’13 in Fox Play

by Jake Jeppson ’12, directed

by Lileana Blain-Cruz ’12, photo by T. Charles Erickson

38

YSD 2012–13

2011– 2012 PETTY HARBOUR

Yale School of Drama

Patriarchy. Banishment. Transformation.

MARTYNA MAJOK ’12 ON PETTY HARBOUR

I was challenged by Paula Vogel (Faculty) to write about patriarchy, with texts like King Lear, The Godfather, and The Bible from which to draw inspiration. I took the Carlotta Festival as my opportunity to write an epic family drama, to create characters with huge appetites and meaty histories, to transport people to a world in the theatre, to feel the joy and the ache of loving people. I crafted a story about a family that, over the course of a single night, learns the meaning of forgiveness.

Petty Harbour is the story of the three banished Murphy brothers who return home to Newfoundland after receiving a strange and prophetic phonecall from a voice they think is their father’s. Once there, they discover that their father has turned their childhood home into a church, and on this night of their return a storm rages outside that threatens to destroy it. Soon their father arrives, and shortly after, two unknown women. Every day I would count the hours until rehearsal. There are few places where I felt more happiness than in that room with director Tea Alagic ’07 and the seven brilliant actors who created a family in only a month.

I just laid the show to rest this past weekend, and I miss everyone terribly. It is a privilege to write, and a gift, a great gift, to be able to stage a play. I watched designers and TD&Ps build a world. I witnessed bodies and voices and spaces transform themselves into characters in the world. The collaboration that became Petty Harbour is doubtless one of the greatest memories of my little life. I hope every soul that worked on it knows how grateful I will always be to them.

Gabriel Levey ’14 and Prema Cruz ’14 in Petty Harbour by Martyna Majok ’12, directed by Tea Alagic ’07, photo by T. Charles Erickson

Mystical Forest Creatures.

Grief, Logic, and a Wooden Stage.

JAKE JEPPSON ’12 ON FOX PLAY

I learned to make plays in a drafty barn with no money. We stole props and made stuff up as we went. If we had a deer in one of our plays, we might lift a taxidermied deer from a local pub and walk around holding it above our heads. Or we would use sticks from the local park as “antlers.” Double casting often involved new accents or fake mustaches.

The ensemble of performers and designers of Fox Play celebrated that tradition in their work. Young and lithe actors transformed themselves into withered octogenarians, melodramatic scientists, and mystical forest creatures. Our director, Lileana Blain-Cruz ’12, and our designers dropped us in different locations while never losing sight of our wooden stage.

Both grief and theatre resist logic, and when we try to pin them down or name them, they slip from our grasp. Fox Play is about living with grief, the kind of grief that burrows into your bones and takes hold, the kind that resists the logic of everyday life.

I’m excited that all of our Fox Play team embraced the illogical nature of our play. I believe that all of it added up to something that the audience felt, but couldn’t quite name.

THE SEAGULL Josiah Bania ’13 and Carmen Zilles ’13 in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, directed by Alexandru Mihail ’12, photo by T. Charles Erickson ALEXANDRU MIHAIL ’12 DIRECTS THE SEAGULL

Using Chekhov’s play as a map, we have, all together, actors, designers, dramaturgs, taken the journey of inquiring what is our place in the world… between love and art. This genuine, joint questioning was, in my opinion, our greatest achievement. The process, the work on the play, became as relevant for us as the show itself. Those three months of designing, budgeting, and rehearsing was for all of us, a time of breakthroughs, deep personal inquiry, exercises of trust and joy to be sharing ourselves, fully, with the others and with the world. Doing that, as an ensemble and realizing that working on a play is not just about producing a show, but about generously confronting ourselves with our fears and dreams was the true turning point not just for myself, but for us all, the artists of YSD 3, The Seagull.

YSD 2012–13

39

Yale School of Drama

The Season in Review

CYMBELINE

LILEANA BLAIN-CRUZ ’12 DIRECTS DOCTOR FAUSTUS LIGHTS THE LIGHTS

I always thought Gertrude Stein was intriguing. Her plays are captivating, non-linear, aurally alive landscapes, and I had no idea how to direct them . . . which was exciting to me. How do you direct Gertrude Stein??? When it came time to choose my thesis, I realized I wasn’t interested in directing a conventional play. I wanted to create something new. However, because of the thesis production schedule, devising an entirely new piece was impossible. Then I found Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, a libretto for an opera that Stein wrote on the cusp of World War II. Yes! Of course! An opera! Stein wrote a lot about the present.

She wrote, “The business of Art is to live in the actual present, that is the complete actual present, and to completely express that complete actual present.” It’s such an exciting idea to me, because I think that is precisely what can make theatre incredible. PRESENCE. WE ARE HERE RIGHT NOW. TOGETHER. Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights invited a particularly open-ended collaboration with the composer, the designers, and the company of actors that helped to create it, and that task of BEING PRESENT and EXPRESSING the present is what made this piece both challenging and thrilling to work on. All of Gertrude Stein’s papers are at the Beinecke Library at Yale. I hope to visit them again soon!!

DOCTOR FAUSTUS

William DeMeritt ’12, Adina Verson ’12, and Joshua Bermudez ’13 in Cymbeline by William Shakespeare, directed by Louisa Proske ’12, photo by T. Charles Erickson LOUISA PROSKE ’12 DIRECTS CYMBELINE

At the center of Cymbeline stands the idea of forgiveness, of redemption. How can a crime, historical or personal, be purged and forgiven? How can Posthumus and Imogen, who belong to each other but have been torn apart by circumstance, keep their faith in each other, and what happens when one of them falters and his love turns into murderous jealousy? In Cymbeline, life is portrayed as a spiritual journey from blindness to seeing, from inexperience to knowledge, from crime to forgiveness and grace. Consequently it is a play full of journeys, both physical and spiritual, in which the self is constantly in motion, constantly dying and being reborn. Posthumus and Imogen have to go through many lives and identities before they can finally meet each other again and hope for a deeper union that overcomes their catastrophic crisis.

For me, Cymbeline is a profoundly important play because it deals with the question of healing a broken world in such a holistic way, by linking the need for redemption on the political and historical plane to the level of shattered relationships between people, and also to the level of the self. I believe that in our age of violence and division on every level of existence, it is a deep necessity to make theatre about grace and healing and forgiveness and about how these things can occur even after heinous crimes have been committed and ethical principles violated.

Chris Henry ’12, Seamus Mulcahy ’12, Hallie Cooper-Novack ’12, and Lupita Nyong’o ’12 in Doctor Faustus Lights The Lights by Gertrude Stein, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz ’12, photo

by T. Charles Erickson

Alumni Events

New York Holiday 2 Party (2011)

1

at The Yale Club of New York City

3 1 James Leverett (Faculty), Erin Buckley ’06, Catherine Sheehy ’92, DFA ’99 (Faculty), Katherine Roth ’93

2 Gordon Rogoff YC ’52 (Faculty), Roger Simon ’67, Paul McKinley ’96, Christopher Swanson ’97, DFA ’01

3 Lupita Nyong’o ’12, Brian Henry ’07, Sarita Covington ’07

4

5

4 Grace Zandarski (Faculty), Bryce Pinkham ’08 5 Luke Robertson ’09, Slate Holmgren ’10, Danny Binstock ’11

6 Tom Sellar ’97, DFA ’03 (Faculty), Amy Boratko ’06, Monica Achen ’06, DFA cand., Alex Speiser

7 Don Lowy ’76, Angela Lowy, Elizabeth Norment ’79

6

7

YSD 2012–13

41

Photos by Anita Shevett/Shevett Studios

Alumni Events

West Coast Alumni Party (2012)

1

2

at the home of Jane Kaczmarek ’82

3

4

1 Brendan Patrick Hughes ’04, James Bundy ’95 (Dean), Roger G. Smith ’83

2 Christine Estabrook ’76, Jane Kaczmarek ’82

3 Rachel Myers ’07, Stephen Godchaux ’93

4 Jim Kleinmann ’92, Stephanie Meade,

5

Phil Kaufmann ’90, Rafeal Clements ’90

5 Eliza Gross, Tony Shalhoub ’80, Michael Gross ’73

6 Gene Phillip Rogers ’02, Cecilia Rogers 7 Elizabeth Lande ’94, Kimberly Scott ’87

6 Photos by Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging

42

YSD 2012–13

7

YSD Reception, TCG Conference (2012)

1

at M.J. O’Connor’s restaurant, Boston

2

3 1 Mahayana Landowne ’98, Karena Fiorenza Ingersoll ’12, Belina Mizrahi ’10, Shira Beckerman ’06, Nico Lang ’05, Jennifer Lagundino ’13

2 Jim Kleinman ’92, Flora Stamatiades ’94 3 Dawn Helsing Wolters ’01

4

4 Victoria Nolan (Deputy Dean),

5

Josh Borenstein ’02, David Muse ’03, YC ’96, Mark Blankenship ’05, Janice Muirhead

5 Josh Borenstein ’02, Jeff Herrmann ’99 6 Meghan Pressman ’10, SOM ’10, Frances Black ’09, Katie Liberman ’13, SOM ’13

6 YSD 2012–13

43

Congratulations to our newest alumni— the Class of 2012!

Master of Fine Arts/ Certificate in Drama Acting William Cobbs Hallie Cooper-Novack William DeMeritt Lucas Dixon Laura Gragtmans Christopher Henry Miriam Hyman Brian (Lewis) Wiles Seamus Mulcahy Fisher Neal Lupita Nyong’o Michael Place Jillian Taylor Alexandra Trow Adina Verson Design Kristin Fiebig Sidney Johnson Julia Chichieh Lee Hyun Seung Lee Mark Nagle Matthew Saunders Rebecca Welles Yi Zhao Sound Design Elizabeth Atkinson Kenneth Goodwin Junghoon Pi Directing Lileana Blain-Cruz Alexandru Mihail Luisa Proske

Playwriting John Jeppson Martyna Majok Caroline McGraw Stage Management Maria Cantin Catherine Costanzo Brandon Curtis Gina Odierno Technical Design & Production Shaminda Amarakoon Shaina Graboyes Eric Lin Michael Rohrer Christopher Russo Robert Shearin Joseph Stoltman Andrew Wallace Katherine Wicker Theater Management Matthew Gutschick Karena Fiorenza Ingersoll Diana Jacobs Komisar Jaeeun Joo Technical Internship Certificate Emily Erdman Allison Jackson Nathan Jasunas Courtney Mills Jacob Riley Greta Schmitt Kenyth Thomason Jennifer Timms Jacqueline Young

Shaina Graboyes ’12, Mikey Roher ’12, Chris Russo ’12, Joe Stoltman ’12, Kate Wicker ’12, Andrew Wallace ’12, Rob Shearin ’12, Eric Lin ’12; (bottom) Shaminda Amarakoon ’12

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

ASCAP Cole Porter Prize John (Jake) Jeppson ’12 Edward C. Cole Memorial Award Eric Lin ’12 John W. Gassner Memorial Prize Alexandra Ripp ’13 Bert Gruver Memorial Prize Catherine Costanzo ’12 Gina Odierno ’12 Allen M. and Hildred L. Harvey Prize Karen Walcott ’13 Morris J. Kaplan Prize Jaeeun Joo ’12 Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize Lileana Blain-Cruz ’12 Jay and Rhonda Keene Prize Rebecca Welles ’12

Leo Lerman Graduate Fellowship in Design Mark Nagle ’12 Dexter Wood Luke Memorial Prize Shaminda Amarakoon ’12 Mentorship Award Shaminda Amarakoon ’12 Michael Rohrer ’12 Donald and Zorka Oenslager Fellowship Julia Chichieh Lee ’12 Yi Zhao ’12 Pierre-André Salim Prize Lileana Blain-Cruz ’12 The Frieda Shaw, Dr. Diana Mason OBE, and Denise Suttor Prize for Sound Design Kenneth Goodwin ’12 Oliver Thorndike Acting Award Michael Place ’12 George C. White Prize Matthew Gutschick ’12 Herschel Williams Prize Lupita Nyong’o ’12 Lucas Dixon ’12

Dramaturgy Delilah Dominguez Kee-Yoon Nahm Elliot Quick Anne Seiwerath Cheng-Han Wu

Junghoon Pi ’12, Elliot Quick ’12, Cheng-Han Wu ’12

44

YSD 2012–13

YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA FELLOWSHIPS AND SCHOLARSHIPS The recipients for the 2011–2012 academic year were:

John Badham Scholarship Alexandru Mihail ’12 The John Badham Scholarship in Directing Luisa Proske ’12 The George Pierce Baker Memorial Scholarship Kate Attwell ’13 Benjamin Fainstein ’13 Kee-Yoon Nahm ’12 The Herbert H. and Patricia M. Brodkin Scholarship Jack Moran ’13 The Patricia M. Brodkin Memorial Scholarship Maria Cantin ’12 Brandon Curtis ’12 The Paul Carter Scholarship Eric Lin ’12 Nicholas G. Ciriello Endowed Scholarship Fund Joseph Stoltman ’12 The Caris Corfman Scholarship for Students at Yale School of Drama Hannah Sorenson ’13 The Cheryl Crawford Scholarship Caroline McGraw ’12 Edgar and Louise Cullman Scholarship Dustin Wills ’14 Cullman Scholarship in Directing Lileana Blain-Cruz ’12 Nicole Lewis ’14 Jack Tamburri ’13 Holmes Easley Scholarship Fund Adam Rigg ’13 Matthew Saunders ’12

The Eldon Elder Fellowship Jaeeun Joo ’12 Julia Chi-Chieh Lee ’12 Hyun Seung Lee ’12 Junghoon Pi ’12 Paul Robert Pryce ’13 Luisa Proske ’12 Alexander Roll ’13 Cheng-Han Wu ’12 Jayoung Yoon ’13 Yi Zhao ’12 Wesley Fata Scholarship Fund Joshua Bermudez ’13 The Sylvia Fine Kaye Scholarship Fund Monique Barbee ’13 The Foster Family Graduate Fellowship Alexandra Trow ’12, YC ’09 The Annie G.K. Garland Memorial Scholarship Gina Odierno ’12 Randolph Goodman Scholarship Rebecca Welles ’12 Jerome L. Greene Endowment Lucas Dixon ’12 Laura Gragtmans ’12 Christopher Henry ’12 Lupita Nyong’o ’12 Pamela Jordan Scholarship Adina Verson ’12 The Jay and Rhonda Keene Scholarship for Costume Design Kristin Fiebig ’12

The Alfred L. McDougal (1953) and Nancy Lauter McDougal Endowed Scholarship Fund Margot Bordelon ’13 Will Cobbs ’12 Benjamin Mordecai Scholarship for Theater Managers Jonathan Wemette ’13 The Kenneth D. Moxley Memorial Scholarship Shaminda Amarakoon ’12 The Donald M. Oenslager Scholarship in Stage Design, 3rd year Sidney Johnson ’12 Mark Nagle ’12

Scholarship for Playwriting Justin Taylor ’13 Pierre-André Salim Memorial Scholarship Barbara Tan-Tiongco ’13 Hansol Jung ’14 Yi Zhao ’12 The Richard Harrison Senie Scholarship Paul Lieber ’13 Hannah Wasileski ’13 Daniel and Helene Sheehan Scholarship for Yale School of Drama Students Matthew Gutschick ’12 Howard Stein Scholarship Amelia Roper ’13 The Leon Brooks Walker Scholarship Brian (Lewis) Wiles ’12

The Donald and Zorka Oenslager Scholarship in Stage Design Nikki Delhomme ’13 Meredith Ries ’13 Kristen Robinson ’13 Matthew Saunders ’12

The Richard Ward Scholarship Reynaldi Lolong ’13

The Eugene O’Neill Memorial Scholarship Martyna Majok ’12

The Zelma Weisfeld Scholarship for Costume Design Martin Schnellinger ’13

The Mary Jean Parson Scholarship Katherine McGerr ’14

The Constance Welch Memorial Scholarship Molly Bernard ’13 Timothy Brown ’13

Barbara E. Richter Scholarship Fund Catherine Costanzo ’12 Karena Ingersoll ’12

The Rebecca West Scholarship Robert Grant ’13 Brenda Meaney ’13

The Mark Richard Scholarship Martha Kaufman ’13

The Audrey Wood Scholarship John Jeppson ’12

Lloyd Richards Scholarship in Acting Winston Duke ’13

The Ray Klausen Design Scholarship Maria Hooper ’13 Gordon F. Knight Scholarship Fund Liz Atkinson ’12 The Lotte Lenya Scholarship Fund Fisher Neal ’12 Victor S. Lindstrom Scholarship Dan Perez ’13 The Lord Memorial Scholarship Caitlin Hannon ’14, som ’14 The Virginia Brown Martin Scholarship Sheria Irving ’13 The Stanley R. McCandless Scholarship Masha Tsimring ’13 Solomon Weisbard ’13

(Back, left to right) Seamus Mulcahy ’12, Delilah Dominguez ’12, Adina Verson ’12, Hallie Cooper-Novack ’12, Alexandra Trow ’12, yc ’09, Miriam Hyman ’12; (front) Laura Gragtmans ’12, Jillian Taylor ’12, Lupita Nyong’o ’12

YSD 2012–13

45

Alumni and Faculty Honors and Awards 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards 2011

43rd Annual L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards 2012

Outstanding Animated Program

Outstanding Set Design

Michael Price ’63 (Co-Executive Producer)

John Lee Beatty ’73

Nominee, The Simpsons

Nominee, Poor Behavior (Center Theatre Group at the Mark Taper Forum)

Outstanding Art Direction For Variety, Music Or Nonfiction Programming

Eugene Lee ’86 Nominee, Saturday Night Live Outstanding Art Direction For Variety, Music Or Nonfiction Programming

Akira Yoshimura ’71 Nominee, Saturday Night Live Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie

Paul Giamatti ’94, YC ’89 Nominee, Too Big to Fail Outstanding Drama Series

Rolin Jones ’04 (Supervising Producer) Nominee, Friday Night Lights Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Series

Scott A. Sherman ’94 (Writer) Nominee, The Colbert Report Outstanding Costumes for a Series

Chris Peterson ’08 (Assistant Costume Designer) Nominee, Boardwalk Empire

43rd Annual Equity Jeff Awards 2010–11 Outstanding Actress in a Principal Role (Play)

Jennifer Lim ’04

43rd Annual L.A. Stage Alliance Ovation Awards 2011

18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards 2012

Outstanding Scenic Design (Large Theatre)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role (Film)

Todd Rosenthal ’93

Meryl Streep ’75, DFAH ’83

Winner, Twist—An American Musical (Pasadena Playhouse)

Nominee, The Iron Lady

Nominee – Outstanding Sound Design (Large Theatre)

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

Vincent Olivieri ’01

Paul Giamatti ’94, YC ’89

Nominee, Extraordinary Chambers (Geffen Playhouse)

Winner, Too Big to Fail

69th Annual Golden Globe Awards 2012 Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, MiniSeries or Motion Picture Made for Television

Nominee, Too Big to Fail

Outstanding New Work (Play)

Meryl Streep ’75, DFAH ’83

David Henry Hwang ’83

Winner, The Iron Lady

Jon Jory ’65

David Ives ’84 Nominee, Heir Apparent (Shakespeare Theatre Company) Outstanding Director, Resident Play

David Muse ’03, YC ’96

Nominee, Chinglish (Goodman Theatre)

Outstanding New Adaptation

The Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play or Musical

Paul Giamatti ’94, YC ’89

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture-Drama

Winner, Chinglish (Goodman Theatre)

28th Annual Helen Hayes Awards 2012

Nominee, Habit of Art (Studio Theatre) Nominee, Venus in Fur (Studio Theatre) Outstanding Set Design, Resident Production

Lee Savage ’05 (Faculty) Winner, Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare Theatre Company)

Nominee, Sense and Sensibility (Northlight Theatre) Outstanding Scenic Design (Large)

Todd Rosenthal ’93 Nominee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

(Steppenwolf Theatre Company) Outstanding Lighting Design (Large)

Christopher Akerlind ’89 Nominee, As You Like It (Chicago Shakespeare Theater) Outstanding Costume Design (Large)

84th Annual Academy Awards 2012

Jacqueline Firkins ’00 Nominee, The Comedy of Errors (Court Theatre)

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Meryl Streep ’75, DFAH ’83 Winner, The Iron Lady

David Henry Hwang ’83 and Jennifer Lim ’04 at the Opening Night party for Chinglish on Broadway, photo by Jenny Anderson for Broadway.com

46

YSD 2012–13

Da’Vine Joy Randolph ’11 and the cast of the Broadway production of Ghost The Musical, photo by Joan Marcus

57th Annual Drama Desk Awards 2012 Outstanding Play

David Henry Hwang ’83 Nominee, Chinglish Outstanding Play

Lynn Nottage ’89 (Faculty) Nominee, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark Outstanding Actress in a Play

Sanaa Lathan ’95 Nominee, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark Outstanding Actress in a Play

Jennifer Lim ’04 Nominee, Chinglish Outstanding Lighting Design, Resident Production

Outstanding Lighting Design

Thom Weaver ’07

Nominee, An Iliad

Scott Zielinski ’90

62nd Annual Outer Critics Circle Awards 2012 Outstanding New Off Broadway Play

Nominee, Cyrano (Folger Theatre) Playwrights’ Sidewalk Inductee

David Ives ’84

Outstanding Lead Actress, Resident Play

Richard Foreman ’62

Nominee, The School for Lies

Erica Sullivan ’09

78th Annual Drama League Awards 2012

Outstanding Director of a Play

Winner, Venus in Fur (The Studio Theatre)

Distinguished Performance Award

Ted Van Griethuysen ’60

Nominee, The Mountaintop

Angela Bassett ’83, YC ’80

Nominee, Habit of Art (The Studio Theatre) Distinguished Performance Award

Sarah Sokolovic ’11 Nominee, The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World Outstanding Book of a Musical

Mark Brokaw ’86 Nominee, The Lyons

The Robert Prosky Award for Lead Actor, Resident Play

Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical

Peter Stone ’53 (deceased) Nominee, Death Takes a Holiday Outstanding Set Design

Outstanding Set Design (Play or Musical)

Derek McLane ’84 Nominee, Follies

Derek McLane ’84

Outstanding Costume Design

Nominee, Nice Work if You Can Get It

William Ivey Long ’75

27th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards 2012

Da’Vine Joy Randolph ’11 Nominee, Ghost the Musical

Outstanding Costume Design (Play or Musical)

Outstanding Play

Distinguished Production of a Play

William Ivey Long ’75

Catherine Zuber ’84

David Ives ’84

Lynne Meadow ’71 (Artistic Director)

Nominee, Don’t Dress for Dinner

Nominee, Death Takes a Holiday

Nominee, The School for Lies

Nominee, The Columnist (Manhattan Theatre Club) Nominee, Venus in Fur (Manhattan Theatre Club)

Outstanding Lighting Design (Play or Musical)

Outstanding Sound Design in a Play

Donald Holder ’86

Nominee, She Kills Monsters

Outstanding Lead Actress

Sanaa Lathan ’95

Lynne Meadow ’71 (Artistic Director)

Adrianne Lobel ’79

Nominee, Wit (Manhattan Theatre Club)

Outstanding Actress in a Play

Winner, Sweet and Sad, including Laila Robins ’84

Laila Robins ’84 Nominee, The Lady from Dubuque

Nominee, Galileo

57th Annual Obie Awards 2012

William Ivey Long ’75

Best New American Play

Nominee, The School for Lies

Amy Herzog ’07, YC ’00

Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical

Da’Vine Joy Randolph ’11

Winner, 4000 Miles

Nominee, Ghost the Musical

Ilona Somogyi ’94 (Faculty)

Best Performance

John Gassner Award

Nominee, Maple and Vine

Winner, Ensemble of Sweet and Sad, including Laila Robins ’84

Winner, The Submission

Outstanding Costume Design

Shane Rettig ’99

Outstanding Ensemble Performance

Distinguished Revival of a Play Outstanding Scenic Design

Outstanding Costume Design

Outstanding Costume Design

Nominee, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

Winner, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark

Outstanding Costume Design

Nominee, Lucky Guy

Jeff Talbott ’96

Catherine Zuber ’84 Nominee, Death Takes a Holiday

YSD 2012–13

47

continued on page 48

66th Annual Tony Awards 2012 Best Play

Rick Elice ’79 Nominee, Peter and the Starcatcher

Best Revival of a Play

Best Scenic Design of a Musical

Lynne Meadow ’71 (Artistic Director)

Tobin Ost ’01 (Co-Designer)

Nominee, Master Class (Manhattan Theatre Club) Nominee, Wit (Manhattan Theatre Club)

Nominee, Newsies

Connecticut Critic Circle Awards 2012 Outstanding Direction

Best Costume Design of a Play

Christopher Bayes (Faculty)

William Ivey Long ’75 Nominee, Don’t Dress for Dinner

David Ives ’84

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

Winner, A Doctor in Spite of Himself, Yale Repertory Theatre

Nominee, Venus in Fur

David Alan Grier ’81

Best Lighting Design of a Musical

Outstanding Set Design

Nominee, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess

Christopher Akerlind ’89

Alexander Dodge ’99

Nominee, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess

Winner, The Tempest (Hartford Stage), Bell Book and Candle (Long Wharf Theatre/Hartford Stage co-production), The Circle (Westport Country Playhouse)

Best Play

Best Play

Lynne Meadow ’71 (Artistic Director) Nominee, Venus in Fur (Manhattan Theatre Club) Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical

Da’Vine Joy Randolph ’11

1st Annual Off Broadway Alliance Awards 2012

Nominee, Ghost the Musical Best New Play Best Scenic Design of a Play

Rick Elice ’79

Amy Herzog ’07, YC ’00

John Lee Beatty ’73

Nominee, Peter and the Starcatcher (Lyrics)

Nominee, 4000 Miles

Nominee, Other Desert Cities

Honors Amy Herzog ’07, yc ’00 was one of ten writers to receive a Whiting Writers’ Award of $50,000 from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. The foundation provides awards to writers and humanities scholars who are near the beginning of their careers.

