David Geffen School of Drama, Alumni Magazine (Spring 2026)

spring 2026

James Bundy ’95 Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean

Nina Adams MS ’69, NUR ’77

Cathy MacNeil-Hollinger ’86

Amy Aquino ’86

Brian Mann ’79

Florie Seery Associate Dean

Rudy Aragon LAW ’79

Drew McCoy

Pun Bandhu ’01

David Milch YC ’66

John B. Beinecke YC ’69

Jennifer Harrison Newman ’11

Sonja Berggren

Richard Ostreicher ’79

Chantal Rodriguez Associate Dean

Special Research Fellow ’13

Carol Ostrow ’80

Carla L. Jackson ’99 Assistant Dean

Frances Black ’09

Maulik Pancholy ’03

Carmine Boccuzzi YC ’90, LAW ’94

Daphne Rubin-Vega

Nancy Yao SOM ’99 Assistant Dean

Lynne Bolton

Tracy Chutorian Semler YC ’86

Lois Chiles

Michael Sheehan ’76

Edgar M. Cullman III ’02, YC ’97

Anna Deavere Smith DFAH ’14

Michael David ’68

Woody Taft YC ’92

Wendy Davies

Andrew Tisdale

Deborah S. Berman Editor/Senior Director of Development and Alumni Affairs

David Geffen School of Drama Board of Advisors Julie Turaj YC ’94 Chair Jeremy Smith ’76 Vice Chair, East Coast John Badham ’63, YC ’61 Vice Chair, West Coast

Special Research Fellow ’21

Edward Trach ’58

Sasha Emerson ’84

Esme Usdan YC ’77

Lily Fan YC ’01, LAW ’04

Courtney B. Vance ’86

Terry Fitzpatrick ’83

Donald Ware YC ’71

Marc Flanagan ’70

Shana C. Waterman YC ’94, LAW ’00

Anita Pamintuan Fusco YC ’90

Kim Williams

David Alan Grier ’81

Henry Winkler ’70

Sally Horchow YC ’92

Amanda Wallace Woods ’03

Ellen Iseman YC ’76 David G. Johnson YC ’78 Sarah Long ’92, YC ’85

Dean’s Letter

Dear Friends,

I

hope this finds you well and resilient in a time so challenging for artists and humanists alike. Last night—as I write this—I had the uplifting pleasure of attending the opening of Liz Diamond’s (Faculty) sparkling and provocative production of Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, adapted by Frank Galati, at Yale Repertory Theatre. The show marks her twentieth Yale Rep outing: no director has helmed more productions here. Liz’s prolific career as Resident Director has dovetailed with her 34 years on the faculty of David Geffen School of Drama—24 of them as Chair of the Directing program—to make her one of the most influential theater practitioners and teachers of her, or any, generation. She enters phased retirement next year: this magazine contains an appreciation penned by Sara Holdren ’15, YC ’08 (Faculty), one of more than 100 Diamond-trained directors; speaking for myself, I have relied on Liz’s teaching every single day of my working life since my first classes as her student in early 1993. Two other extraordinary artists and teachers in stages of retirement are also celebrated herein: lighting designer Stephen Strawbridge ’83, and translator and dramaturg, Paul Walsh (Faculty). Scrupulously attentive to their students’s training, each of them also worked brilliantly nationwide for decades and on multiple occasions at Yale Rep. There, as something of a late bloomer, I felt especially privileged to collaborate with and learn from them. Forthright and sophisticated, erudite and openminded creators, Steve and Paul, too, have influenced generations of alumni whose field leadership is part of their shining legacy. Elsewhere, Catherine Sheehy’s ’92, DFA ’99 (Faculty) first offering of her unprecedented research and writing on the history of DGSD is absorbing, inspiring context for all that has been achieved and that may be looked forward to in the life of the School. Further, I encourage you to entertain the spirit and

accomplishments of so many alumni gracing these pages—from recent graduates and current students who represent hope and promise, to eminent artists and managers who are living—or who lived— lives in joyful service to art and audiences. Speaking of service, I cannot imagine where DGSD would be today without Deborah Berman’s (Staff ) twenty-two years of partnership and impassioned dedication to our alumni, friends, and supporters. Working with her to maintain the connections of our community in print and in person, to underwrite the training and advancement of artists and managers, and to keep us all happily in SWAG, has been a joy. Thank you, Deborah, for your profound personal investment in our mission and values. You have truly touched every part of our enterprise. As I approach my own last night of all—June 30— in my role as Dean and Artistic Director, I have only thanks to Yale, and all of you, for the opportunities of the past 24 years, as well as for your support of every conceivable kind. When I started work here in 2002, I knew it was my dream job. I had no idea how much greater the experience would be than my imaginings; that it would last as long as it has; or that it would change me so much. Blessed to grow in an environment of so much creativity, aspiration, learning, and loving kindness, I owe you all a profound debt of gratitude, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Sincerely,

James Bundy ’95 Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean, David Geffen School of Drama Artistic Director, Yale Repertory Theatre

Contents

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features

22 The Bundy Era: A Legacy of Listening, Leading, and Leaning Forward by Mark Blankenship ’05 (Faculty)

James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean)

30 Reading People: A Dramaturg in the DGSD Archives by Catherine Sheehy ’92, DFA ’99 (Faculty)

Original rendering of 222 York Street.

Editor’s Letter

No one deserves a standing ovation more than James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean). For nearly a quarter of our institution’s 100-year history, he has guided the School and Yale Repertory Theatre with uncommon vision and with distinction. As Peter Brook observed, “Theatre is the place where the invisible can appear.” Under James’s leadership, the invisible—our aspirations, our sense of purpose, and our collective imagination—have been vivid and enduring. In “The Bundy Era,” Mark Blankenship ’05 (Faculty) offers a compelling portrait of what made James truly sui generis, illuminating his pivotal role in shaping the modern identity of both the School and the Rep. One thing is certain: no tribute can fully encompass James’s impact. He has transformed our institution in innumerable ways, both sweeping and subtle. Also in these pages, Catherine Sheehy ’92, DFA ’99 (Faculty), with her singular blend of wisdom, wit, and scholarly insight, delves into a century of archival history to trace the evolution of our School and the remarkable individuals who built and sustained it. In reading “Reading People,” you will discover the behind-the-scenes stories and the unexpected turns of our founding.

defining studios

Dear Alumni and Friends,

Whether through news, honors, or recollections, this magazine is a window on you—our extraordinary alumni, whom James has championed with unwavering fidelity. Working alongside him to celebrate your achievements and to tell the stories unfolding on and off York Street has been a profound privilege. I will miss that collaboration deeply. I hope this centennial issue encourages you to reflect, to imagine, and to celebrate the rich legacy we mark together. Warmly,

Deborah S. Berman Editor Senior Director of Development and Alumni Affairs deborah.berman@yale.edu

Contents David Geffen School of Drama at Yale Annual Magazine 2025-2026, Vol. LXX Editorial Staff Editor Deborah S. Berman Associate Editor Catherine Sheehy ’92, DFA ’99 (Faculty) Managing Editor Scott Bartelson (Staff) Editors Mark Blankenship ’05 (Faculty) Leonard Sorcher Contributors Claudia Campos ’26 Wendy Davies Special Research Fellow ’21 Cayenne Douglass (Staff) Joe Grafasi ’75 Susan Hilferty ’80 Sara Holdren ’15, YC ’08 (Faculty) Chanel Johnson ’28 Ebonee Johnson ’28 Chad Kinsman ’18 Marty New ’92 Huseyin H. Okvuran YC ’94 Gavin D. Pak ’28 Alesandra Reto ’27 Frank Rich Scott D. Richards YC ’82 Mia Van Deloo ’26 Gavin Whitehead ’17, DFA ’22 Robert Wildman ’83 Matt Wolf YC ’83 Tamilla Woodard ’02 (Faculty) Evan Yionoulis ’85, YC ’82 (Former Faculty) Grace Zandarski (Faculty) Design Gregg Chase Yale Printing & Publishing Services Cover Photograph T Charles Erickson

departments 6

On & Off York Street

20

Bookshelf

38

Events

40

Art of Giving

42

In Memoriam

55

Alumni Notes

70

Newest Alumni

71

Graduation Prizes

72

Fellowships & Scholarships

74

Donors

79

Design Spotlight

On & Off York Street News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

Nathan Roberts ’10 Teaches Yale Students about Theater for Young Audiences Nathan Roberts ’10 has long championed the power of theater to engage and inspire young audiences. With decades of experience creating youth theater alongside his wife Jennifer—who is director of education at Hartford Stage—Roberts now brings that passion to Yale College as a senior lecturer. His new course, Production Seminar: Theater in Education, co-taught with his longtime colleague Deb Margolin, invites undergraduate students to explore theater for young audiences as a tool for connection and transformation. A version of the course debuted in Spring 2022, with the focus on the creation of original adaptations for children with a curriculum inspired by Paula Vogel’s D.Litt. ’20 (Former Faculty) “Bake-Off ” method. “Bake-Off ” is a fast-paced playwriting challenge where writers create a new play in 48 hours using a given theme and a set of required elements including props, lines, or situations. The constraints spark creativity and risk-taking by forcing unexpected combinations. In 2024, the course curriculum evolved into a full production-based experience centered

Yale College students performing The Arkansas Bear for New Haven elementary school students.

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Nathan Roberts ’10 (back row center) in his Theater in Education class.

on The Arkansas Bear, Aurand Harris’s play about grief and healing. Undergrads handled all aspects of production, creating a 45-minute adaptation for flexible spaces. Children were seated in a circle around the action dissolving the traditional performeraudience divide. Partnering with Yale’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs, the class brought the production to two local elementary schools and performed it on campus as well. Roberts’s journey to educational theater began in a touring children’s company in New Hampshire, where he and his wife adapted more than 20 folk tales for young viewers. “Children have an extraordinary ability to suspend disbelief,” he says, “but they also have a fine-tuned barometer for truth.” He credits his time at DGSD with shaping his artistic voice, especially through mentorship from Dr. Matthew Suttor (Former Faculty) and David Budries (Professor Emeritus), and feeling a true sense of belonging led by James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean). “DGSD was a golden period,” he reflects. “It wasn’t leaving the real work—it was investing in myself.” For Roberts, this class is a living example of how theater can meet young people where they are and turn any space into a stage.

On & Off York Street News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

Ed Jooss Retires after 42 years by Marty New ’92 Customer Service Safety Officer Ed Jooss (Former Staff), a cherished presence at DGSD and Yale Rep, retired in 2025 after 42 years of service. He joined DGSD in 1982, and during his very first week he responded to an emergency at the University Theatre where the set of a Dramat production had collapsed. From that moment on, he became an enduring and reassuring presence in the community. Ed worked closely with fellow Officer Jake Thompson (Former Staff), who retired in 2017. “I’m three years shy of Jake’s record!” Ed joked. “We met the evening of my first shift and have been friends ever since. I would’ve kept working just to best him—and because I’ve always loved the students.” Ed coined their motto: “Chapel and York, York and Chapel. We’re your undertakers. The last to let you down.” Their humor and camaraderie became legendary, often convincing me to join them at Thomas Sweet for ice cream, gossip, and stories of their adventures and unwavering love for the DGSD community. Students frequently share stories of Ed’s kindness: helping an acting student and his brother get home for a family birthday, assisting someone who couldn’t

Shane Quinn (Staff), Ralph Black (Staff), Ed Jooss (Former Staff), Jake Thompson (Former Staff), John Marquez (Former Staff) at Ed’s retirement party.

afford to travel during break to visit their ill mother, and advising an administrator on late-night security procedures. I’ll never forget when he picked me up from the train station during an ice storm. At Ed’s retirement party, he was presented with the book, The Play’s the Thing: Fifty Years of Yale Repertory Theatre (1966–2016) by James Magruder ’88, DFA ’92. He has seen nearly every production. Ed fondly recalls his time working at the School and Rep: “James always treated us well, as did Lloyd Richards MAH ’79 (Former Dean), who often sat with us in the basement to check in and chat.” Our memories of DGSD and New Haven are forever colored by Ed’s warmth, loyalty, and care.

Thirteen plays by John Guare ’63 were published in the Library of America Series in September 2025. The landmark collection, edited by Tony Kushner, includes Guare’s most celebrated works including: Six Degrees of Separation, a Pulitzer Prize finalist about a charming con artist who exposes the fragile illusions and hidden connections in a wealthy couple’s life; The House of Blue Leaves, his Obie-winning play that satirizes obsession with fame and the pressures of celebrity; and A Free Man of Color, set in New Orleans, which confronts the legacy of racism in America and the struggle for freedom. Reflecting on the honor, Guare said, “I’m overwhelmed to join the Library of America roster and amazed it happened while I’m still alive!”

peter bellamy

Plays of John Guare ’63 Enter Library of America

ANNUAL MAGAZINE 7

On & Off York Street News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

The Mother of Us All: Celebrating Liz Diamond by Sara Holdren ’15, YC ’08 (Faculty)

t charles erickson

After 34 years teaching in the Directing Program, Liz Diamond (Faculty) is stepping down as Chair and beginning phased retirement. Former student, Sara Holdren ’15, YC ’08 (Faculty), shares a tribute. Dear Friend,

courtesy of alexis kulani woodard ’25

I’m writing to you today to tell you about Liz Diamond Brecht or Caryl Churchill or opera, and, of course and (Faculty): an astute and sensitive director; a formative always, discuss The Work. Knowing that telling a fellow artist what you thought of what they made— teacher, mentor, and friend to hundreds of young (and formerly young) artists; an expansive, unfailingly or getting told—is a delicate business, Liz asked us to write our responses as letters. “Imagine,” she said, ethical intellect; a generous heart; and, for 34 years, “that you’re writing to a theater-literate friend who the soul of the Directing program at DGSD. A few hundred words will never fully represent the didn’t see the show you saw, and you have to describe it, succinctly and effectively. Tell them what you impact Liz has made on the School, on the lives of saw.” Just tell them what you saw. As with so many of so many colleagues, and on the field she has champithe tools in Liz’s belt, it’s deceptively simple—an oned and—by her presence, by her values—elevated for decades. First, however, I want to explain why I’m invitation to rigor through attention. We wrote dozens of these letters to each other, and with each spending these words writing to you. I’m lucky to one, under Liz’s caring, uncompromising guidance, have been one of Liz’s students: Directors don’t tend we learned, like Lear, to see better. to travel in packs, but every Friday at the School Anyone who’s met Liz knows that there’s something of Drama, you could find all nine directing students, of the pixie about her—equally erudite and mischieLiz, and, in my day, her wonderful colleague David vous, she is as fully herself discussing Paulo Freire or Chambers ’71, gathered in a circle of chairs on the Gertrude Stein as she is encouraging her students to second floor of 149 York Street. There, this “college “be stupid” or to look for “the dog-shit level of reality” of directors” (Liz’s words), would test theories, in a play. In a field where emperors may well have build makeshift mises en scène, mess around with no clothes, Liz, an artist of both immense integrity and unquenchable good humor, models a practice that defies superficiality and pretension. From her, directors receive the incredible gifts of joy, toughness, curiosity, and responsibility in the world. As my fellow director Cole Lewis ’14 put it: “Liz makes people feel capable of anything, as long as they are accountable to their own potential.” When she was 22 years old, Liz Diamond found herself in West Africa starting a theater company. “I was much older when I learned that you’re probably wise to pay more attention to what you do rather than to what you say,” she told me recently with a laugh. “When I went trotting off to college, I majored in political science. I had incredibly vague, fuzzy images Liz Diamond (Faculty) with colleagues and students in 2025. of myself working in international relations.”

8 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

On & Off York Street News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

Meanwhile, however, she was “doing theater all the time and paying no attention to that fact.” After graduating from Wellesley in 1976, she joined the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso, at that time Haute-Volta. “That,” she tells me, “is where everything changed.” While teaching ESL courses in Ouagadougou, she started dreaming up the idea for a theater project. A couple of grant proposals and a meeting with a representative from the Ford Foundation later (“I was so intimidated because she was wearing a suit and actual shoes!”), she was awarded $15,000 for the Rural Theater Project of Haute-Volta. “At which point, it was like… I guess I have to create it.” Along with the Mossi theater artist Prosper Kompaoré, Liz Diamond became co-director of the Projet de Théâtre Rural Voltaïque. “I was taking my moped to the central market to buy drums,” she recalls—then finding a truck (“the steering wheel was attached by a bungee cord to the dashboard”) and a rehearsal space (“an abandoned monastery in the countryside”) and starting to work with local villagers to build a repertoire of plays. “We would arrive in a village at dusk,” she says, “and all the kids in the village would surround us. We’d start the fire and put out our sleeping mats and mosquito nets, and we’d send the kids off to their mother’s cook houses to get the white ash from the fires, and they would bring the ash in buckets, and we would make a big circle with the white ash on the earth…We had flashlights for the kids— they would climb on the backseat of a bicycle and we’d give them a flashlight and say, ‘You follow that character.’ It was all word of mouth. You’d start to see figures coming through the darkness—women with babies on their backs, fathers biking with a child on the handlebars. All showing up for the show. It was magic.” The Rural Theater Project celebrates its forty-ninth year in 2026, and in telling you just a little of its story, dear friend, I’ve barely scratched the surface of Liz’s incredible achievements. There’s so much else I could tell you—about her time at Columbia earning her MFA in Directing—or about her first job out of grad school doing laundry for Sam Shepard’s The Tooth of Crime at La MaMa (“This is 1983 and I’m taking laundry—which was disgusting, because it was this rock-and-roll extravaganza—to the 2nd Avenue laundromat and putting the coins in. Me and the crack addicts at midnight!”). I could tell you about her first show in New York, Beckett’s Fizzles (no one cracks open seemingly impenetrable texts like Liz), about her

time assisting JoAnne Akalaitis, or about her experience as one of the inaugural cohort of directors in New York Theater Workshop’s New Directors Project. We could talk for hours about Liz’s decades of collaboration with Suzan-Lori Parks, from her Obie-winning production of Imperceptible Mutabilities In The Third Kingdom in 1989 to her epic envisioning of Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2, and 3, co-produced in 2018 by A.C.T. and Yale Rep, where Liz has long been a resident director. Her production of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros in 2026 marked her twentieth show as a director at the Rep, where she has illuminated projects and playwrights from Shakespeare, Strindberg, and Shaw to Anna DeavereSmith, Charles Ludlum, and Marcus Gardley ’04 (Faculty).