Austin Durant ’10 and Bryce Pinkham ’08 both received Annenberg Fellowships, two-year grants awarded by The Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund for the Performing and Visual Arts to early-career dancers, musicians, actors, and visual artists.

Laura Eckelman ’11 received a 2011 S&R Washington Award in the amount of $5,000. The S&R Foundation recognizes talented young artists in the fields of fine arts, music, drama, dance, photography, and film.

Meryl Streep ’75, dfah ’83 was honored at 2011 Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime contribution to culture. She also received an Academy Award and a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Arts) Award for Best Actress for her role in The Iron Lady.

Nastaran Ahmadi ’06 received a 2011–2012 Playwriting Fellowship from The Playwrights Realm for emerging young playwrights to work on a new play over the next nine months.

Jennifer Lim ’04 received a Theatre World Award for her Broadway debut performance in Chinglish.

48

YSD 2012–13

Austin Durant ’10, photo by Anita Shevett

Bryce Pinkham ’08 Laura Eckelman ’11 with Drs. Sachiko Kuno and Ryuji Ueno, founders of the S&R Foundation, photo by AElkington Photography 2012

The Art of Giving Art Matters It is open-heartedness driven by a deep and abiding belief in the most ephemeral of pursuits. To many people the arts are a luxury, expendable, disposable. Shouldn’t generosity be directed toward something more tangible, goes the common wisdom, something with measurable results? In fact, it has been shown incontrovertibly: Art improves people’s lives. The generosity of the people profiled below flies in the face of more traditional giving; it says: Yes, art matters.

Kara Unterberg YC ’87 is a philanthropist who believes in the power and purity of art. It is out of that belief that she has made a generous gift to support musical theatre at Yale School of Drama. Having sat on the boards of several arts organizations, Kara was dismayed to see a lot of money being given to improve or construct buildings and very little support to artists. “This was very frustrating to me,” she says. “It is my passion to give to emerging artists.

If I can keep one artist doing art, if I can help them not lose hope and keep them going—and not wind up going to law school!—then I’ll feel I’ve done something worthwhile.”

Kara’s interest in the theatre took root during her years as an undergraduate when she sang in the Yale Glee Club while pursuing studies in economics and political science. Her growing interest in the stage made her take a hard look at the state of musical theatre in this country. “One of the main reasons I want to support musical theatre at Yale School of Drama is that in the commercial theatre it’s all about making money. This means you need a big name or something with mass appeal, and that can be at the expense of true art which has no profit motive. For young writers to have the opportunity to see their work done at a high level, to see their art brought to life at an early stage . . . this is the great chance that Yale gives them. Otherwise the need for their work to make money would stifle them at the start.” The essence of Kara’s generous gift to YIMT (Yale Institute of Music Theatre) is to provide possibility and hope.

“What is the future of art without that?”

Mark Brokaw ’86, Kara Unterberg yc ’87, James Bundy ’95 (Dean), John Rando

Board of Advisors member Lynne Bolton founded a scholarship in the name of Earle Gister, former chair of the acting program at Yale School of Drama. Lynne met Earle 15 years ago when, as a young mother of a four-year-old girl and eighteen-month-old twin boys, she entered a summer program at the School taught by Mark Brokaw ’86 and overseen by Earle.

Lynne Bolton

YSD 2012–13

49

The Art of Giving “Earle came into the room at various times and watched our scenes,” Lynne recalls. “I did something from All My Sons, and afterward he stopped me and said, ‘I want to know about you.’”

Lynne went on to study with Earle at The Actors Center in New York and played Madame Arkadina in a New York production of The Seagull that Earle directed. “He encouraged me to work and explore where I fit into the world of the theatre. He was a very good teacher, clear about how to work. He gave me rules of how to read the text and create a character.”

After Earle’s death earlier this year, Lynne decided to honor him with this scholarship. “I loved how game Earle was,” she says. “He didn’t judge. The work was what he loved. I jumped at the chance to make the scholarship happen.”

Linda Rodman YC ’73, GRD ’75 has a particular place in her

Linda Rodman yc ’73, grd ’75

heart for Yale, partly because she was in the first class of women accepted to the university in 1969. “Some women felt they were not taken seriously,” she says.

“Not me. I had four phenomenal years.” After she received her undergraduate degree, Linda stayed on to earn a graduate degree in organizational behavior in the Psychology department. She has a son and a daughter who attended Yale, as well as a son-in-law-to-be. “So there are six Yale degrees in my family,” she says with pride.

Linda’s philanthropic activity began with a gift to the Capital Campaign and another to the Drama Library Fund. “I like to give with a purpose,” she says. “I gave to the library because my daughter was an English major and to the lacrosse stadium because my son played lacrosse. Then, three years ago I heard James Bundy speak, and I was tremendously impressed. I felt that I wanted to endow a scholarship at the School of Drama. It was beyond what we originally planned to give, but I felt it was really important to do. It was hearing James speak that clinched it. Everything he’s doing is very appealing to me. And I welcome the opportunity to meet the recipients of my scholarship. It’s also exciting that there is a community to become involved with.”

Both Pam Rank ’78 and Jeff Rank ’79 work for Disney Productions theme parks worldwide, Pam as lighting designer and Jeff as an engineer for park rides. They have given regularly to the School of Drama but when they were first approached to endow a scholarship, they did not feel they were in a financial position to do so. “But we kept thinking about it,” Jeff says, “and three years later we were ready.”

“Our time at Yale was extraordinary,” Jeff said, and as the years went on, both he and Pam came to recognize that their YSD degrees meant an enormous amount to their careers. “YSD’s value in the marketplace is both the strength of its name and the quality of what we learned here,” Jeff adds. “The education we got was brilliant. We’re so appreciative of what the School did for us.

Now that we can show our appreciation, we want to remove a barrier for a talented student coming to Yale. We know where our support is going, and we understand the value of a great education.”

Pam Rank ’78 and Jeff Rank ’79

Carol Waaser ’70 had been a philosophy major as an undergraduate and was uncertain as to what to do with her life. One of her college instructors suggested that since she enjoyed working backstage in the school’s theatre department, she go to Yale School of Drama. She took his advice, entered YSD, and got her first scholarship as an assistant in the Sound Department. After graduation, Carol worked for a few years as a stage manager for theatre and dance, then got a job with Actors’ Equity, where she remained for 28 years, her last few as acting executive director.

When Carol retired from Actors’ Equity, she established a charitable gift to benefit Yale School of Drama. Carol remains grateful to the School for starting her on what she calls “an accidental career.”

Carol Wasser ’70

Anita Fusco YC ’90 and Dino Fusco YC ’88, longtime theatre lovers, had an interest in contributing to Yale in some way and had discussed possibilities with the Development Office, but they hadn’t found a gift that seemed right to them. Then they saw War Horse at Lincoln Center and realized that one of the actors, Peter Hermann yc ’90, had been a classmate of theirs, and that six of the other actors were graduates of the School of Drama. This helped to focus their interest on the School. “In the theatre you see a lot of people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets that come together to put on a play. It’s like a team sport. They have to sacrifice a lot to make the whole brilliant.” The next step was to host a cocktail party for the Yale cast members of War Horse and invite people who were interested in theatre to see the play and meet the cast in a casual setting.

The Fuscos made their gift to the School of Drama in the belief that it would help to attract the best students. “The arts can be a difficult profession,” Anita says, “and not immediately rewarding. Sometimes never rewarding. We felt that quality moves the arts forward and that money shouldn’t be an obstacle for any talented student if we could help.”

For all of these generous people, support of the arts is not simply a belief but a cause, one with a specific and direct beneficiary: students of the theatre. At a time in our country when people are asked to support many different causes, it takes dedication and a fierce kind of passion to make giving to the arts a priority.

Barry Jay Kaplan

Leave Your Legacy

Anita Fusco yc ’90 and Dino Fusco yc ’88, photo

by The Jussen Studio

By including Yale School of Drama in your financial plan, you make a significant commitment that will strengthen the School and, through faculty and students, touch and inspire countless lives.

A life income gift can offer you the best of many worlds: dependable income for you and your family, current and future tax savings, and a means to support scholarships and the unique programs that have made Yale School of Drama a leader in arts training for more than eighty years.

Whether planning for retirement, the educational expenses of children, or the care of loved ones, life income gifts are an excellent way to balance your goals. . . for you and for the School.

To learn about these opportunities, please contact Susan Clark at (203) 432-1559 or susan.clark@yale.edu.

YSD 2012–13

51

In Memoriam

Earle Gister (Faculty) with Maria Aitken at BADA/Oxford 1987, photo

by Bruce Katzman

Acting Teacher Earle Gister Earle Gister gave everything to his students and expected in return hard work and dedication to their craft. He made demands on them that were exacting, rigorous, difficult, and as simple as truth. And though he was sometimes hard and unwavering in his demands, he was also generous and kind, a teacher whose face would fill with light when a student finally broke through to the truth of a moment.

He was regarded as one of America’s foremost acting teachers. During his long and distinguished career, he played key roles in actor training programs at North Carolina School of the Arts, The Juilliard School, Carnegie Mellon University, City College of New York, the British American Drama Academy, and The Actors Center, where he mentored some of today’s most celebrated actors. Though he taught in many places, he always believed it was the students that made the school, not the reverse.

Earle made his greatest impact during his years at Yale, where he joined the faculty of the School of Drama in 1979, when Lloyd Richards mah ’79 was dean. He was named the first Lloyd Richards (Adjunct) Professor of Drama in 1994. For a total of 19 years, until his retirement in 1999, Earle was associate dean of academic affairs and chair of the MFA Acting Program. He directed the entire canon of

52

YSD 2012–13

Anton Chekhov and earned a reputation as one of the nation’s most respected theatre professors.

As a tribute to Earle, who died on January 22, a memorial service was held at the Signature Theatre in New York on April 2. The theatre was filled with Earle’s former students, friends, and family, several of whom—including James Bundy ’95 (Dean); Michael Miller, friend and head of The Actors Center; actress and former student Laila Robins ’84; and Earle’s son Carey Gister—offered their thoughts about him, and in so doing, gave a fuller picture of the man than a list of his accomplishments alone could provide.

James Bundy: “I once asked Earle what he thought was the greatest strength of the School of Drama. Without missing a beat, he replied, ‘The students.’ As anyone who studied acting with him knows, Earle knew how to get the focus off himself. He understood that a conservatory could be a place of stability and equity for artists, and with Ben Sammler ’74 (Faculty) he built the most comprehensive and fair-minded production calendar in the country. Directors and playwrights were no longer competing with each other for opportunities—everyone got the same chances to succeed. Earle and Lloyd Richards together trained and advanced a generation of artists who are leaders in the field today. They also leveraged the financial success of Yale Rep in the commercial theatre to literally double faculty salaries. Earle laid this foundation beginning in 1980, and the way the School operates today still reflects his vision. Earle Gister was a brilliant teacher and a generous soul.”

Michael Miller: “My friend Earle Gister was the most confounding, Machiavellian loose cannon. He was both brilliant and childlike, generous and petty, loving and devoted, while often completely selfabsorbed. He was a conflicted person, quixotic in many ways. But he was absolutely brilliant in his assessment of issues and strategies, with an unerring sense of talent and its possibilities. It was at Yale School of Drama where his most brilliant level of teaching was at its peak and where he made such a major contribution to everyone he engaged with for some twenty years.”

Laila Robins: “We would do a scene in class, and Earle bombarded us with questions. Who are you? What kind of family do you come from? What do you want? What are you willing to do to get it? What was the society like at that time? And what are your given circumstances? And who are you? Earle gave us this incredible key to acting.

He completely demystified it. He gave me a way to work and a way to break things down and to make sense of it all, and he taught us about actions. So simple, and yet so illusory. And to this day, if I’m struggling in a scene, I go back to some of those profound basics that Earle gave us. He was a guide. He showed me the way.”

Carey Gister: “I was interviewed by the Yale newspaper the day after he died, and they asked what it was like growing up with somebody as esteemed as my father, and I said that it was really like getting a world-class education at a very young age. I don’t think that very many people have that opportunity. I have two young children,

News from the Yale School of Drama

who are Earle’s only grandchildren. I told them that Grandpa Earle was a great man, and when you grow up, people are going to say to you: Are you Earle Gister’s grandchildren? And you’ll say yes. And they’ll respect you for that. And they’ll love you for that, because of who he was for them and what he was in his life.”

Earle Gister died at his home in New Haven. He was 77.

Playwriting Teacher Howard Stein Howard Stein (Former Faculty), a man devoted to plays and especially to playwrights, died on October 14 at his home in Stamford, CT. Howard was born on July 4, 1922 in Chester, PA, and served in the 394th Infantry of the 99th Division of the US Army during World War II. Upon graduation from Swarthmore College, he attended Columbia University and the University of Iowa, where he spent seven years as the head of the Playwriting Program and received a PhD in English in 1965.

From 1967 to 1978, Howard was associate dean and supervisor of the Playwriting Program at Yale School of Drama. After short periods at the University of Texas in Austin and the State University of New York in Purchase, he spent ten years at Columbia University as the first permanent chair of the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies and supervisor of the Playwriting Program. He retired from Columbia in 1992.

Howard had a profound and lasting impression on many of his playwriting students, including Ralph Arzoomanian, Robert Auletta ’69, Christopher Durang ’74, Albert Innaurato ’74, Allan Knee ’69, Ted Talley ’77, and Wendy Wasserstein ’76. David Milch yc ’66, who established the Howard Stein Scholarship at YSD to honor his great friend, said of him, “Howard Stein was a great teacher and a great soul. Like so many of his students and friends, my life was changed for having known him.”

Although most famous as a teacher of playwriting—and a fivetime winner of the Samuel French Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Playwriting—Howard also had a distinguished career as a playwright, essayist, and editor. His plays appeared in The Best One-Act Plays of 1951–52 and The Best Short Plays of 1959–60. In addition to the essays he published on dramatic criticism, dramatic literature, theatre history, and dramaturgy, he was the co-editor with Glenn Young ’79 of The Best American Short Plays series and author of A Time to Speak.

Upon learning of Howard’s passing, Robert Brustein ’51, hon ’66, (Former Dean) wrote: “He was everybody’s friend and he will be dreadfully missed, and deeply mourned, not least of all by me. He was a man of total integrity and devotion.”

Howard is survived by Marianne, his wife of 58 years, and by his sons David, Ted, and Joshua, and grandchildren Ben, Alexandra, Gillian, James, and Madeleine.

Satirist Peter Bergman A founding member of the surrealist comedy troupe Firesign Theater, whose albums became cult favorites among college students in the late 1960s and 70s, Peter Bergman ’65, yc ’61, died in Santa Monica, CA. He was born in Cleveland, where his parents co-hosted a radio show, “Breakfast with the Bergmans.” His father also worked as the men’s fashion editor for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. An oft-told story about his youth has Peter as an announcer on his high school radio system, warning the student body that the Chinese communists had taken over the school and that a “mandatory voluntary assembly was to take place immediately.” Peter was fired from his announcing job by the principal, who lived on as the inspiration for the Principal Poop character on the Firesign album Don’t Crush That Dwarf.

Peter graduated from Yale, where he then taught as a Carnegie Fellow. A more natural fit was his subsequent attendance at Yale School of Drama on a Eugene O’Neill playwriting fellowship. It was in New Haven that Peter met Phil Proctor yc ’62, who would eventually become one of his collaborators at Firesign. After graduation, Peter moved to Los Angeles in hopes of establishing himself as a professional writer.

One of his first jobs was in 1966 as the host of an all-night radio call-in show on KPFK. The free-wheeling, wildly associative conversations on a show known as Radio Free Oz were a precursor of what would become the Firesign sensibility. Phil Austin was the producer and David Ossman the director of the show, and Phil Proctor, Peter’s friend from Yale, was a frequent guest. They were an informal group of friends who stayed up all night, taking phone calls on the air from people who were also up all night.

The show attracted the attention of Columbia Records, and Firesign Theater (as the four men called themselves) made its first album in 1968: Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him, followed the next year by How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All? During the next few years they developed their stream-of-consciousness, often surrealist style, filled with wordplay, references to psychedelic drugs, movies, radio, TV, and political figures, intermingled with sound effects and bits of music. Their work influenced contemporary comedy, from Saturday Night Live to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Peter also wrote and produced on his own, including the 1986 monologue “Help Me Out of This Head,” about his childhood in Cleveland. He was also fascinated with interactive games and wrote a CD-ROM parody of the popular adventure video game MYST. Peter died on March 9. He is survived by a daughter, Lily Oscar Bergman, and his sister, Wendy Kleckner. Peter was 72 years old.

YSD 2012–13

53

In Memoriam Audiences probably know Phil Bruns ’56 best as the father in the 1970s cult television series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, in which he played George Shumway, a rubberfaced factory worker who could never quite understand what was going on with his daughter Mary, or with the other societal changes of the 1970s.

Before he began working in television, Phil had a distinguished career on the stage. After graduating from Yale School of Drama, he studied at the Old Vic Theatre School and began acting regularly offBroadway in such plays as The Butter and Egg Man, The Moths, A Dream out of Time, and Spitting Image. Phil won an Obie Award in 1964 for the off-Broadway production of Mr. Simian, an exploration of the misery of the human condition, in which he played the title role of an ape that morphs into a human. He made his Broadway debut in 1964 in the political drama The Deputy, played Pistol in the 1969 American National Theatre and Academy production of Henry V starring Len Cariou, and was in the 1972 revival of Lysistrata.

From his work on the stage, Phil went on to appear in more than 40 movies and 60 television shows. He was a regular on Jackie Gleason’s comedy-variety show American Scene Magazine and did regular guest work on both dramatic and comedic television series, including such classics as Route 66, The Defenders, Sanford and Son, M*A*S*H, Kojak, Naked City, Barney Miller, Maude, and Seinfeld (he was the first actor to play Jerry Seinfeld’s father). His films include The Out-of-Towners, Nickelodeon, The Stunt Man, Flashdance, and The Great Waldo Pepper.

Phil Bruns was born on May 2, 1931 in Pipestone, MN, and died on February 8, 2012 in Los Angeles at the age of 80. He is survived by his wife, actress Laurie Franks.

Character Actor William Duell William Duell ’52 was a character actor whose face, though not necessarily his name, was familiar to generations of television, film, and stage audiences. Born on August 30, 1923 in Corinth, NY, Bill acted in his first play, Arsenic and Old Lace, at Green Mountain College in Vermont.

Following service in the Navy during WWII, he finished his studies at Illinois Wesleyan University, then earned a master’s degree from Yale School of Drama. Bill’s stage career in New York began in the legendary 1950s Theatre de Lys production of Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. He was also in the Lincoln Center 1976 revival, playing Crook-Finger Jack. He appeared with regularity off-Broadway in such productions as The Memorandum, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, On the Bum, and Comedians, and on Broadway in The Ballad of the Sad Café, Illya Darling, and the original 1969 production of the musical 1776, in which Bill became famous as the only actor who played every performance of the entire run of the show and was never understudied. (He played a different role in the 1997 revival.)

54

YSD 2012–13

Bill’s first film appearance was in The Hustler with Paul Newman ’54, lhdh ’88 and Jackie Gleason, followed by roles in Airplane, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Ironweed, In & Out, and The Out-of-Towners.

Perhaps his most memorable film role was Sefelt in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

No matter how many film or television roles he played, Bill always came back to the stage. As recently as 1996 he played Erronius in the revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum with Nathan Lane. In 2000 he was a deluded doctor in The Man Who Came to Dinner. In 2010 he appeared in a one-night-only semi-staged concert reading of Evening Primrose, an early musical by Stephen Sondheim.

Bill was also a regular attendee at Yale School of Drama holiday parties. He died on December 22, 2011 at age 88 at his home in Manhattan. He is survived by his wife.

Director and Actor Jonathan Frid Jonathan Frid ’57, the Canadian actor who breathed dynamic life into the character of the sophisticated vampire Barnabas Collins on the 1966–71 daytime gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, died on April 13, 2012 at age 87, just weeks before a feature film remake of the series was released. The vampire, as embodied by Jonathan (and, incidentally, created by Jonathan’s classmate, Ron Sproat ’58) was brooding and remorseful, a new kind of romantic figure on daytime television. Originally conceived to make a few brief guest appearances, his character became so popular—not only with the largely female audience, but also with high school and college students, who saw the show as a camp classic—that he evolved into the central focus and turned the show into a hit whose cult status lives on to this day.

Jonathan played Collins as a man tormented by his own nature, racked with guilt over his thirst for blood, and doomed by his own immortality to endure it forever. This interpretation of a vampire was both unconventional and modern, and influenced the way vampires are portrayed in fiction and film today. At the height of the show’s popularity, Jonathan received 5,000 fan letters a week addressed to Barnabas Collins. Two feature films, House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows, were based on the television show. When a contemporary version of Dark Shadows, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas, was released in May 2012, Jonathan was coaxed out of a long retirement to appear as the old Barnabas confronting the young one portrayed by Depp.

After serving in the Canadian Navy during World War II, Jonathan studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.

Though he made his career as an actor, his degree from Yale School of Drama was in directing. For many years before his breakthrough in Dark Shadows he played roles in theatre and television.

After the series ended, Jonathan returned to his roots to do classical stage work, appearing at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, CT. On Broadway he played Richard Scroop, Archbishop of York in Henry IV, Part II, starred in Arsenic and Old Lace, and created three well-received one-man shows. He appeared in the 1973 TV movie

Frid photo from Getty Images

Stage and Television Actor Phil Bruns

The Devil’s Daughter and starred in Oliver Stone’s directorial debut, 1974’s Seizure.

Long after Dark Shadows ended, however, Barnabas Collins remained an albatross around Jonathan’s neck; true to his nature the vampire would not die. When he was in his late 70s, Jonathan acceded to the many invitations he received over the years from fans of Dark Shadows and began attending reunions and fan conventions, where he was hailed as the prodigal vampire. The 2012 remake of Dark Shadows was his final screen performance.

Film and Theatre Director Ulu Grosbard

Ulu Grosbard ’55 was a two-time Tonynominated director who worked in movies as well as theatre. He had a reputation for perfectionism, whether in collaboration with playwrights—including Arthur Miller (The Price), Beth Henley (The Wake of Jamey Foster), and Woody Allen (The Floating Light Bulb)—or major actors, including Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep ’75, dfah ’83, and Robert Duvall.

Playwright and Screenwriter Ulu was born on January 9, 1929 in Antwerp, Belgium. He and his David Zelag Goodman parents fled the Nazis and waited out the war in Havana. When the David Zelag Goodman ’58 was born in family moved to the United States, he earned a BA and an MA in Manhattan on January 15, 1930. He studied English from the University of Chicago and went on to Yale School of playwriting, first at Queens College and then Drama before serving in the Army in the mid-1950s. At the very at Yale School of Drama. When he was 24 years beginning of his career Ulu worked as an assistant to film directors old, he almost made his Broadway playwriting Robert Rossen on The Hustler, Elia Kazan ’33 on Splendor in the Grass, debut with High Named Today, a title he borrowed from a line in Walt and Arthur Penn on The Miracle Worker. His first New York stage Whitman’s poem The Bravest Soldiers. Scheduled to open in February directing credit was off-Broadway in 1962, with William Snyder’s 1954 starring a pre-Father Knows Best Jane Wyatt, the play’s financial ’55 The Days and Nights of Beebe Fenstermaker, and a cast featuring his backing was suddenly withdrawn and the play had only a short run wife, Rose Gregorio ’50, and Robert Duvall. off-Broadway.

Ulu earned two Tony nominations, the first for directing the 1965 David’s biggest successes were in Hollywood, where he worked in Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Subject Was Roses, starring Martin both television and film from 1960 through the 1980s. He wrote the Sheen, Irene Dailey, and Jack Albertson; the second for directing screenplay for the British film The Stranglers of Bombay (1959) and David Mamet’s American Buffalo. He also worked with Robert Duvall contributed a number of scripts to The Untouchables in the early 1960s. on the 1965 off-Broadway revival of A View From the Bridge, a producA skilled craftsman, David adapted several popular novels and tion that won Obie Awards for both men. He worked with Duvall worked in a wide range of genres, including drama, comedy, westerns, again in the film True Confessions (1981), with a cast that included and science fiction, as writer or co-writer of such films as Logan’s Run, Robert De Niro and Ulu’s wife Rose.

Monte Walsh, and Farewell My Lovely. Though largely unnoticed by Ulu’s other films include The Subject Was Roses (1968); Who Is the public, he co-wrote one of the most controversial movies of the Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? 1970s, an adaptation of a Gordon Williams novel, The Siege of (1971) with Dustin Hoffman; Straight Time (1978), also with Dustin Trencher’s Farm. Retitled Straw Dogs, it was directed by Sam Hoffman and Kathy Bates; Falling in Love (1984) with Robert De Niro Peckinpah and starred Dustin Hoffman. David was also a writer on and Meryl Streep; Georgia (1995), a story of two sisters, with Jennifer The Eyes of Laura Mars, a thriller starring Faye Dunaway, and Monte Jason Leigh and Mare Winningham; and The Deep End of the Ocean Walsh, a Lee Marvin western. He was nominated for an Academy (1999) with Michelle Pfeiffer and Treat Williams.

Award for Lovers and Other Strangers, a romantic comedy he adapted Ulu Grosbard died in New York on March 19 at the age of 83; he is from the stage play by Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna. survived by his wife, Rose.

One particular talent David had as a writer was an ability to see precisely what the problems were in a screenplay written by someFencing Teacher one else, and to figure out how to solve them; thus his reputation as a Katalin Piros script doctor. Actor Steve Martin gave him credit for the new ending Katalin Piros (Former Faculty), who taught fencing at Yale School to Roxanne, Martin’s remake of Cyrano de Bergerac. David’s suggesof Drama, died on May 31, 2012. Born in 1931 in Nagyvarad, Hungary, tion: “Cyrano gets the girl.” He was famously brought in to help the she met her husband Lajos during a fencing competition in his screenplay of Fatal Attraction, and he told producer Sherry Lansing hometown of Miskol. The couple continued to live there, had a son, that the film had to punish the home wrecker played by Glenn Close.

George, and escaped to Austria when the Hungarian Revolution “You can’t let her off the hook,” was David’s advice. “Let’s drown her!” broke out in 1956. From Austria they traveled on a United States David died in Oakland, CA on September 28, 2011. Until his death Navy troop carrier that brought Hungarian political refugees to the at 81, he was married for 61 years to Marjorie Goodman. Their daughUnited States. Sponsored by the First Presbyterian Church, Katalin ter Kevis Goodman is an associate professor of English at the and her husband and son found a home in Woodbridge, CT. Her University of California at Berkeley. husband worked as an accountant while Katalin got a job in a neuropharmacology research lab at Yale University.

YSD 2012–13

55

In Memoriam As a young woman, Katalin was an excellent fencer and a member of the Hungarian Olympic Fencing Team, but was unable to compete because of her pregnancy. She maintained her love for fencing, however, first teaching at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven and then once a week at the Drama School. At the end of each academic year she would entertain the Drama students at her home with various Hungarian delicacies that she prepared days in advance. She was beloved by Yale Drama students, and many kept in touch with her over the years. She and her husband had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera for more than thirty years, and together they hosted weekend pool parties for members of the local Hungarian community. Katalin was 81 at the time she died. She will be remembered for her intelligence, warmth, joie de vivre, beauty, elegance, and style. She is survived by her son, Dr. George Piros, his wife, Susan, and her daughter, Dr. Judy Piros, all of Savannah.

Dramaturg Christiane Riera Born in São Paulo in 1968, dramaturg and critic Christiane Riera ’00, dfa ’06 revolutionized dramaturgy in her native Brazil. A student of the controversial Brazilian playwright Nelson Rodrigues, Christiane translated Sam Shepard’s Buried Child and Kenneth Lonergan’s This is Our Youth into Portuguese. While earning an MFA and DFA in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, Christiane wrote for Theater magazine and the Village Voice, and consulted at New York Theatre Workshop. She was the dramaturg for Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid and Lynn Nottage’s ’89 (Faculty) Crumbs from the Table of Joy at Yale Rep. Upon her return to Brazil, Christiane worked as a script consultant in the film industry, supervising the screenplay of Fernando Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener, as well as Xingu and The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, both directed by Cao Hamburger.

Kate Bredeson ’02, dfa ’06 wrote: “I remember Christiane as impossibly kind and improbably generous. Intelligent in her readings of texts, elegant in her style, Christiane was equally fierce in her passion for making theatre that mattered and for her love of her home. At one point, when discussing lavish thesis production budgets at YSD, she countered: ‘In Brazil we made our stage sets out of sticks and cardboard and it was incredible.’ Once we both went to Montreal for a theatre festival. Unbeknownst to us, this was also the weekend of a U2 stadium concert. When we discovered that all of the hotels were booked, Christiane talked her way into sleeping in a hotel lounge. She was that resourceful, witty, and charming.”

Christiane Riera died on May 11, 2012 at the age of 44. She is survived by her son, João.

56

YSD 2012–13

Actor and Composer Paul Schierhorn Paul Schierhorn ’74 (Former Faculty) began his music career at a very young age, attending the American Boychoir School in Princeton, NJ, and was awarded a full scholarship to Interlochen Arts Academy, from which he graduated in 1969. Paul was accepted by a small college in his hometown, and also by Yale School of Drama. At the age of 19, he was one of the youngest people ever admitted to the School.

Paul was extremely popular with his classmates at Yale, impressing them with his prodigious musical talent. Joe Grifasi ’75 remembers how Paul could sit down at the piano and improvise a sonata on the spot. While a student, Paul appeared in the Yale Rep production of Stephen Sondheim’s The Frogs. After graduation he worked briefly as a journalist in Washington, D.C., but returned to New Haven in 1977 as resident composer for Yale Repertory Theatre. He also joined the faculty of the School to teach singing in the Acting Department.

His career as a musician took him to New York, where he was the vocal director, arranger, and associate conductor for the Broadway production of The 1940s Radio Hour (1979). Two years later Paul, Joe, and Mark Linn-Baker ’79, yc ’76 collaborated and performed The Laundry Hour (1981) at The Public Theater, with music and lyrics by Paul, about two struggling performers trapped in the post-70s Reagan era trying to come to terms with the religious right. After a stint as musical director for a national tour of The Rocky Horror Show, Paul returned to New York and wrote the music and lyrics and coauthored the book for an original Broadway musical, The News (1985).

Although the show had a short run, Paul received a Tony nomination for best original score. He wrote music for and acted with numerous regional theatres, including the Folger Theatre (American premiere of David Hare’s Teeth ‘n’ Smiles), Arena Stage, The Kennedy Center, the American Repertory Theater, The Denver Center Theatre Company, Indiana Repertory Theatre, and the New York Shakespeare Festival.

He often returned to New Haven to appear in Yale Rep productions, including Suicide in B Flat, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been. . ., The Idiots Karamazov, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Paul was also a member of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association (VASTA) and worked as a dialect coach for films and television with such established actors as Nicolas Cage, Don Cheadle, Larry Hagman, Ellen Burstyn, and Annabella Sciorra. From 1988 to 2007 Paul was an associate professor at Tulane University. During his career he also won a Mortarboard Award for Excellence in Teaching, a Storer Boone Award, an Obie award, and the Oliver Thorndike Acting Award from Yale School of Drama. In 2007 he took the position of director of the BFA Program in Musical Theatre at Mars Hill College in Mars Hill, NC. Friend Robert Benedetti writes, “Paul was one of nature’s gentlemen and will be sorely missed.” Paul passed away on Sunday, July 8 in Asheville, NC at the age of 61. He is survived by his wife, Maria Mason, and their son, Will.

Actress, Director, Writer Shirin Devrim Trainer “If, and I mean if, you have a story to tell, if you have a melody within you, then it is through art that you will express it.”

Shirin Devrim Trainer Born in 1926 in Istanbul, Turkey, Shirin Devrim Trainer ’50 described her family’s life in her 1996 memoir, A Turkish Tapestry: The Shakirs of Istanbul, as characteristic of life in “the last years of the crumbling 500-year-old Ottoman empire and . . . the new Turkey which rose like a phoenix from its ashes.” Shirin was educated in Berlin, Baghdad, Istanbul, and New York, and in the Acting program at Yale School of Drama. She made her first professional theatre appearance in 1950 as Bella Maningham in Gaslight at the Court Theatre in Wisconsin, and her off-Broadway debut in 1953 as Rosa Gonzales in Summer and Smoke.

In the late 1950s Shirin returned to Turkey, where she became a leading actress, playing comic roles in The Matchmaker and The

Women and dramatic roles in Five Finger Exercise and The Rose Tattoo, as well as classical roles in The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, and Hamlet. She also worked in the Turkish theatre as a director and received a Rockefeller grant to observe theatre in several other countries.

Over the following two decades Shirin built a career in the American theatre as an actress, director, and teacher, as a visiting artist at Stanford Repertory Theatre, and eventually as a member of the Drama faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. Her extensive regional theatre work included roles at Milwaukee Repertory Theater, the Guthrie Theatre, and the McCarter Theatre. In 1989 Shirin returned to Turkey in a critically acclaimed portrayal of Sarah Bernhard in Memoir. Her commitment to the arts extended to appointments as vice president of Milwaukee Ballet and trustee of New York’s Chelsea Theater. She also served on the board of directors of the American Turkish Society.

Shirin died in her New York City home in March 2011, two days after her 85th birthday. Her body was flown back to Turkey and buried on the Island of Bukada, near her beloved childhood home.

Farewell Robert W. Barr ’53 9.04.2011

Yvonne Cody Dell ’45 12.03.2011

Jack A. Hensley ’59 11.14.2011

Emma Lou Nielson ’43 2.14.2012

Peter P. Bergman ’65, yc ’61 3.09.2012

William F. Dowling Jr. ’52 9.01.2012

Albert Hurwitz ’49 3.24.2012

Christiane Riera ’00, dfa ’06 5.11.2012

Richard Bianchi ’57 6.30.2012

William Duell ’52 12.22.2011

Andrew B. Jones ’52 5.09.2012

Dorothy Brenner Rostov ’43 3.02.2012

Esther Sagalyn Bick ’38 3.16.2012

Marcus Eisenstein ’59 6.07.2011

Wynston A. Jones ’75 12.14.2011

Paul Schierhorn ’74 7.8.2012

Jerome E. Borgos ’53 5.28.2012

Jonathan Frid ’57 4.20.2012

David Hartt Locklin ’57 8.22.2012

Shirin Devrim Trainer ’50 3.5.2011

Phillip H. Bruns ’56 2.8.2012

David Zelag Goodman ’58 9.26.2011

Frances Elizabeth Wiles ’54 9.01.2011

Kathleen M. Craven ’59 7.03.2009

Ulu Grosbard ’55 3.18.2012

Edward A. Langhams ’54, grd ’55 4.28.2012

YSD 2012–13

C. Lindsay Workman Jr. ’50 4.24.2012

57

Bookshelf

Publications by and about Yale School of Drama Alumni

The Film Director’s Bag of Tricks: How to Get What You Want from Actors and Writers

By Mark Travis ’70 Michael Wiese Productions 2011 Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan

By William Hjortsberg ’65 Counterpoint Press 2012

Screenwriter’s Compass: Character as True North

By Guy Gallo ’82 Focal Press 2012

The Art of Living Joyfully: How to Be Happier Every Day of the Year

By Allen Klein ’62 Viva Editions 2012 Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theater

By Jonathan Kalb ’85, DFA ’87 The University of Michigan Press 2011

Blood on the Stage, 1975-2000

By Amnon Kabatchnik ’57 Scarecrow Press 2012

The Hatchery

By Tom Isbell ’84 HarperFiction 2013 A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration

By Paula Vogel (Faculty) Theatre Communications Group 2012

58

YSD 2012–13

Alumni Notes

40s

.................................

Joan Feldman Kron ’48 is still working as contributing editor-at-large of Condé Nast’s Allure magazine, covering cosmetic surgery and the sociology of beauty. Her most recent stories have been: “Behind the Bandages: In Hollywood, the face you’re born with is just the start” (January 2012); “Wrinkles in Time,” a timeline on the history of Botox, “Skin Forecasts: Sagging Necks and Chins” (both April 2012); and “Behind the Butt Lift” (May 2012). Her blogs on Botox statistics, new Gummy Bear implants, and the myth of the Stem-Cell facelift can be found on Allure.com. Joan just returned from London, where she visited some Harley Street plastic surgeons and attended a stunning and bloody production of John Webster’s 400-yearold The Duchess of Malfi at the Old Vic, where she was seated next to a great-great-greatgrandson of Charles Dickens, whose brother was one of the leads in the production. Joan is developing a documentary based on a book she wrote 20 years ago: Ms. Faux Pas: A Non-Guide to Glitterati Manners has been optioned for an independent Hollywood film. Contracts for all involved are still being negotiated, reminding Joan of John Gregory Dunne’s book on Hollywood, Monster.

50s

.................................

At age 85, Marillyn Barker Johnson ’50 is still teaching a weekly class in writing personal history, and giving monthly lectures about world history and current events. She is also winning poetry awards: local, national, and international.

There has been some activity on Robert Barr’s ’52 plays in 2012: Excerpts from The Tiger’s Skin were read at Oracle Theatre, NYC; Make This Go Away was produced at Camino Real Playhouse, CA in January 2012 and at the Phoenix Fringe Festival in March 2012, and was published by Gumbo Press, UK in 2012; Meeting with the Teacher was produced at NFA (Newburgh Free Academy), Newburgh NY; The Yard Sale was done at the Phoenix Fringe; Out of Ink was done in Austin, TX. Robert has

also been acting in the films Queens of Country, starring Lizzy Caplan and Ron Livingston, and the short film Ten to Eternity, both of which were first shown at the Phoenix Film Festival in 2012.

Peter Nelson ’53 is a screenwriter. He married Christine Burke ’53, an actress, who passed away in 2009. They lived in Los Angeles, where Peter wrote many film scripts, some actually filmed. Peter and “Rissy” had two sons and two grandchildren. Peter now lives in Santa Monica and is working on a screenplay.

Joy Carlin ’54 directed Annie Baker’s Body Awareness at Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley and will act in a world premiere of Our Practical Heaven by Anthony Clarvoe. Joy is also preparing an oral history with slides of theatre in the Bay Area.

A trustee of the Noel Coward Foundation, Geoffrey Johnson ’55 is proud to have been an advocate of a grant for master classes in comedy acting taught by director Maria Aitken (a fellow trustee) for YSD actors. He has also has been active in presenting the successful Noel Coward “Star Quality” Exhibition at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts this year.

An invitation was extended to Lucile Lichtblau ’56 from the Southern Writers Project at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival to develop her new play, The Hemings Diary.

She was there May 14–21 working on the play with a dramaturg, a director, and four actors.

Lucy’s play The English Bride will be produced at Centenary Stage Company in Hackettstown, NJ and at Theatre Exile in Philadelphia,

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

YSD 2012–13

Joan Kron ’48 is a contributing editor-at-large of Allure magazine, covering cosmetic surgery and the sociology of beauty, photo by Alex Digenis, M.D.

PA. The play is also the winner of the Israel Baran Award, which is given by the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon, CA. After two years of hectic consulting with the California Energy Commission on matters of light and vision connected with all the solar energy plants to be constructed in Southern California, James Jewell ’57 has gone back to his “retirement” of travel, gardening, and reading. Occasional and interesting architectural lighting commissions get the creative blood flowing.

In his new book, Blood on the Stage, 1975– 2000, Amnon Kabatchnik ’57 provides an overview of 80 milestone plays of crime, mystery, and detection. Each of the entries revolves around murder, theft, chicanery, kidnapping, political intrigue, or espionage. The emphasis is on manuscripts of enduring importance, pioneering contributions, singular innovations, outstanding successes, and representative works by prolific playwrights in the genre. This work covers plays produced between 1975 and 2000 —suspense melodramas, psychological thrillers, and baffling whodunits. Many notable playwrights of the era are represented, such as David Mamet, Ira Levin, Stephen Sondheim, Sam Shepard, Reginald Rose, Charles Ludlam, Aaron Sorkin, Terence Rattigan, Tom Stoppard, Anthony Shaffer, Jeffrey Archer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Romulus Linney ’58, a classmate of Annon’s at Yale School of Drama.

Working with playwrights, doing readings, and workshop productions are part of Robert Kalfin’s ’57 ongoing commitment to the development and production of new works.

A recent example is the musical Give a Man a

59

Alumni Notes

James W. Flannery ’61 was honored as the 2012 “Irishman of the Year” for his many contributions to the Irish community of the city of Atlanta.

Mask by Richard Isen at the York Theater Developmental Lab program. Other projects Robert is working on include: Speak of the Devil, a new play by Richard Stockton about the famous American “atheist” Robert Ingersoll; Young Davy, a stage adaptation of David Copperfield by Joel Gross; Spy –The Betrayal of Mata Hari by Bart Midwood; and Second Hand Smoke, a stage adaptation by Marsha Sheiness of the comic novel by Thane Rosenbaum about growing up as the child of Holocaust Survivors.

Vienna Cobb Anderson ’58 traveled in Iran last October and recently returned from a visit to Cuba. “Both places are fabulous,” she writes, “and the people very hospitable.”

Vienna was diagnosed with a return of breast cancer, which delays plans for further travel.

She is working on another book, still singing in two choirs, making jewelry to support the choir trips, and creating a pettipoint stole.

60s

................................

Edward Pomerantz ’60 received a Fulbright Specialist Grant to teach master classes in playwriting and writing for television at the Saint Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia. Edward’s Collected Plays of Edward Pomerantz and an Original Screenplay is now available in paperback and e-book through Amazon.com. 2012 began with a staged reading of his play Electra: the Rewrite, a mix of Greek tragedy, vaudeville, and Bob Hope road movies, at Theater for the New City in New York. He was also invited to give a presentation in May at the International Conference on American Drama and Theater by the University of Seville. The subject of his paper is “Great Comedies of the American Theater: Time to Take Them Seriously.”

60

Literary detective David Burke ’61, yc ’58 has just launched a series of walks in Paris based on his book Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light.

Over the course of eighteen years the Atlanta Celtic Christmas Concert, produced

by James W. Flannery ’61, has become one of Atlanta’s most popular holiday traditions. Last December a film of the concert, featuring the talents of three Grammy Award winners, was broadcast on Georgia Public Broadcasting.

The film is a finalist for a Southeast Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Art/ Entertainment and is being readied for national distribution by PBS. James has been named an international associate artist at the Abbey Theatre, where for the past two years he has taught a master class on W.B. Yeats. He is also working with the Abbey to develop a Yeats Studio, designed to meet the manifold challenges of Yeats’s “total theatre” in mime, masking, dance, singing, and verse speaking.

He is also a visiting professor at University College, Dublin, and has been named by the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland to the Global Irish Network, a group of international leaders in business, the arts, and education designed to advise the government in these areas. With the help of a “We the People” award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, James recently organized “Making Connections: The Celtic Roots of Southern Music,” an international conference at Emory University, where he holds the Winship Chair of Arts and Humanities. He was also honored as the 2012 “Irishman of the Year” for his many contributions to the Irish community of the city of Atlanta and rode in an open car in the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. It’s the first time in his life he has understood what it’s like to be a rock star or famous politician, acknowledging the plaudits of a cheering crowd lining the streets.

Judith Ebert McMahon ’61 was awarded The Heart of the Arts Award from the Broome County Arts Council for co-founding Southern Tier Actors Read, a readers’ theatre company. She directed an original play, Apron Leslie Stark ’62 as an announcer in It’s A Wonderful Life, photo by Sally Cohn

YSD 2012–13

Judith (Ebert) McMahon ’61

Strings, at Roberson Museum and Science Center in Binghamton, NY, in conjunction with its Civil War exhibit.

News from Martha’s Vineyard: Leslie Stark ’62 played nine roles in the Vineyard Playhouse holiday production of Philip Grecian’s radio-play adaptation of the Frank Capra classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. Leslie directed and co-starred in Susan Shafer’s Lou Bitterman, Attorney-at-Law at the Katharine Cornell Theater. This was Leslie’s fifth year in the short-play festival for Island Theatre Workshop; Leslie played the attorney. Earlier, Leslie directed the first public performance of Arnold Rabin’s Quartet For a Queen, playing Henry VIII. He has also done productions of A.R. Gurney’s ’58 Love Letters and a package of four short plays by David Ives ’84 from All In The Timing, and directed a fully staged reading of Wendy Wasserstein’s ’76 The Sisters Rosensweig, in which he plays Merv Kant, a role created on Broadway by Robert Klein. Leslie continues to present series of classic jazz appreciation programs, and he taught a course in classic jazz last semester at Adult Community Education for Martha’s Vineyard.

The professional life of Leonard Berkman ’63, dfa ’70 continues to be a mix of teaching, dramaturgy, mentoring, and playwriting. Last fall, Smith College awarded him the 2011 Sherrerd Prize for Distinguished Teaching, a recognition he also received in the 1990s. This is his 42nd year of teaching playwriting and dramatic literature to students at Smith and the neighboring Five College community. He has also worked with the University of Southern California and the University of Iowa’s MFA playwrights, as well as continuing his decades-long involvement with play development projects at New York Stage and Film, Epic Theatre Ensemble, and other companies.

HowlRound, the Internet journal of Arena Stage, is publishing an interview with him and his playwright son, Zak, conducted by Ron Russell of Epic Theatre Ensemble in NYC and initiated by Jeremy Cohen of the Minneapolis Playwrights Center. The focus is on generational shifts in new play development approaches. Currently, Leonard is a guest professor at the University of Hamburg, a campus

and city he and his wife Joyce came to love in 2005. He is also the official mentor for Canadian playwright Beverley Cooper.

Jean Richards ’63 continues doing voiceovers, appearing in commercials, and writing.

With Brent Brolin, she has just completed an enhanced eBook for iPad and Kindle about her mother’s 16 months in a Stalinist prison, entitled Eva Zeisel: A Soviet Prison Memoir. The iPad version includes audio and video clips.

In January-February 2012 Tom Atkins ’64 and Mary Ellen O’Brien Atkins ’65 gave an eight-week lecture presentation entitled “A Boy From Brooklyn: Arthur Miller’s America” for Florida Atlantic University’s Lifelong Learning Program. In addition to commenting on Miller’s life and work, they performed scenes from his plays and showed excerpts from his films. One of the highlights was Mary Ellen’s portrayal of the eccentric ninetyyear-old furniture appraiser Gregory Solomon from Miller’s The Price. Their lectures drew an audience of 289. Mary Ellen is working on a book about film acting and Tom is writing a novel.

At the Ethical Culture Society in New York Elaine Berman ’64 is one of a group of directors who direct play readings for the series “Ethics and the Theatre.” Each month a play is read, followed by an audience discussion of the play’s ethical issues. Elaine has also been teaching Monday and Thursday evening writing classes at Ethical Culture called “The Joy of Personal Writing.”

Please Rise Against Our National Anathema, a 2004 political comedy CD by William Boardman ’64, yc ’60 is still selling in the single digits at CD Baby. Inveighing against rape in the military, using depleted uranium, torture, homelessness, and other outrages of the empire has made no difference whatsoever.

In December, Robert Cohen dfa ’64 was at the National Romanian Theatre of Cluj for the opening of his play, Machiavelli; The Art of Terror. In March he gave a talk on “Mobile Theatre” at the International Association of Theatre Critics in Warsaw.

Ike Schambelan dfa ’64 continues as artistic director of TBTB (Theater Breaking Through Barriers), which he started 33 years ago. Last June the company did a festival of short commissioned plays about disability, including one by Pete Gurney ’58. Russ Treyz ’65 is also directing one, and Jay Novick dfa ’66 is the dramaturg.

Raymond Barry ’65 has been playing the role of Arlo for the past three years on FX’s TV series Justified, which entered its fourth season in October. Raymond recently performed

Chuck Hallett ’67 and his wife, Elaine and directed his three-character play Awake in a World That Encourages Sleep at Theater for the New City in New York and a three-month run at the Electric Lodge in Los Angeles.

Having recently moved back to Wisconsin to spend time with her family, Beverly Brumm ’65, directed a local production of Oklahoma!

In the spring of 2011 F. Mitchell Dana ’67 took a semester sabbatical from teaching at Rutgers and lit seven musicals and a world premiere play. In January he designed the lights for Boeing Boeing at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Then Mitchell’s wife, Wendy, went in for an aortic valve replacement that developed complications, resulting in almost three months in the hospital. She is home now and progressing well. To be with her during recovery, Mitchell gave up working at the St. Louis Muny, where he has lit 34 musicals. His children and grandchildren are doing well.

Back in the screenwriting business, Stephen Foreman ’67 is doing a coming-ofage story set in 1803 against the backdrop of slavery. He is also 30,000 words into a new novel and is writing a book on the devastating flood that hit Prattsville, NY. The story is of the people struggling to rebuild the town that was destroyed. Stephen writes that when his students ask him why he never sold out, he tells them, “Believe me, I’ve tried. I just couldn’t!”

After teaching Shakespeare and Renaissance drama for 45 years at Fordham University, Charles Hallett dfa ’67 celebrated his retirement by publishing a book on Shakespeare’s playwriting techniques in Richard III. Chuck has spent the past year transforming the Pushkin/Mussorgsky opera Boris Godunov into a drama for the stage. His attention is now directed to crafting a play that explores the Founding Fathers’ revolutionary endeavor to forge a definition of the meaning of individual freedom in a nation where major parties considered slavery an economic necessity.

This year Ray Klausen ’67 designed the sets for the Broadway production and international tour of Burn the Floor, and the off-Broadway productions of The Shoemaker with Danny Aiello and The Pretty Trap. In regional theatre he designed Boeing Boeing and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (both at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey and the Riverside Theatre in Florida), The Unnecessary Farce at the Cape Playhouse, plus the Directors Guild Awards.

Upcoming productions include The Shoemaker on Broadway, Carousel for the New York Philharmonic, The 100 Anniversary of Actors’ Equity TV special, Just Lust, and Getting to Know You, both for London and Broadway.

He will also be producing a concert version of the original opera La Sargento de la Concepcion

by Patricio Molina at the Kaye Playhouse in New York City.

Headed out in mid-May for a summer in Bristol, England, Robert Lawler ’67 visited colleagues on the Continent. With highspeed Internet connectivity, he was able to continue his own projects while enjoying the Bristol Old Vic and proximity to Stratfordupon-Avon. He’ll most likely cross the Irish Sea for the Abbey’s Juno and the Paycock and a bit of Guinness and music upstairs at St. John Gogarty’s pub in Temple Bar. During rehearsals of the Austin Lyric Opera’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor, Ev Lunning Jr. ’69, yc ’67 advanced from the chorus to “second in command to Normano.”

No pay raise was involved. Ev is currently directing a production of The Spitfire Grill for the Mary Moody Northen Theatre in Austin.