(left to right) Jessica Holt ’15, Sara Holdren ’15, YC ’08 (Faculty) (above), David Chambers ’71 (Former Faculty), Liz Diamond (Faculty), Andras Viski ’15

Just as there’s no sufficient summary for such a career, such a soul, there’s no good end for such a letter. Perhaps I should simply tell you what I saw—what I still see—in Liz. I see one of the most extraordinary artists, educators, and humans I’ve ever known. I see that rarest thing: analytical brilliance matched by deep humanity. Everything is political, she told me once. She was, as always, right. Kindness and care and accountability—to one’s own potential and to the wider world—are a politics. They are the politics Liz Diamond lives and that, through her astonishing tenure, she has instilled at the very heart of the School of Drama. Sincerely, Sara

ANNUAL MAGAZINE 9

On & Off York Street News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

The 2026 Burry Fredrik Design Fellowship has been awarded to set designer Jessie Baldinger ’26. Each year the fellowship provides a grant to a graduating designer, while also offering a matching award to any Connecticut professional producing theater that hires the fellow over the next two years. Since its creation in 2017, the Burry Fredrik Foundation has continued to deepen its statewide impact. In 2024 alone, 15 design fees were awarded to Connecticut theaters, reflecting a commitment to nurturing the next generation of artists from DGSD. Baldinger, originally from West Palm Beach, FL, brings to her practice a curiosity‑driven approach and a passion for crafting striking visual worlds. After working as a freelance scenic designer in Chicago, she moved to New York and soon enrolled at DGSD. Her credits while in New Haven include the James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean)-led

molly harris

Nurturing Future Designers

Jessie Baldinger ’26

production of Hedda Gabler at Yale Repertory Theatre, Metamorphoses at the School, and Iolanta at Yale Opera. Reflecting on the fellowship, Baldinger shared, “I’m so grateful to be given this opportunity by the Burry Fredrik Foundation to continue working in Connecticut’s vibrant theater community. I’m thankful to the mentors, colleagues, and collaborators who made this possible, and to the Foundation for its support of my work!”

Celebrating a Century Together

A curated exhibition by Erin Carney, Arts Librarian for Drama, Theater, and Performance Studies, honored the School’s 100th anniversary by tracing its history from founding to present day. Featuring documents, photographs, and other archival materials, the retrospective highlighted each program and its origins within the School.

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On September 15, 2025, members of the DGSD community gathered on Library Walk, across from University Theatre, to celebrate the School’s 100th anniversary. Featured are (left to right) Nancy Yao SOM ’99 (Assistant Dean), Carla Jackson ’99 (Assistant Dean), Deborah S. Berman (Staff ), Davon Williams ’27, James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean), Chantal Rodriguez (Associate Dean), and Florie Seery (Associate Dean).

On & Off York Street News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

Mikayla Stanley ’25 Makes the Garden Glow by Alesandra Reto ’27

travis emery hackett

Hit The Lights! Theatre Co. (HTL!), co-founded by Theater Management alumna Mikayla Stanley ’25, debuted “The Night Muse,” an immersive puppetry installation at New York Botanical Garden during the summer of 2025. Conceived as a counterpart to the Garden’s Van Gogh-inspired flower exhibition, this large-scale experience invited audiences into a three-dimensional interpretation of Van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night, blending visual art, performance, and participatory engagement. The installation, which ran for three months, drew large crowds and garnered critical praise. Returning to HTL! after receiving her degree at DGSD was important to Stanley.

“Being part of a collective of multidisciplinary artists that is actively creating and collaborating with partners like the Botanical Garden is so rewarding,” she shared. Stanley and HTL! are now at work on ISLA, inspired by the family history of company member Samantha Blaine, which tells the story of three sisters from Cuba who journey to the United States during the freedom flights of the 1960s. This new play with music is scheduled to premiere at WP Theater in 2026.

“The Night Muse” immersive puppetry installation at New York Botanical Garden.

ANNUAL MAGAZINE 11

On & Off York Street News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

How Lynne Meadow ’71 Shaped American Theater by Matt Wolf YC ’83 After more than five decades as Artistic Director, Meadow has retired from Manhattan Theatre Club. London-based critic Matt Wolf YC ’83 offers a tribute to his longtime friend.

sara krulwich/the new york times/redux

Meadow told me during an exhaustive phone interview in late January. Given both her appetite for work and her energy, there’s small chance of Meadow shutting up shop any time soon. A native of New Haven, Meadow says the city, and Yale, shaped her artistic pursuits early on, having decided from age six that the stage was the place for her. Her mother was herself a writer and performer so it wasn’t surprising when at age 12, Meadow found herself working alongside her in the musical Grand Tour, which featured such theater greats as Gretchen Cryer and Austin Pendleton YC ’61. The show’s Lynne Meadow ’71 accepts the Tony Award for Best Revival creators were David Shire YC ’59 and Richard Maltby, of a Play for Eureka Day in June 2025, marking her fifth Tony Jr. ’62, YC ’59, the latter of whom would go on to as lead producer of a Manhattan Theatre Club production. win a 1978 Tony for directing the smash MTC Featured left: Jessica Hecht and Chris Jennings ’97. production Ain’t Misbehavin’. That Fats Waller musical compilation lingers in the memory as one of the It’s simply inconceivable to think of the New York, theatrical glories of my adolescence. indeed the American, theater without giving pride of In high school, Meadow found herself at age 16, place to Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) and its legendary founder, Lynne Meadow ’71. As a New York playing Jocasta in a staging of Oedipus that toured the American South, and it was while she was at Yale theater devotee who over time added London to the in 1969 that she directed 60 students in a production mix, I was directly shaped by this very institution. of Marat/Sade presented in the dining hall of I first frequented its original address on East 73rd Saybrook College. “Everyone,” she said, chuckling Street and then became a regular at its two homes at the memory, “was an inmate.” Off-Broadway at City Center and on Broadway at “The only thing I ever wanted was to be in the the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, a short walk away. theater and to be with theater people,” said Meadow, Over time, I gained a thrilling awareness of a whose own academic path took her from Bryn Mawr remarkable canon of work, ranging from (to name to the School of Drama (from which she took a a select few) Richard Greenberg ’85, Terrence McNally, and David Auburn to Alan Ayckbourn, Lynn leave after two years and never graduated) and the decision not to act but, in fact, direct. Nottage ’89, and the mother of all musical revues, “My passion,” Meadow realized early on, “was for Ain’t Misbehavin’. This perspective was entirely due discovering talent: I’ve always loved trying to bring to the curatorial skill and imaginative empathy of Lynne Meadow, who founded MTC at age 25, not long out the best in people, including myself.” MTC gave her the ideal canvas on which to leave a mark as the out of Yale School of Drama. She stayed on over organization spread its wings beyond—in her words— the half-century and more that followed and helped “the crazy rabbit warren” of its initial East Side perch define the American theater in the process. to two distinct and inviting midtown locations. Last summer, Meadow stepped down from her Awards rolled in with unerring regularity—more history-making tenure as artistic director but will continue to act in an advisory capacity to the company Tonys (31) and Pulitzers (7) than most theaters could imagine. she birthed. “I’d feel bereft if I just closed the door,”

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On & Off York Street News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

The repertoire across the years spread beyond Beth Prodigal Son… MTC all the while providing fertile Henley (Crimes of the Heart) and house regular Donald terrain for spotting tomorrow’s big names today.) Margulies (Collected Stories) to embrace Martyna “I feel like I’ve had the chance to live a dream,” said Majok ’12 (Queens) and—twice over—Stephen Meadow, who looks forward with her newfound free Sondheim, Jonathan Spector (last year’s Tony winner time to teaching and returning to the rehearsal room. for Eureka Day) and John Patrick Shanley, of Doubt “I’ve lived every day in the candy store,” she added, renown. (I shan’t soon forget seeing a teenage though it’s fair to say that Meadow’s audiences are Timothée Chalamet in a 2016 production of Shanley’s the ones who have emerged enriched.

Spotlight on Dede Ayite ’11 by Chad Kinsman ’18

hiring Ayite for her first professional New York As Dede Ayite ’11 well knows, the scientific method show, Kimber Lee’s and the creative process are not as different as brownsville song (b-side popular belief maintains. The Ghanaian designer for tray) in 2014. began her undergraduate career studying behavioral Since then, Ayite neuroscience at Lehigh University, intending to has designed costumes become a doctor. Halfway through her degree, she (and occasionally sets) added a second major in theater. Today, the prolific at theaters across the costume designer draws on both fields to help country and on and actors and audiences see themselves on stage. Off-Broadway. She “I’m able to utilize my training in behavioral has worked on several neuroscience to understand what makes a character shows more than once, who they are and how that might impact what including Othello, clothes they wear,” Ayite shares. “The science gives me The Wiz, Slave Play by access to what makes us tick. Theater is illustrating Jeremy O. Harris ’19, moments that show us as human.” and Jocelyn Bioh’s Jaja’s Research, experimentation, and collaboration are African Hair Braiding. vital parts of Ayite’s design process. “There are times “For each iteration I look when I have an actor come in with fears, with doubts at what I previously about wearing a certain color or silhouette,” she says. designed and ask, ‘Is it Dede Ayite ’11 at the 2019 Signature Salon du Chocolat Fashion Show in NYC. “What’s beautiful to witness is ushering them into meeting the moment seeing themselves in a new light,” Ayite continues. we’re in now?’” The “It takes trust and patience. I cannot heal everything, results speak for themselves. In 2020, Ayite was one but in that moment, there might be a piece of of six School of Drama alumni to receive a Tony themselves that feels whole.” nomination for Slave Play. She earned a second nod Ayite experienced moments like that herself at the that year for A Soldier’s Play. Four years later she School while working with directors Liesl Tommy became the first Black woman to win Best Costume and Patricia McGregor ’09. She designed the set for Design for a Play for her work on Bioh’s vibrant Tommy’s 2011 Yale Rep production of The Piano Lesson. salon-set comedy. She was also nominated that “Working with a director from outside of Yale, who year for Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Faculty) and the Alicia Keys musical Hell’s brought her own take on a story that matters to me was impactful. I learned a lot about investigating the Kitchen. “I’m blessed to feel invigorated every words on the page and how to illuminate them time I meet the work. It’s always asking different through design,” Ayite shares. McGregor is another questions, or it’s asking me to dig in deeper, longstanding mentor and friend. “She allowed me, as to reflect who I am, to study and reflect life back a young designer, to feel seen and supported.” That to an audience. That doesn’t change.” dynamic continued after Yale, with McGregor ANNUAL MAGAZINE 13

On & Off York Street News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

courtesy of tdf

June 29 is “Lisa Carling Day” in New York City

Lisa Carling ’72 holds her proclamation for “Lisa Carling Day” from the NYC Mayor’s Office.

by Wendy Davies ’21 (Special Research Fellow) In 2011, Lisa Carling ’72 launched Theatre Development Fund’s (TDF) groundbreaking autism-friendly performances with the musical The Lion King. TDF, a nonprofit committed to making live performance accessible to all, embraced Lisa’s vision, recognizing the need for inclusive theatrical experiences for individuals with autism and sensory sensitivities. Her leadership made TDF one of the first organizations to champion this approach, and the program proved to be an overwhelming success. The performances are joyful, noisy, and welcoming spaces where families can attend theater without fear of judgment, creating what the TDF team called a “no apology zone.” Autism-friendly performances are now offered for multiple productions each year on Broadway.

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After 40 years at TDF, Lisa retired in 2025 as Director of Accessibility Programs. Her legacy reaches far beyond autism-friendly shows, encompassing open captioning, sign language interpretation, audio description, mobility-accessible seating, and programming for veterans. She has collaborated with The Shubert Organization, Bridge Multimedia, and Juilliard, and in 2022 received the Kennedy Center LEAD Award for Excellence in Accessibility Leadership. As a fellow Yale alum and former TDF trustee, I had the privilege of witnessing Lisa’s compassion, devotion, and tenacity firsthand. Her work has reshaped theater into a more inclusive, welcoming space. In recognition of her accomplishments, former Mayor Eric Adams inaugurated June 29, 2025, as “Lisa Carling Day” in NYC. Congratulations, Lisa!

On & Off York Street News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

Tony Awards Honor Michael Price ’63 Michael Price ’63 received the 2025 Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre for his 47 years of service as Executive Director of Goodspeed Musicals. The award recognizes individuals and institutions who have had an extraordinary impact on the field. “The life I’ve had in the theater has been like magic,” he said. Price’s industry journey began as a child actor in Chicago, where he would perform in local theater productions. As he got older, his interest turned backstage, with a focus on lighting design. After receiving his MFA at Yale in Technical Design and Production, he landed at Goodspeed Musicals. “I got hired as the production manager for the opening season in the summer of 1963—and I got fired in the fall! I was a smart-ass kid right out of school,” he recalled. That rocky start made his return to Goodspeed a few years later a full-circle moment he could have never imagined. Under Price’s leadership, Goodspeed premiered and produced the original Broadway and Tony Award–winning musical Annie, which 50 years later still delivers approximately $400,000 a year in royalties to the organization. That goes a long way. But Price’s transformative leadership reaches beyond the economic boon of a single show. He built the company through strong relationships with all its stakeholders—staff, unions, patrons. “Every Saturday night, my family and I had supper at the theater with the whole company. My kids practically grew up there. We built an institution rooted in warmth and community.” During curtain calls, Price would stand at the front of the stage shouting “Adequate! Adequate!” and tossing Hershey’s Kisses to the cast. In his world, “Adequate” became a badge of honor—his playful irreverence turned the word into a symbol of excellence.

courtesy of american theatre wing

by Claudia Campos ’26

Though Price sits on the Tony Awards Administration Committee and has been a Tony Award voter for many years, the accolade came as a surprise. He retired from Goodspeed in 2014. “It was kind of a shock to receive the award after 10 years…. It felt good. And it came from my peers, which means everything.” Price’s tenure at Goodspeed is unique in the industry—a career devoted to growing a single institution into the monument of musical theater it is today. “For the better part of 50 years, I was at the theater at the end of each performance to say goodnight. I met my patrons, I met the audiences... I never had a bad day. I loved going to work.”

“The life I’ve had in the theater has been like magic.” —michael price

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On & Off York Street News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

linda-cristal young

Save a Point for God: A Tribute to Paul Walsh

by Gavin Whitehead ’17, DFA ’22 After 17 years teaching in the Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism program, Paul Walsh (Faculty) has retired. Former student, Gavin Whitehead ’17, DFA ’22, shares a tribute. There comes a time for many new students at DGSD when it suddenly hits you: “I got into Yale, and I’m actually here.” It carries the intense clarity of a divine revelation, and you feel as if you’re one of the heavenly elect. I had this experience a few days into my first semester in fall 2014. Early one morning, I made my way to a first-floor classroom in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, taking a seat among some 60 of my fellow students. We had all gathered for the inaugural lecture of Drama 6, a yearlong survey of theater history, stretching from ancient Egypt to medieval China to modern-day North America, and covering plenty of

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terrain in between. Paul Walsh (Faculty) taught the class, and I sat, rapt, as he took his place on an elevated platform and gave a brilliant lecture weaving together centuries’s worth of history. Yeah, I was at Yale, alright. In the eyes of admiring students, great professors can seem godlike. Paul was a great professor, but he never had the aura of a divinity. Divinities exist on high and expect to be worshipped, whereas Paul was down-to-earth and devoted to his students. I got my first taste of his immense generosity in my second semester. Before enrolling at the School, I had translated Georg Büchner’s 1836 comedy, Leonce and Lena. Paul was the Dramaturgy program’s translation guru, and I asked if he would look at my script because I wanted to pitch it to the Yale Cabaret. He said yes, and he certainly didn’t have to, considering this was extracurricular. We met at Book Trader Cafe, Paul’s de facto office, where he gave me a line-by-line commentary that was as astute as it was thorough. It was as if he had watched over my shoulder as I typed at my laptop, noting every line that tripped me up and offering an improvement on how I had worded it. It was the first of many enlightening sessions at New Haven cafés. After graduation, I served as a Drama 6 Teaching Associate for three years. Every Tuesday, after class, Paul took the T.A.s to Atticus Bookstore Cafe for breakfast. As we ate, the T.A.s talked about how our respective discussion sections were going, brainstormed essay questions for the midterm and final, and compared notes on how we were evaluating our students’s written work. Paul imparted wisdom throughout, teaching us how to teach, often with the help of a witty epigram. He shared too many to list in this tribute, so one example will have to suffice. We were grading midterms, and part of me feared I was being too lenient. After all, I was about to give a student a 100 percent. Then again, her exam was flawless; she had known everything, I explained. Paul advised me to give her a 99. That score recognized her excellent performance while also acknowledging that nobody’s perfect— or, as Paul put it, “Save a point for God.”

On & Off York Street News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

Design Alumnae Awarded 1/52 Project Grants by Ebonee Johnson ’28

ron kain

In 2022, Tony Award–winning set designer Beowulf Boritt launched the 1/52 Project, a grant program to support early-career designers from historically excluded groups, bringing diverse new voices to the theater design community. The name reflects the original business model, which encourages commercial Broadway designers to donate one week’s royalties or AWC (Additional Weekly Compensation) to the fund. Boritt told Playbill in 2025, “When we started 1/52 it seemed quixotic. Now, after distributing a half million dollars in grants, I’m overwhelmed by the generosity of our industry and even more committed to meeting and supporting so many talented earlycareer designers.” This past year, 12 designers were selected, including DGSD alumnae Emily Duncan Wilson ’20 and Haydee Zelideth ’17.

Haydee Zelideth ’17

Emily Duncan Wilson ’20

“It is such an immense honor,” said Duncan Wilson “to be recognized with this grant. It has allowed me a financial boost to be able to pursue creative projects I’ve been putting off, as well as feel a true sense of belonging within the larger design community as a non-NYC-based queer, female sound designer.” Zelideth added, “The 1/52 project was a resource I needed to help me grow and thrive as a costume designer over the past year. I’m excited for the ability to focus on my craft and vision thanks to this support.” They join seven other alumni who have received the honor since its inception: Brittany Bland ’19, Emma Deane ’20, Gerardo Díaz Sánchez ’19, Mika Eubanks ’19, Kathy Ruvuna ’19, Hannah Tran ’23, and Miguel Urbino ’23.

“It is such an immense honor to be recognized with this grant.” —emily duncan wilson

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On & Off York Street

Hansol Jung ’14 received the 2025 Herb Alpert Award for Theatre, honoring mid-career artists creating bold, risk-taking work. Established by the Herb Alpert Foundation in 1994, the award recognizes two artists in each of five fields: dance, film/video, music, theater, and visual arts. Jung was selected from 100 nominees nationwide for her daring, experimental approach. Her work includes Wolf Play, produced by Soho Rep with Ma-Yi Theater Company and MCC Theater, which earned the 2024 Obie Award for playwriting; Merry Me (New York Theatre Workshop, 2023); and plays developed at The Public Theater, Woolly Mammoth, and the O’Neill Theater Center. The foundation also honored Paloma McGregor (Faculty), who received the award for her work in the field of dance.

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Rudi Goblen ’23 received a 2025 United States Artists Fellowship—one of only 50 artists from 10 creative disciplines to be so honored. The USA Fellowships recognize artists who “push boundaries across disciplines, identities, and definitions, demonstrating boundless explorations of creativity and innovation throughout their multidisciplinary practices.” Goblen graduated from the Playwriting program at DGSD, but his work as an educator, poet, performer, dancer, and choreographer has been presented at venues across the country. He joins DGSD’s past USA Fellowship recipients Christina Anderson ’11, Lileana Blain-Cruz ’12, Marcus Gardley ’04, Tarell Alvin McCraney ’07, Anna Deavere Smith DFAH ’14, and Jennifer Tipton (Professor Emerita).

beowulf sheehan

t charles erickson

News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

On & Off York Street

doaa ouf ’25

News from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

Second-year designer Sveta Moroz ’27 received the Willa Kim Costume Design Scholarship from Theatre Communications Group (TCG)—the first DGSD student to receive the honor. “The scholarship reflects TCG’s commitment to supporting visionary early-career artists, whose work challenges, redefines, and uplifts the theatrical form through costume design,” said TCG Co-Executive Director Emilya Cachapero. For Sveta, the award has been transformative: “This scholarship gave me the space to return to painting and fine art—to rediscover the joy of making by hand and to bring that renewed sensitivity into my design process.” Born in Russia, Sveta trained at the Moscow Art Theatre School and interned at the Hermitage Museum. She has designed for The Imaginists, a California-based nonprofit theater, and for three Yale productions: two at the Yale Cabaret and one—Utopia by Mikhail Durnenkov, directed by Andreas Andreou ’26—for the DGSD season. She describes design as “a process of uncovering—finding casual expressions that carry emotional and narrative weight.”