Ev Lunning ’69 , yc ’67

YSDYSD 2012–13 2012–13

6161

Alumni Notes

Gayle Kelly Landers ’69 in Brooklyn Academy of Music’s advertising campaign Last May Carrie Robbins ’67 received the 2012 Theatre Development Fund (TDF)/Irene Sharaff Award for Lifetime Achievement.

The award is presented to a costume designer who, over the course of his or her career, has achieved great distinction and demonstrated a mastery of the art. Last year a profusely illustrated book, The Designs of Carrie Robbins, written by Barry and Annie Cleveland, was published by USITT and Broadway Press; it is available at Amazon.com and the Drama Book Shop in New York. Dragon Tales, a quartet of short plays by Carrie, was seen at The Playroom Theatre in April 2012, with Charles Turner ’70 playing The Dragon Griswynd and Robert Kalfin ’57 directing The Diamond Eater.

Howard Pflanzer ’68 had a staged reading of his play Poetry Class with Serial Killer, about Ted Bundy in a poetry class, as part of Medicine Show’s JumpStart Series. Howard has been reading/performing with several different actresses in sections from his recent book, Dead Birds or Avian Blues (Fly By Night Press), at such venues as The Brecht Forum, A Gathering of the Tribes, The Living Theatre, Medicine Show Theatre, Barnes & Noble at FIT, and the East Harlem New York Public Library.

Along with her composer/collaborator, Kamala Sankaram, Susan Yankowitz ’68 has received a MAP Fund grant for their opera in progress, The Thumbprint of Mukhtar Mai. Boxes A-Z (Kutular) has been running in Turkey since December and has just won a major award as best ensemble play in Ankara.

Seven, a collaboration with six other women playwrights, was performed in Istanbul last May and will be seen in Japan in the fall.

Linda Fisher ’69 is thrilled to have had the opportunity to do three shows at Irish Rep in

62

New York City in the last year, all of which were filmed for the Lincoln Center Library archives: Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney (which also went to Long Wharf), Dancing at Lughnasa, and O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon.

Still living in New York, Gayle Kelly Landers ’69 is still loving it, especially since she was featured in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 150th anniversary advertising campaign.

“The Curse of the Chameleon: A Comparison between Brutus Jones and James Tyrone” by Robert Einenkel ’69 was published in the latest Eugene O’Neill Review, 2012, Vol. 33, No. 1.

The Play of Daniel at the Church of the Transfiguration (“The Little Church Around the Corner”) in Manhattan was directed by Richard Olson ’69 in December 2011. The first modern production of this liturgical drama was directed by his teacher, Nikos Psacharopoulos ’54 (Former Faculty), at The Cloisters in 1958; this was the famous Pro Musica production, in which the same Transfiguration Boy Choir participated. In March 2012 Richard also directed Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera The Prodigal Son, at Transfiguration. The music director for both productions was his wife, Claudia Dumschat, who is the church’s organist and choirmaster.

Richard is also on the Council of the Episcopal Actors’ Guild, a charitable organization for performers of all faiths or none, which is historically and physically connected to the church.

70s

.................................

Dividing his time between Ireland and Southern California, Marc Flanagan ’70 likes to say that he goes to Ireland for the weather, of which they have plenty. Marc attended the YSD Advisory Board luncheon in New York

For the past 15 years, Mark Travis ’70 has been traveling and teaching film directing throughout the world.

YSD 2012–13

James Rado, Rosemary Harris, and Charles Turner ’70 backstage at Road to Mecca last December, delighted to see familiar faces — Neil Mazzella ’78, Asaad Kelada ’64, David Marshall Grant ’78 and Sasha Emerson Levin ’84, among others—and happy to meet new YSD Advisory Board Members. This has become one of his favorite YSD events, and he looks forward to next winter’s meeting. He adds: “Heartfelt thanks to Sterling yc ’74 and Clare Brinkley for treating us all to an afternoon’s fancy at ‘21.’” Marc also continues his role as a sponsor and advisor to an Irish film festival and attended its latest event in Dingle, Ireland. Currently he is working with an Irish production company developing a television comedy to be shot in Ireland. Marc’s son Sean is in his last year at USC in the Film and Television Department, where one of his instructors is Barnet Kellman ’72. Last fall Marc traveled to Italy to help classmate Jill Eikenberry ’70 and her husband, Michael Tucker, harvest olives at their home in Umbria.

Alan Marlis ’70 has three books for sale at McNally Jackson Bookstore: 13 Farce Plays, The Lindbergh Baby Kidnap Conspiracy, and Einstein, Serb Agent & Other Essays.

Awaiting publication of her memoir Far Out! (five years on a 1970s backwoods commune) Carol Schlanger Helvey ’70 has her fingers crossed for a bestseller. Carol is associate producer of the Tittticaca Lama, which had a reading at Manhattan Theatre Club with Michael Tucker (husband of Jill Eikenberry ’70) and Tovah Feldshuh. She has been reading and performing her work in venues all over Los Angeles and is an artist-in-residence with the Jewish Women’s Theater. Carol splits her time between L.A. and her organic farm in Deadwood, OR, where she grows apples and blueberries.

For the past 15 years Mark Travis ’70 has been traveling and teaching film directing all over the world. (See the Bookshelf for Mark’s latest book.) Now located in Shadow Hills, CA, he is returning to making his own films.

This past season Charles Turner ’70 appeared on CBS TV in A Gifted Man with

Maxine Lieberman ’71 in her one woman show When Music Was Musical in 2011

Patrick Wilson. He reunited with Michael Kahn’s Shakespeare Theatre in Julius Caesar, having previously performed in Greece with The Oedipus Plays. Most recently Charles was acclaimed as The Dragon Grizwynd in Carrie Robbins’s ’67 Dragon Tales off-Broadway. He just recorded a CD with Tammy Grimes and

Joe Grifasi, Actor and Mentor Joe Grifasi ’75, an accomplished actor of stage and screen (Batman Forever, Splash, The Deer Hunter), remembers the confusion he felt after he and his classmates graduated from YSD. “There was no cachet whatsoever. There was no recognition from casting directors. You didn’t even get your Equity card.” But you did get a network of devoted colleagues. “In 1999 I directed a show at Yale Rep, and in an interview I was asked if there was anyone I knew at YSD who impacted my career. I realized that every job I’d had was no more than three degrees of separation from the people I knew here. You might only make those strong connections with a few people, but they grow exponentially.”

In recent years Joe has been doing more directing, teaching, mentoring, and producing. He directed Lewis Black ’77 in One Slight Hitch at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in the summer of 2011, and he directed the show again at A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle from June 8 to July 8, 2012. Remarking on the difference between directing and acting, Joe says, “As an actor it’s ‘I’m here and you’ll be hearing from me.’ As a director I just sit back and wait for the moments in rehearsal when the actors need me. It’s fun to sit and watch.”

Last May Joe completed his second year teaching acting at the New School in New York and preparing its class of third-year actors for their showcase and the professional world. “I try to let them see what it is they have—which is not always what they thought they had,” Joe says.

“Today, actors feel like they have to have a big package; I like to encourage something small and specific. I try to give them as much confidence as I can.”

Joe has also been instrumental in setting up a program that connects graduating YSD actors with alumni who volunteer to become their mentors, answering questions and offering professional advice about an actor’s life after Yale. Joe got the idea for this program when he went to the YSD actor showcase and met Jennifer Lim ’04, who proceeded to call Joe a few weeks later to ask about moving to New York, getting an agent, and starting her career. At the end of their conversation Jennifer remarked on how grateful she was to get this kind of practical advice from a working actor.

This incident inspired Joe to start connecting graduating students with more experienced alumni. “You’ve got people working every day in every field, and no one takes enough advantage of it,” Joe says. “It’s like stepping over free money!” Joe wants to restore the ethos of apprenticeship in theatre that used to be more encouraged in the regional repertory model. “I think of it as a one-on-one lifeline project. I put them in touch and see what happens. Over the years I’ve tried to refine and improve it. I expand the alumni circle every year. I try to pair people ethnically and culturally, if they want, so they can discuss specific casting issues.”

As a producer Joe has been busy launching OnStage in America, a program devoted to bringing the best of regional theatre to national public television. James Bundy ’95 (Dean), Mark Rosenthal ’76, and Carmen de Lavallade (Former Faculty) have been instrumental in helping shape the program. Joe calls it the “Antiques Roadshow of theatre,” and expects a pilot to be filmed in the near future.

When asked about what he hopes young actors will bring to their future projects, Joe responds, “The rehearsal forum is a very special, private forum where dangerous things can happen. People should let their emotions fly.” Joe believes disagreement is a vital part of making theatre. “Rehearsal is rehearsal. Life is life. Thank God they’re not the same thing.”

Ethan Heard ’13, yc ’07

Brian Murray celebrating the poems of Robert Browning. At ART he was the Narrator in the musical Johnny Baseball, directed by Diane Paulus. This summer Charles performed his one-man show on the painter Henry Ozawa Tanner at the Olympic Arts Festival in London, where his son Kai, a website artist/ architect, resides. His doctor daughter, Shairi, practices in Florida while raising Aaliyah, 7, and Khari, 9.

Having been appointed to the Tony Awards Nominating Committee last spring for a three-year term, Carol Waaser ’70 is required to see every show that opens on Broadway each season, and she has seen much fine work by various YSD alumni. Carol is pleased to have a connection to the industry in her retirement.

In addition to his ongoing teaching at YSD, David Chambers ’71 (Faculty) is creating librettos for three new operas, which he will also direct; is preparing a book on a methodology of directing that is being researched in Russia and explored in YSD directing classes; and is senior producer of a multi-platform international Shakespeare project for PBS and European television, a vast multilingual internet site, and NPR/BBC radio, all produced by The Documentary Group of New York and Culture Works of Seattle.

Jim Crabtree ’71 continues in his 42nd season—his 31st as CEO—at Cumberland County Playhouse in Tennessee, producing over 400 performances of 16 projects in rotating rep in two theatres with a year-round resident company. New and recent works include the plays See Rock City and The Moving of Lilla Barton and the new musicals Cowboys!, Backwards in High Heels, Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge (a bluegrass musical based on Synge’s Playboy of the Western World), as well as the world premiere of a new version of Little House on the Prairie.

After moving to San Francisco in 1973 in search of a new identity, Maxine Lieberman ’71 changed her name from Maxine to Ashley.

She hasn’t got a Facebook account and is living an unexpected life.

YSDYSD 2012–13 2012–13

6363

Alumni Notes An excerpt from Craig T. Martin’s ’71 play Benvolio in Fair Verona, The Other Tragedy has been published in At Second Glance, A Gay City Anthology, available from Amazon. His short story “Broadway” appeared in Gay City: Volume 2 and was selected for an Editor’s Choice Award. Craig lives in Seattle. His poetry has appeared in The Northwest Gay & Lesbian Reader.

As professor of design at Union College in Schenectady, NY, Charles Steckler ’71 spent three months this spring in Florence, Italy teaching his signature term-abroad course, “Immagini e Annotazioni di Passaggio,” to Union College undergraduates. The course employs intensive journaling, drawing, and photography as tools to vivify the cross-cultural experience along with other program studies in architecture and Italian language.

Having received tenure last spring at USC School of Cinematic Arts, Barnet Kellman ’72 is teaching directing as well as “founding” a Comedy Institute at the school. He writes that he is “trying my best to channel Nikos.”

Marty Lafferty ’72 is completing his ninth year as CEO of the DCIA and, for volunteer service, now serves as executive officer of District 5 of the US Power Squadron’s national boating organization.

While he continues to head the design and technical theatre program at Marymount Manhattan College Theater Department, Ray Recht ’72 designed The 39 Steps for Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Florida Repertory Theatre, and Theatre by the Sea. He also designed Black Tie and Bedroom Farce for Florida Rep. Joel Schechter ’72, dfa ’73 and Barbara Damashek ’69 co-directed Brecht’s Trial of Lucullus at San Francisco State University, where both continue to teach in the Theatre Arts Department, along with Bill Peters ’79. continued on next page

Nicholas Hormann ’73, Josh Stamberg, and Peter Van Norden in performance of Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, Shanghai, December 2011

64

Patricia Norcia ’78 (riding Nebrijo) with Gina Paolillo and Blake Burnham Pearson in Eclipse at Liberty Park near Ground Zero, New York City, photo by Janet Biggs

Patricia Norcia Riding High “I go to rehearsal with my horse.”

Valiente, Patricia Norcia’s ’78 jet-black Andalusian gelding, loves an audience; he also has a sense of humor. Macho and a ham, as Patricia characterizes him, Valiente is also calm, an essential quality in a dance partner. An actress who loved to dance, Patricia has traveled an extraordinary journey from her childhood in Italy, to Yale School of Drama, to performing the Ruth Draper monologues at Carnegie Hall, and then to Spain to train as an equestrian. Now a master equestrian clinician in classical French dressage, Patricia is a longtime member of the Equus Projects, a dance company directed by New York choreographer and Alvin Ailey and Juilliard faculty member JoAnna Mendl Shaw, who explores choreographic possibilities through performance with dancers and horses.

Once a busy working actor living in New York City, Patricia found herself driving five hours each way to and from Vermont to train with her horses. Her first horse, Scarlet O’Hara, didn’t take direction well, yet Patricia found true love in the equestrian life. She is passionate when describing the “mystical” quality of the horse and the “power and freedom” that comes with riding. There is “nothing more beautiful,” she says. We no longer rely on the labor of horses, 150 years after the Industrial Revolution, but they remain one of the few connections to our history and our culture. Just looking at a horse, Patricia says, “strikes a deep chord within us.”

Popular large-scale equestrian productions, such as Apassionata, Cavalia, and Zingaro, have been touring for many years, and while the spectacle of equine athleticism, formation riding, and the sheer beauty of a moving horse are integral, Patricia and JoAnna, her choreographic partner, are exploring a subtler art in which improvisation is essential and the choreography is often generated by the horse. This form of equestrian theatre is truly a collaborative investigation from multiple viewpoints—rider, choreographer, dancer, and horse. For JoAnna, this leads to a fascinating question: How do human dancers behave in this equine landscape?

Fundamental to this unique blend of art and sport is the concept of natural horsemanship, a technique between rider and horse that is informed by the behavior of free-roaming horses.

Indeed, Patricia found her acting skills “fit naturally” with equestrian arts, she says, fondly recalling dance classes with Wesley Fata (Former Faculty) and acting classes with Bobby Lewis (Former Faculty). As Bobby taught her, “listening is paramount.” Patricia observes that the horses choreograph directly from their personalities. Dancers are matched with horses according to personality, but in any case they have to be good runners. JoAnna says “there’s a lot of running, but we are constantly shaping to the horses spatially and energetically. It actually takes quite a bit of dance skill and stamina to make it beautiful.”

“If you had told me when I graduated from Yale,” says Patricia, “that I would be rehearsing choreography with a quadruped, I wouldn’t have believed it. Yet what a journey the acting profession takes us on; what a wonderful journey.”

Matthew Suttor (Faculty)

YSD 2012–13

Barnet Kellman ’72 (left), Jack Epps, Jr., and David Isaacs of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts at Nate ‘n Al Delicatessen in Beverly Hills, photo by Stephanie Diani for The New York Times

Bill directed a production of Hamlet there this spring, at the same time Barbara was directing Spring Awakening.

At Bucknell University’s Griot Institute for Africana Studies, Bob Gainer ’73 directed and co-devised a performance of Sally Hemings, A Montage. The event was an interdisciplinary narrative illustrating the 40-year relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave/mistress. One of the two composers who provided original sound design for this theatre work was Keith Obadike ’04.

L.A. Theatre Works sent Nicholas A. Hormann ’73 to China this season with a controversial play about the Pentagon Papers.

He writes that his 40-year-old Mandarin stood him in good stead.

In the past year Ben Slotznick ’73, yc ’70 has been developing the Fat Cat Chat line of iPhone apps, combining a bit of whimsy and verbal fun with serious assistive technology for folks who can’t speak. With the apps they can talk like a pirate, an Aussie, a pre-teen, etc.

All are connectable, all are illustrated with cute orange cats. There is, as well, serious linguistic research underlying the fun, and serious iOS programming underlying the connectability. Ben has also had the pleasure of working with Cliff Warner ’87 on Yale Global Alumni Leadership Exchange events in China, New Haven, and the UK. As he watches with great pride the careers of his classmates, his students, and the recent graduates of YSD, Charles Levin ’74, yc ’71 writes that he loved every moment when he performed. Charles retired after 30 years of acting, and the only thing he misses is “that ecstatic moment when I became the character and the play was everything.”

This year Steve Zuckerman ’74 did four different TV shows for four different networks and a play in Los Angeles. His greatest joy, however, was being at Yale for the graduation of his daughter Esther from Yale College with the Class of 2012.

At the end of 2011, after nearly 23 years, Marian Godfrey ’75 retired from The Pew Charitable Trusts and is enjoying a return to life as a free agent. She is dividing her time between her and husband Tom Gardner’s farm in Richmond, MA and their house in Vinalhaven, ME. She is writing, mostly about family, and thinking hard about how to understand the arts sector from a non-philanthropic perspective.

To Kill a Mockingbird was directed by Ralph Redpath ’75 for the Asheville Community Theatre, where he served for 11 years as artistic director. Ralph appeared in Proof and Noises Off last summer at Flat Rock Playhouse, where he is a 42-year veteran.

After 19 years heading the Program in Theater at Princeton, Michael Cadden ’76, dfa ’79, yc ’71 has been promoted to chair the University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, the umbrella unit for Theater, Dance, Creative Writing, Visual Arts, and the Princeton Atelier Program. Another Yale alumnus, Tim Vasen ’93, yc ’87 (Faculty), who has taught and directed there for many years, is the new Director of Theater. Other colleagues include Anita Yavich ’95, James Magruder ’88, dfa ’92, grd ’84, Melissa James Gibson ’95, Riccardo Hernandez ’92, and Mimi Lien yc ’97.

Joseph Capone ’76 appeared in Love Orchard, directed by Farhad Mann and starring Bruce Dern, Kristanna Loken, and Ian Duncan, in which he played Henrich Grove, a behind-the-scenes political figure who has the power to control many future outcomes.

Joe also received a New York State Council on the Arts grant to write, direct, and act in Sebal’s Star, a play about Sebal Ludington, the female Paul Revere, who rode her horse “Star” 40 miles on the stormy night of April 26, 1777.

Her goal was to warn the troops under her father, Colonel Henry Ludington, that the British were burning down Danbury, CT and were about to invade many upstate New York villages and towns. The play received a full production at Columbia-Greene Community College’s Arts Center in Hudson, NY in the fall of 2012.

After 13 years teaching AP English Lit at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, Charles Andrew Davis ’76 celebrated with seniors accepted to Brown, Berkeley, and

The cast of Agamemnon Redux by Robert Auletta ’69, Front row, left to right: Peter Rogan, Sarah Wharton, and Anna Frankl-Duval. Back row, left to right: Jeremy Smith ’76, Kenneth Ryan ’76, and Rebecca Nelson ’79, photo by John Birdsong Williams and with one who is on Yale’s wait list. His Academic Decathlon speech team won six medals out of nine in Los Angeles and nationally, finishing 54th out of 1,700 schools. Charles writes: “These students are the best teachers a teacher can have.”

This year Robert Long ’76 helped to open the award-winning Moody Theatre in Austin, TX, home of the long-running Austin City Limits Festival. It is already considered to be the best concert venue in that music-crazy town.

A new role for Steve Pollock ’76: Father of the Bride! His daughter, Lia, was married to Brian Tisler on October 1, 2011 in National Harbor, outside of Washington, D.C. The event was lovely, according to Steve, and he and wife Nancy were able to attend “as ‘honored guests’ which meant: no planning, no load-in or setup . . . just a lot of fun.”

Jeremy Smith ’76 writes that in February and March, 2012, THE LAB—a theatre company comprised largely of Yale School of Drama alumni—staged Agamemnon Redux, a modern adaptation of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon by Robert Auletta ’69 in the Roger Smith Hotel’s intimate 40-seat penthouse. The cast included Rebecca Nelson ’79, Nancy Thun ’78 designed costumes, and Neil Mazzella ’78, founder and CEO of Hudson Scenic Studio, contributed the lighting equipment.

Edith Tarbescu ’76 recently completed a mystery titled One Will: Three Wives. Her onewoman play Suffer Queen was produced at the Algonquin Theatre Company in New York.

YSDYSD 2012–13 2012–13

6565

Alumni Notes After writing plays, journal articles, TV and radio commercials, and children’s stories, and serving as a publisher of a film and theatre trade publication, Mark Boyer ’77 has completed his first screenplay, Journey Home, working under the mentorship of Richard Walter, head of the Screenwriting Program at UCLA. Working at The Center for the Arts, American University in Cairo, New Cairo, Egypt, Ryan Scott Yuille ’77 writes: “Remember your wide-brim hat and sunscreen when you visit.”

Roy Steinberg ’78 played Rothko in Red and will be directing God of Carnage and Time Stands Still at Cape May Stage, where he is artistic director. Robert Auletta ’69, Rebecca Nelson ’79, Kenneth Ryan ’76, and Jeremy Smith ’76 came to see his performance, and all went out after the show to catch up. Plans are being made to bring Robert Auletta’s adaptation of Agamemnon to Cape May Stage later this season.

Andrew Carson ’79 is doing construction and working on custom recumbent bikes. He hopes to see friends at the upcoming USITT. Elizabeth Norment ’79 has shot a full season of House of Cards, a new series produced

by Netflix, scheduled for streaming in the fall of 2012. Elizabeth also filmed an episode of Political Animals, a USA Network miniseries that had its premiere on July 15; it stars Sigourney Weaver ’74. Elizabeth recently did the world premiere of Victor Cahn’s Dally with the Devil off-Broadway at the Beckett and covered Cynthia Nixon in Wit on Broadway.

Yale Cabaret Hollywood did three productions last year, writes Walter Klappert ’79: Beat, by Paavo Hall ’79, Jon Howard, and Walter, was done as a radio-show-style production at the Café Metropol in downtown Los Angeles with Fred Sanders yc ’77 directing. Dyanne Asimow ’67 brought in a new play by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

Elizabeth Norment ’79 and Wit playwright Margaret Edson

66

James Ricci, which was read at Gregory Berger-Sobeck’s ’98 Studio Theatre under the direction of Eric Scott Gould ’98. The final piece was Barbara Bragg’s ’87 Tales of the Old West at the Heritage Square Museum, directed by Corey Madden, former associate director of the Mark Taper Forum. Barb and Corey brought in Patricia Lewis ’98, Obi Ndefo ’97, yc ’94, and Joe Reynolds ’97 to play parts. Walter is still inventing for Rovi Corporation, and his daughter Erika is now making a living editing video.

80s

.................................

Charles (Chas) Cowing ’80 has made two trips to Iceland in the past eleven months, the second time at New Year’s with his son, Grayson. Charles writes: “A beautiful, strange, and occasionally eerie place, where they understand and appreciate humor.”

Serving as director of performance programs at the Getty Villa Museum in Los Angeles, CA since 2008 has not only been an adventure in ancient Greek and Roman dramaturgy, it has also brought Norman Frisch ’80 back into contact with many old YSD friends, including Chris Barreca ’83, Mona Heinze-Barreca ’88, Ellen McCartney ’87, Naomi Okuyama ’07, Travis Preston ’78, and Susan Solt ’82.

In March 2012 Princeton’s One Act Opera Project featured a first look at Lear on the 2nd Floor, a chamber work by Allan Havis ’80 with musical composition by Anthony Davis yc ’73. This is Allan’s second opera in collaboration with Davis. New single-edition releases of his from Broadway Play Publishing include A Jew on Ethiopia Street, Mink Sonata, Hospitality, and Morocco. Arthur & Joe (as in Miller & DiMaggio) was given a staged reading at San Diego’s Cygnet Theatre in May. In partnership with UC San Diego’s MFA Theatre Program and KSDS 88.3FM public radio, Allan helped launch a full year of radio theatre programming on the last Sunday of every month.

Kate Mendeloff ’80 has had a successful series of collaborations with her former classmate David Kaplan ’79, including three productions for David’s Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival over the past five years. Kate has been on the faculty of the Drama Department at the University of Michigan since 1990 and is artistic director of a site-specific theatre festival in the University Arboretum. Shakespeare in the Arb is now in its 12th season, and Kate directed a production

YSD 2012–13

Charles (Chas) Cowing ’80 in Iceland with his son, Grayson of The Merry Wives of Windsor, with the audience following the action through the woods in this 125-acre park.

The Private Theatre — formed by John Gould Rubin ’80 in 1979 and featuring work with or led by Travis Preston ’78, Jody McAuliffe ’80, Royston Coppenger ’84, dfa ’98, Chris Barreca ’83, Steve Strawbridge ’83 (Faculty), Billy Foeller ’80, Nancy Thun ’78 and other Yalies of the period — is reconstituted and alive. The group did a noted site-specific Hedda Gabler two summers ago using an adaptation by Royston and designs by Chris.

This past summer the company produced a multimedia deconstruction of Strindberg’s Playing With Fire at The Box, NYC, also adapted

by Royston. Then John went to Oslo for the Ibsen Festival to do a workshop of the group’s new adaptation of Peer Gynt, then The Seagull at The Stella Adler LAB (again with an adaptation by Royston), and finally the second production of Everything Must Go by Tony Glazer at The Private Theater. John is also producing and directing Turn Me Loose, a one-man show about Dick Gregory, and developing a new musical about the advent of be-bop for Broadway.