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Bookshelf The Power of Collective Spectacle

Bringing Bayes to Beijing Discovering the Clown, or The Funny Book of Good Acting by Christopher Bayes (Faculty) and Virginia Scott, has been released in China by Jilin Publishing. The text was translated by Luo Yu, an acting teacher at China’s Central Academy of Drama, and acting student Chen Yinuo. Chen’s experience as a volunteer therapeutic clown at a center for adults with disabilities led her to Bayes’s book and the idea that “absurdity can awaken emotional resonance,” she said. Luo added that the translation promotes a cross-cultural dialogue that underscores the value of live performance and “the life essence of improvisation.”

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In her new book, Mass Performance: Systems and Citizens, Kimberly Jannarone ’96, DFA ’00 (Faculty), professor in the practice of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, explores largescale, choreographed public spectacles that reflect and shape their socio-political moment. As defined in her research, mass performance involves at least 1,000 performers in one place at one time. “I wanted to look at what people were discussing when they participated in these performances. They spoke about the sounds they heard and the feeling of togetherness, and very physical things like the sheer mass of people...what people were feeling in their bodies was something extreme,” said Jannarone in the Yale Daily News. The book chronicles mass performances during the French Revolution, in Czech and German areas during the 19th and 20th centuries, in post-World War II socialist regimes, and most recently, in North Korea. The publication serves as a record of the creation of these historic activities.

Bookshelf A Heroic Gesture

Making the Scene Three DGSD alumni—Wilson Chin ’03, Alexander Dodge ’99, and Adrienne Lobel ’79—are the subjects of newly released monographs in The Scenographer series, a collection of publications for theater artists and enthusiasts. Published in Italy, The Scenographer offers in-depth explorations of the work of contemporary directors, set designers, and lighting artists. Each large-format volume features over 200 full-color photographs, drawings, plans, production notes, scholarly essays, and first-hand interviews with a specific artist. Theater critic Frank Rizzo praised the series for its unique behind-the-scenes perspective: “This elegant series celebrates these creatives, shares their insights and makes their productions come alive again.”

While studying at Yale, Robert U. Taylor ’68 created Methodman, a comic strip satirizing trends in theater design. Originally published in the very first issue of Yale’s journal of criticism, plays, and reportage, yale/theatre (currently Theater), the strip captured the spirit of its era. Taylor donated the original sketches to the School as a unique piece of theatrical history that will live in its archives. After being mentored by Donald Oenslager (Former Faculty), whom he remembers as “design royalty,” Taylor brought his vision to theater, film, television, theme parks, and more. His stage work includes Raisin, the musical adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s play; Bertolt Brecht’s Happy End with Meryl Streep ’75, DFAH ’83; The Beggar’s Opera, which earned him a Drama Desk Award; and Polly, for which he received an Obie. He also co-founded the Greek Theatre of New York with Yannis Simonides ’72, YC ’69, producing works by classical and contemporary Greek playwrights.

“ Methodman” comic strip by Robert U. Taylor ’68, published in the first issue of yale/theatre (currently Theater) magazine.

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The Bundy Era 22 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

Y A Legacy of Listening, Leading, and Leaning Forward by Mark Blankenship ’05 (Faculty)

ou could argue the James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean) years were defined at a faculty meeting way back in 2002. As the School of Drama’s new dean—only 43 years old and just seven years past his own graduation from the Directing program—Bundy was under incredible scrutiny. After all, he was assuming one of the most prestigious titles in the American theater, and while he had plenty of experience as both an artist and an artistic leader, he wasn’t yet a household name among the folks who read American Theatre. He might have used that faculty meeting to assert his bona fides. Instead, he put his focus on the people in front of him. Bundy addressed each of his colleagues by name, then mentioned something specific they had contributed to the School. “I’ll never forget it,” said Marc Robinson ’90, DFA ’92 (Faculty). “I figured it would take him weeks to remember who all of us were, if he ever remembered at all. Instead, it happened right away.” This foretold the coming era. In his 24 years as Dean of David Geffen School of Drama at Yale—and as Artistic Director of Yale Repertory Theatre—Bundy has an impressive string of accomplishments, including an overhaul of financial aid, a reimagining of inclusivity, a transformative building project, and a visionary play development program. Any of these milestones could secure his legacy. But what’s truly remarkable— and so very Bundy-esque—is the compassion that’s grounded them all. No matter the circumstances, James has been the same as he was in that faculty meeting, ennobling the room with his empathetic attention. As he concludes almost a quarter century of leadership, it’s time to consider how he’s done it.

The Active Listener

(top row) Bradley James Tejeda ’16, Nahuel Tellería ’16, DFA ’21, Libby Peterson ’16, James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean), Bobby Román ’18, Sean Boyce Johnson ’18; (bottom row) Richard Montoya, Catherine María Rodriguez ’18, Stephanie Machado ’18, Johnny Moreno ’18

First and foremost, James Bundy listens. Consider what happened with Chantal Rodriguez (Associate Dean) and the poster. When she first arrived at DGSD, there was a poster outside her office of a 2003 Rep production of The Taming of the Shrew, featuring an all-male, mostly Latino cast. “The tagline was something like, ‘Shakespeare with a spicy twist,’” Rodriguez recalled. “And I didn’t want it in front of my door. I wasn’t saying, ‘Throw it away!’ I was

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Austin Durant ’10 and James in rehearsal for Hedda Gabler at Yale Repertory Theatre (2026).

just thinking, ‘I feel some-kind-of-way that it’s in front of my door.’ I didn’t know what to do.” So, Rodriguez reached out to Bundy and asked if the poster could be relocated. “That’s when he pulled me aside and said, ‘I want to invite you to stop asking for my permission and just start telling me. Part of why I hired you is that I trust your judgment.’ He was telling me to claim space, and that was a moment where I thought, ‘Wow, there’s a real trust in the collaboration here.’” The collaboration has only grown. As the School’s Associate Dean and the Rep’s Associate Artistic Director, Rodriguez is part of the “team of deans” whose shared leadership model shapes both institutions. Bundy helped craft this approach, and while he still makes final decisions on many things, he always heeds what he hears from the deans and others in his orbit. “I’ve learned so much from the way he takes other perspectives to heart,” Rodriguez said. “We’re in an art form that believes the collaborative work we do can make an impact, and he models that.”

Catherine Sheehy ’92, DFA ’99 (Faculty) has seen this, too. “Not long after James was hired, a group of us were out at a season planning dinner, and we were wrestling with a play that half of us liked and half of us were unsure about,” she said. “And I will say that James was less than enthusiastic about the play. Then he took a minute to think about it, and he said, ‘Maybe I don’t have to like every show we produce.’ I thought that was a pretty enlightened thing for someone to say as an artistic director, and also a humble thing to say. He looked past personal preference, listened to the other people in the conversation, and said, ‘I believe this is right for our theater.’” Bundy himself affirmed this mindset. “It’s a privilege to work closely with wise and impassioned colleagues with whom I often agree,” he told me. “But who also see some things differently than I do and are generous enough to tell me so.” James has been listening like this since he got the keys to his office. “When I arrived, there was a very

“ It’s a privilege to work closely with wise and impassioned colleagues with whom I often agree. But who also see some things differently than I do and are generous enough to tell me so.” —james bundy

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Directing class of 1995: (top to bottom) Derek Anson Jones, James, Kaia Calhoun, Constance Grappo

courtesy of nora bundy

clear consensus that financial aid was the number one priority,” he recalled, and so he set about relieving the enormous debt that many students carried. The load lightened bit by bit until 2021, when a massive donation from the David Geffen Foundation meant every degree candidate, certificate student, and technical intern could attend the school tuition-free. Another sea change began in 2014, after Bundy heard Carmen Morgan (Faculty), founder of the organization artEquity, present at a TCG conference. “The thing she said in that workshop that stayed with me was, ‘There are a lot of organizations that value diversity without practicing inclusion.’ I heard that, and I went, ‘Oh my God, I totally understand what you mean, and that applies very distinctly to the School of Drama. That’s it. That’s the project now.’” Bundy asked current students and alums to share their experiences, positive or negative. The feedback wasn’t always gentle, but it was invaluable. For example, the Acting program now takes a fully inclusive approach to enrollment. Merit is the determinate of admission, whereas in decades prior,

James with a pumpkin carved in his likeness, joined by his daughters, Nora and Mary, on a Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella set piece built by Yale Rep technicians during his first year as Dean/Artistic Director.

there were strictly 10 men and six women per class, since this supposedly reflected how roles are distributed in classic plays. “That [change] is the direct result of an emotional end-of-year meeting I had with acting students,” James said. “Their challenge to an inequitable, canonically biased admission policy was all but unanswerable.” Meanwhile, in response to a community call for broader input into programming and pedagogy, the leadership model has changed at both the School and the Rep. Mirroring the expanded group of deans, the Rep’s season planning committee is more than twice the size it was in 2002. This lets artists of vastly different backgrounds, aesthetics, and perspectives advocate for what’s on stage. Neil Mazzella ’78, a former chair of DGSD’s Board of Advisors, noted that Bundy has further protected the School’s future by diversifying its board. “James is my fourth dean,” he said. “What makes him unique is that when it comes to [the health of ] the institution, he has embraced all of Yale University.” For one thing, by inviting Yale alums onto the board, even if they didn’t attend the School of Drama, Bundy opened funding streams that would have otherwise been inaccessible. He also demonstrated that DGSD is an integral part of the university. “He made sure we’re not an elitist group,” Mazzella said. “And the School has reaped the benefits.” Those benefits will accrue long after Bundy leaves. Most notably, the School’s new building—a state-ofthe-art facility that will bring most of the departments under one roof—is well underway: the design drawings are in, and the land is being prepared.

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In other words, Bundy listens like an artist. He even jokes that as a director, he tries to say as little as possible. “I see that he’s casting people with whom he can really, truly collaborate,” said Felicity Jones Latta, and she would know: James directed her five times at the Rep, starting with The Ladies of the Camellias during his third season and ending with Hedda Gabler, the last production he helmed as Artistic Director. Latta added, “He’s looking for people who come in with the same work ethic, really. And the same curiosity and the same willingness to explore what they’re trying to do together as an ensemble, not just individuals.” Anne Tofflemire (Former Faculty), Tijuana Ricks ’04, and Bundy nurtured that ensemble sensibility whenever James at the LA Alumni Party in 2024. he could. During the rehearsal period of every Rep show, for instance, he and his wife Anne Tofflemire When he considers this project’s impact, James thinks (Former Faculty) invited the entire company to their home for dinner. “I’ll never forget those dinners,” in decades, not years. “Sometimes it’s crucial to keep said Jesse Perez, who has worked at the Rep more than your vision far past the horizon,” he said. half a dozen times. “We weren’t at a restaurant. We James’s longtime collaborators are attuned to that were at their house. I would always think, ‘What steady progress. “You look back, and suddenly it’s artistic director does this, or still has the energy after been six years, and then suddenly it’s been 20 years, all those years of running that place?’ I just feel like and you realize that you’re in this deep professional the respect he has for people that can actually change partnership,” said Deborah Berman (Staff), who has the art form is huge.” been DGSD’s Senior Director of Development and Allen Gilmore, a veteran of six Rep shows, had a Alumni Affairs since 2005. “I am so proud to have similar response. “James would have everybody at his helped advance James’s vision of expanding house, and it just showed his open-door policy,” he opportunities and creating a foundation for the said. “He created an environment where people could School’s continued bright future.” flourish.” Gilmore was also struck by how DGSD Bundy added, “You can make a few steps forward students participated in rehearsals. “They were able every year. The accumulation of the improvements— to say things that made me think, ‘Wow. They or ‘the pendulum swings,’ as Sheehy would refer to really have a say, and they really have a stake in them—is all in pursuit of making it a better place.” their training.” As a teacher in the Acting department, Bundy has always insisted that students become invested in the work. “He doesn’t tolerate reserve in the classroom,” said Georgia Petersen ’26, who has been his teaching Bundy’s administrative goals spring from his ideas assistant multiple times. “He encourages people to be about the theater itself. Discussing the value of those totally ecstatic about their work, and he responds to student feedback sessions, he said, “The ability to their energy with total attention. His attention makes truly receive [criticism] is related to artistry in so many ways. As an actor, if you’re critiquing your scene people feel like their choices really matter.” And just as he focuses on them, he wants his acting partner while you’re on the floor with them, you’re students to focus on the moment. In one class, simply not in the scene with them. Similarly, a creative Francisco Morandi Zerpa ’26 was working on a scene team that isn’t tracking how the audience responds to from Hamlet, and James saw he was holding back. elements of the storytelling runs the risk of losing the audience. To that end, I owe it to every member of “I’ll never forget him looking me in the eyes and saying, ‘The bus of impulse just passed you by,’” Zerpa said. the community not to put my fears or sensitivities “Because then the question is, ‘Well, why did you miss ahead of the advancement of the mission.”

The Artistic Advocate

26 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

Deans James Bundy, Robert Brustein ’51, MAH ’66, and Stan Wojewodski, Jr. at Yale Rep’s 50th Anniversary celebration.

that bus of impulse?’ Because you are doubting that your impulse is sufficient. And that blinds you. It makes you miss what’s happening right in front of you. And that’s all James asks us to do. To be attentive to what is happening in front of us.” Bundy developed this sensibility alongside Tofflemire, who taught vocal performance in the acting department for over a decade. “Anne met us all as true individuals, with unique, often complex, relationships to singing,” said Olivia Cygan ’23. “She was concerned first with our integrity as actors, with storytelling as the engine for technique. And you better believe that if she was asking us to open up some new vocal space with a wacky cartoon voice, she was doing it, too.” This all-in spirit was reflected in Tofflemire’s decision to resurrect the “senior sing-off,” a tradition where the acting department serenades third-year performers just before they graduate. Gestures like these are not only enjoyable, but also instructive on how to build a rich life as a professional artist. Almost a decade out of school, Juliana Canfield ’17, YC ’14 is still absorbing the lessons. “James said in a Shakespeare class that every person, and therefore every character, has a sense of humor,” she told me. “And I thought that was such an important thing,

such an important little nugget, which I’ve carried in every job that I do. If you’re approaching a character without humor, then you’re approaching them without humanity.”

The Ongoing Advocate Speaking of seeing a person’s humanity: Once someone is connected to the Rep or School, Bundy often takes a yearslong interest in their artistic development. That’s evident in the number of alums who work at the Rep or teach at DGSD. It’s evident in all the shows he attends. It’s also evident in his knack for following people’s trajectories. Personally, I was amazed when in 2021 after I got a new job, James congratulated me with a handwritten note. How had he heard the news? I imagined him in his office, looking at a ticker tape readout of alumni updates. Perez, who is now the program director at the University of San Diego’s graduate theater program, told me Bundy’s support solidified his own career as an educator. “I remember James was the one who called me when this job opened up, and he talked me into applying for it,” he said. “He’s really had his finger on the pulse of my career.”

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joan marcus

Yet for all his enthusiasm as a booster and mentor, Bundy is not a puppeteer. Once he’s identified an opportunity for someone, he prefers to step back and let them navigate it. “He really does place trust in people.” Sheehy said. “He sets people up and allows them to do their job.” That trust guided the Binger Center for New Theatre, the Rep’s commissioning and development program founded in 2008. (It was permanently endowed in 2012.) Though Bundy has been intimately involved with the Center’s support of new work, he’s also empowered his colleagues to oversee it as they see fit. “He just had so much trust in my vision and experience, and he encouraged me to dream,” said Jennifer Kiger (Faculty), who was the Rep’s Director of New Play Programs when the Binger Center was founded. During her 18 years at Yale Rep, the Center mounted dozens of projects. It also enacted artistforward policies like paying commissioned writers additional money for the time they spent in workshops and increasing royalty compensation. “It’s about really looking at the career of an artist holistically,” Kiger said. She added that the Center’s innovations were largely possible because James encouraged everyone to think bigger and do more. “That was one of the most vital artistic collaborations I ever had,” she said.

Rebekah Brockman and Felicity Jones Latta in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia at Yale Repertory Theatre (2014), directed by James.

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The Community Member Those collaborations often turn into friendships. Rolin Jones ’04 was a second-year playwriting student in 2002, when Bundy was the new guy. They worked together when James produced his shows The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow and These Paper Bullets!, leading to a lasting bond. “I started walking the earth thinking, ‘What would James do here?’” Jones told me. “There was a sense of agape—you know, unconditional love for the students and for the faculty. He seemed to me to be this example that I hadn’t had in my life in a long time.” But that’s not to suggest James Bundy is a rigid paragon of lofty ideals. “I’ve always experienced him as a guy who wanted to sit on a stoop, have a beer, and watch a baseball game,” Jones said. And indeed, Bundy is quite happy to goof around. He’s been especially enthusiastic about the pranks that people play on him after Rep shows close. “All the pranks were funny as hell, from my perspective,” he told me. He was especially impressed by what happened in 2004, when a production of King Lear featured an onstage sculpture of a giant Olmec head. Once the head was struck, it was meticulously rebuilt in Bundy’s office. “There was a footlong pink tongue added, sticking

out at anyone who stood in front of it,” he recalled. “My reaction was to seek out Neil Mulligan ’01 (Faculty) to figure out how to get the set piece out of my office—without realizing that he was the ringleader of the installation.” Upon further consideration, he added, “The plexiglass Richard II coffin that was hung from pick points atop the UT, so that it occupied my parking space about three feet off the ground, was also an impressive rigging achievement.” There again is a reminder of how Bundy spent his time at Yale. As he’s spearheaded seismic change and secured the legacy of both the School and the Rep, he’s also enjoyed the jokes. He’s savored the nights at the theater and the dinners at home. He’s permanently affected this community— not by hovering above it like an emperor or a priest, but by living within it as an artist and a friend. James, Lupita Nyong’o ’12, and John B. Beinecke YC ’69

Students, faculty, and staff at the 2025–26 orientation each holding an image of James.

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Dramaturg in the DGSD Archives

defining studios

Reading A People by Catherine Sheehy ’92, DFA ’99 (Faculty)

30 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

Since a little before the pandemic, at James Bundy’s ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware

Dean) invitation, I have been working on a volume I sometimes humorously think of as “The Autobiography of DGSD by Catherine Sheehy” (though I suspect in taking on this story that is only partly mine, I have experienced far more crippling self-doubt than Gertrude Stein ever did while immortalizing Alice B. Toklas). Who am I to write the hundred-year history of this famous institution?

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32 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

“ An anonymous donor has given Yale one million dollars to establish new department of Dramatic Art in School Fine Arts, including theatre building…” Well, for more than a third of that century I have been here. I have been here as a student, a faculty member, a program chair. I have been here under three of the five deans in the School’s history, under two of its three names, through the retirement of at least one chair in every program, and through the rise and reorganization of entire disciplines. And perhaps most germane to this undertaking, I am a dramaturg, trained by this program to research, to write, to discern and read subtext, tone, and pattern… in short, to analyze circumstances, given and arising, as products of deliberate human action. As every student of theater knows, human nature has changed very little, if at all, over the last couple of millennia. Oh, tastes and proclivities change. Medea’s bloody filicide morphs into Hedda’s far tidier arson, but the vengeful impulses of these two misapprehended women rhyme; witness the weight of their choices on an audience. It is remarkably, even startlingly, similar. An ear for those rhymes, an instinct for connections or, perhaps even more importantly, for connections lost to time or erasure, an allusive intellect and well-ordered imagination are in every dramaturg’s DNA. And all contribute to our strength in an archive. As a result of time spent with dramatic texts on the page or in the rehearsal hall, dramaturgs may have an advantage over other academics when it comes to reanimating the past, putting flesh on the bones of letters, memos, and other scraps. These items are not just documents, they are scenes complete with actors, setting, costumes, lights, and lines. In this way, a four-word telegram—“am glad to consent”—sent collect on November 20, 1924, at 12:55 p.m. to Yale’s President James Rowland Angell by Yale Corporation member, Supreme Court Chief Justice and former President of the United States, William Howard Taft YC 1878, becomes more than just a simple vote in favor of establishing drama as a field of study at Yale; particularly when the very next piece of paper in the file is a telegram from Corporation

member and Chairman of Merchants National Bank of Boston, Alfred L. Ripley YC 1878, sent just two hours earlier at 10:22 a.m., offering only grudging support: “am not enthusiastic about the whole plan but consent to advance announcement.” To make matters worse for the embryonic project, Ripley’s telegram is followed by the letter he sent the next day to Angell expanding on his objection, “I own frankly that I have no special interest in dramatic art. I cannot, therefore, escape the feeling that in establishing a new department we are adding weight to the criticism that the old no longer interests us; that the side-shows are more important than the main tent.” The circus metaphor is a succinct container for Ripley’s contempt and justifies the nervous urgency Angell had evinced in a “day letter” he sent to these worthies on November 19: “An anonymous donor has given Yale one million dollars to establish new department of Dramatic Art in School Fine Arts, including theatre building…. We wish to appoint Professor Baker of Harvard to organize work. He will accept. Conditions at Harvard make it urgent we should be able to announce his appointment Monday next in order to avoid serious embarrassment for him. Am communicating with all members of Corporation to ask unanimous consent to such announcement in advance of regular protocol. Please wire collect your

Collage (clockwise from top left): Pamela C. Jordan; George Pierce Baker; The Cherry Orchard (1993); photo of Earle R. Gister, Stan Wojewodski Jr., Vicki Nolan, Mark Bly, Ben Mordecai; Gordon Rogoff; various poster art; Acting class of 1987; telegram from former President Taft; cast and creative team of Fences; early students of Department of Drama.

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Brustein sails the Drama School out of the doldrums in which Canfield had becalmed it and right into the maelstrom of the mid-1960s personal attitude. Entire matter still confidential. Signed JRA.” The portly Taft, the owlish Angell, the dyspeptic Ripley, and the fussy Baker are there on cue. The anonymized donor, Edward S. Harkness YC 1897, though publicity phobic and refusing to take his curtain call, still plays a part as big as Miss Julie’s father or Godot himself in this tense paper drama circumscribed by these four century-old documents tucked away in a manilla folder in a gray box in Yale’s vast collection. I have begun to see those boxes in my dreams. For the past few years, even as I sat (masked and unmasked) in the well-appointed Manuscripts and Archives reading room of Special Collections at Sterling Memorial Library, I was often simultaneously wor(l)ds away, time-traveling to spy on the occasionally still-living, but more often long-dead, figurative and literal architects of DGSD’s present. (The tussle over placement and design of the University Theatre is itself a three-act melodrama worthy of Boucicault.) Sifting through correspondence, meeting minutes, receipts, blueprints, greeting cards, budgets, newspaper clippings, and magazine articles, I have come to know many of the featured players through their handwriting, their diction, their public and their private personas. Like all of us, they are different people before different audiences, or before the same audience in a different circumstance. I have gotten to know George Pierce Baker (Former Faculty) better perhaps than if I were one of his students. While most of his correspondence is typed, the occasional note handwritten for confidentiality or convenience reveals a legible if slightly idiosyncratic cursive. His manner meets each situation: coffee-klatch gossip with theater friends and favorite former protégés (there is no need for the feminizing extra “e” here; they are all men) like Philip Barry YC 1919 and Eugene O’Neill; dead certainty with his faculty, students, or any playwright or producer seeking his opinion; canny deference with President Angell; gratitude tinged with just a hint of unmet need with his ally on the Yale Corporation, Samuel H. Fisher YC 1889, who was also Harkness’s personal lawyer. Baker’s canceled passport is in the archive. In it he looks every inch a professor: unsmiling, with thinning hair neatly combed, wearing pince-nez from which

34 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

dangles a black ribbon looped around his neck. There is also a photo of the portrait that Deane Keller YC 1923, ART 1925, MAH ’48 painted of him and a picture from his last day of teaching surrounded by students; still, whenever I see him in my mind’s eye, he is played by 1930s character actor Grant Mitchell. He does look a bit like Baker, but it is more likely I ‘cast’ him as the chairman because Mitchell plays the beleaguered foil to Edgar Montillion “Monty” Woolley’s YC 1911 Sheridan Whiteside in the 1941 film of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s The Man Who Came to Dinner. When Woolley, who was the ambitious “coach” of the Yale Dramat in 1925, was given no place in Baker’s new venture, he became an absolute thorn in the Harvard transplant’s side, instigating a letter-writing campaign and outraged editorials in school and national publications until an exasperated university administration managed to frustrate him into resigning. Fortunately, I was able to persuade Monty Woolley to play himself in my little theater. Personalities like those of the second chairman of the new department, urbane British scholar Allardyce Nicoll (Former Faculty), and ur-Dean F. Curtis Canfield, the safe pair of hands to which an unimaginative Yale administration entrusted the new professional school in 1955, were incredibly even keel. Nicoll’s is the most elegant but most infinitesimal hand I have ever strained to read; he used it to create policies that largely hewed closely to Baker’s original vision for which he was courted and chosen. Curt Canfield’s correspondence is humble and affable. An excruciatingly careful steward of every nickel and dime the greater institution reluctantly grants him, he is on such good terms with A. Whitney Griswold YC 1929 that he nearly convinces the Yale President to do a “George Spelvin” appearance one night in November 1960 as the Porter in Macbeth. But the only main player in our dramatis personae really giving George Pierce Baker a run for his money in the “infinite variety” sweepstakes is Robert Brustein ’51, MAH ’68 (Former Dean). Tapped by Yale President Kingman Brewster, Jr. YC ’41, MAH ’60, D.Litt ’77, after a disgruntled contingent of students demanded an audience to express their incandescent disappointment with the status quo under Canfield, Brustein, firebrand critic of The New Republic and Columbia professor

Lloyd Richards MAH ’79 (Former Dean)

who left the Department of Drama as a disaffected student, arrived at Yale with a megaphone and a mandate for change. In the archive as in life, Bob Brustein contains multitudes. By turns optimistic and aggrieved, forthright and Machiavellian, eloquent and earthy, with starry friends who make cameo appearances (Philip Roth’s suggestion to Bob for stress relief is…well…unsurprisingly practical in a very Rothian vernacular.), Brustein is always extremely readable. As he had in the life of the School, in the record, Brustein sails the Drama School out of the doldrums in which Canfield had becalmed it and right into the maelstrom of the mid-1960s. In his first year, four Drama School students were arrested and ordered to stand trial for desecrating the flag in a performance in New York of Megan Terry’s Keep Tightly Clothed in a Cool Dry Place. An inability to keep tightly clothed was the headline of the Yale Rep tenure of the Living Theatre in September of 1968. Police got involved. That year, too, the Black Drama School students presented a petition for more Black writing and representation that fell largely on hard-ofhearing, if not deaf, ears. By 1972, they had sent Brewster a telegram saying they had begun a boycott. One of the new dean’s first acts was to send for the mandatory retirement ages of everyone on faculty, many of whom had been there for decades and some since Baker’s time. When tenure precluded his turning over personnel quickly enough, Bob sought money from the administration to overhire, which they granted him. Jerzy Kosinski, Robert Penn Warren MAH ’52, D.Litt ’60, Stella Adler, Joe Papp popped as Connie Welch, Frank Poole Bevan ’31, and Lemist “Bun” Esler ’29 (all, Former Faculty) took their bows. Certainly, Robert Brustein’s biggest coup was persuading the University to use its major ask of the

Ford Foundation to help create Yale Rep. Robert Brustein thus became the first to sport the new title, Dean/ Artistic Director. Yet despite being given his heart’s desire, a repertory theater in which to put all his theories—and his friends— to work, Bob’s old New Havenschmerz returned almost immediately as is evident in a letter to a friend in August of 1967, just a year into his tenure: “We had a dreary year in New Haven—the work was exciting but the town is really dismal. Just came back from Cambridge where I lectured some Harvard students—now there is a town. I have a dream that someday we might move the whole shebang some place where people are human, where men and women don’t divide into different rooms after dinner, and where a four-letter word doesn’t bring the whole town about your ears. Maybe some day.” O, his prophetic soul, for that is exactly what he would do 11 years later when new president of Yale, A. Bartlett Giamatti YC ’60, GRAD ’64, LHDH ’86, declined to offer Brustein the contract extension he sought, and the American Repertory Theater was born in Cambridge. An open search that included the novelty of solicited student nominations yielded the first theater professional hired to head this professional theater school, Lloyd Richards MAH ’79 (Former Dean). The chairmen and deans before him had all been academics first, but Richards was a man of the theater with a proven record as a director and administrator, because he was at the time the head of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, where he would cement a collaboration with August Wilson that changed the fortunes of the O’Neill, Yale Rep, the Drama School, and, not to put too fine a point on it, the history of American theater. During Lloyd’s tenure, however, the archive begins rapidly to change. Until under Stan Wojewodski, Jr.’s MAH ’92 (Former Dean), who arrived from Baltimore Center Stage when I was a third-year in 1991–92, and continuing with the School’s longest-tenured leader, James Bundy, who will conclude a 24-year term on June 30, 2026, the archive sometimes all but vanishes into the Ethernet.

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Gone are the carbons, telegrams, and stamped envelopes; the paper trail thins. Fortunately, at about that point I often found myself in (or more properly just outside) the room where it happened…whatever it was…because my work-study for three years was as administrative support in the office shared by Ellen McNally, first Lloyd’s and then Stan’s administrative assistant, and Joyce Josephy, who had the same job for Associate Dean and Chair of Acting Earle R. Gister. I took over for Joyce every day at 4 o’clock when she left for her second job at Long Wharf Theatre’s box office. There I sat at her desk covered in photos, framed letters, and mementos of the students whom she loved and who loved her, answering phones, doing light typing and filing, little knowing I would meet myself 30 years later in an even lighter grey box. Soon Ellen McNally gave way to Gerri Lewis (yep), then Meg Esposito, as Stan refocused decanal energy and attention from the Rep to the School, trimming YRT down and funneling the savings into opportunities for more fully realized student productions. He began the Rep’s associate artist program and the School’s connection with the Dwight/Edgewood Project. Reasoning it would be beneficial to provide the actors with the experience of a sustained run, he presented, and often directed, the third-year acting class as a company in one of the Yale Rep slots starting in 1992-93 with his Hamlet and concluding in his last year with Jean Randich ’94 directing Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money. Then James, who just seven years before had been Stan’s student, took over in 2002–2003. He hired as his administrative assistant Josie Brown, who retired

36 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

last year in favor of Grace O’Brien ’04, while he began a balancing act to steady the pendular swings between those two sometimes clashing mantles: dean and artistic director. James returned the focus of the Rep to new writing thanks to a robust commissioning program that with help of the Robina Foundation has become the Binger Center for New Theatre. And at the School, he implemented a 5-year plan that drastically reduced student indebtedness, initiated multi-year contracts and research funding for faculty, and set about wooing an often disaffected alumni base. He made the School tuition-free and rechristened it with the gift from the David Geffen Foundation. He shepherded the School through the Covid crisis and has piloted ongoing reflection and action around institutional and personal accountability by implementing anti-racist and anti-oppressive work. Oh yes, and then there is what may well be James’s signature achievement: the new Dramatic Arts Building. Begun as a promise by Yale’s administration to every leader of the department or School of Drama since George Pierce Baker found himself cramped for room just two years after the University Theatre was finished, the edifice has dwelt in the archives long before site preparation began this year. It exists as memos, blueprints, renderings, feasibility studies and the like, all precisely and presciently preserved. It is no wonder, then, that I have been thinking about how beholden I am not just to those administrative assistants, librarians, and registrars, whom I have known but to all the record keepers of the last 100 years. I have now struck up a passing but warm acquaintance with their long-gone predecessors like Barbara G. Latin and Dorothy Newcombe and

Anne Ferring who exist in the archives almost exclusively as initials on the correspondence they typed, or in the occasional request to meet with the university president or a student they conveyed, or the canny interference they concocted to spare their bosses such meetings, or a written promise to forward the chairman or dean’s mail to the Vineyard (Brustein) or the New Hampshire farm (Baker) or the Amherst homestead (Canfield). Sometimes, when the nature of the correspondence is particularly angry or misogynist or racist (it’s all in there), I look for the initials at the bottom of a letter and imagine these women taking that dictation or typing from scribbled drafts. Did they roll their eyes? Or did it roll right off their backs? I can’t know. But I do know that every time a former student wrote to Mabel Hastings, the general secretary of the

James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean)

Department for many years and a sort of de facto registrar, (a precursor to Maria Leveton herself a precursor to pinch-hitter Joan Channick ’89 (Faculty) and now Registrar, Ariel Yan) to ask for some administrative favor: transcripts, letters of recommendation, advice from the chairman or placement help, her response was always efficient and warmly personable, asking after them and their families. In the archive I have found proof of my decadeslong assertion that there is something immutable at the heart of this project begun a century ago. There is a leap of welcome that accompanies each new encounter. I recognize librarians Erin Carney and Lindsay King and Pamela C. Jordan though they could not be more different from one another, in Isabel Wilder 1928 and Virginia Dean, early librarians of the Department. I recognize Ed Jooss and Jake “the Snake” Thompson in Henry “Pop” Griswold, the first doorkeeper, custodian, and security man who was hit and killed by a streetcar leaving the theater one late night in 1943 after almost 20 years on the job. There he is smiling in a photo in one of those grey boxes wearing a suit and flat cap with a cigar in his mouth. I recognize something of myself, my students, my teachers, my colleagues, and my friends in every piece of paper I’ve come across. This project has reaffirmed for me that the ethos of any institution is truly created and sustained by all the people who comprise it. Everyone who has been a part of this place has left at least a shimmer in the archives. We are all in there somewhere, and it’s been my happy, if daunting, task to tell our story. Oh, for a dram of Gertrude’s self-confidence!

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Ethan Heard ’13, Baize Buzan ’17, Benjamin Anderson ’18

Julie Fain Lawrence-Edsell ’93, Drew Richardson ’93, Reg Rogers ’93, Claudia Feldstein ’91

Kayodè Soyemi ’23, Malachi Beasley ’23

Claudia Wilsch Case ’01, DFA ’07, Pun Bandhu ’01, Alexander Dodge ’99

James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean), Alan Hendrickson ’83 (Faculty)

Nancy Yao SOM ’99 (Assistant Dean), Deborah S. Berman (Staff), Carla L. Jackson ’99 (Assistant Dean), James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean), Florie Seery (Associate Dean)

El Colectivo

FOLKS

38 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

photographs this page by samuel stuart

Events new york alumni party 2025

Events los angeles alumni party 2026

Wesley Fata (Former Faculty) and James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean)

Stephen Godchaux ’93 and Deborah S. Berman (Staff)

Abby Evans ’87, Laura Zucker ’75, Meredith Freeman ’88, Lori Robishaw ’88

Rebecca Kate Epstein ’09, Kate McConnell ’05, Cliff Warner ’87, Greg Copeland ’04

Roger G. Smith ’83, Gil Kofman ’90, Fred Melamed ’81, Carole Cartwright

James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean), Meghan Pressman ’10, SOM ’10, Snehal Desai ’12, Florie Seery (Associate Dean)

Jeffrey Herrmann ’99, Carla Jackson ’99 (Assistant Dean)

Seamus Mulcahy ’12, Brett Dalton ’11, Luke Harlan ’16

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Art of Giving Honoring the Legacy of Liz Diamond “The year I qualified for Medicare was one of the best years of my life—in large part because of Liz Diamond (Faculty),” said Sonja Berggren ’13 (Special Research Fellow), a former corporate lawyer, member of the DGSD Board of Advisors, and founder of Panndora Productions, her Long Beach–based theater company. What Sonja couldn’t imagine was that she would enroll as a Special Research Fellow in Directing at the School, and that this leap would ignite a decadelong creative partnership and friendship with Liz. During her time as Liz’s student, Sonja developed her own artistry inspired by curiosity, imagination, and an unwavering belief in the global artistic community, cementing a bond between the two women. In 2014, motivated to help expand Liz’s vision, Sonja and her husband, Patrick Seaver YC ’72, began providing funding for international travel for directing students, launching the “Berggren Adventures.” This initiative allows students to

(left to right) Patrick Seaver YC ’72, Liz Diamond (Faculty), Daniella Topol, Kevin Hourigan ’17, Sonja Berggren ’13 (Special Research Fellow), Annie Middleton ’16

attend major festivals around the world, immersing themselves in international theater. When Sonja and Patrick learned that Liz was retiring after more than three decades in the Directing program, they knew they wanted to honor her legacy. This year, they established the Elizabeth Diamond Scholarship, which will support DGSD students for generations. “After my Fellowship, my bond with Liz deepened, as we conspired and collaborated to enhance opportunities for directing students,” Sonja reflected. “This scholarship will honor Liz and her legacy as a gifted teacher and mentor to all who cross her path.”

Paul Walsh and Stephen Strawbridge Scholarships Sallie A. Baldwin has generously established two new scholarships honoring Paul Walsh (Faculty) and Stephen Strawbridge ’83 (Faculty). Both scholarships extend the influence of two remarkable teachers whose work shaped generations of DGSD students. Walsh, who retired this year after 17 years on the faculty, is celebrated for his teaching, scholarship, and unwavering commitment to his students. His legendary Drama 6 lectures and mentorship across the Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism program have left an enduring imprint on the School’s academic and artistic life. A gifted translator whose work on Ibsen has been seen at the Yale Rep in three productions, Paul taught generations of translators as well.

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Strawbridge, who retired last year after more than three decades at the School, has long been a pillar of the Lighting Design program and defining artistic voice at Yale Repertory Theatre. He served as co-chair of the Design program with Ming Cho Lee DFAH ’20 (Professor Emeritus) starting in 1996, and then with Michael Yeargan ’73 (Faculty) in 2012 for another nine years. His extraordinary body of work and collaborative, generous teaching style influenced countless designers working throughout the field today. Baldwin’s gift to fund these scholarships continues the legacy of her late husband, Foster Bam YC ’50, LLB ’53, who so generously supported the School for many years.