At the USITT conference in Long Beach, CA, Alec Scribner ’80 met up with Ben Sammler ’74 (Faculty), Brackley Frayer ’80, Cosmo Catalano ’79, and Alan Hendrickson ’83 (Faculty). “After 30+ years,” Alec writes, “it was great to see them as if it was yesterday, especially Ben.” It has been a great year for Ben Cameron ’81 (Faculty) at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, where the board awarded the arts program an additional $50 million above and beyond the annual arts budget to support artists’ fellowships and residencies. The first class of recipients was announced in the spring; each one received $275,000, the bulk of it unrestricted. In addition, Ben was made a Chevalier

of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government and became the tenth recipient of the Sidney Yates Arts Advocacy award from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters.

Jan Eliasberg ’81 was accepted into the Fox Writers Intensive, a program designed to groom show runners, show creators, and filmmakers across all divisions of Fox: cable, network, and features. Only ten writers were chosen out of 350 nominations. While she continues to direct—most recently NCIS: Los Angeles—Jan’s goal for the next few years is to bring her writing and directing together under one umbrella, creating and running a series or directing her own screenplays.

It has been a busy year for Eve Gordon ’81.

She had recurring roles on American Horror Story, Hart of Dixie, and Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23. She also appeared on Mad Men

Cecilia Rubino ’82 and Melissa Trn ’03 (both in middle) with the cast of From the Fire, photo by Erica Min

as the whorehouse madam. She played one of the leads in Peace in Our Time, the world premiere of a Noel Coward adaptation at Antaeus Company. Her web series was named one of the 50 best in the world by Time magazine; Fred Willard plays her husband.

After more years on the East Coast than she can count, Patrice Thomas ’81 relocated to Los Angeles. She is one of the production

Michael Fain, A Student Then and Now Michael Fain ’82 recalls arriving with his wife Carol in New Haven over three decades ago: “Two foreign exchange students from Arizona,” he joked. “I spent three years getting my MFA, and Carol spent three years getting her PhT: Put Hubby Through! It was a well-spent three years. It affected everything I did in the theatre ever since. And it meant I could get work right away.”

And work he certainly did: Since graduating, Michael has enjoyed a diverse career as a theatre professional and educator, as associate professor of theatre technology for the University of Oklahoma (which, he notes, is the second oldest school of drama in the country, after Yale).

He also serves as the technical director for all student shows.

Which bring us to the question: What would bring Michael back to study at Yale School of Drama in 2012, thirty years after graduation?

“After U of O hired a full-time staff technical director, I was finally allowed to take a sabbatical,” he says. He decided he wanted to go somewhere else and learn something valuable, so that he could help his university move into the future. Michael decided to speak to Ben Sammler ’74 (Faculty), who suggested that Michael re-join YSD for a full semester as an auditing alumnus.

So in January 2012 Michael began his “second Yale adventure,” moving to New Haven for one semester, learning about show control and animation, and auditing such classes as hydraulics and pneumatics, as well as working on Rep shows and technical directing a baroque opera for Yale College. His ambition was “to learn stuff here that I don’t have an immediate application for, but hope to use when I get back. You never know what you’ll learn and how you’re going to apply it.”

Michael emphasizes that the current Yale TD&P students have been exceptionally welcoming. “At first, in class, you could tell that people were like, ‘Whoa, who’s the old guy?’ but they became very helpful and very accepting. They made sure that I felt like I was part of the process.” In return, Michael is committed to being a supportive resource for the students.

Was the time away from his job—the time revisiting his past—time well spent? As Michael prepared to return to Oklahoma, he noted the one thing that hasn’t changed at YSD. Just as in his first experience at the School, he says: “I’ve learned as much from my student peers as from the faculty.”

Tanya Dean ’11, dfa ’14

managers for the L.A. Music Center, primarily responsible for any dance, touring shows, or events coming in to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. She will occasionally be hanging out at Walt Disney Concert Hall as well.

Having recently completed her first year as scenic project manager at CNN, Sharon Braunstein ’82 writes that “it’s the perfect job for me, doing work that I love in a stimulating environment.” She has been on the road working on all of the Republican debates, and she worked on the conventions last summer. Sharon enjoyed spending time with Michael Baumgarten ’81 and his family when she was in Charlotte for the Democratic Convention.

Spending the spring playing Margie in the West Coast premiere of Good People at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, Jane Kaczmarek ’82 had a wonderful experience, “although,” she writes, “memorizing lines as a middle-ager is a whole new terrifying world.

Add to that three kids and a commute from my home in Pasadena, and I remembered how demanding theatre is. Some TV friends came and said, ‘We kept waiting for someone to yell cut. You did the whole thing in a single take!’” Jane also hosted the annual YSD Alumni Party in the spring.

Mindy Roffman ’83 is still working as an art director in Los Angeles; she is currently busy with the new spin-off of The Closer called Major Crimes, scheduled to air in August. The second episode features fellow classmate Vyto Ruginis ’82. Last season on The Closer, Kate Burton ’82 was a guest star.

She had fun seeing another classmate, Jane Kaczmarek ’82, in Good People at the Geffen.

Once again coordinating the undergraduate Theater Program at Lang College at The New School in Greenwich Village, Cecilia Rubino ’82 interviewed classmate Frances McDormand ’82 about her work before a screening of Fargo.

Cecilia also worked with costume designer and YSD alumna Melissa Trn ’08 on From the Fire, a piece that Cecilia wrote and directed, with music by composer Liz Swados. The original piece was staged with 32 singers at the historic Judson Church for the centennial

YSDYSD 2012–13 2012–13

6767

Alumni Notes

Ken Marks ’84 with daughters Clarissa (4) and Eleanor (8) of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and went on with a cast of 14 to the Edinburgh International Festival, where it won the UK/ Edinburgh Musical Theatre awards for best music, best production, and best new musical.

It was a wonderful year in production for Rick Davis ’83, dfa ’03. He directed Kaiulani Lee (with whom he first worked as a student dramaturg at YRT on Richard Nelson’s [Former Faculty] Rip Van Winkle) through a developmental process and then full production of her solo piece, Can’t Scare Me, the Story of Mother Jones for Theater of the First Amendment (TFA). The show opened at D.C.’s Atlas Performing Arts Center in October 2011 and had a brief remount at George Mason in February. In January, Rick worked on an operatic double bill, Barber and Barberillo, pairing Samuel Barber’s miniature A Hand of Bridge with a Spanish zarzuela, El Barberillo de Lavapies, for the In Series in D.C. In March he did a professional student hybrid production of The Life of Galileo. Offstage Rick took on a new role as executive director of George Mason University’s two-year old Hylton Performing Arts Center, participated in the decision to end TFA’s 22-year run as the resident professional company at George Mason, and continued work on Spanish Golden Age materials.

After 27 years of enjoying the laughter of children as PSM at Seattle Children’s Theatre, Linda-Jo Greenberg ’84 has left the business and is now an administrative coordinator in the Office of Research Integration at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. Linda-Jo always wondered if she would know when it was time to leave, and it took until now for her to

68

feel that she had done all she could do at the theatre, having been company manager and assistant to the artistic director, in addition to PSM, when she left. She feels fortunate to have landed in a new field and organization that is equally collaborative and equally important but better funded than theatre.

“Every business needs a good stage manager,” she writes. “And as a two-time cancer survivor, I couldn’t ask for more meaningful work.”

In January, Tom Isbell ’84 entered into a three-book deal with HarperCollins for a young adult fantasy trilogy, tentatively titled The Hatchery, and will be taking this year off from teaching at the University of Minnesota Duluth while he completes books two and three. Publication of the first book is scheduled for January 2014. In November the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Theater for Young Audiences produced Tom’s adaptation of Rodman Philbrick’s Newberry Honor book, The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg, to be directed by Gregg Henry.

An additional highlight of Tom’s year was getting to perform Love Letters with his wife Pat for three weeks at the Yellow Tree Theatre in Minneapolis, a theatre run by two of Tom’s former students.

A tenth wedding anniversary was celebrated last fall by Ken Marks ’84 and his wife Laura. They are also in their eighth year of restoring their home in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Ken can now use a hammer with some aplomb but has yet to discern the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. Ken’s two daughters, Eleanor and Clarissa, ages 8 and 4, however, know everything about everything, as do the two cats. Laura recently graduated from the Juilliard playwriting program and has been invited to be a member of New Dramatists. One of her plays will have an offBroadway production next year. Ken is still playing the ill-fated Uncle Ben in the Broadway production of Spiderman: Turn off the Dark, where he has been since 2010. Prior to that he had played Editor Webb in Our Town at the Barrow Street Theatre.

Serge Audio is in its 11th year in midtown NYC, and in addition to mixing, Serge Ossorguine ’84 writes that the company is now doing more composing music for commercials and long form features and documentaries. He heard recently from YSD Tooth of Crime collaborators Chan Chandler ’85 and Erik Ehn ’83, yc ’79, and was happily able to share with them that he continues to rock on.

For their performances in Richard Nelson’s (Former Faculty) Sweet and Sad at

YSD 2012–13

The Public Theater last fall, Laila Robins ’84 and the entire cast received both Obie and Drama Desk awards for best ensemble. Last spring Laila was in Edward Albee’s The Lady from Dubuque, the inaugural production in the Diamond Theatre at the new Signature Theatre. The production received several Best Revival nominations, and Laila received an Outer Critics Circle nomination for Best Actress. She is also last year’s recipient of the Actors’ Equity Richard Seff award. Laila cherishes these honors and wishes her teacher Earle Gister could have enjoyed them with her.

Robert Wierzel ’84 (Faculty) most recently did the lighting for Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, book by Stephen King, music by John Mellencamp, music direction by T Bone Burnett, directed by Susan Booth, at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, GA; Aida, an opera

by Giuseppe Verdi, directed by Francesca Zambello, scenery by Lee Savage ’05 (Faculty) at the Glimmerglass Festival in the summer of 2012; and Lost in the Stars, book and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson and music by Kurt Weill, directed by Tazewell Thompson, also at Glimmerglass; Divine Rivalry, a new play by Michael Kramer, directed by Michael Wilson at The Old Globe in San Diego, CA, in the summer of 2012; The Pearl Fishers, an opera by Georges Bizet, directed by Tazewell Thompson, scenery by Donald Eastman ’76 at Virginia Opera, in the fall of 2012. In development is The Rite of Spring, music by Igor Stravinsky, a coproduction with Anne Bogart’s SITI Company and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company for the spring of 2013.

Serge Ossorguine ’84

Chicago area YSD alumnae reunite (left to right): Heidi Schultz ’86 with her daughter Kristina, Melodie Swanson ’86, and Tamara Heeschen Gaglioti ’85 with her daughter Kathryn Robert Alford ’85 directed the Shreveport Little Theatre and LSU Shreveport Black Box Theatre production of August Wilson’s Fences with Sy Richardson as Troy Maxson in August 2012.

Jayne Atkinson ’85 and her husband Michel Gill were recently cast in the Netflix series House of Cards with Kevin Spacey, directed by David Fincher. That and the news of the SAG/AFTRA merger (thank you to Yalies Amy Aquino ’86 and Dylan Baker ’85) have her soaring. Jayne was in a new play by Kelly Masterson called Edith at the Berkshire Theatre Festival last summer; the play is about Edith Wilson’s takeover of the White House for six weeks. Jane and Michel’s son is 13 and Jayne writes: “To date this is my favorite job in my whole life, being his mom. What a joy! Alongside that is my partnership with my husband. After 13 years more beautiful than ever.”

Jane Ann Crum ’85 was the production dramaturg for Bruja, Luis Alfaro’s re-imagining of the Medea myth at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, which opened last May 30.

Working with Jane Ann were Andrew Boyce ’09 (Faculty) and Julie Haber ’77, stage manager.

Michael Engler ’85 just finished shooting his third season as executive producer and director of Showtime’s The Big C. Having slowly worked her way back into theatre since moving to the Twin Cities, Tamara Heeschen Gaglioti ’85 has done a staged reading for the Playwrights’ Center’s PlayLab series, and the play 1968: The Year that Rocked the World, as well as two staged readings for History Theatre. Tamara also works part time for Weight Watchers, which, she writes, “has had a positive impact” on her

life. Her husband Paul fills his time with various projects around the house and with restoring cars. Their daughter Katy, currently in second grade, keeps them busy with homework, Girl Scouts, and various sports.

Chicago has been a life changer for Terrence Witter ’85. The show has been running almost 16 years: the longest-running American musical in Broadway history. Some exceptional people have worked on the show, including fellow alums James Naughton ’70 and John Lee Beatty ’73. Terrence never wanted to be the kind of stage manager who worked on the same show for an eternity, “but,” he writes, “when the production is as good as Chicago is and the components change so often that the show is constantly being reinvented and is as exciting as it was back in 1996 when we opened . . . that’s different. We have seen so much: weddings and divorces, births and deaths, several presidents and the horror of 9/11 . . . and we are still standing, doing incredible work eight times a week at the Ambassador Theatre.”

Campbell Dalglish ’86 is president and artistic director of a new art cinema, screening international films as well as opera, ballet, music concerts, and poetry and play readings.

He also continues teaching film at CCNY fulltime as well as being a film commissioner for Suffolk County. Last summer Campbell took a group of CCNY film students to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College in Oklahoma, where he shot the documentary Being Indian in Oklahoma. For the last 14 years

he has been living in an alternative-energy home he built and filmed in Patchogue, NY with his wife, filmmaker Catherine Oberg.

Their red-headed son, Milo, joined them four years ago; daughter Ariel is a dancer in the March 4th Marching Band out of Portland, OR, touring the world; son Sage is lead guitarist and vocalist in the band The Dog Soldier Society in NYC; eldest daughter, Sierra is a performing puppeteer in New Orleans, and her son (Campbell’s grandson) Bixby won a national poetry contest and flew into NYC to receive his award on June 1 at Carnegie Hall.

Charles Grammer ’86 and his wife Michelle live in Buffalo, where Charles has been at the Litelab Corporation for 12 years, now as project and specification analyst.

Charles’s daughter Meghan, who occasionally visited the YSD scene shop as a babe-in-arms, is now a freelance graphic designer in Portland, ME, and son Nathan just graduated summa cum laude in philosophy from Buffalo State. Charles does the sound mix for the Buffalo Friends of Folk concerts, holds ham radio license KA2CQQ, and has become an avid cyclist, logging more than 1900 miles last year.

Loulou, an original musical for which Quincy Long ’86 is writing the book, is in development with Junkyard Dog, to be produced in 2013. The Huntsmen, a play with songs, will be produced by Portland Playhouse in December 2012.

Charles McCarry ’86 and his wife, Theresa, are the proud parents of Tyler McCarry,

Terrence Witter ’85 at the Ambassador Theatre on Broadway

YSDYSD 2012–13 2012–13

6969

Alumni Notes graduate of Riverview High School, June 2012.

Charles was production designer for Material Queen, a Taiwanese romance drama co-production between Next TV and CTS TV, filmed in Taiwan and Paris.

After a much-needed hip replacement, Tina Cantu Navarro ’86 accepted a job with her pain doctor, Dr. Arnulfo Carrasco, working with his film company, Carrasco Media Group, which creates videos about his patients (one of them Tina). She does many different things for the company: She has helped with costuming for re-enactment scenes and creating a set for his new TV studio. After retirement from teaching and designing for regional theatre, Tina is glad to return to utilizing those skills she learned from Ming Cho Lee (Faculty) and Jane Greenwood (Faculty) as a design student at Yale.

Adapting her father’s western stories to the stage has kept Barbara Bragg ’87 busy this year. Ten Sleep Mail was produced by Bernardo Solano ’88 at Cal State Poly Pomona and directed by Corey Madden. Yale Cabaret Hollywood and Walt Klappert ’79 produced her reading at Pasadena Heritage of Old West Stories, also directed by Corey Madden. She has also been shooting a documentary called The Yale Project, a series of interviews asking the question, “How does an actor come to Los Angeles and book a TV series as a regular in this new media environment?” Over the last year she has interviewed major directors, show runners, casting directors, agents, and managers.

It was a busy spring for Michael Chybowski ’87. He did the lights for the

1

Barbara Bragg ’87 interviewing Michael Engler ’85 for the documentary The Yale Project

national tour of the Acting Company’s Julius Caesar, The Tempest at Hartford Stage, Beaux for the San Francisco Ballet with choreography by Mark Morris, and A Choral Fantasy, a new work for Mark’s company at BAM. Both dances had costumes designed by Isaac Mizrahi. Michael also teaches at UConn as head of the school’s lighting program and is preparing to light a show at the Gate Theatre in Dublin with Neil Patel yc ’86 and Doug Hughes.

Bill Clarke ’87 had a fairly busy season doing mostly LORT shows. He designed Lemon Sky for Keen Company on Theater Row in the fall. He worked on a farce for Barrington Stage Company in August and You Can’t Take it With You for Geva in September.

Recently moved back to New York City, Susan Jonas ’87, dfa ’90 is working as a dramaturg with NewShoe Theatre, developing new plays that respond to classic plays by women, and curating a series on the contribu-

2

3

tion of women to the theatre called The Legacy Project. She is also co-editing two new anthologies on dramaturgy, practice, and pedagogy, and co-developing an online archive of the lectures of Leon Katz (Former Faculty).

After years of teaching dramaturgy, playwriting, and adaptation, she has returned to her own writing for the stage and is working on an adaptation of a novel and a new musical.

The last few years have been good to Peter Lewis ’87. He has appeared in several films, including a starring role opposite Diane Lane in the Lakeshore Entertainment feature Untraceable and supporting roles in Down in the Valley opposite Bruce Dern and Edward Norton yc ’91, Stone opposite Robert De Niro, and the Judd Apatow features Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express. He has also been busy on television, including guest starring roles on Mad Men, 30 Rock, Law & Order SVU, and as a recurring guest star on Dark Blue. Most recently Peter worked on The Onion News Network and the upcoming Bourne Legacy directed by Tony Gilroy. He hasn’t been as busy on stage recently, although he was nominated by the L.A. Weekly Theatre Awards for Best Actor for the role of Andrew in Chuck Mee’s two-hander, Limonade Tous Les Jour, which won the award for Best Ensemble Cast; and in the fall he was helping to develop a new rock musical, The Problem, at The Actors Studio, NYC. Peter’s wife, Sook Jin Jo, has been busy with shows and installations around the world, including Paris, Seoul, New York, Switzerland, Poland, India, and Brazil.

The first writer selected for The Writers Room at The Arden Theatre in Philadelphia is

4

5

1 John Guare ’63 with Cheryl Mintz ’87 at the McCarter Theatre, during the world premiere of John’s play, Are You There, McPhee?

2 Cliff Warner ’87 3 Lori Robishaw ’88 greets George C. White ’61, yc ’57 (Faculty) at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, CT. George, along with his wife Betsy, were honored for their contributions to the cultural life of southeastern Connecticut.

4 Sharon Washington ’88 at the Signature Theatre 5 Wendy Rolfe Evered ’89 with Josh Fardon ’91, at the Palm Springs Film Festival promoting the film, A Thousand Cuts, written and directed by Wendy’s husband Charles Evered ’91

70

YSD 2012–13

Wendy MacLeod ’87. She wrote a new play during her residency which was directed by Associate Artistic Director Ed Sobel and given its premiere in early July. While in Philly she saw fellow alums Pearce Bunting ’88 in A Behanding in Spokane at Theater Exile and Ben Lloyd ’88, yc ’85 in Cyrano at the Arden.

2011–12 was Cheryl Mintz’s ’87 21st season as McCarter Theatre’s resident production stage manager. The season began with the world premiere production of Marina Carr’s Phaedra Backwards, directed by Emily Mann. The second half of the season was filled with back-to-back productions directed

by Sam Buntrock; Travesties was followed by the world premiere of Are You There, McPhee?

by John Guare ’63. Between those two shows, Cheryl returned to Opera New Jersey as the production stage manager for Tosca, presented at the McCarter Theatre and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. During this past season Cheryl also conducted master classes for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, speaking to 170 acting students, and the University of Iowa’s MFA Program in Stage Management.

Philip Dean Stoller ’87 was awarded the Master of Divinity (MDiv) degree from Yale Divinity School in May 2012.

After leaving Thinkwell last May, Cliff Warner ’87 sold his shares to start a new company, Mycotoo. He enjoys helping passionate people achieve. Cliff turns 50 on 12/12/12 and will celebrate with a small party in Maui. He extends his appreciation to everyone who contributed to the Frank Torok Scholarship.

Benjamin Lloyd ’88, yc ’85 performed with Tovah Feldshuh in Gypsy at Bristol Riverside Theatre in December 2011 and as the Compte de Guiche in Cyrano at the Arden Theatre in April 2012. He saw many old friends that month at Earle Gister’s memorial at Signature Theatre. He went to Kenya on Quaker business and performed a variation of “Who’s On First?” with a Kenyan academic. In May he saw Pearce Bunting ’88 in Philadelphia when he did A Behanding in Spokane at Theater Exile there. He honored Earle by teaching “The Gister Master Class” this summer at his production company, White Pines Productions.

His work life is divided between theatre and fiction. James Magruder’s ’88, dfa ’92, grd ’84 second book, a novel-in-stories titled Let Me See It, came out in August. James is completing a third novel and thinking about a fourth, this one with a summer-stock setting.

He took a break from teaching translation in the dramaturgy program this year and just

finished leading his first fiction workshop for MFA students at the University of Baltimore.

As for theatre, Tim Vasen ’93, yc ’87 (Faculty) commissioned a world premiere English adaptation of Der Bürger als Edelmann, Hofmannsthal and Strauss’s musical comedy version of Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. It is tentatively titled Das Bourgeois Bigshot, and it opened at Princeton in November. Also in the pipeline are a new version of Giraudoux’s Madwoman of Chaillot for Mark Rucker ’92 at ACT in San Francisco and a year in Uganda with James’s partner Steve, who helps run clinical trials for HIV vaccines in Kampala.

After last year’s Tony awards Sharon Washington ’88 finally said good-bye to the role of The Lady in Kander & Ebb’s final collaboration, The Scottsboro Boys, which she had originated at the Vineyard Theatre and gone on to do at the Guthrie and then on Broadway.

She followed that with her second musical, Lost in the Stars, at City Center Encores. The start of a new musical theatre career? Last year Sharon also began working with her Scottsboro Boys castmate, Tony-nominee Colman Domingo, on a new play he was writing called Wild With Happy. There were workshops of it at the Sundance Playwrights Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, and TheatreWorks Palo Alto. It will have its world premiere at The Public Theater in the 2012–13 season. Sharon is looking forward to it because she doesn’t cry, doesn’t die, and finally gets a chance to be funny. She is also writing a children’s book.

L.A.’s Write Act Repertory has scheduled Bob Barnett’s ’89 comedy/drama Olympic Notions & Supply for production. It was also a finalist for last year’s Ashland New Plays Festival. In New York he is now a member of the advisory board of New York’s New Haarlem Arts Theatre and his play Colors at Sunset was shortlisted at the UK’s HighTide Festival Theatre. A Day at the Museum, a oneact set to music, was produced at the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, D.C. in July of last year. Bob continues to work as a freelance writer in corporate communications and branding, with clients including General Mills, Qualcomm, and Cedars Sinai Medical Center. He was creative director for New York’s first Chinatown Restaurant Week earlier in the year and has been providing communications consulting for NY’s Chinatown Partnership, the Alliance Heritage Center in New Jersey, and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. Last year he traveled to Rome and to China with the Yale Alumni Service Corps, teaching Introduction to

Benjamin Lloyd ’88, yc ’85 (left) with John Akimbe, Kabarak University, Kenya Theatre to high school students in Anhui province. He continues to edit the newsletter for Yale GALA, the University’s LGBT alumni association.

In January Wendy Rolfe Evered ’89 and family attended the Palm Springs Film Festival with her and husband Charles Evered’s ’91 film A Thousand Cuts. The film has been picked up by Kino-Lorber. Wendy is parenting, acting, and publishing her first children’s book, Too Much, due out in the fall of 2012. In May, Wendy performed the role of Margaret in Charles Evered’s comedic Pilot Stateside, winner of the Writers Guild of America East Pilots Resurrected competition in New York City.

90s

.................................

This past year, George Tynan Crowley ’90 played Arthur in Superior Donuts at Capital Rep in Albany, Ishaq in Two Jews Walk into a War at Florida Studio Theatre, and Bob in Humble Boy at Maine’s Public Theatre.

George’s latest play, Sex with the Gods, recently had a staged reading at the Leslie/Lohman Art Foundation in New York City. George attended the Earle Gister memorial and writes that he was “vigorously re-inspired by what we can do, warts and all.”

Recent designs of Sarah Lambert ’90 include Fishy Waters at Crossroads Theatre and Shipwrecked! at Penguin. Sarah also did design and dramaturgy for Spill at Wesleyan and NOCCA. This past summer she did workshops of Casa Cushman for the Orchard Project and Spill at ATC, Chicago.

Martin Blanco ’91 has been producing, directing, writing, and performing in the successful radio variety show The Flagpole Radio

YSDYSD 2012–13 2012–13

7171

Alumni Notes

Martin Blanco ’91 in The Flagpole Radio Café variety show

Linda (Sithole) Kuriloff ’91 Café, broadcast in Newtown, CT, and on WPKN radio in Bridgeport. Now in its fourth season, the show has featured such musical guests as Livingston Taylor, Peter Yarrow, Tom Chapin, Deborah Henson-Conant, Patty Larkin, Jonathan Edwards, Guy Davis, Vaneese Thomas, and The Whiffenpoofs.