Art of Giving Empowering Global Learning Inspired by a conversation with James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean), Brian Ong YC ’06 established the Ong International Travel Fellowship Fund at DGSD. This new resource provides awards to first- and second-year students, making meaningful summer travel abroad possible. For Ong, a successful entrepreneur, international travel is a vital lens through which to understand the world. He is dedicated to creating opportunities at DGSD that broaden perspectives and cultivate crosscultural awareness. Through this fellowship, he hopes students will bring their theatrical work and

Brian Ong YC ’06 and family in Florence, Italy.

artistic vision to global audiences, strengthening cultural exchange and sparking conversations that deepen international connection. In turn, students will be able to do research and experience productions performed in other countries. During its inaugural year, eleven fellowships have been awarded across six disciplines. Students will travel to four continents—Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America in the summer of 2026. Some fellows will study with established theater companies, while others will carry out archival research, examine regional costumes and textiles, attend festivals, or engage with indigenous and local community theater practices. Ong’s commitment to the arts and learning is longstanding. During his time at Yale, he double majored in economics and international studies while maintaining a strong passion for music and building close friendships with drama students. Today, he continues to champion artistic expression, encouraging this same love in his five children and witnessing its transformative effect on their lives. “I had the chance to travel abroad while I was in college, and these experiences shaped my perspectives and helped me develop as a global citizen,” said Ong. “I am glad to be able to provide similar opportunities to DGSD students while they are at Yale.” Thanks to Ong’s generosity, students at the School will expand their artistry, sharpen their perspectives, and gain a richer understanding of the world.

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In Memoriam Mark Brokaw Mark Brokaw ’86, an award-winning director who championed the work of playwrights including Paula Vogel D.Litt. ’20 (Former Faculty), Kenneth Lonergan, and Nicky Silver, died on June 29, 2025. He was 66. In addition to his husband, Andrew Farber, Mark is survived by four siblings and many nieces and nephews. Born and raised in rural Illinois, Brokaw received a BA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1980 and an MFA from the School of Drama in 1986. One of his first productions was The Good Times Are Killing Me by Linda Barry at Second Stage Theater, followed by a long list of New York premieres: Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive, which earned Brokaw Drama Desk, Obie, and Lucille Lortel awards, Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth, Silver’s The Lyons, and The Dying Gaul by Craig Lucas. Brokaw’s Broadway credits include Heisenberg, After Miss Julie, The Constant Wife, Reckless, and Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. In 2007 he directed the film Spinning into Butter starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Beau Bridges, and Miranda Richardson. He was for nine years the artistic director of the Yale Institute for Music Theater. Evan Yionoulis ’85, YC ’82 (Former Faculty) first met Brokaw 40 years ago at DGSD. She remembers her colleague and dear friend: “I met Mark Brokaw in front of the Cabaret building on one of his first days on campus; I was a year ahead of him in the Directing program. I immediately felt a connection to this Illinois farm boy with his love of literature, warm smile, and dry sense of humor. By the time we walked over to the Beinecke tour, I knew we would be great friends and colleagues. We, of course, spent time together in directing seminar, and I admired his work on projects, but we also collaborated as he shared his acting prowess, notably playing Og, the obedient son of a flamboyant evangelist, in Dick Beebe’s ’85 Heavenzapoppin’ and employing his lovely singing voice in a musical revue called U.S. Oh! that I directed at the Summer Cabaret. After graduation, we taught high schoolers together in Yale’s summer programs for more than a decade, lugging our fans from the city to the unairconditioned sublets we shared. Over dinner at Kavanagh’s (later Sullivan’s, now Atelier Florian), we’d test out character 42 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

courtesy of evan yionoulis ’85, yc ’82 (former faculty)

director

Evan Yionoulis ’85, YC ’82 (Former Faculty) and Mark Brokaw ’86

objectives for the scenes we’d be teaching in our respective classes that evening and then return to share our pedagogical triumphs and missteps over scotch and stale popcorn later that night. We co-taught a week-long directing course for teachers and community theater directors and tried out our lessons on each other into the wee hours of the morning until we felt confident that we knew what we were doing. Mark was generous, kind, beloved. His gifts were evident when he was at Yale, and his professional success was a natural extension of his time in school. A director who appreciated and understood actors and whom writers entrusted with their plays, he championed the work of others, including through leading the Yale Institute for Music Theatre and his mentorship of many Broadway associates who now have vital careers of their own. This fall, I had the honor to present Mark posthumously with the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society’s President’s Award for extraordinary service to the union, on whose executive board he served for more than 20 years, including two terms as vice president. Mark was also president of the SDC Foundation from 2020 to 2024 where he extended his advocacy for directors and choreographers nationally and across their careers. All those whose lives Mark touched professionally and personally miss him dearly.”

In Memoriam John Conklin

designer and teacher by Susan Hilferty ’80

courtesy of susan hilferty ’80

High up on the back wall of the Glimmerglass Opera theater in Cooperstown, New York, sits a simple red box—made with love—holding the ashes of John Conklin ’66, YC ’59. John died on June 24, 2025, while the four operas he was designing were in technical rehearsals. Two years earlier, he had committed to designing the entire season celebrating Glimmerglass’s 50th anniversary, where he had worked in many capacities over the years. Little did any of us know that it would become a celebration of John himself: extraordinary designer, teacher, colleague, and friend.

cabinet of curiosities—a world of books lining every wall and closet, exploring art, opera, and anything that might spark his imagination. Surfaces overflowed with model pieces, art supplies, and mementos. File cabinets held yellow folders of handwritten notes, a physical history of his work. John lived for his work so in the space there are very few personal effects, until you look closely: a Robert Wilson snow elevation signed to John; portraits of his grandparents; awards tucked among models; a poster for Lolita—both opera and design by John; sketches of him by students; even a playful imp from a Hartford Stage design climbing a bookcase. The greatest gift during his last month was his openness to visits from friends—titans of the theater such as JoAnne Akalaitis, Mark Lamos (Faculty), Irene Lewis ’66, and Santo Loquasto ’72, who filled hours with brilliant stories that reveal the heartbeat of American theater and opera of the late 20th and early 21st century. Former students turned leading designers and educators came in droves including Christine Jones, Constance Hoffman, Mimi Lien YC ’79, among others. Many of us say we want to die at our drafting table, and John ostensibly did. The day before he died, he said: “I want ruhe.” I thought he meant a ruler, but no. “Ruhe means peace in German,” he said. “You don’t speak German,” I responded. “How do you know the word?” “Götterdämmerung, of course,” he shrugged, Wagner’s opera which he considered one of the great pieces of art. And then he said “ruhe” again, so that I knew he was looking for peace. That night, after watching a technical rehearsal of the new opera Mango Street on an unsatisfying Zoom session, I closed his computer and John said, “I’m done.” He hoped to live for two more weeks to see the season open, but he died the following morning. But in spirit he is still with us! He was there on opening night in his beautiful red box—made by his beloved Glimmerglass Opera artisans—high up on the back wall, matching the red color he had chosen for the walls of the opera house for the season…watching over the world that he loves so much.

John and I were close for many years, but in 2024 he invited me to help him navigate what turned out to be his final year—and what a journey it was! Though physically weakened, John remained utterly committed to this act of making theater, as he had all his life. He inspired colleagues who saw that, despite his frailty, he never wavered. He was so completely passionate about every detail and so completely willing to start every day and every rehearsal with questioning, examining, probing, blowing up, and piecing back together. He was so completely JOHN. Few have seen the wonders of John’s Upper West Side apartment overlooking incredible views of the Hudson River, where he lived since the 80s. It was a

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In Memoriam Peggy Cowles actor and teacher

Peggy Cowles ’65, an actor and drama teacher, passed away on September 18, 2025. She was 87. Peggy was born and raised in Spokane, Washington, attended Vassar College, and graduated from Spokane’s Whitworth College with a degree in drama in 1959. She studied acting at Stanford University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and received her MFA from the School of Drama in 1965. That same year, Peggy married playwright and fellow drama teacher Daniel Stein ’64, DFA ’67. He would write one of Peggy’s most critically acclaimed one-woman shows, An Independent Woman, the story of women’s rights activist and abolitionist Anna Dickinson. Peggy was a member of the DGSD board of advisors from 2003– 2012. Peggy performed at Long Wharf Theatre, Milwaukee Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Williamstown Theatre Festival, among other regional theaters. She played Maggie in Cat on a

Hot Tin Roof, Blanche DuBois opposite Tom Berenger in A Streetcar Named Desire, and Annie in Alan Ayckbourn’s Table Manners. She appeared in the film The All-American Boy with Jon Voight, several award-winning shorts, and made a number of television appearances. While Peggy loved New York City, and maintained an apartment there for many years, her favorite place was a primitive cabin without electricity in Washington state. A dedicated private conservationist, she was active in protecting natural land in the Northwest from development. She is survived by her brother, James P. Cowles; sister, Agnes Cowles Bourne; and many nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her brother, William H. Cowles III, partner, Jerry McDermott, and ex-husband Daniel Stein.

John W. Cunningham

bennett raglin

actor

John W. Cunningham ’59 died on January 6, 2026, at the age of 93 in his beloved Rye, New York home. A Dartmouth undergraduate and U.S. Army veteran, Cunningham leveraged the GI Bill to earn his degree from the School of Drama, where he formed a lifelong with fellow Yaliecareer, Dick Cavett YC ’58. Over bond a remarkable 70-year Cunningham became a stalwart of Broadway, originating roles in iconic productions such as Cabaret, Company, Zorba, 1776, and Six Degrees of Separation, and later gracing stages in Titanic and The Sisters Rosensweig.

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He made his Broadway debut in Hot Spot in 1963 and delivered his final stage performance Off-Broadway in Painting Churches in 2012. In 2006 he returned to Yale in All’s Well That Ends Well at the Rep directed by James Bundy ’95 (Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean) and Mark Rucker ’92. Often portraying stern father figures on screen, Cunningham appeared in Mystic Pizza, Dead Poets Society, and School Ties. His dignified voice brought comic flair to In & Out and Starship Troopers. He is survived by his wife Carolyn, three children, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

In Memoriam

courtesy of national theater of the deaf

Haldun Dormen

David Hays

designer and artistic director David Hays ’56, an award-winning designer and the founding artistic director of the National Theater of the Deaf, died on February 18, 2026. He was 95. During his prolific career, Hays designed sets and lighting for more than 50 Broadway plays, working with some of the theater’s most prominent directors. Among them were Long Day’s Journey Into Night with José Quintero, Tartuffe with Elia Kazan, and Dinner at Eight with Tyrone Guthrie. He was nominated for three Tony Awards. Hays graduated from Harvard in 1952 and went to London on a Fulbright fellowship and worked at the Old Vic Theatre on productions directed by Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Peter Brook. Returning to the U.S., he studied at the School of Drama and completed his MFA at Boston University where he was offered a teaching position. The National Theatre of the Deaf grew out of his work on the Broadway production of The Miracle Worker, based on the story of Helen Keller. Hays recognized an opportunity to create what he saw as an entirely new theatrical experience. The Theatre of the Deaf, he was quick to explain, was not The Theatre for the Deaf. Its productions included both hearing and deaf actors, spoken and signed language. Looking back on his early work, he told Harvard Magazine, “My life as a designer is really of the past. The National Theatre of the Deaf is my passion.” Hays served as its artistic director for 30 years. The Theater was honored with a Special Tony Award in 1977, and Hays was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2014.

actor and director

by Huseyin H. Okvuran YC ’94 Haldun Dormen ’53, an actor, director, writer, and educator, was a transformative figure in modern Turkish theater. He died on January 21, 2026, at the age of 98. While at Yale, Dormen refined his craft and deepened his understanding of theatrical discipline and performance. He often spoke with gratitude of Constance Welch (Former Faculty) who encouraged him to perform despite a disability in his foot, reinforcing his belief that artistic presence transcends physical limitation. Upon returning to Turkey, Dormen became the first Turkish actor to perform professionally after completing formal theater studies abroad. In 1955, he founded the Cep Theatre, the country’s first private theater company, followed by the Dormen Theatre in 1957. Through productions such as Papaz Kaçtı (See How They Run), Şahane Züğürtler (Tovaritch), and Sokak Kızı Irma (Irma la Douce)—the first Western-style musical staged in Turkey—he introduced new genres, staging techniques, and performance standards to Turkish audiences. Beyond directing and acting, Dormen devoted himself to education. He established the Dormen Akademi, shaping future talent guided by the principle, “Whatever you do, do it to the very best of your ability.” Haldun Dormen believed theater to be a living, communal art—demanding discipline, imagination, humor, and heart. His life was chronicled in the documentary Yaparsın Şekerim (“You Can Do It, My Dear”) on Netflix.

ANNUAL MAGAZINE 45

In Memoriam Leslie Epstein

writer and professor

rick friedman

Leslie Epstein ’67, an acclaimed novelist and a highly regarded professor of creative writing, died on May 18, 2025, in Boston. He was 87. Epstein was the author of two dozen works of fiction, among them King of the Jews (1979), named by The New York Times as one of the best books of that year, Pandemonium (1997), Ice Fire Water (1999), and San Remo Drive: A Novel from Memory (2003), a story about a Hollywood family loosely based on his own life. He was also a frequent contributor

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to The Atlantic, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, and The Boston Globe. Epstein was born and raised in Los Angeles. His father, Philip, and his father’s twin brother, Julius, were celebrated Hollywood screenwriters whose films included Arsenic and Old Lace, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and Casablanca, for which they received the 1944 Academy Award. His childhood years were spent among a who’s who of Hollywood celebrities: Elizabeth Taylor, Tony Curtis, and the writer Thomas Mann were frequent guests at his parents’s dinner parties. “Whenever we trick-or-treated,” he told NPR’s Fresh Air in a 2003 interview, “Gregory Peck always came to the door himself. He was very kind. The guy who was never home was the actor Joseph Cotten and we always soaped his windows.” Epstein received a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale College in 1960. He attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and later earned a master’s degree in theater arts from UCLA. In 1967, he received a PhD in playwriting from the School of Drama. Epstein began his teaching career at Queens College in New York. In 1978, he joined the faculty of Boston University, where he would become the director of BU’s creative writing program, a position he held for more than 35 years. Among his students were the award-winning authors Jhumpa Lahiri and Ha Jin. “Leslie had a deep knowledge of art—literary art, but also film, music, painting—and he had a vision of all of these sharing a certain spirit that he communicated as a person and as a teacher,” remembered his BU colleague, poet Robert Pinsky. Leslie Epstein is survived by his wife, Ilene; daughter, Anya; sons Paul and Theo; six grandchildren; and a brother, Ricky.

In Memoriam

Richard Greenberg playwright by Frank Rich Originally published in American Theatre and shared with permission. The first play I saw by Richard Greenberg ’76 was The Bloodletters in 1984 and the last was The Perplexed on the eve of the pandemic. In between came some 30 others, almost all of which could have had the same titles. His work cut to the core of his characters, who never had easy answers for life’s questions but had brilliant retorts to deflect them for as long as they could. In The Bloodletters, a teenage boy in suburban Long Island is imprisoned at home by an incurable ailment—he smells like “an old bathroom” (though it is hoped he might possess “a beautiful soul, like the Elephant Man”). In real life, Rich was known as a shut-in. Among major artists in the New York theater, he may have been the least self-promoting. Though often tagged (including by me) as an urbane wit who diagnosed the id, self-delusions, and social mores of the contemporary upper middle class, in truth his work roamed too far afield in period, setting, and most of all, in hair-trigger emotions to be glibly

segregated in any genre. Rather than explain himself, he just kept writing, leaving behind many plays that are overdue for revival and reappraisal. I might start with Eastern Standard (1988), a work of the AIDS era that was widely undervalued at the time in part because it contained zero agit prop: When a young man who looks like a million bucks cries out “I’m sick!” late in Act Two, that simple exclamation proves enough to light a blow torch illuminating all that is repressed in a world whose hyper-articulate characters are “dancing on the rim of a champagne glass” in the Hamptons. Or maybe The Assembled Parties (2013), in which a sprawling late-20th-century Jewish household on Central Park West is ransacked for its darkest secrets with endless compassion but no sentimentality. Richard Greenberg’s best-known plays, Take Me Out and Three Days of Rain, are themselves illustrative of his range. But fine as they are, they are far from the whole story. He leaves behind a vast canon unified by a voice, at once antic and scabrous and deeply moving, unlike any other. I have nothing but envy for new generations of theatergoers who will have the thrill I had when hearing him for the first time.

ANNUAL MAGAZINE 47

In Memoriam Rosalind “Roz” Heinz

arts administrator by Robert Wildman ’83

When the regional theater movement surged in the late 1960s—long before the internet, social media, email, personal computers, or computerized box offices—the responsibility for generating ticket sales often fell to a single person known simply as the “press director.” Theaters didn’t yet speak in terms like “marketing,” “education,” or “community engagement.” From those early, understaffed crucibles emerged

Roz and her beloved dog, Saskatoon (“Sassy”)

Farewell Listing Lawrence Amick ’49 Mark Auerbach ’75 Mark Brokaw ’86 John S. Clayton ’59, DFA ’60 John Conklin ’66, YC ’59 Peggy Cowles ’65 Andy Davis ’76 William Dawson ’87 Carmen de Lavallade DFAH ’19 Haldun Dormen ’53 Leslie Epstein DFA ’67, YC ’60 William Firestone ’69 Athol Fugard DFAH ’83 Charles F. (OyamO) Gordon ’81

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gifted pioneers like Roz Heinz (Former Faculty/ Staff ). Their tools were typewriters, telephones, pens, and a great deal of wit, common sense, and hustle. Roz began her career at Actors Theatre of Louisville in her hometown. She moved to New Haven in 1973 and “beat the drum” for Long Wharf Theatre until 1980. She began teaching at the School of Drama in 1981 and became the School/Yale Rep press and marketing director in 1982. Her infectious laugh and wicked wit quickly endeared her to colleagues across the organization. At Lloyd Richards’s MAH ’79 (Former Dean) request, her famed red pen even found its way onto early drafts of some of his speeches. In 1986, Roz returned to Louisville to be near her aging parents. That same year, Ben Mordecai (Former Faculty/Staff), managing director of Yale Rep, co-chair of Theater Administration (now Theater Management), and future associate dean, invited me to return to Yale and succeed Roz—one of those thrilling “succeed your mentor” opportunities people usually receive decades later. I was 28. Roz and I kept in touch over the years—our birthdays were two days apart, giving us an annual excuse to reconnect. Every time we spoke, we marveled at the remarkable shared work we’d been lucky enough to be a part of.

Richard Greenberg ’85 David Hays ’56 Rosalind (Roz) Heinz (Staff/Faculty) Malik T. James ’25 Harriet Koch ’62, YC ’56 Mark McCullough ’91 Mary U. McGuire ’61 Stephen Mendillo ’71 Stephen B. Pollock ’76 Benjamin Shecter ’65 Kat Sirico ’08 James Beech Steerman ’62, DFA ’69 Michael R. Waley ’77 George C. White ’61, YC ’57 Marshall Williams ’95 Albert J. Zuckerman ’61, DFA ’62

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In Memoriam Malik James

actor

by Tamilla Woodard ’02 (Faculty) and Grace Zandarski (Faculty) Malik James ’24 passed away suddenly on September 5, 2025. He was 28. “Tender, sensitive, loving, generous, loyal, devoted, powerful, gifted artist, dear friend to his cohort, mischief maker and charm machine… He walked with an easy breezy kindness alongside a deep knowing and vulnerability. His pursuit for excellence was pure and steadfast, inspiring and inspirable… an explosive talent living inside this humble, kind, and profoundly human human-being… a friend to everyone. He brought light and humor and a deep ability to listen and pierce to the heart of whatever he was working on.” These are just some of the ways his friends, his faculty, and co-conspirators in creation talk about our dear Malik James and the time he was with us in this community of artists and learners. He was a gift every day we were in his company, and a reminder when we lost him, of the necessity of being a light in the dark for each other. September 5, 2025, marked a truly profound loss of a potent life force. As Chris Bayes (Faculty) has said, “Malik was a revelation to the room, his wide, open laugh, an astonishment.” We can remember the many times he was genuinely surprised by his own talent and his ever-expanding capacity for tenderness, wonder, and willingness to go far. And yes, he had charm and charisma. They were among his superpowers.

He knew it and wielded it with shameless abandon and delight. Malik wrote in his statement of purpose in his application to the Drama School that he was intensely curious about the human experience. He said he wanted to “assume a career of creativity, rigor and joy [and] lift my brothers and sisters, honor my predecessors, and express my truth.” And indeed, he did that. He brought light to our rooms of learning and creation and to the stages of the Kondoleon Studio with his performances in The Cherry Orchard and The Alley, the Iseman in Measure for Measure, and to Yale Rep in Choir Boy and The Inspector. He pierced our hearts and souls, and his spirit is forever impressed into these walls. We acknowledge Malik’s passing, but it remains too difficult to accept that this gorgeous human being has left us. He is our beloved Malik James, Class of 2024. And we are forever his tribe.

“As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer.” —henry iv, part i, act 4, scene 1

ANNUAL MAGAZINE 49

In Memoriam

Joe Grifasi ’75 and Carmen de Lavallade DFAH ’19 (Former Faculty)

Carmen de Lavallade

artist, performer, teacher

The Seven Deadly Sins, and as a rapturous Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her performance prompted one critic to write, “It would take Carmen de Lavallade DFAH ’19 (Former Faculty), Shakespeare himself to describe Miss de Lavallade!” described by The New York Times as a “performer Her students will never forget her inspiration who defied boundaries of race and age and touched in class. She taught us to embrace our own authentic almost every realm of the performing arts in a movement and to appreciate the unique character career of over six decades,” died on December 29, of our bodies. She said many times that she preferred 2025. She was 94. teaching actors because they questioned movement Carmen’s life before Yale was already legendary and motivation, a thing rarely allowed in the in the dance world, but her creative life was always dance world. Interestingly, Carmen didn’t differentiabout change and challenge. So in 1969, as she recalled: “I receive a telegram from Robert Brustein ’51, ate between students and professionals and often performed with us. In my final year, Carmen apMAH ’66 (Former Dean). An invitation to join his repertory company at Yale. Everything with a purpose. proached me and said she wanted to make a dance together—“something funny and different.” Thus was I travel to Yale, to another life. In New Haven.” born the adagio team of Leo & Lupe. She in black Carmen made the theater her new home—acting, chiffon, me in tails with a pencil moustache. In choreographing, and teaching full time. She worked rehearsals I never worked so hard just trying to keep tirelessly with text, character development, and voice up with her and look like a dancer. We sprung it training. She scored brilliant successes at the Rep, on the audience and the laughs started building, creating roles including Googie Gomez in Terence and building, and as I lifted her off into the wings McNally’s The Tubs, Anna in Brecht/Weill’s by Joe Grifasi ’75

50 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

In Memoriam

courtesy of the metropolitan opera

shouts of “Encore!” filled the theater. She proved a comic genius! This led to a second comic duet we called The Prince and the Butterfly, which we performed at the American Dance Festival on a program with Wesley Fata (Former Faculty) and Martha Clarke. After the show Carmen came smiling into the dressing room saying, “Miss Martha said she loved our piece.” I said, “Who’s Miss Martha?” “Why Martha Graham DFAH ’71 of course.” Can you imagine?! I told Carmen, “That’s it, I’m hanging up my Capezios for good!” So many lives and careers were touched by Carmen. As for her own, she wrote, “When I go back to dancing, the theater has changed me. I’m not sure where one leaves off and the other one begins.” In 2014, Carmen created and performed her solo autobiographical evening, As I Remember It. The show arts administrator played Los Angeles (where she was raised), Jacob’s Pillow (where she danced over 70 years ago), The Herman Krawitz (Former Faculty), longtime Kennedy Center (where she was an honoree in 2017), Assistant General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, and New York City, where she lived. and a former member of the School of Drama faculty, Carmen’s late husband, Geoffrey Holder, would died on March 25, 2025. He was 100. say of friends who had passed that “they went on Krawitz first joined the Met in 1953. He held tour.” On December 29, Carmen “went on tour,” but several administrative posts before rising to the leaves a lot of herself with us. position of Assistant General Manager, reporting to the opera’s legendary leader, Rudolf Bing. One of his primary responsibilities was the planning of the Met’s new home at Lincoln Center. Working closely with the project’s architect, Wallace K. Harrison, he oversaw every detail of the design and construction of what was to become one of the world’s premier opera houses. In 1966 he was recruited by Robert Brustein ’51, MAH ’66 (Former Dean) to join the Drama School’s faculty and founded the Theater Administration (now Theater Management) program, and to develop a core curriculum. He continued to teach at the School until 1979. Krawitz served as Executive Director of American Ballet Theatre, was the Founder and Chairman of New World Records, a label dedicated to the recordings of American composers, and produced a number of cultural programs for television, among them The Nutcracker with Mikhail Baryshnikov (1977) and the Emmy and Peabody Award–winning Baryshnikov on Broadway (1980). Herman Krawitz is survived by his sons, Joshua and David, and their families, and his sister Selma. Carmen de Lavallade DFAH ’19 (Former Faculty) at the He was predeceased by his wife, Rhoda. 40th Kennedy Center Honors ceremony. jeremy smith ’76

Herman Krawitz

ANNUAL MAGAZINE 51

In Memoriam George C. White

George C. White ’61, YC ’57 (Former Faculty), founder of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and a leading figure in American theater for more than four decades, died at his home in Waterford, CT, on Aug. 6, 2025. He was 89. A graduate of Yale College and the School of Drama, White was an accomplished director and producer. He was also an avid sailor, and it was from the waters of the Long Island Sound that he first spotted the abandoned house that he would transform into a home for the O’Neill Theater Center. With the help of Artistic Director Lloyd Richards MAH ’79 (Former Dean), the theater became a leading workshop and proving ground for hundreds of new American plays. Among those with Yale connections were The House of Blue Leaves by John Guare ’63; Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein ’76; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, and The Piano Lesson by August Wilson, D. Litt. ’88; and Nine by Arthur Kopit, Mario Fratti, and Maury Yeston YC ’67. White’s vision and stewardship earned the O’Neill two Tony Awards and a National Medal of Arts. In 2011, White was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. White served on the DGSD faculty from 1978 to 1992. In 2009, former students established the George C. White Prize to honor their beloved teacher. Awarded annually at graduation, it recognizes a student who embodies White’s distinctive qualities— global artistic appreciation, cultural curiosity, respect for creative production management, and collegiality. George C. White is survived by his wife, Betsy; his children, Caleb, George, and Juliette; his brother, Nelson; and 10 grandchildren. Scott D. Richards YC ’82, son of Lloyd Richards fondly remembers the theater titan: “During his 32 years as artistic director of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, before every performance, my father would give a curtain speech. In it, he always reminded us that we were assembled because a man had an idea. That man, of course, was George C. White, who had invited him up to this place he had never heard of to stage a play that had yet to be finished in a theater that hadn’t been built yet. But George had a vision— a vision that became reality in a way that must 52 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

courtesy of white family

producer, arts administrator

certainly have surpassed even his most secret hopes that first summer. George had judged correctly that ‘the theater’ was in a bad way, and that playwrights were in dire need of attention, so he invited a group of theater professionals to Waterford to address that need—and I got to tag along. I watched the workmen pour asphalt into the amphitheater (to this day I associate the smell of new asphalt with the theater), I watched my father direct, and I watched George as he organized the people of Waterford to create a welcoming space for artists from around the world— and I mean from everywhere—among them future Nobel Prize winners Derek Walcott and Wole Soyinka D.Litt. ’80. I remember watching George welcome the FBI agents who showed up to check on our Soviet guest artists (and their KGB handler) during the Reagan administration. There is a photograph that begins to capture the breadth of what George and my father accomplished at the O’Neill. It’s a shot of three playwrights— August Wilson, Lee Blessing, and John Patrick Shanley—sitting next to each other at the top of a bleacher: three brilliant playwrights whom you would

In Memoriam

bob rooy

James B. Steerman professor

courtesy of the emporia gazette

never link stylistically, but who, thanks to George and my father, spent three summers learning from each other. And thanks to George’s continued vision, the O’Neill expanded beyond playwrights to welcome composers, librettists, puppeteers, and cabaret performers as well. George and his wife, Betsy, welcomed us into their family. We—the Richards—lived with George’s brother, Beebe, every summer for what—30 years? My brother Thomas and I grew up playing on the Whites’s beach alongside their children. When Peter Brook came to the O’Neill, I watched George spend an entire day creating a clambake for 100 people. My mind still retains an image of George hopping across white-hot stones in burning boat shoes to pull lobster and clams from piles of steaming seaweed. Descriptor words for George: joy, style, flow, discernment… and he managed the trick of discernment without negativity. He celebrated the positive, and everything else fell away. George saw the world as an abundant place filled with wonderful people, fabulous food and wine, transcendent art—and I believe he acted from the core belief that we would all be happier if more people had access to those wonders.”

James B. Steerman ’62, DFA ’69, a professor emeritus at Vassar College died on July 10, 2025, in New York. He was 88. James was born and raised in Emporia, Kansas, a place he always called home and would return to throughout his life. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Kansas but found himself increasingly drawn to theater. He enrolled at the School of Drama and earned both MFA and DFA degrees. While completing his DFA, Steerman joined the faculty of Vassar. He taught dramatic literature and playwriting, and later film at Vassar for 44 years, retiring in 2011. A dedicated teacher and a skillful administrator, he served as chair of the Drama Department, and after helping to create a separate discipline for Film Studies, chaired both departments. He was also instrumental in the planning and building of Vassar’s Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film, designed by noted architect Cesar Pelli in 2 003, an important addition to the college campus. “Professor Steerman navigated with grace and diplomacy the increasingly distinct disciplines of drama and film,” wrote Vassar president Elizabeth H. Bradley in a letter to the college’s alumni. “He was also sensitive to the balance between training students for a profession and teaching them to think critically about plays and films.” In 2021 Vassar honored its longtime professor by creating the Steerman New Play Series dedicated to giving full stage productions to student-written original short and full-length plays. James Steerman is survived by his wife, Denise, whom he met at Vassar; daughter, Amanda, and her husband, Judson; grandson, Henry; and a sister, Sarah.

Lloyd Richards MAH ’79 (Former Dean) and George C. White ’61, YC ’57 in 1975 at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.

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In Memoriam Albert J. Zuckerman literary agent

Stephen B. Pollock design consultant

Stephen B. Pollock ’76, a distinguished theater consultant, designer, and professor, died on March 13, 2025. He was 73. After graduating from Brown University, Pollock discovered a deep passion for theater design and went on to earn his MFA in Technical Design and Production from the School of Drama. He began his career as a theatrical lighting designer at Yale Rep, Berkshire Theatre Festival, and Virginia Stage Company. He later toured internationally as technical director and lighting designer for Edward Albee’s Albee Directs Albee and worked on New York City Opera’s Barber of Seville tour. In 1985, Pollock joined Auerbach Pollock Friedlander, becoming a leading voice in performing arts facility design. Over four decades, he played a central role in shaping more than 350 venues for universities, civic arts centers, museums, and opera companies nationwide. Pollock also taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the University of Michigan and served as editor for Theatre Design & Technology and Theatre Crafts. He passed away surrounded by his family, including his wife of 50 years, Nancy, and their children, Lia and Jake.

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Albert J. Zuckerman ’61, DFA ’62 (Former Faculty), founder of one of the publishing industry’s leading literary agencies, Writers House, died on March 5, 2026. He was 94. In a career that spanned nearly 50 years, Zuckerman represented a long list of authors whose books topped bestseller lists, among them Ken Follett, Jonathan Franzen, Stephen Hawking, Michael Lewis, and Nora Roberts. Zuckerman received a BA from Princeton and earned both an MFA and DFA from the School of Drama, where he was mentored by playwriting professor John Gassner MAH ’56 (Former Faculty). After graduation, Zuckerman joined the School’s faculty, teaching from 1962 to 1966. His play To Become a Man won the Stanley Drama Award in 1966. He also published two novels and wrote for several television shows. In 1973, Zuckerman formed Writers House with the idea that literary agents should be both creative and business partners for writers. His book, Writing the Blockbuster Novel, became a seminal handbook for aspiring authors. Zuckerman retired from Writers House in 2012, serving as its emeritus chairman until 2020. In 2015, he endowed the Albert Zuckerman Scholarship, an award for DGSD students of playwriting, dramaturgy and dramatic criticism.

Alumni Notes 1960s Simone in Pieces, Janet Burroway’s ’60 ninth novel, was published in November 2025 by University of Wisconsin Press. Her third novel, Eyes Came Out, is part of a reissue of her entire oeuvre by Michael Walmer Publishers. In September 2025, a song cycle based on her poem, Seven Songs for a Dead Son, was performed in Knoxville, TN, with music by composer Philip Wharton. Janet lives in Chicago with her husband, film scholar Peter Ruppert. Her son, Alex Eysselinck, manages one of the London Tube lines. Her three granddaughters, Eleanor, Holly, and Thyra, cover the cultural bases in business, film, and astrophysics. Hugh Fortmiller ’61 retired after 45 years of secondary school directing, teaching, administration, and theater design consulting. The Middlesex School in Concord, MA, named their new workshop theatre the Hugh Fortmiller Theatre in his honor. Students call it “The Fort.”

John Badham ’63. Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images

Michael David ’68

John Badham ’63 was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts and emeritus status at Chapman University.

to Michael David ’68. Michael is president of Dodger Properties, a producing partnership founded in 1979 with Edward Strong ’79, Rocco Landesman DFA ’76, Des McAnuff, Sherman Warner, and Doug Johnson. Currently he is the executive producer of MJ the Musical, which has productions on Broadway, touring nationally, and in London, Melbourne, and Hamburg.

Robert Edward Darling ’63 continues as director emeritus for the Alliance for New Music-Theatre, which he founded with others in Washington, DC in the mid-1990s, building on the work of Wesley Balk and Ben Krywosz’s Composer-Librettist Studio. Robert and his wife, Mary, recently moved to Fayetteville, PA. They love to attend Gettysburg’s Majestic Theater. John Guare ’63 is the first Yale playwright to have a volume of plays published by the Library of America. William Boardman’s ’64 third book, Circling the Drain: Trump’s Assault on America, was published in August 2025 by Yorkland Publishing in Toronto, CA. Estuary, an experimental animation by Warren Bass ’67, won 17 international awards and received official juried selections at 75 film festivals across 39 countries. Ray Klausen ’67 is about to complete his fifth novel in the Duplicity series.

Allen Klein ’62 with Sky Bergman. Photo by Sky Bergman.

Filmmaker Sky Bergman is directing The Jollytologist, a documentary about the life and work of Allen Klein ’62. After making the rounds at film festivals, the film is slated to be shown on PBS in Fall 2026.

Roger Hendricks Simon ’67 starred Off-Broadway in Omar Bakry’s In the Shadow of Her Father at 59E59 Theaters, and in the feature film The Best You Can with Kevin Bacon. The Broadway League’s Lifetime Achievement Award 2024 was awarded

Howard Pflanzer’s ’68 play, Ice, had a reading at Crossways Theatre. Lonnie Carter’s ’69 play, 1781, had its second reading produced by The Tent Theater Company at Playwrights Horizons. It follows the story of Mumbet, the first enslaved person to win her freedom. Susan and Charles Dillingham ’69, YC ’65 live in Pasadena, CA, but have an apartment in NYC where they often entertain DGSD friends. Charles’s latest project is to raise funds to name a scholarship for the founder of the Theater Management Program, Herman Krawitz (Former Faculty). Everett Lunning ’69 appeared as Vyasa and Prince Dushasana in Mahabharata Tales, adapted by Ann Ciccolella at Austin Shakespeare. Presented in the Rollins Theatre at the Long Center for the Performing Arts. The production featured actors, dancers, and musicians from Austin’s South Asian community.

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Alumni Notes businesses. Two grandsons now play in the family vaudeville. Stephen values indelible memories of Robert Brustein ’51, MAH ’66 (Former Dean), and is still buoyed by the loving pinpoint exhortations of Stella Adler (Former Faculty).

1970s Jim Metzner ’69

In the spring of 2025, Jim Metzner ’69 received a surprise package filled with memorabilia which had belonged to his grandfather—photographs, letters, and two spiral notebooks written in a beautiful flowing Yiddish script. This led to the creation of a new play, Rediscovering Poppa, which was performed live onstage at the Rosendale Theatre in upstate NY. An NYC production is planned for March 2026.

Andy Friedlander ’70 is proud to be able to support theater students at Skagit Valley College through the Andrew J. Friedlander Award for Excellence in the Dramatic Art. In the past five years, the scholarship has helped 51 students pursue their education in the arts. This year, two of those students were the first in their families to attend college. On another note, Andy's band, the Prozac Mtn Boys, has decided that 28 years is long enough to provide bluegrass music to Northwestern Washington. At age79, Andy continues playing as a singer/songwriter and has 14 songs registered with ASCAP. William Purves ’71 is going out on the road for events a few times a year with the HGP Creative Group. He enjoys seeing Howard Rogut ’71 when he gets to Florida and Charles Dillingham ’69, YC ’65 in LA and on San Diego theater trips. He, Charles, and Howard are at work on a DGSD Theater Management Scholarship honoring the late Herman Krawitz (Former Faculty).

Don Walker ’69 and Natalie Symons in The People Downstairs at Stageworks Theatre.