Martin is still a stay-at-home dad. His wife, Barbara, is a partner in a radiology practice in Danbury. Their children, Kathryn and Matthew, attend school. The Blancos reside in Newtown, CT. On academic leave from Middlebury College, Alex Draper ’91 spent the school year in Brooklyn Heights with his wife, Lorraine, daughter, Nora, son, Toby, and their corgi, Frodo. Everyone was glad to be back in the city, and Alex enjoyed working with Carol Ochs ’84 and the 52nd St Project on Bouncing Back: The Resilient Plays. He also worked with Dare Clubb ’82, dfa ’91, David Lang mus ’89, and Maya Baiser on a workshop of Samuel Beckett’s Cascando. Alex guest starred on The Good Wife, performed in the premiere of Erin Courtney’s A Map of Virtue (produced by the playwrights collective 13P), and played The Yale Moderator in the feature film Hairbrained with Austin Pendleton, Parker Posey, and Brendan Fraser. In July he appeared in PTP/NYC’s production of Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money at Atlantic Stage II, then returned to Middlebury in the fall.

72

A Thousand Cuts, a thriller starring Academy Award nominee Michael O’Keefe and co-written and directed by Charles Evered ’91 had its premiere at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in 2012. Charles splits his time between Princeton, NJ, and a ranch he and his wife, Wendy Rolfe Evered ’89, bought in Joshua Tree, CA. Sarah Grossman ’91 was associate producer on Stick Fly on Broadway this season and the producer on Ann, a play about former Texas governor Ann Richards, which opens on Broadway this coming March.

Daniel Elihu Kramer ’91 directed The Swan by Elizabeth Egloff ’89 in July at Chester Theatre Company in Massachusetts, where he is artistic associate. His play Pride@ Prejudice was produced at Capital Rep in Albany in October.

Linda (Sithole) Kuriloff ’91 performed her solo show Linda Means to Wait in the New York International Fringe Festival in August.

Geoffrey Owens yc ’83 directed.

Shoot Your Computer a new web series by Kevin Meredith ’91 became available at www.shootyourcomputer.com in late July.

Ronald invites everybody to have a look, see what he’s doing, and welcomes any comments, suggestions, or computer horror stories of the type seen on his first “webisode.”

James Van Bergen ’91 spent a year mixing RAIN: A Tribute to the Beatles on Broadway, then switched to television and mixed more than 96 shows of episodic television while production managing arena and theatre tours for television personalities. He designed sound for Amahl & the Night Visitors and Peter and the Wolf at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center; did audio for NYC Ballet’s The

Marty New ’91 with her son Somerset New-Stein Nutcracker for PBS; and did production sound for Chinglish, Peter and the Starcatcher, and The Lyons on Broadway. His wife, Annette Jolles yc ’91, just won her third Emmy, and they shared a Tony nomination for producing The Scottsboro Boys on Broadway.

This year marked the fifth season for Chris Bauer ’92 on HBO’s True Blood. He saw some of his classmates at Earle Gister’s West Coast memorial and has the occasional dinner with those classmates who are also out west. He spends time in Sag Harbor during the summers and serves on the board at Bay Street Theater there.

Marty New ’92 recorded a CD of music from the child/parent partnering yoga class she teaches in Santa Barbara, CA called ClimbTime Yoga.

Michael Vaughn Sims ’92 is currently designing the set for A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Portland Center Stage; the production, directed by Penny Metropulos, opens in November 2012.

Brendan Corbalis ’93 now resides in Bucks County, PA. He is planning to attend Villanova Law School in the fall.

Jim Van Bergen ’91 during production alongside the Western Wall in Jerusalem

YSD 2012–13

Craig Mathers ’93 worked with David Cromer on his production of Our Town with the Huntington Theater Company.

Barbara Hodgen ’94 is back in the Bay Area as the new executive director of the New Conservatory Theatre Center, by way of Las Vegas, where she was the company manager for Blue Man Group, and Los Angeles, where she was the interim managing director for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Taking a spring break on Fire Island, Bob Schneider ’94, dfa ’97 found nobody there but the deer. Bob is working on a new play about how children don’t live in quite the same historical period as their parents. He’s exaggerated the difference a bit: His characters include Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, Edith Wharton, and two twenty-first century young women modeled on his students.

Last spring Bob found himself the guest of honor at a student-organized commemoration of Samuel Beckett’s birthday. Candles were lit, a toast was made, and everybody read their favorite bits and pieces. All of this stemmed from a hint by Peter Brook that cultures with a rich ceremonial life have a leg-up when it comes to making stage behavior meaningful. “If Brook had been there,” writes Bob, “he would have been overjoyed, and if Beckett had been there, he might actually have smiled.”

Still in Los Angeles, Erich Stratmann ’94, yc ’93 is editing music for the movies. He recently finished People Like Us for Dreamworks, with composer A.R. Rahman and director/writer Alex Kurtzman.

He never thought of himself as someone who would try to make it big in Hollywood,

1

2

Christopher Darland ’95 on top of the new Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center in Reykjavik, Iceland

but that’s just what Sy Sussman ’94, yc ’87 is doing . . . though his job has nothing to do with theatre, movies, or TV. He is a loan administration analyst for ZestCash, a startup company that makes loans to the underbanked.

The new head of stage management and associate professor at The Theatre School at DePaul University is Narda Alcorn ’95.

Before leaving New York, Narda was an assistant stage manager for The Lion King on Broadway for many years and also production stage managed the recent Broadway revivals of Fences and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. In addition to her new position at DePaul, Narda was also the stage manager for the 2011

3

Welcome Yule at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In May 2012 she stage managed Immediate Family, a new play by Paul Oakley Stovall, directed by Phylicia Rashad and presented at the Goodman’s Owen Theatre.

Narda lives in the Rogers Park neighborhood in Chicago with her wife and two children.

The set and costume design for Eve Ensler’s new play, Emotional Creature, are by Myung Hee Cho ’95. The play had its premiere at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, directed by Jo Bonney, and will move to off-Broadway in the fall. Myung is also working with Scott Zielinski ’90 on a new musical for the Esplanade’s tenth anniversary season in Singapore, to be directed by Ong Keng Sen.

4

1 Jack and Austin Kocher, sons of Robert Perry ’99 and Cynthia Kocher ’00 2 Michael Goodfriend ’96 with sons Noah and Elijah 3 Mercedes Herrero ’95 at Lido Beach in Sarasota, FL with her son 4 Elaine Tse ’92 (right) with son Boehde and Carrie Burriss during a recent visit to New York

YSDYSD 2012–13 2012–13

7373

Alumni Notes Jeff Talbott ’96

Chris Weida ’95 with sons Alex and Connor

2011–12 has been a busy year for Christopher Darland ’95 at Artec, opening six projects, including the new Harpa concert hall and conference center in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Christopher is nearing the 15-year mark at Artec and has recently been named an associate partner. Mike Parrella ’00, Geoff Zink ’99, and Lars Klein ’99 are all doing well and busier than ever.

Her son Javier was born almost three years ago, and Mercedes Herrero ’95 has done eight plays since his birth. She recently played Gertrude in Hamlet in both English and Spanish at Asolo Repertory Theatre. Last fall she played Dean Wreen in Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, a new play

by Madeleine George, at the Two River Theater in NJ. After 17 years in New York City, Mercedes relocated to Chicago last summer and looks forward to meeting midwestern YSD alumni.

Living in Milwaukee and raising four great kids — Alex, 12; Connor, 10; Emily, 8; and Danny, 5 —Chris Weida ’95 is also working as operations manager at Derse Inc., a custom creative exhibit manufacturer.

Sharon Challenger ’96 has been actively working as a scenic artist and props artisan in various theatres in New England, including TheaterWorks Hartford, Shakespeare & Company, Goodspeed Opera, and Westport Country Playhouse. During the past four summers she has worked as a participant in the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT. Last summer she had the pleasure of

74

working with Roman Paska on a new piece about Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight, titled Desert Flights. In May 2011 she performed in New York City and London in a workshop production of Two Noble Kinsmen with the Oxford Shakespeare Company of New York City. As a member of SouthEastern Connecticut Filmmakers, she worked as art director on a short film titled Commuting and on Scenic Artist for Aphids. In addition to theatre and film work, Sharon is an active volunteer for Artists for World Peace, which creates opportunities for artistic expression to foster world peace and raise funds to benefit humanitarian causes.

Celebrating two years in the role of C.S. Lewis in Mark St. Germain’s award-winning play Freud’s Last Session at New World Stages, Mark Dold ’96 was recently named an associate artist at Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires, where Freud’s Last Session had its premiere.

With her husband and six-year-old son Samuel, Shawn Marie Garrett ’96, dfa ’06 moved from the big city to the tiny village of Sea Cliff, NY. She recently joined the faculty of the Writing and Rhetoric Program at Stony Brook University, where she is researching and teaching at the intersection of rhetoric and performance studies.

It’s been a wonderful year for Michael Goodfriend ’96 with the arrival of a second son, Elijah David. Work included portraying the artist Duncan Grant in a world premiere off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters; performing in As You Like It, Ed Stern’s final production at Cincinnati Playhouse; the premiere of a new play at the Fulton Theatre, directed by fellow alum Matthew Wiener ’88; and a turn as a pirate in B.H. Barry’s production of Treasure Island in New York with fellow alum Tom Beckett ’91, yc ’85. Michael’s play Dear Father, based on the life and writings of Franz Kafka, was a semifinalist in this year’s O’Neill Festival. He writes: “I continue to write and produce every episode of Left Jab on Sirius XM Radio, now in its seventh year. Recent guests included Elliot Spitzer, Dylan Ratigan, Van Jones, Henry Waxman, and just to keep it fair and balanced, Lou Dobbs. Eternal thanks to Earle Gister (Former Faculty) for opening the door to a thrilling life in art.”

While four and five months pregnant, Jennie Israel ’96 played the title role in Medea at The Actors’ Shakespeare Project, directed by David R. Gammons. Jennie and her fiancé, Stephen, had a baby girl in June of 2012. Their son Liam is four.

YSD 2012–13

Kimberly Jannarone ’96, dfa ’00 is living in San Francisco and teaching at UC Santa Cruz, where she was just promoted to full professor. She and her partner, Erik Butler, translated a new French play that was given its first reading in May 2012, directed by Carey Perloff and produced by the French Consulate. Her next book, Vanguards of the Right, is forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press; it includes contributions by Yale alumni Katherine Profeta ’99, dfa ’09, yc ’90 and Monica Achen ’06, dfa cand. and an afterword by Elinor Fuchs (Faculty).

After visiting Norway in August 2012, Kimberly will direct a multimedia Peer Gynt at UCSC in the spring of 2013.

The Submission by Jeff Talbott ’96 was produced off-Broadway at MCC Theater in a production directed by Walter Bobbie and starring Jonathan Groff, Rutina Wesley, Will Rogers, and Eddie Kaye Thomas; it will be published by Samuel French in 2012.

Going on his third year back in production, Michael Sean Graves ’97 is out of the dance flooring business. Michael and his wife Dorothy have a daughter, Rowan, who turned 2 in July.

Heading the Directing department at the Catholic University of America, Eleanor Holdridge ’97 is now a resident of Washington, D.C. She recently directed a Susanna Centlivre play at the Folger with Jessica Ford ’04 on costumes, Veronika Vorel ’08 on sound, and starring Emily Trask ’11.

Upcoming are shows at Theatre J, Round House Theatre, and Everyman Theatre, where Timothy Mackabee ’09 is doing the set.

In London for the past two years, Suttirat Larlarb ’97 was one of two designers for the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, directed by longtime collaborator Danny Boyle.

Sarah Newhouse, Obehi Janice, Jennie Israel ’96, and McCaela Donovan in Medea at the Actors’ Shakespeare Project

Katherine Profeta ’99, dfa ’09, yc ’90 with her husband Steve Bodow and her daughters Nina (6) and Veronica (4) This has been a terrific season of new plays for Paul Niebanck ’97: Blood and Gifts at Lincoln Center Theater, RX at Primary Stages, and Death Tax at the Humana Festival.

Julius Galacki ’98 had three short dramas — A Haunted World, My Death, and Empty Slot — in the Atlantic Stage’s first annual Festival of New Plays in Myrtle Beach, SC in April 2012. Marj Mitchell ’97 is the managing director of that theatre. A Haunted World was also performed at the Hollywood Fringe Festival last June at the Theatre Asylum in Los Angeles, directed by Julius. First Night, a short film he wrote and directed based on the play first seen at the Yale Cabaret, was also screened during the Festival, giving the movie its Los Angeles premiere.

This year Mahayana Landowne ’98 is adopting the title Theatrical Visioneer. Her intention is to bridge “traditional theatre” with participatory art. Lately she has been inspired by engaging the audience and shifting theatrical paradigms. Mahayana has also started a business leading workshops in creativity and has held sessions at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. She is still based in Brooklyn, creating plays, parades, and action events.

Last spring Wade McIntyre ’98 wrote the latest installment of the Home Alone movie franchise, which will have its premiere on ABC Family this holiday season. He worked closely with Rachel Rusch ’05, dfa ’08, yc ’00.

Wade is now working on Do No Harm, a medical thriller on NBC that will have its premiere in early 2013. His daughter, Story, is two years old and enjoys swimming, trains, and throwing sand onto her own head and laughing about it.

With each year that passes, Ed Blunt ’99 is more grateful for his experiences at YSD. Ed continues to practice and enhance the skills and techniques taught at YSD in his company,

Life Design, where he trains multibillion dollar companies, doing keynote presentations around the world and vacationing for a living.

He worked most recently for the Federal Aviation Corp, Novo Nordisk, Combined Federal Campaign, and the EPA. Ed is also the voice behind the launch of Amazon’s Kindle Fire. “My goal is simple,” he writes. “Inspire 100,000 people to action and lead them to freedom.” He is grateful to YSD for opening up his imagination to greater and greater possibilities.

After a successful performance of So the Arrow Flies at Wellesley College, Esther Chae von Zielbauer ’99 is delighted to share that the research materials as well as the script in various stages of development went on display at the Library of Congress as part of the Asian Pacific Heritage Month in May, 2012. It will be archived in the Library of Congress’s Asian American Pacific Islander Collection, Primary Holdings Initiative. In the fall of 2012 Esther’s absurd puppet play Ddan Da Ddan!!!, about a superwoman sock puppet imprisoned in a kryptonite cell, will be featured at the inaugural TimeWave festival, a new, cutting-edge, international festival fusing art and technology. Esther continues to work as an actor and TED fellow, exploring the intersection of live performance, technology, and intercultural communication.

Raymond Kent ’99 has been busy opening two new offices this year in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles for his company, Sustainable Technologies Design Group, LLC. Ben Strange ’11 has joined the team this year.

The company recently completed the opening of the Las Vegas Mob Museum, the Allen Theater complex for Cleveland Playhouse/ Playhouse Square/Cleveland State University (where Jim Swonger ’93 is the resident sound designer) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame renovation. Raymond has also been continuing his work on sustainable technology initiatives as co-chair of the International

Mahayana Landowne ’98

Esther Chae von Zielbauer ’99, photo by Amanda Max

STEP Foundation (Sustainable Technology Environments Program) and is currently working on two pilot projects for the STEP rating system: Slippery Rock Performing Arts Center in PA and the Cuyahoga County Library Auditorium in Parma, OH. A landscape architect and painter, Jane Padelford ’99 also collaborates on art installations in Washington, D.C. Robert Perry ’99 and Cynthia Kocher ’00 have had a busy year! Their son Austin James Kocher Perry was born on November 15, 2011.

He joins his big brother, Jack, who is now in kindergarten. After seven years in sunny South Florida, they moved to Richmond, where Rob is the assistant professor of lighting design at Virginia Commonwealth University. Rob and Cindy both continue to work professionally. Rob has especially enjoyed collaborating on several projects in Minneapolis with director Lisa Channer ’00.

Since the fall of 2010 Katherine Profeta ’99, dfa ’09, yc ’90 has been an assistant professor in the Drama, Theatre, and Dance Department at Queens College, CUNY. She still collaborates with Elevator Repair Service and choreographer/visual artist Ralph Lemon, whom she met as a student at YSD. Lately she has been asked to speak on several occasions on the emerging field of “dance dramaturgy.”

She visited YSD last spring as a respondent on the dramaturgy students’ “passion projects.”

Katherine is married to Steve Bodow yc ’89 and has two daughters: Nina, 6, and Veronica, 4. She still sees classmates Becca Rugg ’00, dfa ’05 (Faculty), Annie Dorsen ’00, yc ’96, Louisa Thompson ’98, and Lisa Channer ’00.

Writing from Beijing, China, where she and her family have moved and will stay through 2015, Claudia Arenas Rosenshield ’99 says she has been studying Chinese and being a full time mom to two daughters, now 9 and 6.

YSDYSD 2012–13 2012–13

7575

Alumni Notes

Emily Elizabeth Bates, daughter of Cindy Brizzell-Bates ’00, dfa ’07 and husband Justyn, was born on August 1, 2011.

Amsterdam. Two upcoming projects Marcus is excited about are In the Garden of Dreams, with Sarah Rothenberg of DaCamera of Houston, and Rituel pour une metamorphose at the Comédie Française, both in 2013. Marcus has recently been appointed to the faculty of Northwestern University’s Department of Theatre, where he began teaching lighting in the MFA Design Program in September 2012.

Currently practicing criminal defense law, Denver Latimer ’00 is also serving as interim artistic director and board member of the Blue Room Theatre in Chico, CA. Since moving back to Chico three years ago, Denver has spent a lot of time convincing actors and directors connected with community theatres that readings are an essential component of show development. He recently directed The Secretaries by the Five Lesbian Brothers and is looking forward to

Andy Cassano ’01 with Yannis Simonides ’72, yc ’69, following the performance of Yannis’s Apology of Socrates, Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University implementing a gradual theatre mission, heavy on readings and workshops, and an ambitious children’s theatre academy.

Featured in the award-winning independent film Transatlantic Coffee, Amy Morse ’00

Paul Tigue ’99 is in Los Angeles, plugging along.

00s

Kristen & Will Connolly: Something in the Genes ..................................

In November 2011 Kraig Blythe ’00 took on the role of executive producer with Disney’s Creative Entertainment group.

Cindy Brizzell-Bates ’00, dfa ’07 and her husband, Justyn, are thrilled to announce the arrival of their daughter, Emily Elizabeth, on August 1, 2011.

This academic year Terri Ciofalo ’00 was named co-chair of stage management at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, alongside Karen Quisenberry. Last July, Terri took seven students to Armagh, Northern Ireland to study playwriting for a month and to participate in the John Hewitt International Writing Festival.

Currently an adjunct professor of film, teaching Directing the Actor and Editing at New York University in the graduate and undergraduate divisions at Tisch, Keith Davis ’00 will also be directing his debut feature film, The American People, which he developed with the Sundance Institute Feature film program as a writing/directing fellow.

Last spring and summer Marcus Doshi ’00 continued to tour with The Speaker’s Progress, a work he helped devise with the Kuwaitbased international company Sabab Theatre, with whom Marcus has become an associate artist. The show was devised during, and is in response to, the Arab Spring, and so far performances have played Kuwait, Beirut, Brooklyn, Boston, Tunis, Cairo, and

76

When Mr. and Mrs. Connolly signed up their children, Kristen ’07 and Will ’10, for the Essex Youth Theater, little did they know that those productions of Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz were only the beginnings of the siblings’ acting careers. Today Will can be seen on Broadway in the much-celebrated new musical Once, and Kristen starred in the Joss Whedon cult-film thriller Cabin in the Woods.

Though the siblings wanted to be actors since they were children, the two have embarked on distinctly individual paths. Kristen studied theatre at Middlebury College and upon graduation was promptly cast in the 2003 film Mona Lisa Smile. After graduating from YSD, she continued her film work in Revolutionary Road and Confessions of a Shopaholic, and made television appearances on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Nurse Jackie, and The Good Wife. Last fall she was Cordelia to Sam Waterston’s Lear in King Lear at The Public Theater.

Will earned a BFA in theatre from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. In the summer of 2005, his interest in grassroots theatre led him to co-found a theatre company in New Orleans, the Nola Theatre Project; in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he returned to New Orleans with the company the following summer to play Ferdinand in a site-specific production of The Tempest.

In addition to showcasing his musical abilities in Once—Will plays bass, guitar, ukulele, and percussion—he also co-wrote the musical Fly-by-Night with fellow YSD alums Michael Mitnick ’10 and Kim Rosenstock ’10, which debuted at the 2009 Summer Cabaret. The piece is about to receive a workshop production at Roundabout Theatre Company.

Will and Kristen agree that their different artistic and professional paths have brought them closer together. “I’m still awestruck by her abilities,” Will says. “Watching Kristen today is a lot like watching her when I was five. I realize again and again how lucky I am to have her as a sister, and how much I have to learn from her.”

“It’s great to have someone whom you know is on your team no matter what,” explains Kristen.

Any sibling rivalry? Will shakes his head. “I am easily her biggest fan, and I know that she is mine as well.”

Kristin nods. “I feel much more proud of his successes than I do of my own.”

Katherine McGerr ’14

YSD 2012–13

On York Street

News fromYale School of Drama

Angel Gardner ’01

The YSD contingent at Walt Disney Imagineering Left to right: Alec Scribner ’80, Jeff Rank ’79, Jason Davis ’04, Pam Rank ’78, and Kraig Blythe ’00

also appears in the Paramount film One Shot, directed by Christopher McQuarrie and starring Tom Cruise.

In May 2011 Christopher Baker ’01 graduated cum laude from St. Mary’s School of Law. While earning his JD, he also obtained an MBA with honors by taking night classes at the university. Back in January he was a semifinalist for a Presidential Management

1

2

Fellowship from the Office of Personnel Management in D.C. He spent the summer preparing to take the Texas bar exam and plans to live in Austin, TX, practicing entertainment and IP law in the film, music, and video game industries.

Andy Cassano ’01 presented Yannis Simonides’s ’72, yc ’69 Apology of Socrate at the Zoellner Arts Center at Lehigh University,

3

where he is administrative director.

While Angel Gardner ’01 is enjoying her sixth year as director of communications with National Dance Institute, the company is celebrating its 35th anniversary and the first year in its new home on 147th Street in Harlem as the National Dance Institute Center for Learning & the Arts. Angel has also completed her third season as director of marketing and public relations for the Oratorio Society of New York. She is a second soprano with the Oratorio Society, singing three concerts a year at Carnegie Hall, and is also a member of the Cathedral Choir of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.

Rio Puertollano ’01 played the off-beat character, Mr. Rodriguez, in the television pilot, Change of Plans, which is nominated this year for best comedy at the ITV Festival in Los Angeles. Rio’s film Broken Wings, which he wrote with his brother, Juan Puertollano, was recently accepted at the Las

4

5

1 Christopher Baker ’01 graduated cum laude from St. Mary’s School of Law, as well as earning an MBA with Distinction from the Greeley School of Business 2 Nondumiso Tembe ’09 headlined the first-ever African production of Rogers & Hammerstein’s musical Cinderella in her home country of South Africa last year, photo by The Playhouse Company 3 Amanda Cobb ’05 in Private Lives at the Pittsburgh Public Theater 4 Kimberly Jannarone ’96, dfa ’00 with her partner Erik Butler 5 Sabrina McGuigan ’04 lives in Springfield, NJ with her boyfriend Dennis Boyko.

YSD 2012–13

77

Alumni Notes

Making art on mountaintops at the annual Freedom Art Retreat of Playwrights’ Commons, founded and run by Ilana Brownstein ’02

Vegas Film Festival and screened at NewFilmmakers in New York and at the Chicago Filipino American Film Festival.

Broken Wings is a silent film about a man who discovers that he has cancer. Rio and Juan dedicated the film to their mother and to others who have lost their lives to cancer.

Adriana Gaviria ’01 helped to produce the short film.

After seven years as the head of new plays at the Huntington Theatre Company, Ilana Brownstein ’02, dfa ’06 made the transition to teaching dramatic literature and dramaturgy in the Boston University School of Theatre, and is the director of new work at Boston’s Company One theatre. She is also the founding dramaturg of Playwrights’ Commons, a development organization for New England area playwrights, where she runs annual creative collaboration retreats in the New Hampshire woods.

As a stand-up comic, Frank Liotti ’02

1

Susan Finque ’03 (right) with partner Maria Martinez and friends Amy Kratz and Gregory Colucci at the Vancouver Folk Festival

recently came in first for the second year in a row in the New York division of the prestigious Laughing Skull Comedy Festival (headlined by Margaret Cho) and competed in the finals in Atlanta, Georgia. He also placed first in preliminaries of the Boston Comedy Festival New York Showcase, placed in the Laughing Devil Comedy Festival this past May, and did a guest spot in the Los Angeles Comedy Festival. He also appeared in the film Bear City 2, a TLA Films release, last summer.

The big news from Claire Lundberg ’02, yc ’98 is the birth of her daughter, Sophia, in

2

November 2011. Claire is living in Paris and loving being a mom. She is also working as a consultant for British and French film companies that want to make films in the American market and is writing articles for Slate.

After receiving tenure in the spring of 2012, Erika Rundle ’02, dfa ’07 was promoted to associate professor of theatre arts at Mount Holyoke College. Her first book, Drama after Darwin, will be published in 2013.

The production of Love Goes to Press by Martha Gellhorn and Virginia Cowles at the Mint Theater had Heather Violanti ’02 as the

3

1 Malcolm Darrell ’07 2 David Howson ’04 at the Depot Theatre in Westport, NY in the Adirondacks, photo by The Depot Theatre 3 Sarah Bartlo ’04 with her daughters Katie and Dannan 4 Frank Liotti ’02

78

YSD 2012–13

4

Claire Lundberg ’02, yc ’98 and her daughter, Sophia

Gia Forakis ’04

co-dramaturg. Heather is also co-teaching a playwriting workshop at Horse Trade Theater Group and doing freelance research for the BBC. Continuing to make her home in Seattle, Susan Finque ’03 has completed her first year of doctoral studies at the University of Washington. Her focus is moving to hemispheric studies, and she is doing work on the Harlem Renaissance and the cabaret scene in Mexico City. This fall she will be living in Cuzco, Peru for several months where she will be involved in Spanish immersion studies and art history, along with adventuring in the land of magic. The year 2012 marks the ten-year anniversary of her partnership with Maria. It was ten years ago they traveled from Yale to Brattleboro, VT to consecrate a civil union in that welcoming state.