In 2020, Stephen Mills’s ’69 first independent feature film, Love Is Not Love, premiered at Cinequest. It went on to screen at 125 festivals and received 170 awards. He is now in final preparation for a second feature, ¡Contesta!, a Spanish language adaptation of Ugo Betti’s Ispezione set in a Mexican safe house. Stephen and his wife, Audrey, are longtime SoCal residents. Both of their sons are there: Wyatt, who paints, and Jordan, who provides digital security for schools and

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After teaching for 46 years and designing some 200 shows, Charles Steckler ’71 returned to his first love— the art studio—where he draws, paints, and, unsurprisingly, builds shadowbox dioramas that reflect the themes and devices of the theater. In the spring of 2025, Charles was invited to create an installation for the miniMoCA518, a miniature art gallery project, organized by the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy. His diorama, A Proscenium of Dreams, or The Misfortunes of Cardboard, is a paper model in the manner of a nineteenth century toy theater, populated with cutout figures photocopied from popular sources. The work is subtitled “a tragi-comic masque in

Stephen Mendillo ’71 with Carol Kane.

scenes and acts of irresistible splendor & fantasy for the amusement of children of all ages, daily on this stage.” Barnet Kellman ’72 writes, “After a yearlong sabbatical and lots of travel, I’m back teaching directing and comedy at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and playing tennis with friends. Sadly, I lost my favorite doubles partner, and we lost a great DGSD alum, Stephen Mendillo ’71, who passed away in September. He was a great actor and wonderful pal. I was lucky enough to have directed him a few times. This fall, John Lee Beatty ’73 returned to the School after 52 years to teach five sessions of drawing and painting for scenic designers. He was the recipient of this year’s Ming Cho Lee Award for Lifetime Achievement, presented by the Henry Hewes Design Awards. John, a student of Ming Cho Lee DFAH ’20 (Professor Emeritus), has designed over 115 Broadway shows and many more Off-Broadway and regional theater productions. Joel Schechter DFA ’73 has been writing columns about the arts and politics for a San Francisco’s newsletter, 48 Hills. James F. Ingalls ’75 continues his work as a lighting designer for opera, ballet, modern dance, symphony concerts, and theater. Some of his recent designs include Job at Writers Theatre in Glencoe, IL; Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming for Justin Peck at the Ballet of the National Opera of Bordeaux; a new version of La Bayadère for Dutch National Ballet; and Perle Noire with Julia Bullock, directed by Peter Sellars at the Adelaide Festival. He traveled to

Alumni Notes China in January 2026 for a 10-day workshop in lighting design at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. In the fall of 2025, he designed Endgame for Druid, which played at the Irish Arts Center in New York; Giselle for the Norwegian Ballet in Oslo; Three Verses of Solitude at Zoukak Theatre in Beirut; and stim, choreographed by Lauren Lovette for Paul Taylor Dance Company at Lincoln Center.

infused with Spanglish—it was the most fun I’ve ever had watching Pyramus and Thisbe. He also coached the school’s academic decathlon team to city and statewide acclaim. Over the years, he received letters from former students thanking him for changing their lives. I believe he saw this role as equal (if not more important) than his acting. At his wedding, his wife Jen asked the best man what he loved most about Andy. He replied, ‘Andy sees the world like no one I’ve ever known.’ His loss is irreparable to those who knew him.” Edith Tarbescu ’76 recently published her memoir, Beyond Brooklyn. It includes a one-woman play titled Suffer Queen and a few short humorous plays, all performed in New York and in regional theaters. “Have fun reading them aloud,” says Edith.

(left to right) Richard W. Bey ’76, Andy Davis ’76, and Joel Polis ’76.

Richard W. Bey ’76 writes: “Charles Andrew Davis ’76 was known to those of us who loved him simply as Andy. He passed away in Los Angeles on June 14, 2025. Andy’s transformational talent stood out in our acting class—we recognized it immediately. Whether portraying the poetically delicate or the dangerously volatile, he was always unpredictable, always truthful. His comic judge in Bartholomew Fair, wielding a gavel with a life of its own, and his gentle troubadour in Lulu, shockingly revealed as Jack the Ripper, were unforgettable. His mournful Feste (for which he composed the music) and his weary, lovelorn Chebutykin were deeply moving. After graduation, Andy joined Actors Theatre of Louisville and continued his work at Arena Stage, PlayMakers Repertory Company, and Indiana Repertory Theatre. His Broadway debut in The Crucifer of Blood—a brief coda at the end—was, as always, stunning and memorable. Later, Andy found a new calling as a teacher at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. I watched his students perform the mechanicals scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, joyfully

R.N. Sandberg ’77 and his wife, Ginger Zakian, with Sandberg’s former student, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Faculty) after a Broadway performance of JacobsJenkins’s Purpose. Photo by Jill Hackett.

Led by William Otterson ’76, residents of Block 780 in NYC (one block south of Penn Station) are fighting to save their neighborhood from demolition tied to the Gateway Project. At the project’s announcement celebration, they protested. Otterson made a statement that became the day’s defining soundbite: “Amtrak, don’t be tearing down my house.” The remark, captured on official recordings, played repeatedly in media coverage, earning Otterson a nod in the New York Daily News as a “full-voiced Yale School of Drama graduate.” Though Amtrak later erased the clip, Otterson remains steadfast: “We’re not giving up!”

her life under totalitarian regimes, played at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in February and March of 2026. It was directed by his daughter Megan Sandberg-Zakian. The third volume in the Global Anthologies series, Classical and Modern Plays from China, edited by Sandberg along with Xiaomei Chen and Ayling Wang, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2026. Sandberg is also the series editor and co-editor of the African volume (with Simon Gikandi, 2024) and the Indian volume (with Nandi Bhatia, 2025). He continues to mentor current and former Princeton students and is thrilled to see the wonderful things they do in the theater and their lives.

R. N. Sandberg’s ’77 newest play, Zabel in Exile, about writer and political activist Zabel Yessayan and

Broadway Play Publishing has released Oppenheimer’s Atomic Bombers by Russell Vandenbroucke ’77, DFA ’78.

Anita DeMatteo and William Otterson ’76 protesting on behalf of Block 780 on West 30th Street in NYC. Photo by Eugene Sinigalliano.

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Alumni Notes Originally broadcast on public radio to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima, it premiered on stage at Northlight Theatre, where Vandenbroucke served as artistic director from 1987-1998. In the aftermath of Breonna Taylor’s murder in Louisville, he directed a livestream production of Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act by Athol Fugard DFAH ’83, the focus of his dissertation and subsequent book, Truths the Hand Can Touch: The Theatre of Athol Fugard, published by Theatre Communications Group. He retired as Professor Emeritus of Theatre from the University of Louisville, where he was the founding director of its Peace, Justice and Conflict Transformation program.

David Kaplan ’79 collaborated with Patricia Norcia ’78 to stage Gertrude Stein’s 1936 circus play, Listen to Me, in June 2025 at the FITS International Theatre Festival in Sibiu, Romania. The production’s DGSD connections included Yu Jung Shen ’25 and Andrei Serban (Former Faculty), who is on the advisory board of FITS.

The year 2025 marked the conclusion of Neil Mazzella’s ’78 45 years at Hudson Scenic Studios, first as Vice President, and later as CEO. Hudson has been a viable employer of many DGSD graduates over the years, including long-term employees Joe Bellber ’01, Carrie Winkler ’04, and Roger Bardwell ’80. Roy Steinberg ’78, Producing Artistic Director of Cape May Stage, continues to elevate the theater’s reputation. Under his leadership, Cape May has become a beacon for thought-provoking productions that resonate long after the final curtain. Dutch Masters by Greg Keller, which explores race, privilege, and human connection, struck a chord with audiences and garnered widespread acclaim for the theater.

58 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

The Stage Managers’ Association (SMA) honored Judy Martel ’81 with the Del Hughes Award for Lifetime

1980s Mark Bly ’80 and wife, Catherine Witschey, welcomed their first child, Diana Rae Witschey Bly, on August 9, 2025. Mark recently authored a farewell tribute for Morgan Jenness in the LMDA Review 2025, which included 20 memorial salutes by major dramaturgs who had known the legendary dramaturg, agent, and champion of playwrights. Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote, the third opera collaboration by Allan Havis ’80 with composer Anthony Davis YC ’73, premiered January 2026 in San Diego and Tijuana. Allan’s stage play Morocco was adapted for film with director Tom Waters; filming was completed at the end of 2025. This is Allan’s 37th year on faculty at UC San Diego’s theater program.

Neil Mazzella ’78 at Hudson Scenic Studio.

on Death & Life, with the Process Series, and served as production dramaturg for PlayMakers Repertory Company’s production of Macbeth.

Geoff Pierson ’80 guest-starred on the first three episodes of the 2025-26 season of the ABC series 9-1-1, alongside fellow DGSD graduate, Angela Basset ’83, YC ’80. In the spring of 2026, he can be seen in the David E. Kelley Apple TV series Margo’s Got Money Troubles, with Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, and Marcia Gay Harden. In fall 2025, Adam Versényi ’86, DFA ’90, YC ’80, organized and curated the third iteration of Theatrical Translation as Creative Process: A Conference Festival in collaboration with the Process Series at UNC-Chapel Hill. Four plays in translation from Ancient Greek, Latvian, Indonesian, and Catalan were given public concert readings with the translators in residence. In February 2026, he performed his one-person show, An Empty Fullness: Meditations

Del Hughes Award honoree Judy Martel ’81 (right) with producer and host of awards event, Cheryl Mintz ’87. Photo by Jackie Leibowitz.

Achievement in the Art of Stage Management. The honor is given to those who represent the finest qualities and artistic achievement in stage management throughout their career. With over 200 completed, her work has been seen at theaters from Milwaukee Rep to Manhattan Punch Line. Judy received the SMA Lifetime Professional Membership Award in 2020. She currently serves on the board of the Foundation for Stage Managers. Billy Aronson’s ’83 book, Out of My Head/Learning to Reach People Through the Arts, published by BearManor Media, includes a chapter about his time at the School of Drama. Geoff Cohen ’83 enjoyed working on Take a Banana for the Ride, featuring Jeff Ross at the Nederlander Theatre; hearing his one act, The G Girls, read in Brooklyn at the Flatbush Community Theater; and seeing his photographs selected for juried exhibitions across

Alumni Notes York with direction by Carolyn Cantor, lighting by M.L. Geiger ’85, and dramaturgy by Kathleen Dimmick ’85

Out Of My Head by Billy Aronson ’81. Cover photo by Cristina Tarantola.

the U.S and in Europe. He also recently concluded a residency in Oaxaca, México, with a show marrying images and words titled Living Earth.

David and Jaylene Wallace ’86 celebrated 34 years of pure married bliss in July 2025. Their trip in September included a week on White Earth Lake in Minnesota with extended family, and a couple of weeks together in Scotland. Their older son, William, is currently designing an engagement ring, presumably for his longtime partner, Emma, so stay tuned. Their younger son, Phillip, continues to build his career as a sound technician for independent films, one which he shot near Telluride in the spring, giving Mom and Dad an excuse to go on a road trip there for a few days.

Michael Bianco ’84 is building a Renaissance Festival in Madison, Virginia, after working at several other festivals around the country. It is the pinnacle of theatrical scenery and live performance art, opening in spring 2026. Robert Wierzel ’84 shares a list of his recent work in lighting design: House of McQueen, a new play by Darrah Cloud, about the life of fashion designer Alexander McQueen; Silent Night, an opera with music by Kevin Puts MUS ’96 and libretto by Mark Campbell at Florida Grand Opera; Gotterdammerung, (Twilight of the Gods) at Atlanta Opera; and Francesca Zambello’s production of Madame Butterfly, with scenery by Michael Yeargan ’73 (Faculty) and costumes by Anita Yavich ’95 at Glimmerglass Festival. The astonishing singing abilities of Joe Urla’s ’85 13-year-old daughter, Silvie, leave him speechless on a regular basis. More to come on that note, for sure. Charles Grammer ’86 retired from Litelab Corporation after 25 years. Midwest Porn by Quincy Long ’86, is slated to be produced in February 2026 by The Tent Theater Company in New

Jaylene Wallace ’86 and her husband, David, at an anniversary dinner in Denver.

Rick Butler ’87 had another busy year teaching at St. John’s University, and will return to Brooklyn College to teach in 2026. This year’s highlight was the chance to sit in on two of Wendall K Harrington’s (Faculty) wonderful courses: Projection Design and Visual Storytelling. “Do we ever really stop learning?” Rick wonders. Gail (Burns) London ’87 is working as a part-time consultant for the New York State Council on the Arts, primarily in the operations division, where she helps grantees navigate the intricacies of the New York State financial system. Wendy MacLeod’s ’87 son, Foss, married his Ukrainian girlfriend, Angela,

on the beautiful Danish island of Aero last summer. This past fall, Wendy directed her stage adaptation of Dorothy Parker’s comic poetry and prose at Kenyon College. Along with many other School of Drama alums, she is a proud member of The Tent Theater Company. Cheryl Mintz ’87 reunited with playwright and director Emily Mann for their 39th production together, the revival of Mann’s political play Execution of Justice. This is her 5th season as a production stage manager with American Repertory Ballet under the direction of Ethan Stiefel and New Jersey Ballet under the direction of Maria Kowroski. She is an Adjunct Professor at Montclair State University teaching stage management, and continues her service with the Stage Managers’ Association as host, producer and event chair of the Del Hughes Awards. This past year, Cheryl and her husband, Harris, escaped to Paris, Amsterdam, Canada, and the Caribbean for extended adventures. Her son, Jake, is a third year architecture major at Syracuse University. Paintings by Tim Saternow ’87 were in two New York City shows in December 2025: Prince Street Gallery and Out of the Shadows exhibit at the Carter Burden Gallery. This year Tim will have a solo show at the William Scott Gallery in Provincetown in July, and a solo show at the Prince Street Gallery in November. Ming Cho Lee’s DFAH ’20 (Professor Emeritus) painting techniques still influence him. Peter Lewis ’87 recently appeared in the Oscar-nominated Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown; worked on the third installment of the cult horror franchise, Terrifier 3; and appeared in a sci-fi short directed by his young friend and mentee, Anthony Bradford. He is currently in pre-production for his short film (a western) that he wrote and will be co-directing with the Emmy-nominated cinematographer, Tas Michos. Shooting is slated to begin in western Montana in June of 2026. His wife, artist Sook Jin Jo, will have solo exhibitions at two museums, the Seoul Museum

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Alumni Notes

Tim Saternow ’87 at William Scott Gallery in Provincetown, MA. Photo by Paul Bisaccia.

of Contemporary Art and the AAEF Art Center in Shanghai, in 2026. Bruce Katzman’s ’88 book, Acting Chekov: A Practical Guide to Chekhov’s Major Plays, will be published by Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama in the coming year. The book is based on his popular 2021 webinar series, Secrets of Chekhov, which examined 15 iconic scenes from Chekhov’s major plays. Like so many DGSD grads, Bruce was mentored by Earle R. Gister (Former Faculty). He has been teaching Gister’s pioneering work on Chekhov since 1987, when Gister took him as his associate to the Midsummer in

Bruce Katzman ’88

60 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

Lori Robishaw ’88 and Cheryl Mintz ’87 at Chautauqua Institution.

Oxford program at the British American Drama Academy. In the nearly 40 years since then, Bruce has taught at Princeton University, University of Scranton, Circle Rep (NYC) and has had a long-term relationship with Stella Adler Studios in New York and Los Angeles. Bruce’s peer reviewers included Gregory Wallace ’87 (Faculty), Christopher Grabowski ’89, Vincent Cardinal ’89, and Kate Burton ’82; with editorial help from Bill Connington (Faculty).

including former roommate Cheryl Mintz ’87 at the Chautauqua Institution where Cheryl was working with her longtime collaborator, playwright/ director Emily Mann. Lori was delighted to see Lewis Black ’77, who was curating Comedy Now Week with the National Comedy Center. Along with performing an evening of The Rant Is Due, Lewis presented a reading of his one-act The Deal with Yale classmates Joe Grifasi ’75, Mark Linn-Baker ’79, and Tony Shalhoub ’80, along with Tony’s wife Brooke Adams.

Regina Lickteig Neville ’88 and Tom Neville ’86 write from Minneapolis where Regina is the Executive Director of Rise & Shine, a nonprofit supporting education in Ghana, and Tom is the President of Apeiro Design theater consultants. Current projects include: the Museum of the Future in Dubai, the Natural History Museum in Abu Dhabi, The Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati, and working with Ray Forton ’85 on the newest Cirque du Soleil show in Puerto Vallarta. Their three children are launched, and they are overjoyed to spend time with their first grandchild.

It’s been a busy last couple of years for Bob Barnett ’89. He had an industry workshop in 2024 of his play, The Hiroshima Daughter, now out to producers. He’s been working on some screenplays, developing a streaming series, and starting work on a new theme park project that promises to be both exciting and challenging. He keeps himself off the streets and on the water as Director Emeritus with Harlem River Community Rowing. He won silver in a men’s masters quad at the Head of the Passaic. He also mentors the next generation of theme park creatives with their capstone projects at Ringling College of Art and Design, which he’s enjoying immensely. Bob shares that he’s learning from them as much as he is giving back.

Lori Robishaw ’88 is enjoying her retirement by traveling around the country and visiting classmates,

Alumni Notes 1990s A highlight of the 2024-25 season for Scott Zielinski ’90 was the pleasure of reconnecting with Tina Landau. He designed the lighting for the Broadway musicals Redwood and Floyd Collins, which she directed. Scott received a Drama Desk and a Tony Award nomination for Floyd Collins. He was also thrilled to work with other longtime collaborators, director Arthur Nauzyciel and scenic designer Riccardo Hernandez ’92 on a very special production of Genet’s The Screens, performed at Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris. Daniel Elihu Kramer ’91 directed Samuel D. Hunter’s A Case for the Existence of God at Chester Theatre Company (where he was formerly Producing Artistic Director) in July 2025 with a cast of fellow Yalies Steven Lee Johnson ’18 and Kayodè Soyemi ’23.

wrote and directed John Legend’s Christmas show that toured the U.S. in December, and started working on a documentary about tattoos and pet loss—after I lost my beloved Jazz in February. I am grateful to be a part of this School of Drama community and count all of you as family.” Todd Rosenthal ’93 and Haydee Zelideth ’17 joined Ben Thoron ’92 at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre in September of 2025. Julie Lawrence-Edsell ’93, Program Head for BFA Acting at Pace University, was appointed Director of Intimacy and Consent-Based Practices. Julie is dedicated to creating safe, inclusive, consent-based, and transparent spaces within the performing arts. In her new role, Julie oversees faculty and staff training and develops and updates policies for both classrooms and productions to ensure best practices are in place. She is thrilled that her efforts have led to stronger collaborations, more inclusive practices, and a healthier learning environment!

(left to right) Michael Manuel ’92, Roxanna Manuel ’93, and Michael Potts ’92.

Michael Manuel ’92 writes, “Roxanna [Manuel] ’93, Lily, and our pups made it out of our house okay during the Eaton Canyon Fire in January. While it was scary, we were so grateful for our family Jennifer Tipton (Former Faculty) and Trui Malten ’93. and friends for all their support. More “Where to start?” writes Trui Malten importantly, it gave us a renewed ’93. “I graduated in 1993—more than 30 perspective about what is essential in years ago! Three years ago, Giancarlo this world: family and friends. I was Corsetti YC ’91 and I moved back to lucky enough to connect with a bunch Florence, and we have since enjoyed a of my beloved classmates throughout the year: Chris Bauer ’92, Elaine Tse ’92, steady stream of friends visiting. It seems Florence has proven somewhat Sue Cremin ’95, Bill McGuire ’91, Bo more popular than Cambridge, England! Foxworth ’94, Marya Mazor ’92, Jennifer Tipton (Former Faculty) has Harris Fishman ’92, Loni Berry ’92, and visited twice for wonderful reunions, Michael Potts ’92. Workwise, I did a and Jean Randich ’94 and Michael movie with the McManus Brothers Chybowski ’87 joined us to celebrate called Redux Redux that was a blast. I did a ton of dubbing and voiceover stuff, their honeymoon. I am also looking

forward to having Karen KirkhamLordi ’92, DFA ’97 nearby in Bologna next year. Karen and I revisited Angels in America in 2024, and collaborating again felt as though no time had passed. This past summer, I met up with Peter Wallace ’81 in Portland, Oregon. I am now preparing to light a short run of Snow White at the New Victory Theater in New York with NIE, the company I have been working with for the past nine years. Our daughters, Lea and Valentina, remained in the United Kingdom—one working in development, the other completing a PhD in Chemistry.” Bo Foxworth ’94 played C.S Lewis in Dean Batali’s play Lewis & Tolkien at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. He also appeared as Joe Keller in Antaeus’s production of All My Sons. Robert Cotnoir ’94 is continuing his fourth season as music editor on the hit Netflix series The Diplomat, where he helped the show earn critical praise, including Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress and Outstanding Drama Series. Bobby is also continuing his musical journey under the new name, Sun1. Myra Hope (Bobbitt) Eskridge ’94 and her wife of 15 years, Molly, live in Massachusetts with a burgeoning garden, beehives, and a rotating cast of foster kittens. Myra Hope is a product owner at the software company MathWorks, where she continues a long career of fostering productive negotiations between energetic and brilliant designers, builders, and performers. Terry Terzakis ’94 brokered the mortgage for Deanna Stuart’s ’94 first home purchase. Thanks, Terry! Phillip Christian Smith ’94 directed Fifth Planet and Other Plays by David Auburn at Hunter College and had a whole bunch of Yalies working on it. Suzanne Cryer ’95 has two indies currently being released—the teen comedy by and for trans people called

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Alumni Notes Andrea Nellis ’96 writes, “I started Arts FMS in 2021 with my business partner, Lucy Mallett. We provide outsourced financial management to nonprofit arts groups. We have 20 theater companies among our clients. Belina Mizrahi ’10 has been part of our senior management team since the beginning.”