Nathanael Johnson ’03 recently joined the faculty at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA), where he teaches classical acting, scene study, and yoga. Earlier this year he directed a production of The Tempest at Lamar University with fellow alum Scott Pask ’97 as the scenic designer. He recently directed a mainstage production of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest at AMDA and has launched a free yoga podcast that is available in the iTunes store.

Maulik Pancholy ’03 began filming the second season of NBC’s Whitney. The show airs at 8pm on Friday nights starting this fall.

Maulik also continues to voice Baljeet on the Disney Channel cartoon Phineas & Ferb.

Continuing her employment with the facility management company SMG, Sarah K. Bartlo ’04 relocated to sunny Jacksonville, FL in 2010 to become the director of the TimesUnion Center for the Performing Arts. The three-venue facility hosts a Broadway series, a resident symphony, and major touring acts such as James Taylor, Diana Ross, and Drake.

Sarah, Michael, and the girls love the beach, the sun, and not having to shovel snow.

While the Times-Union keeps Sarah busy, she has still found time to flex her acting muscles in the local community theatre, appearing in both Our Town and Trojan Women recently; she will be directing a production next season.

Gia Forakis ’04 recently directed Songs from the Uproad: The Lives and Death of Isabelle Eberhardt, an original multimedia opera composed by Yale School of Music alumna Missy Mazzoli mus ’06, produced by Beth Morrison ’05, which had its premiere at The Kitchen in New York. Others working on this project included Scott Bolman ’03, Alixa Gage Englund ’06, Zane Pihlstrom ’06, John Starmer ’06, and Lindsey Turteltaub ’11. Gia’s theatre company, Gia Forakis & Company, did a season devoted to an exploration of the Greeks and film noir. The company’s May salon of Antigone featured Jennifer Lim ’04 as Antigone and James Chen ’08 as

Jennifer Lim ’04 with Gary Wilmes in Chinglish on Broadway, photo by Michael McCabe

YSDYSD 2012–13 2012–13

7979

Alumni Notes

Peter Kim ’04 with Marin Ireland in Maple and Vine at Playwrights Horizons in 2011; the production also starred Jeanine Serralles ’02, with scenic design by Alexander Dodge ’99 and costume design by Ilona Somogyi ’94 (Faculty). William H. Lang ’86 was the production’s stage manager.

Haemon. The season concluded in June with Oedipus Rex, and then, entirely by coincidence, an invitation arrived to the 8th International Festival of Making Theater in Athens, Greece, where Gia was invited to lead three One-Thought-One-Action Workshops.

As the Arthur Zankel Director of Arts Administration at Skidmore College, David Howson ’04 joined in celebrating the launch of Skidmore’s new undergraduate Arts Administration Program with a visit from Michael Kaiser, arts management guru and president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Guest speakers during the inaugural year of the program also included alumni Marcus Dean Fuller ’04, president of Compass Entertainment, and Judy Hansen ’04, board president of Milwaukee Rep. During the summer of 2012 David was in residence again in Westport, NY at The Depot Theatre, the only professional theatre company in the Adirondacks, where he assisted the company with fundraising and marketing.

After originating the role in the world premiere at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago —and garnering Jeff and Chicago Theater Critics’ Beat nominations — Jennifer Lim ’04 made her Broadway debut in David Henry Hwang’s ’83 Chinglish. New York Magazine named her “Most Exciting Broadway Newcomer 2011.” This summer Jennifer

80

performed in Troilus and Cressida, a coproduction of The Wooster Group and the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and Stratford-upon-Avon.

After dabbling in the New York sound design scene, Sabrina McGuigan ’04 turned her energies to medical education. Currently at Fallon Medica, she works with key opinion leaders to educate physicians on various disease states and new pharmaceuticals. Sabrina lives with Dennis Boyko in Springfield, NJ, where they spend their weekends outdoors, hiking and going on motorcycle rides. In November 2011 Sabrina completed her first marathon in NYC, and in July 2012 she completed her first NYC triathalon.

Kevin Rich ’04 left his position at Kenyon College to become artistic director of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival and assistant professor of acting at Illinois State University, beginning in August.

After eight wonderful years Amanda Leigh Cobb ’05 plans to leave the business, perhaps to go back to school for a masters in speech pathology. Her final performance will be in Private Lives by Noel Coward at the Pittsburgh Public Theater.

Anne Michelson ’05 married John McPherson in October 2011 in Brooklyn, NY. Marion Friedman Young ’05 was in the wedding party. Other guests included Sarah Bierenbaum ’05, yc ’99, Nico Lang ’05, Bryan

YSD 2012–13

Keller ’05, Alice Moore ’04, Chloe Chapin ’05, and Cat and John Starmer ’06.

An original musical theatre adaptation of Büchner’s Woyzeck by Christopher Carter Sanderson ’05, titled Woyzeck Musical Deathmetal, completed development with the help of a Fulbright grant and Ensemble Free Theater Norway, then bowed at the Times Square International Theater Festival, where it played to sold-out audiences and garnered a three-week extension.

Sound designer for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee Celebration in Manchester, UK was Bradlee Ward ’05. At the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Brad’s design for PMQ is currently part of an exhibition entitled, “Transformation and Revelation: Gormley to Gaga. UK Design for Performance 2007–2011.” He was also project manager for the West End transfer of Abigail’s Party at the Wyndham Theatre and the UK tour of 42nd Street. In addition, Brad designed a production of The Secret Garden and taught a course in digital production at Mountview Academy of Theatre Art in London.

The world premiere of Katori Hall’s Whaddabloodclot!!! at Williamstown Theatre Festival in August was directed by May Adrales ’06. May also directed Hall’s The Mountaintop at Milwaukee Rep in September 2011 and will direct the revival of David Henry Hwang’s ’83 Dance and the Railroad at Signature Theatre in February 2013.

Nastaran Ahmadi ’06 was a 2011-12 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow and a writerin-residence in Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s 2011-12 Workspace program. In December 2011, her play Exile received a Studio Retreat workshop at the Lark Play Development Center, where she is also a member playwright. Exile received a reading in Playwrights Realm’s INK’D Series in May 2012, featuring Erin Buckley ’06, Robin Weigert, and Aysan Celik. Nastaran traveled to The Orchard Project in June 2012, where she was invited to develop her new play with original music called Rocket Song, inspired by Patti Smith’s book Just Kids.

Having just completed her Master of Nonprofit Management degree at Regis University, Janann Eldredge ’06 is looking forward to exploring the intersection of arts and community in the Denver area. She has settled in nicely and is proud to call Colorado home. The red carpet awaits any YSD folks who find themselves on this side of the Mississippi.

Now based in London, Anna Jones ’06 and husband Jamel Rodriguez ’08 run their own

theatre company, NYLon Productions. They recently held a workshop of Stephanie Fleischmann’s play Tally Ho at The Roundhouse Studio and are currently planning future projects.

Brian McManamon ’06 was featured in The Clearing by Jake Jeppson ’12 at Axial Theatre in Pleasantville, NY, directed by Josh

Hecht and featuring Francesco Campari, Allison Daugherty, Mark Gorham, and Gene Gallerano.

Splitting her time between Virginia and New York has been quite therapeutic for Amy Altadonna ’07. She has collaborated with former schoolmates May Adrales ’06 and Zane Pihlstrom ’06. Amy taught live sound at

Michael Mitnick Arrives It has been quite a ride for playwright Michael Mitnick ’10.

Since graduation from Yale, Michael has had his play Sex Lives of our Parents produced at Second Stage Theatre in New York and another play, Babs the Dodo, at Washington Ensemble Theatre in Seattle. Two other plays are about to open in Colorado, a screenplay is about to be filmed, and a musical is coming to Broadway. How did all this happen, and in such a short time?

“I’ve been very lucky,” Michael says, then qualifies it slightly.

“A lot of it is luck, but I work hard too, and the two accommodate each other.”

One example he gave of how luck and hard work lead to success was in the way he came to write the book for the forthcoming Broadway stage musical of Animal House, to be directed by Book of Mormon director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw: “I wrote a play at Yale called Space Bar: A Broadway Play by Kyle Sugarman. After graduation it was part of a showcase that my agents ran of work by new songwriters. From there it made some kind of short list and found its way to the desk of Broadway producer Jeffrey Richards. The play had certain elements he was looking for, a good comic sensibility. He asked me to write a two-page outline for the Broadway musical of Animal House. It was my first paying job, and I would have said yes to any offer.” But when he started to work on it Michael saw that a two-page outline could only fail miserably because so much of the movie was physical humor and comic bits. “Instead I wrote a 120-page treatment,” he says. “Essentially, the whole play. Jeffrey Richards was surprised and showed it to the director, and I got the job.”

After that bit of luck and hard work Michael was blacklisted, which in today’s Hollywood is a good thing. Michael explains: “The Blacklist of 2011 is a list of the strongest unproduced screenplays written that year. Some of them have rights problems but people write them anyway as spec scripts.” Michael’s script was an adaptation of a musical he wrote at Yale about the competition over electricity between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. After the play had a workshop production at Manhattan Theatre Club, Michael’s agent suggested he adapt it as a screenplay, which he did, without the songs. “After it got the attention of being on the Blacklist,” Michael says, “it was bought by Timur Bekmambetov, the director of Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, who was looking for a small film to do. It goes into production this fall.”

With so much happening in different media, does he feel pulled in different directions?

“Theatre is always the center of my attention,” Michael says. “Film writing opportunities pay for my theatre addiction.” This year Ed, Downloaded will be produced at The Denver Center Theatre Company, and elijah at LOCAL Theater Company in Boulder, Colorado. There is also going to be a production of Fly-by-Night, a musical he co-wrote with Kim Rosenstock ’10 and Will Connolly ’10, which had its premiere at Yale Summer Cabaret.

“I’m interested in narrative, motivated by character and plot,” Michael says. “And going from one form to another actually helps. After writing a screenplay, I go to a stage play and find I’m more visual.”

To cap off this string of accomplishments, Michael was recently named a Visionary Award winner by Theatre Masters, a non-profit organization whose core mission is to seek and nurture the next generation of artists for the American theatre. Looking at the trajectory of Michael’s career over the last two years, it seems the next generation is already here.

Barry Jay Kaplan

American University last spring and started a new job as lecturer of sound design and technology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

This year has been full of blessings for Malcolm Darrell ’07, including a new job as the new play production associate at Center Theatre Group and being selected to the Theatre Communications Group 2012 class of Young Leaders of Color program in Boston, MA. Additionally, Malcolm was awarded the Cultural Exchange International Fellowship by the British Council and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. The $5,000 fellowship is awarded to 3-5 socially engaged emerging cultural leaders in Los Angeles to conduct residencies of two to three weeks with host organizations in the UK. Malcolm’s residency commences in 2013, and he plans— through discourse, interviews, performance attendance, meals, cultural outings, and social media—to contribute to the bridge that connects people of the African diaspora to one another. The fellowship will culminate in a podcast series with the Black Is online magazine in Los Angeles and partners in the UK. It has been a busy year for Rachel Myers ’07. She was recently an assistant art director with Production Designer Rusty Smith ’86 and Art Director Rosario Provenza. She also did art direction for the Golden Globe Awards, E! Entertainment, and NBC. She has been designing music videos and commercials and done production design for a series called Video Game High School, and designed costumes at San Jose Rep with Christopher Morris ’00.

Rachel recently joined the Art Directors Guild in Los Angeles.

Grace, or the Art of Climbing by Lauren Feldman ’08 will receive a production at Denver Center Theatre Company in JanuaryFebruary 2013, directed by Mike Donahue ’08.

Brian McManamon ’06 as Peter Reisner (left) and Gene Gallerano (right) in The Clearing

by Jake Jeppson ’12 at Axial Theatre in Pleasantville, NY

YSDYSD 2012–13 2012–13

8181

Alumni Notes

Vincent Olivieri ’01 and Sarah Olivieri ’08 Her script for The Orpheus Variations, devised with director Adam J. Thompson and ensemble, had its premiere in Brooklyn in October 2012 at Magic Futurebox, and her play A People, directed by Beth Milles, will be given its premiere at Cornell University in the winter/ spring season of 2013.

The academic life continues apace for Jason Fitzgerald ’08 as he works through his third year of the PhD Theatre program at Columbia.

He spends his afternoons either sitting in a library or coffee shop reading postmodernist and avant-garde text or is in a classroom teaching undergraduates how to write college-level essays. In the evenings he is likely to be at a theatre somewhere in New York City, taking notes for a review, some of which appear in BackStage.com, or supporting one of the writers in the Playwrights Realm Writing Fellows group, for which he continue to act as dramaturg.

After joining the Directors Guild of America as a second assistant director last spring, Sarah Olivieri ’08 did her first season on the Fox television series Glee. The film she worked on for a couple of years, Battleship, was released last May, so be sure to watch the credits all the way through. Husband Vincent Olivieri ’01 also had a busy year, breaking international ground with his band The Night I Found Out I Was Adopted and presenting his sound-art collective, Push the Button, at conferences and sound-art festivals.

Vince is currently hard at work on a world premiere for the National Theatre of Romania.

In the Cypher, a cabaret show by and with Gamal Palmer ’08 and Syreeta Covington ’07, had a workshop in Los Angeles. For the first time the show had an original score with live singing and a guest star performance by Leslie David Baker (Stanley on NBC’s The Office). In the second half of last summer,

82

Gamal and Fay Simpson (Faculty) traveled with five YSD students to Tanzania for year two of Theatre for Social Change: The Quest for Social Justice through Music, Theatre, and Religion.

Working with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s Young Rep actors company, Jennifer Tuckett ’08, wrote Kidnapping Cameron for the UK. The play explores ways young people can have a say in politics.

Jennifer also co-wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for the Octagon Theatre Bolton, which was the best-selling show in the theatre’s 44-year history. She was also the creative director of Write by the Quays, a joint project between the University of Salford and the BBC to celebrate the opening of MediaCityUK. Write by the Quays resulted in six pieces of student work being produced by the BBC and was judged by Creative Director of New Writing at the BBC Kate Rowland, actress Shobna Gulati (currently playing the role of Sunita Alahan in the UK television series Coronation Street), and Associate Director Tamara Harvey of the Bush Theatre in London, as well as Jennifer. She writes that in the three years since she began running the playwriting modules at the University of Salford, student numbers studying playwriting at the University have increased from zero when she joined the University, to eight in the course’s first year, to 40 in the course’s

second year, to over 80 students this year.

Frances Black ’09 is the director of programs at the Alliance of Resident Theatres/ New York (A.R.T./New York), sits on the board of Ice Theatre of New York, and is an independent producer. In the fall of 2011 she produced a clown show called Walled In at IRT. Kyoung-jun Eo ’09 is working as a visiting professor in a music school in South Korea setting up the technical department, and recently worked on a couple of musical productions as an automation engineer.

In Los Angeles, Tilted Field Productions, in association with Son of Semele, presented the rock opera workshop The Last Days of Mary Stuart, starring Alex Knox ’09, Meagan Prahl, and Charlotta Mohlin, written and directed

by Becca Wolff ’09 and adapted from the verse play by Friedrich Schiller. The workshop featured music by Byron Kahr LAW ’08 and John Nixon, with set design by Michael Locher ’08 and dramaturgy by Matt Cornish ’09, dfa cand.; it was produced by Jacob Padron ’08 and Roberta Pereira ’08. Alex also performed in the Antaeus Company’s Macbeth in Los Angeles, alongside fellow acting alumni Tessa Auberjonois ’98, Daniel Blinkoff ’96, and Bo Foxworth ’94.

As design supervisor for the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s 2012 season, Timothy Mackabee ’09 worked on The Elephant Man starring Bradley Cooper and Patricia

Ali Pour Issa ’11 (right) shooting his short film, Cold Ground, with cinematographer Pirooz Maghsoudi Nezhad, in Tehran, Iran

YSD 2012–13

Clarkson ’85, directed by Scott Ellis. He also designed Pregnancy Pact at the Weston Playhouse, The Big Meal at Studio Theatre, Shipwrecked (directed by Jen Wineman ’10) at Triad Stage, and Annie at North Shore Music Theatre; he is the associate designer for the 2012-13 season’s production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, starring Scarlett Johansson, on Broadway.

Alex Teicheira ’09 has recently become engaged to Rebecca Hite, with plans to marry in the fall of 2013. They now live in Astoria, Queens. Alex also ran his first marathon this year with plans to run another in October.

Nondumiso Tembe ’09 was in the first-ever African production of Rogers and Hammerstein’s musical Cinderella in her home country of South Africa last year.

10s

....................................

Valérie Thérèse Bart ’10 designed the costumes for the remounting of The Servant of Two Masters at Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., which opened on May 21, 2012. Originally staged at Yale Rep in the spring of 2010, it was directed by Christopher Bayes (Faculty), with scenic design by Katherine Akiko Day ’10, lighting design by Chuan-Chi Chan ’10, and sound design by Nathan Roberts ’10 and Charles Coes ’09 (Faculty). The cast features Liz Wisan ’10 as Smeraldina and Rachel Spencer Hewitt ’10 as Beatrice. When the production closes, it will move on to the Guthrie in Minneapolis in November 2012 and to ArtsEmerson in Boston in January 2013.

Jessica Barker ’10 is currently assistant stage manager of the San Francisco Ballet.

For the past two years Chris Brown ’10 has been working at the Orlando Repertory Theatre as the general and production manager. The Rep is a theatre for young audiences and it has become the most rewarding job he Joby Earle ’10 inside one of the larger-than-life horse puppets of War Horse, in which he performed in 2011 at Lincoln Center in New York

Meet Sylvia Grey. Her parents, Brett Dalton ’11 and Melissa Trn ’08, couldn’t be prouder.

has ever had. Chris’s wife Katie is an 8th grade language arts teacher. Their daughter Gracie is one and son Michael turned three in June.

After completing a year-long run in War Horse at Lincoln Center alongside fellow YSD alums Austin Durant ’10, Joby Earle ’10, and Elliot Villar ’07, Zach Appelman ’10 landed a supporting role in the upcoming feature film Kill Your Darlings, opposite Daniel Radcliffe. The film, directed by John Krokidas yc ’95, will be released in 2013.

After leaving War Horse in early 2012, Joby Earle ’10 performed in a production of The Pitmen Painters at Palm Beach Dramaworks and was seen this past summer at the Berkshire Theatre Festival as Samuel Finkelbaum in The Puppetmaster of Lodz.

As a 2012 Fellow of the Drama League Directors Project, Jesse Jou ’10 spent the summer at Shakespeare & Company, assisting Artistic Director Tony Simotes on The Tempest and returning in the fall to work on the company’s Fall Festival of Shakespeare with area highschool students.

For the 2012–13 season, Christopher Mirto ’10 will be an artistic apprentice at The Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. under Artistic Director David Muse ’03, yc ’96. Earlier this year Chris co-directed Semele with Devin Brain ’11 with the Baroque Aria Ensemble at Manhattan School of Music.

Julian Laird Nielsen was born on March 30, 2012 to Mr. and Mrs. Scott Nielsen ’10. Scott writes that he hopes the overall YSD community has been birthing great things too. “Go forth and make.”

Laura J. Eckelman’s ’11 life has been an exciting and unpredictable ride over the last year. After hiking the 200-mile Coast to Coast trail across England and visiting family all over the US, she re-joined the YSD

community as a part-time staff member in the Office of Development and Alumni Affairs. She continues to work actively as a lighting and projection designer and spends her free time baking treats for her co-workers.

Ali Pour Issa ’11 has written, directed, designed, and produced a short film, Cold Ground, in Tehran. The film depicts the apocalypse, concentrating on the last days of a family’s life in a catastrophic 2012 winter. As the first graduate in the discipline of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism in Iran, he introduced this field of study in academic and professional settings. As adjunct faculty, he has been teaching Drama II (History of Theater since 1700) in the English Department and a Seeing, Analyzing, and Criticism workshop in the Theater Studies Department, both at the University of Tehran, as well as teaching in the Theatre Studies Department at Soureh University. In addition, he is on the faculty of the Karnameh Institute among such wellknown teachers as Mr. Abbas Kiarostami (Golden Palm award winner at the Cannes Film Festival) and Mr. Asghar Farhadi (Academy Award winner). Ali has begun translating some fundamental resources, such as Elinor Fuchs’s (Faculty) article “EEF’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play” and plans to translate Marc Robinson’s The Other American Drama. He is also the guest editor of Farabi Quarterly Magazine for the special issue on theatre and cinema, published in the summer of 2012.

After having a baby boy, Henry, in July 2011, Martha Jurczak ’11 spent several months working as both managing editor of the Yale Theater Management Knowledge Base and project manager of YSD’s curriculum review.

In April she became a part-time associate at Laura Freebairn-Smith’s som ’86 (Faculty) Organizational Design and Development Associates, assisting clients with strategic planning projects.

Jennifer Newman ’11 is currently creating two projects with fellow classmate Charlotte Brathwaite ’11. The Geneva Project is a performance inspired by photos from the FSA archives in the Library of Congress; it was performed in conjunction with the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in Middletown, CT. Woman Bomb is an adaptation of Ivana Sajko’s play of the same name and will be presented at The Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City. Jennifer also managed ZiRu production’s 2012 summer tour of China and worked with teenagers in Jalisco, Mexico to create social change through dance and theatre. Y

YSDYSD 2012–13 2012–13

8383

Contributors Contributors to Yale School of Drama Annual Fund 2011/12 1940s Lawrence D. Amick ’49 Virginia W. Bowie ’47 Patricia F. Gilchrist ’44 Alfred S. Golding ’49 Albert Hurwitz* ’49 Joan Kron ’48 Mildred C. Kuner ’47 Emma Lou K. Nielson* ’43 Pamela Stiles Roberts ’46 Eugene F. Shewmaker ’49 Yun C. Wu ’49

1950s Robert A. Baldwin ’55 Robert M. Barr ’52 Ezekial H. Berlin ’53 Richard E. Bianchi* ’57 Ian W. Cadenhead ’58 Joy G. Carlin ’54 Sami Joan Casler ’59 Joseph Chomyn ’53 Patricia J. Collins ’58 Forrest S. Compton ’53 Sue Ann Gilfillan Converse ’55 George Corrin, Jr. ’51 John W. Cunningham ’59 Allen Davis III ’56 Jose A. Diaz ’52 John J. Dolan ’55 Peter C. Donat ’53 William F. Dowling* ’52 Philip R. Eck ’59 Sonya G. Friedman ’55 Joseph Gantman ’53 Robert W. Goldsby ’53 James W. Gousseff ’56 Bigelow R. Green ’59 Albert R. Gurney ’58 Phyllis O. Hammel ’52 Carol Thompson Hemingway ’55 Betsy N. Holmes ’55 Evelyn H. Huffman ’57 James Earl Jewell ’57 Geoffrey A. Johnson ’55 Marillyn B. Johnson ’50 Donald E. Jones, Jr. ’56 Amnon Kabatchnik ’57 Lloyd A. Kaplan ’58 James D. Karr ’54 Jay B. Keene ’55

Arthur J. Kelley, Jr. ’53 Roger L. Kenvin ’59, dfa ’61 Bernard Kukoff ’57 David Jeremy Larson ’50 Henry E. Lowenstein ’56 Paul David Lukather ’53 Elizabeth Lyman ’51 Lewis R. Marcuson ’54 Richard G. Mason* ’53 David Ross McNutt ’59 Harvey M. Medlinsky ’58 Ellen L. Moore ’52 George Morfogen ’57 Marion V. Myrick ’54 Franklin M. Nash ’59 Peter J. Nelson ’53 Michael A. Onofrio, Jr. ’53, yc ’50 Kendric T. Packer ’52 Virginia F. Pils ’52 David S. Pomeran ’55 Gladys S. Powers ’57 Mary B. Reynolds ’55 David A. Rosenberg ’54 Philip Rosenberg ’59 A. Raymond Rutan ’54 Raymond H. Sader ’58 Stephen O. Saxe ’54 William T. Schneider ’56 Forrest E. Sears ’58 James A. Smith ’59 Kenneth J. Stein ’59 Edward Trach ’58 Fred Voelpel ’53 Phyllis C. Warfel ’55 William B. Warfel ’57, yc ’55 Ann B. Watson ’53 Zelma H. Weisfeld ’56

1960s Richard Ambacher dfa ’65 Barbara B. Anderson ’60 Rita Aron ’69 Mary Ellen O’Brien Atkins ’65 Thomas R. Atkins ’64 Robert A. Auletta ’69 John M. Badham ’63, yc ’61 James Robert Bakkom ’64 Philip J. Barrons ’65 Warren F. Bass ’67 John Beck ’63 Jody Locker Berger ’66

* deceased

84

YSD 2012–13

Jeffrey A. Bleckner ’68 Carol Bretz Murray-Negron ’64 Oscar Lee Brownstein ’60 James Burrows ’65 Donald I. Cairns ’63 Raymond Carver ’61 Suellen G. Childs ’69 Sarah E. Clark ’67 Katherine D. Cline ’60 Patricia S. Cochrane ’62 Robert S. Cohen dfa ’64 John Conklin ’66, yc ’59 Kenneth T. Costigan ’60 Peggy Cowles ’65 Stephen C. Coy ’63, dfa ’69 Laila S. Dahl ’65 F. Mitchell Dana ’67 Michael S. David ’68 Mary Lucille DeBerry ’66 Ramon L. Delgado ’67 Charles Dillingham ’68, yc ’65 Carolyn Browne Dundes ’60 John A. Duran ’74 Robert H. Einenkel ’69 David H. Epstein ’68 Leslie D. Epstein dfa ’67, yc 60 Jerry N. Evans ’62 John D. Ezell ’60 Ann Farris ’63 Richard A. Feleppa ’60 William H. Firestone ’69 Linda K. Fisher ’72 J. Allen Fitz-Gerald ’63 Keith F. Fowler dfa ’69 David Freeman ’68 Richard D. Fuhrman ’64 Bernard L. Galm ’63 Anne K. Gregerson ’65 John E. Guare ’63 Ann T. Hanley ’61 Jerome R. Hanley ’60 Richard A. Harrison ’66 Patricia Helwick ’65 Stephen J. Hendrickson ’67 Elizabeth Holloway ’66 John Robert Hood ’61 Linda Gulder Huett ’69 Derek Hunt ’62 Peter H. Hunt ’63, yc ’61 Laura Mae Jackson ’68 John W. Jacobsen ’69, yc ’67

Lee H. Kalcheim ’63 Asaad N. Kelada ’64 Abby B. Kenigsberg ’63 Carol Soucek King ’66 Marna J. King ’64 Raymond Klausen ’67 Richard H. Klein ’67 Donald D. Knight ’65 Harriet W. Koch ’62 Robert W. Lawler ’67 Peter J. Leach ’61 Stephen R. Leventhal ’69 Bradford W. Lewis ’69 Irene Lewis ’66 Fredric A. Lindauer ’66 Janell M. MacArthur ’61 Marcia Madeira ’68 Richard E. Maltby, Jr. ’62, yc ’59 Thomas O. Martin ’68 Patricia D. McAdams ’61 B. Robert McCaw ’66 Margaret T. McCaw ’66 Banylou Mearin ’62 Donald Michaelis ’69 Ronald A. Mielech ’60 H. Thomas Moore ’68 Donald W. Moreland ’60 Robert B. Murray ’61 Gayther L. Myers, Jr. ’65 David A. Nancarrow ’63 S. Joseph Nassif ’63 Ruth Hunt Newman ’62 Dwight R. Odle ’66 Sara Ormond ’66 Joan D. Pape ’68 Howard Pflanzer ’68 Louis R. Plante ’69 Michael B. Posnick ’69 Brett Prentiss ’68 Barbara Reid ’62 Lucy G. Rosenthal ’61 Carolyn L. Ross ’69 Clarence Salzer, Jr. ’60, yc ’55 Peter Edward Sargent ’63 Lucia C. Scala ’61 Isaac H. Schambelan dfa ’67 Georg Schreiber ’64 Talia Shire Schwartzman ’69 Winifred J. Sensiba ’63 Suzanne Sessions ’66 Paul R. Shortt ’68

Yale School of Drama Alumni Fund

Carol M. Sica ’66 E. Gray Smith, Jr. ’65 Helena L. Sokoloff ’60 Mary C. Stark ’61 James Beach Steerman ’62, dfa ’69 Louise Stein ’66 John Wright Stevens ’66 Gerda Taranow ’61 John Henry Thomas, III ’62 David F. Toser ’64 Russell L. Treyz ’65 Richard B. Trousdell ’67, dfa ’74 Thomas S. Turgeon dfa ’68 Joan Van Ark ’64 Ruth L. Wallman ’68 Steven I. Waxler ’68 Gil Wechsler ’67 Charles R. Werner, Jr. ’67 Peter White ’62

1970s Sarah Jean Albertson ’71 John Lee Beatty ’73 Lewis Black ’77 Mark R. Boyer ’77 Ian Calderon ’73 Victor P. Capecce ’75 Lisa Carling ’72 Cosmo A. Catalano, Jr. ’79 David Chambers ’71 James A. Chesnutt III ’71 Lani L. Click ’73 David M. Conte ’72 Marycharlotte C. Cummings ’73 Julia L. Devlin ’74 Nancy Reeder El Bouhali ’70 Peter Entin ’71 Dirk Epperson ’74 Mary C. Estabrook ’76 Heidi P. Ettinger ’76 Femi Euba ’73 Douglass M. Everhart ’70 Marc F. Flanagan ’70 Lewis A. Folden ’77 Robert Gainer ’73 Marian A. Godfrey ’75 David M. Grant ’78 Joseph G. Grifasi ’75 Michael E. Gross ’73 William B. Halbert ’70 Charlene Harrington ’74

Barbara B. Hauptman ’73 Jane C. Head ’79 Carol Schlanger Helvey ’70 Jennifer Hershey ’77 Nicholas A. Hormann ’73 James F. Ingalls ’76 Andrew F. Jackness ’79 Cynthia P. Kaback ’70 Barnet K. Kellman ’72 Alan L. Kibbe ’73 Fredrica A. Klemm ’76 Daniel L. Koetting ’74 David A. Kranes dfa ’71 Andrew J. Kufta ’77 Frances E. Kumin ’77 Mitchell L. Kurtz ’75 Stephen R. Lawson ’76 Charles E. Letts III ’76 Alan N. Lichtenstein ’76 George N. Lindsay, Jr. ’74 Jennifer K. Lindstrom ’72 Robert Hamilton Long II ’76 Donald B. Lowy ’76 William Ludel ’73 Patrick F. Lynch ’71 Thomas P. Lynch ’79, yc ’75 Elizabeth M. MacKay ’78 Lizbeth P. Mackay ’75 Alan Mokler MacVey ’77 Brian R. Mann ’79 Jonathan E. Marks ’72, dfa ’84, yc ’68 Peggy Ann Marks ’75, yc ’71 Deborah Mayo ’73 Neil Mazzella ’78 John A. McAndrew ’72 Brian R. McEleney ’77 Caroline A. McGee ’78 Stephen W. Mendillo ’71 Jonathan Seth Miller ’75 Lawrence S. Mirkin ’72, yc ’69 James Naughton ’70 Patricia C. Norcia ’78 Richard Ostreicher ’79 Jeffrey Pavek ’71 William M. Peters ’79 Stephen B. Pollock ’76 Daniel H. Proctor ’70 William Purves ’71 Arthur I. Rank III ’79 Pamela Ann Rank ’78 Ronald P. Recasner ’74

William J. Reynolds ’77 Peter S. Roberts ’75 Steven I. Robman ’73 Howard J. Rogut ’71 Robin Pearson Rose ’73 Robert Sandberg ’77 Suzanne M. Sato ’79 Joel R. Schechter ’72, dfa ’73 Michael D. Sheehan ’76 Richard R. Silvestro ’76 Benjamin Slotznick ’73, yc ’70 Jeremy T. Smith ’76 Maura Beth Smolover ’76 Marshall S. Spiller ’71 Roy Bennett Steinberg ’78 Jaroslaw Strzemien ’75 Susan J. Vitucci ’76 Eva M. Vizy ’72 Carol M. Waaser ’70 David J. Ward ’75 Eugene D. Warner ’71 Lynda Lee Welch ’72 Carolyn Seely Wiener ’72 John H. Wolf ’79 Stephen E. Zuckerman ’74

1980s Ade Ademola ’84 Michael G. Albano ’82 San L. Albers ’89 Amy L. Aquino ’86 Clayton Mayo Austin ’86 Robert James Barnett ’89 Christopher H. Barreca ’83 Michael Baumgarten ’81 James B. Bender ’85 Anders P. Bolang ’87 Sara Hedgepeth ’87 Claudia M. Brown ’85 William J. Buck ’84 Richard W. Butler ’88 Jon E. Carlson ’88 Anna T. Cascio ’83 Joan Channick ’89 Patricia D. Clarkson ’85 Christian D. Clemenson ’84 Dana S. Croll ’87 Jane Ann Crum ’85 Donato Joseph D’Albis ’88 Richard Sutton Davis ’83, dfa ’03 Kathleen K. Dimmick ’85

YSD 2012–13

85

James David Dobner ’87 Merle Gordon Dowling ’81 Elizabeth Angela Doyle ’84 Anne Justine D’Zmura ’89 Sasha Emerson ’84 Michael D. Fain ’82 Terry Kevin Fitzpatrick ’83 Joel C. Fontaine ’83 Alison Ford ’82 Anthony M. Forman ’83 Raymond P. Forton ’85 Walter M. Frankenberger III ’88 Meredith Rand Freeman ’88 Randy R. Fullerton ’82 James H. Gage ’80 Judy Gailen ’89 J. Ellen Gainor ’83 Steven J. Gefroh ’85 Michael J. Giannitti ’87 Jeffrey M. Ginsberg ’81 Dana M. Graham ’82, yc ’79 Rob Greenberg ’89 Allan Havis ’80 James W. Hazen ’83 Heather A. Henderson ’87, dfa ’88 Donald S. Holder ’86 Catherine MacNeil Hollinger ’86 Charles R. Hughes ’83 Thomas K. Isbell ’84 Kirk Roberts Jackson ’88 Chris P. Jaehnig ’85 Michael D. James ’89 Walker Jones ’89 Jane Kaczmarek ’82 Jonathan F. Kalb ’85, dfa ’87 Carol M. Kaplan ’89 Bruce Abram Katzman ’88 Edward A. Kaye ’86 Richard Kaye ’80 David K. Kriebs ’82 William Kux ’83 Edward Lapine ’83 Wing Lee ’83 Kenneth J. Lewis ’86 Jerry J. Limoncelli, Jr. ’84 Benjamin Lloyd ’88, yc ’85 Gail A. London ’87 Mark D. London ’89 Quincy Long ’86 Mark E. Lord ’87 Andi Lyons ’80

Contributors Wendy MacLeod ’87 Peter Andrew Marshall 89, yc ’83 Johanna D. McAuliffe ’80 Thomas John McGowan ’88 Katherine Mendeloff ’80 Cheryl G. Mintz ’87 Isabell M. Monk-O’Connor ’81 David E. Moore ’87 Grafton V. Mouen ’82, yc ’75 Patrick S. Murphy ’88 Mary Elizabeth Myers ’89 Stephanie Bridgman Nash ’88 Tina C. Navarro ’86 Regina L. Neville ’88 Thomas J. Neville ’86 Arthur E. Oliner ’86 Carol Ostrow ’80 Robert J. Provenza ’86 Carol Anne Prugh ’89 Margaret Adair Quinn ’81 Laila V. Robins ’84 Lori Robishaw ’88 Constance Romero ’88 Russ Lori Rosensweig ’83 Andrew I. Rubenoff ’83 Cecilia M. Rubino ’82 Steven A. Saklad ’81 Frank Sarmiento ’81 Kenneth Schlesinger ’84 Neal Ann Stephens ’80 Mark L. Sullivan ’83 Thomas Phillip Sullivan ’88 Courtney Vance ’86 Rosa Vega Weissman ’80 Adam N. Versenyi ’86, dfa ’90, yc ’80 Mark Anthony Wade ’88 Jaylene Graham Wallace ’86 Darryl S. Waskow ’86 Geoffrey J. Webb ’88 Susan West ’87 Dana B. Westberg ’81 Robert M. Wildman ’83 Carl Wittenberg ’85 Terrence Witter ’85 Steven A. Wolff ’81 Evan D. Yionoulis ’85, yc ’82 David R. York ’80 Donald R. Youngberg ’83 Catherine J. Zuber ’84

1990s Narda Elaine Alcorn ’95 Bruce Altman ’90 Nephelie M. Andonyadis ’90 Angelina Avallone ’94 Thomas M. Beckett ’91, yc ’85 Sarah Eckert Bernstein ’95

Martin A. Blanco ’91 Edward L. Blunt ’99 Debra Booth ’91 John Cummings Boyd ’92 Tom Joseph Broecker ’92 James Bundy ’95 Kathryn A. Calnan ’99 Enrico L. Colantoni ’93 Aaron M. Copp ’98 Robert C. Cotnoir ’94 Susan Mary Cremin ’95 Sean James Cullen ’90 Sean P. Cullen ’94 Scott T. Cummings ’85, dfa ’94 Michael Lloyd Diamond ’90 Leslie Shaw Dickert III ’97 Alexander Timothy Dodge ’99 Mark Henry Dold ’96 Frances Louise Egler ’95 Glen Richard Fasman ’92 Donald Stephan Fried ’95 Naomi S. Grabel ’91 Constance Marie Grappo ’95 Elisa R. Griego ’98 Regina Selma Guggenheim ’93 Corin Lance Gutteridge ’96 Jessica Gutteridge ’94 Alexander Taverner Hammond ’96 Scott Christopher Hansen ’04 Douglas Rodgers Harvey ’95 James T. Hatcher ’94 Jeffrey C. Herrmann ’99 Christopher B. Higgins ’90 John C. Huntington ’90 Raymond P. Inkel ’95 Clark Jackson Jr. ’97 Laura J. Janik Cronin ’96 Elizabeth A. Kaiden ’96 Samuel L. Kelley ’90 L. Azan Kung ’91 James William Larkin ’96 Suttirat Anne Larlarb ’97 Malia Rachel Lewis ’97 Patricia Ann Lewis ’98 Chih-Lung Liu ’94 Sarah Long ’92, yc ’85 Suzanne R. Cryer Luke ’95, yc ’88 Elizabeth S. Margid ’91, yc ’82 Craig P. Mathers ’93 Lisa A. McGahey Veglahn ’91 William F. McGuire ’91 Robert A. Melrose ’96 Richard R. Mone ’91 Daniel Evan Mufson ’95, dfa ’99 Kaye I. Neale ’91 Margaret L. Neville ’97 Lori Ott ’92 Dw Phineas Perkins ’90

* deceased

86

YSD 2012–13

Michael A. Potts ’92 Amy Joyce Povich ’92 Jeffry Stephen Provost ’95 James W. Quinn ’94 Sarah Gray Rafferty ’96 Lance S. Reddick ’94 Douglas Ray Rogers ’96 Reg Rogers ’93 Mary Margaret Sasso ’99 Liev Schreiber ’92 Jennifer C. Schwartz ’97 Paul Francis Selfa ’92 Thomas W. Sellar ’97, dfa ’03 James Eric Shanklin Jr. ’97 Jane M. Shaw ’98 Graham A.W. Shiels ’99 Kristin Michelle Sosnowsky ’97 Kris E. Stone ’98 Erich William Stratmann ’94, yc ’93 Deanna J. Stuart ’94 Sy C. Sussman ’94, yc ’87 David Loy Sword ’90 Deborah L. Trout ’94 Erik William Walstad ’95 Thomas S. Werder ’90 Lisa A. Wilde ’91, dfa ’95 Marshall Butler Williams ’95 Liza Barbara Zenni ’90

2000s Jocelyn May Adrales ’06 Paola Allais Acree ’08, som ’08 Alexander G. Bagnall ’00 Michael David Banta ’03 Sarah Elaine Bierenbaum ’05, yc ’99 Frances Anne Black ’09 Deborah H. Bloch ’06 Joshua Ray Borenstein ’02 Michael S. Broh ’00 Jonathan Stewart Busky ’02, som ’02, yc ’94 Nicholas Carriere ’08 Claudia W. Case ’01, dfa ’07 Joseph P. Cermatori ’08 James Q. Chen ’08 Wilson W. Chin ’03 Gregory W. Copeland ’04 Edgar M. Cullman III ’02, yc ’97 Katherine Mary Cusack ’06 Michael M. Donahue ’08 Emily Ryan Dorsch ’07 Janann B. Eldredge ’06 Jenifer Endicott Emley ’00 Miriam Rose Epstein ’02 Dustin Owen Eshenroder ’07 Kristan Falkowski Wells ’05 Alexa Fischer ’00 Aurélia K. Fisher ’09

Sarah McColl Fornia ’04 Marcus Dean Fuller ’04 Carter Pierce Gill ’09 Sandra Goldmark ’04 John J. Hanlon ’04 Judith Ann Hansen ’04 Heidi Leigh Hanson ’09 Amy Carol Herzog ’07, yc ’00 Amy S. Holzapfel ’01, dfa ’06 David Carr Howson ’04 Melissa Huber ’01 Candace Yvonne Jackson ’00 Rolin Jones ’04 Peter Young Hoon Kim ’04 Drew Lichtenberg ’08 Jennifer Chen Hua Lim ’04 Derek Francis Lucci ’03 Alexis Marie McGuinness ’06 Brian James McManamon ’06 Jennifer Yejin Moeller ’06 Matthew Moses ’09 Neil W. Mulligan ’01 Rachel Sara Myers ’07 Arthur F. Nacht ’06 Liv E. Nilssen ’06 Erica R. O’Brien ’09 Grace Eleanor O’Brien ’04 John Barret O’Brien ’09 Adam N. O’Byrne ’04, yc ’01 Jacob G. Padron ’08 Maulik Pancholy ’03 Roberta Pereira Da Silva ’08 Kevin Michael Rich ’04 Glynis Ann Louise Rigsby ’01 David Jordan Roberts ’08 Joanna Sara Romberg ’07 Thomas Everett Russell ’07 Christopher Carter Sanderson ’05 Shawn B. Senavinin ’06 Lisa-Marie Shuster ’08 Amanda Spooner ’09 Glenn Sturgis ’06 V. Jane Suttell ’03 Rachel Louise Smith ’08 Mikiko Suzuki ’02 Carrie E. Van Hallgren ’06 Elliot Carmelo Villar ’07 Arthur T. Vitello ’05 Elaine M. Wackerly ’03 Bradlee M. Ward ’05 Jennifer Lena Mannis Wishcamper ’02, YC ’96

2010s Michael Barker ’10, som ’10 Matthew Adam Biagini ’11 Christopher P. Brown ’10 Laura Jensen Eckelman ’11

Yale School of Drama Alumni Fund

Allison Hall Johnson ’11 Katie Liberman ’13, som ’13 Peter Andrew Malbuisson ’10 Belina Esther Mizrahi ’10, yc ’02 Jennifer Newman ’11 Meghan Moreland Pressman ’10, som ’10 Art Priromprintr ’11 Blake Anthony Segal ’11

Friends Nina R. Adams grd ’69, nur ’77 and Moreson Kaplan Ivy M. Alexander Anne-Marie N. Allen John and Anne Alstott Americana Arts Foundation Deborah M. Applegate grd ’98 and Bruce Tulgan Ana Maria R. Arellano yc ’77 Merritt Forrest Baer Eleanor Banacowski Cynthia K. Barrington* Robert L. Barth yc ’66 Patrick Baugh John B. Beinecke yc ’69 Joan and Robert M. Benedetti Margaret Frances Bennewitz grd ’10 Sonja Berggren and Patrick T. Seaver yc ’72 Deborah and Bruce M. Berman law ’79 Jeffrey and Christa Bernacchia Debbie Bisno Walter Bobbie Lynne and Roger Bolton Annette L. Bond yc ’79 Robert A. Bourgeois yc ’67 Clare and Sterling Brinkley yc ’74 Julie A. Brown The BWF Foundation, Inc. Arthur J. and Marie Carey Patricia Cawley CEC ArtsLink Elena Chidlowsky Lois Chiles and Richard Gilder yc ’54, lhdh ’07 Nicholas G. Ciriello yc ’59 Eliza J. Cleveland fes ’94 Gloria Cohen Robert and Roxanne Condon Converse M. Converse yc ’57 Cynthia W. Cross Edgar M. Cullman, Jr. yc ’68 Paul D’Agostino Bob and Priscilla Dannies mah ’90 Scott Delman yc ’82 Michael Desantis

Scott DeShong Liz Diamond Kirk Donegan William T. Donovan Patricia Egan Danielle C. Egervari Nevarez Gabriel Encinias Ruth M. Feldman Doris Lee Foell nur ’88 Nanci J. Fortgang Anita Pamintuan Fusco yc ’90 and Dino Fusco yc ’88 Karin N. Geballe Helen Katherine Gerardi grd ’08 Martin and Florence Gister Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Kevis Bea Goodman yc ’84, grd ’92 & ’94 Joseph Wayne Gordon grd ’78 Bruce W.J. Graham Lisa J. Grimm Marie-Aude Guie F. Lane Heard III yc ’73, law ’78 Ruth and Stephen Hendel yc ’73 George C. and June Higgins Mary and Arthur Hunt Brian Ibarra Ellen M. Iseman yc ’76 Frederick J. Iseman yc ’75 William H. Jelley Richard F. Jennings nur ’79 David G. Johnson yc ’78 Nelson Johnson Adrian yc ’87 and Nina Jones yc ’87 Yoo Na Kang grd ’10 Won Jung Kim Naomi R. Lamoreaux hon ’10 Ellen Lange Patricio Larriva Norman Levey Lucille Lortel Foundation Romaine Macomb Romaine A. Macomb Betty Mahigian Maximum Entertainment Productions, LLC Melanie McCloskey Mary E. McCormack grd ’80, som ’83 Drew McCoy Deborah McGraw Sara A. McLaren Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Molly Meyer Dawn G. Miller George I. Miller grd ’83 Christian Alejandro Moran Escobosa som ’12

Yale School of Drama Legacy Partners We invite you to join fellow alumni and friends who have included YSD in their estate plans or made other planned gifts to the School. Through Yale School of Drama Legacy Partners you can directly influence the future of Yale.

You are eligible for membership if you have named the School as a beneficiary of your will or trust, life income gift, IRA or other retirement plan, life insurance policy, or other planned gift.

To learn more about making a planned gift to Yale School of Drama, please contact Deborah S. Berman, Director of Development and Alumni Affairs at (203) 432-2890 or deborah.berman@yale.edu.

2011–2012 ysd legacy partners Cynthia Kellogg Barrington * Donald I. Cairns ’63

George E. Nichols III ’41, yc ’38 * G. C. Niemeyer ’42 *

Elizabeth S. Clark ’41 *

Mary B. Reynolds ’55 Mark Richard ’57 *

David M. Conte ’72

Barbara Richter ’60 *

Converse Converse yc ’57

William Rothwell, Jr. ’53, grd ’53 *

Raymond Carver ’61

Sue Ann Converse ’55 Eldon J. Elder ’58 *

Forrest E. Sears ’58

Peter Entin ’71

Eugene Shewmaker ’49

Albert R. Gurney ’58

Kenneth J. Stein ’59

Robert L. Hurtgen Joseph E. Kleno *

G. Erwin Steward ’60

Richard G. Mason ’53 *

Carol Waaser ’70

Dawn and Jim Miller

Phyllis C. Warfel ’55

H. Thomas Moore ’68 Tad Mosel ’50 *

William B. Warfel ’57, yc ’55 Wendy Wasserstein ’76 *

Arthur F. Nacht ’06

Zelma H. Weisfeld ’56

Edward Trach ’58

Edwin Wilson ’57 * deceased

YSD 2012–13

87

Contributors Janice L. Muirhead James C. Munson yc ’66 Gregory S. Murphy Jim Mydosh Don H. Nelson yc ’53 The Noel Coward Foundation Victoria Nolan Dan O’Brien Mr. & Mrs. Albert D. Pailet F. Richard Pappas yc ’76 Anthony J. Parenti Day L. Patterson yc ’66 James M. Perlotto yc ’78 and Thomas Masse mus ’91 Annie Pfeifer Violeta B. Popov Harold Prince Sara Protasi Rishi Raj grd ’09 Michael O. Rigsby med ’88 Robert W. Riordan yc ’66 Robina Foundation Linda Frank Rodman yc ’73, grd ’75 Edward and Alice Saad Nathan Schatz Sharon L. Schmidt Ruth Hein Schmitt Lee Schumacher Robbin A. Seipold Vicki Shaghoian Sandra Shaner Theodore P. Shen yc ’66, mah ’01 The Shubert Foundation, Inc. Manjula Shyam Lorraine D. Siggins, M.D. Stacey Mindich Productions, LLC Susan P. Stroman R. Lee Stump Michael G. and Patricia Stumpf Sarah Sullivan yc ’12 Andrew Szegedy-Maszak Charles H.M. Thorne yc ’74 Thomas J. Thurston grd ’07 Debra N. Thurston Stephen B. Timbers yc ’66 Jennifer Tipton The Tobin Theatre Arts Fund Anne Trites Trust for Mutual Understanding Suzanne Tucker Julie Turaj yc ’93 and Robert Pohly yc ’94 Sally and Cheever Tyler Julie H. Tynion Kara J. Unterberg yc ’87 Esme Usdan yc ’77 Reggie Van Lee Lambros Vetsis

Charles and Patricia Walkup Paul Walsh Anita Watzel Mr. & Mrs. Bertrand Weisbart Vera F. Wells yc ’71 Grace Zandarski

In-Kind Ellen M. Iseman yc ’76 Jeremy T. Smith ’76 Clare and Sterling Brinkley yc ’74 Jane Kaczmarek ’82 Sasha Emerson ’84 Kara J. Unterberg yc ’87

Save the Dates Yale School of Drama 2012–13 Alumni Events

Alumni Holiday Party Monday, December 10, 2012

Contributions received from July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2012

The Yale Club of New York City 6 pm – 9 pm

West Coast Alumni Party Sunday, March 24, 2013 At the home of Jane Kaczmarek ’82 1 pm – 4 pm

Stay in Touch Please remember to send us your current email to ensure you receive invitations to alumni events as well as our quarterly e-newsletter. Visit drama.yale.edu/alumni to read past issues.

Contact the Development and Alumni Affairs Office at ysd.alumni@yale.edu or (203) 432-1559.

* deceased

88

YSD 2012–13

YSD 2012–13

89

(left to right) Jonathan Krupp ’82, YC ’79, Patterson Skipper ’83, Susan Picillo, and Julie Fulton ’84, YC ’81 in the 1981 Summer Cabaret production of Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, directed by Chris Angermann ’83, YC ’73, photo by Margaret Glover ’88, YC ’81

Can you identify the actors in this photograph? (See answers below.)

From the YSD Scrapbook On York Street News fromYale School of Drama

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

ANNUAL MAGAZINE Yale School of Drama P.O. Box 208244 New Haven, CT 06520-8244

YALE SCHOOL O