(left to right) Christian Killada ’25, Kyle Stamm ’25, Caroline Tyson ’25, Daniela Hart ’22, Burke Brown ’07, and Phillip Christian Smith ’94.

She’s the He and Pools, starring Odessa A’zion. Suzanne recently completed filming a guest spot on Ted Lasso, Season 4. After nearly 23 years as a theater consultant, Chris Darland ’95 left consulting in 2019 and returned to freelancing in NYC as a key grip, scenic fabricator, and SFX builder for YouTube content creators and indie film productions. Chris is currently in pre-production for an indie film slated to be released in spring 2026. Pagan nerd that he is, he also builds Krampus costumes for the Christmas season every year.

displaced from all parts of the world remake their lives side by side. The lighting and projection design are by Elizabeth Yun Yeng Mak ’16, with assistant sound design by Noel Nichols ’22.” John James Hickey ’95 writes, “This is my 42nd year teaching acting and directing for children and adults. I recently edited and illustrated the book Acting for the Camera: Back to One, and I’m currently editing a follow-up book, Teaching Acting for the Camera. The remaining free time I have is divided between painting commissioned portraits, writing my book, and writing music for a new musical based on Washington Irving’s classic story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

David Feiner ’95 writes, “I’ve had the extraordinary gift of a 6-month sabbatical this year from my role as Co-Executive Director of Albany Park Theater Chris Weida ’95 is still living in the Project (APTP). I’ve traveled to Japan Milwaukee area, leading operations and made my first visit to Edinburgh at Derse, Inc., headquartered in Fringe. I’ve made new connections with Wisconsin. He and Rosanne are now some remarkable artists, particularly at empty nesters with the graduation the intersection of immersive art and of Danny (18) currently studying technology. I’ve tended to my little architecture at UW-Milwaukee. Emily garden, read, and taken photography (21) is graduating from UW-LaCrosse in classes. At the same time, I’ve seen May 2026 with a degree in Marketing. my city besieged by masked and Connor (24) has been married to militarized federal agents on a camAshton for almost two years and is paign of intimidation and fear. And I’ve living in the Milwaukee area working seen neighbors courageously stand for the State of Wisconsin Investment up to resist and protect one another. Board as a pension analyst. Alex (25), I write this as APTP is about to open married to Moriah, is a PharmD student the seventh season of Port of Entry, an at UW-Madison in his third year. immersive performance that invites “Overall, life is very full yet fulfilling, audiences to journey through a seeing the kids grow up and start re-creation of an apartment building their own lives!” where immigrants and refugees

62 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

Michael Goodfriend ’96 with the company of the audio play adaption of runboyrun featuring Abigail Onwunali ’23.

Michael Goodfriend ’96 is reuniting with fellow alum Reg Rogers ’93 on an audio adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing as part of the Play On series for Next Chapter Podcasts, where he serves as Chief Content Officer. Earlier this year, Marcus Gardley ’04 (Faculty) wrote a phenomenal adaptation of Julius Caesar for Next Chapter, directed by Harry Lennix and starring Michael Potts ’92. Michael had the pleasure of getting to know a brilliant young actor named Abigail Onwunali ’23 who played several roles in two series: Mfoniso Udofia’s runboyrun (a co-production with The Huntington) and Timon of Athens. “One of the great joys of my job is working with so many old friends from the School of Drama and meeting so many incredibly talented newcomers from DGSD!” says Michael. Elizabeth Greer ’97 writes, “Hey, everyone. I hope all is well and that everyone is thriving! I just shot two independent film roles, and the films are entering the festival circuit. My daughter is already a senior in college; it’s unbelievable how time flies! I look forward to reading everyone’s updates.”

Alumni Notes Kenneth Heaton ’97 announces the release of his post-apocalyptic sci-fi podcast, BlueLife, which was an Austin Film Festival script award winner. Jill Marie Lawrence ’97 plays one of the leads. Paul Niebanck ’97 is currently performing in Ivanov with an amazing new company, the New American Ensemble in NYC. In 2025, Julius Galacki’s ’98 play, The Frisco Flash, was an award winner at the Moondance International Festival and received an honorable mention at the Los Angeles Film and Script Festival. His 2025 comedy screenplay, Don’t Eat Paper, was a finalist at the Glendale International Film Festival and San Antonio International Film Festival. The work was also a finalist at Visionfest Screenwriting Competition and won best comedy screenplay at the 40th Film Crash Festival. On a personal note, Julius and his wife, Judy Victor, took a magical trip to the Oregon coast in September 2025. Brooks Ann Camper ’98 is a former professional milliner and bridalwear couturier, who is now a full-time educator. She mostly teaches through her own online sewing school: Brooks Ann’s Prep School for Custom Sewing. She’s had five articles published in Threads and has also been featured in many other publications and podcasts—including a mention in People. Brooks Ann first learned to sew in the Yale costume shop. “Thanks, Tom McAlister (Former Faculty), for believing in me!” Ed Blunt ’99 continues to speak, teach, and train companies and individual clients while also sharing an empowering message of clean, organic, and non-toxic products and consumables. He says, “We are on a mission to assist 1,500 families in removing the harmful toxins from their home and providing them with products that are better, better for you, and better priced!”

2000s Edward O’Blenis ’01 teaches Acting II in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at SUNY Purchase. He guides second-year BFA actors through the plays of Anton Chekhov using Stanislavski’s system and related practices. He recently directed R.U.R. at LIU Post, and continues to act, direct, and expand his audiobook narration work in New York City, where he lives happily with his wife, Laura Bray, and their threeyear-old son, Astra Ra.

Los Angeles with her husband, 12-yearold daughter, two cats, two cockatiels, and two chickens! Courtney DiBello ’02 has begun her 4th season with Oklahoma City Ballet. This growing company produced a new piece last season utilizing the music from Oklahoma rock band, The Flaming Lips. It also partnered with dancers from the outreach group, Dance for Parkinson’s. It was magical for all who witnessed it. Flaming Lips: The Ballet was choreographed by Ryan Jolicoeur-Nye.

Jonathan Shandell’s ’01, DFA ’07 third book, Readying the Revolution: African American Theater and Performance from Post World War II to the Black Arts Movement, was published in January 2025 by University of Michigan Press. He is in his 18th year teaching in the Theater Arts program at Arcadia University in Glenside, PA.

Shannon Flynn ’02. Photo by NATAA.

Bending the Rules: Fashion Beyond the Binary by Camille Benda ’02. Cover art by Esmaa Mohamoud.

Camille Benda ’02 is thrilled to announce the publication of her second book, Bending the Rules: Fashion Beyond the Binary. Along with designer, illustrator and writing partner Gwyn Conaway, Camille was inspired to write the book after years of designing costumes for film, TV, and theater revealed how fashion and accessories can celebrate the full spectrum of gender identity. Camille’s first book, Dressing the Resistance: The Visual Language of Protest, has been mentioned as one of Marie Claire’s top fashion books of 2024. She is based in

In March 2025, Shannon Flynn ’02 was humbled to receive her fourth Emmy Award for directing Sesame Street. She was the producing director for the hit Netflix series, Blippi’s Job Show, and series director for the new Cocomelon show, The Melon Patch. Shannon spent some quality face time with Lori Monnier ’01 and Tijuana Ricks ’04. She’s hoping to see more of her classmates in the future. “It’s been quite a year!” Good Sense & Company, the event design and production company co-founded by Jared Siegel ’02 celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. He is feeling old! Laura MacNeil ’03 shares, “I began my teaching career in 2012 and have taught Sheltered English Immersion in Cambridge public schools, in Massachusetts, since then. I’ve taken up rock climbing, cycling, and sailing. I think

ANNUAL MAGAZINE 63

Alumni Notes fondly of all my classmates and would welcome a call, text or email from any of them at any time. Heck, any alum can reach out to me. I’d love to hear from any of you. Sending lots of love and good vibes into the world.” Sandra Goldmark ’04 and Michael Banta ’03 are still living in New York with their two sons. Sandra now leads the Impact team at Columbia University Climate School, and Michael is Director of Production at Barnard College. Both are still helping performing arts organizations through the Sustainable Production Toolkit— a free downloadable resource created with Edward Morris ’13 and Lauren Gaston of Fabscrap, which offers tailored workshops and consulting services. This fall, the SPT team partnered with organizations from Boston to Baltimore to the Broadway Climate Summit at NY Climate Week who are taking action at the intersection of financial, human, and environmental sustainability. Tony Manna ’04 recently relocated from Los Angeles to New York. He was thrilled to appear in last month’s production of Rhinoceros at Yale Rep, directed by Liz Diamond (Faculty). He continues to work with Tijuana Ricks ’04, with whom he’s producing a horror feature called Envie, as well as with Rolin Jones ’04 and Adam O’Byrne ’04 at Dwight Street Book Club as producer of the podcast, Ask Ronna with Ronna (& Bryan), which performed live at the Huntington Theatre last fall.

(left to right) Amanda Leigh Cobb ’05, Jordan Mahome ’05, Christianna Nelson ’05, Evan Yionoulis ’85, YC ’82 (Former Faculty), Jeff Barry ’05, Jedadiah Schultz ’05, and Jacob Knoll ’05 at the film premiere of Re-Election, written, directed, and starring Adam Saunders ’05.

translation was adapted by Andrea Thome in partnership with Play On Shakespeare. Nominated for two Drama Desk Awards, the production starred Jennifer Lim ’04 as Imogen, was produced by Peter Kim ’04, and Risa Ando ’24 assisted with costumes. Amanda Salchow ’05 continues to play hundreds of characters as a nationally recognized audiobook narrator of the A Court of Wings and Ruin series by Sarah J. Maas, among others. Classmates recently celebrated Adam Saunders ’05 NYC film premiere of Re-Election which he wrote, directed, and starred in.

In 2025, Caite Hevner ’07 designed projections for Off-Broadway productions including Dylan Mulvaney’s The Least Problematic Woman in the World, Rolling Thunder, Duke & Roya, and Romy & Michele: The Musical, and served as production designer for Trisha Paytas’s Big Broadway Dream. She continues to serve as an Eastern Region Member Representative for Local USA 829, IATSE.

(left to right) Peter Kim ’04, Jennifer Lim ’04, and Stephen Brown-Fried ’06 at opening night of Cymbeline at NAATCO.

Laura Sewell and Shawn Senavinin ’06.

Stephen Brown-Fried ’06 directed Cymbeline at the National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO). The world premiere modern verse

Following 20 years as a technical producer in the field of corporate events, Shawn Senavinin ’06 and his wife, Laura, have started to move

64 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

towards retirement. Shawn continues to produce a handful of shows every year. Laura retired from her position as Director of Fine Arts at Southwestern University and now works part-time with a team of talented nuclear physicists, working out of labs at MIT and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Shawn and Laura left the U.S. in 2024. They now reside on the Island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Their daughter, Roxie, is a history major at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. Their youngest child, Declan, a high school freshman, serves on student council and is the varsity mascot.

Yuri Cataldo ’08 joined The Digital Economist as a senior research fellow focused on AI applications in fashion supply chains and AI’s impact on the arts. He has spoken on numerous panels about how in the age of AI, taste and artistic vision are more valuable than ever.

Alumni Notes Steve Henson ’11 and Amanda Haley ’10 have just opened Universal’s Epic Universe in Orlando. Amanda oversaw all the land portals in Celestial Park and Steve oversaw the Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge attraction. Also, their six-year-old son Brayden has caught the theater bug! His favorite activities include acting classes and ushering at Orlando Family Stage where Chris Brown ’08 is Executive Director.

(left to right) Amelia Hensley, Hope Anthony, Kaia Fitzgerald, Thomas DellaMonica, and MoMo Holt in Another Kind of Silence by L M Feldman ’08. Photo by KJH Studios.

L M Feldman ’08 is having a “weirdly prolific production year!” Their new play S P A C E premiered at Central Square Theater in Boston; Limber, A Love Story, premiered at Emerson Stage; Hand Foot Hand was shared at the PlayPenn New Play Conference; and Another Kind of Silence (which they first started writing nearly 20 years ago while at DGSD) is finishing its tri-city Rolling World Premiere at City Theatre, Curious Theatre, and The VORTEX. Hannah Grannemann ’08 was promoted with tenure to Associate Professor of Arts Administration at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in August 2025. She is the first tenured professor of arts administration at UNCG. After sold out runs at the Citadel Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse, Christopher Ryan Grant ’08 will be reprising his lead role as Johnny Cash in the UK Tour/West End production of The Ballad of Johnny and June, directed and co-written by Des McAnuff and Robert Cary. You can also catch him in recent episodes of Law & Order: SVU, Chicago P.D, and in Bess Wohl’s ’02 horror film Baby Ruby.

2010s

Michael Barker ’10 continues to travel the country fighting fires in regional arts organizations with his company Pursued by a Bear. During his time in Seattle working with the 5th Avenue Theatre, he reconnected with his Yale theater management mentor, Ben Moore ’70. He and Heidi Leigh Hanson ’09 celebrated their 15th anniversary in October; their son, Lawrence, is now 11 years old.

Christopher Ryan Grant ’08. Photo by Stan Demidoff.

Aaron Moss ’10 at the International Black & Diversity Film Festival in Toronto.

Aaron Moss ’10 co-created and directed the TV pilot Teaching While Black, which won awards for Best Director at the International Independent Film Awards, Global Film Festival Awards, and World Film Festival, and Best TV Pilot awards at the Global Film Festival Awards, International Black & Diversity Film Festival, and Women’s Independent Film & TV Festival. His first feature-length screenplay, Good Medicine, received Best Biographical Screenplay and Best First-Time Screenwriter awards at the Cannes World Film Festival, and received an Honorable Mention at the New York Screenwriting Awards. Aaron is an associate professor of theater/directing at Stockton University in New Jersey. Aaron and Allie recently celebrated the arrival of their baby girl, Aheeta (Sunshine)! “The Wilsons” reunited for Seamus Mulcahy’s ’12 solo show at the Hollywood Fringe, A Historical Gay Comedy Starring Nancy Reagan: Clown

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Alumni Notes Jack Moran ’13 and Kate Moran welcomed their second child, Olivia, in January and celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary in June. Their daughter, Maya, is five and started kindergarten this fall. They live in Brooklyn, where they juggle a range of creative pursuits, most significantly family dance parties and KPop Demon Hunter sing-alongs. Brian Smallwood ’13 has launched Safe Makers, a registered nonprofit dedicated to bringing safety compliance to K-12, higher ed, and professional venues and programs.

(top row, left to right) Brian Wiles ’12, Sunder Ganglani ’12, Hallie Cooper-Novack ’12, Misako, Michael Place ’12, Chris Henry ’12; (bottom row, left to right) Lupita Nyong’o ’12, Joby Earle ’10, Charise Castro Smith ’10, Miguel Valarino, Seamus Mulcahy ’12, Willoughby (dog), and Jillian Taylor ’12.

Show. After the performance, Seamus was asked to marry Miguel Valarino… he said yes. Louisa Proske ’12 opened the 50th Anniversary season of Glimmerglass Festival with Tosca, featuring designs by John Conklin ’66, YC ’59 and Robert Wierzel ’84. Conklin passed away at the age of 88 during technical rehearsals, and the production became a celebration of his visionary life work. Louisa also co-created and directed the world premiere processional opera Primero Sueño, with words by Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. This production took spectators on a journey through eight galleries of the Met Cloisters and will be shown at the Mexican House of Representatives. Her award-nominated production of Rinaldo was transferred to Detroit Opera, with designs by Matt Saunders ’12 and Montana Levi Blanco ’15. She closed her final season as Associate Artistic Director of Oper Halle with a new production of Gypsy featuring 60 local kids. After switching careers to social work, JT Timms ’12 was excited to return to

66 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

Mikkel E. Brøgger and Shane Hudson ’14. Photo by Bon Ton goods.

(left to right) Audrey Corsa, Irene Sofia Lucio ’11, Kristolyn Lloyd, and Adina Verson ’12 in Liberation by Bess Wohl ’02 on Broadway.

Yale University in fall 2025, as a clinician for the undergraduate population. Adina Verson ’12 and Irene Sofia Lucio ’11 appeared in Bess Wohl’s ’02 Liberation on Broadway this season. Reynaldi Lindner Lolong ’13 is now Director of Development at DreamYard, a nonprofit organization that provides free social justice arts education programs for youth in the Bronx.

After 10 years as Executive Director of Primary Stages in New York City, Shane Hudson ’14 has stepped down to focus full-time on his work in Scandinavia. Shane and his husband, artist and jeweler Mikkel E. Brøgger, co-own Bon Ton goods, a curated home and lifestyle shop known for its celebration of heritage craftsmanship and contemporary design. The couple live in Malmö, Sweden, with their four pugs and continue to travel frequently between Copenhagen, Paris, and New York. Carly Zien ’14 and her husband, Andrew Krepow, welcomed their first child, Ramona Sylvie Krepow, in June of 2025. They currently live and work in Los Angeles. Shannon Dillon ’15 shares, “I was thrilled to see my classmate Emily Calamanco (DeNardo) ’15 when she

Alumni Notes Company, an Off-Broadway theater which she co-leads with Producing Director Annie Middleton ’16. Kelly and Annie met in 2013 at Yale Cabaret and are thrilled to be teaming up to take Keen Company into the future.

Kelly Kerwin ’15 and Annie Middleton ’16 at the Keen Company welcome party. Photo by Edward T. Morris ’13.

came to visit my hometown of Monterey, CA, last summer. Having your classmates meet your child is so much fun! I’m also sad to share that my mother passed away in October after a long journey with cancer and dementia. She is greatly missed. My heart is with anyone caring for an ill parent.” Kelly Kerwin ’15 and Edward T. Morris ’13 moved back to New York City and in January 2025 their daughter, Domino Kerwin Morris, was born. The family currently lives in Manhattan with their rescue dog, George. Edward is a freelance set/projection designer, and Kelly is Artistic Director of Keen

Paula (Clarkson) Duffy ’17 just finished work on the new Netflix movie The Last Mrs. Parrish and is expecting her first baby in March.

Molly Hennighausen ’15 writes, “I’m in my third year operating MM Strategic Advising. I’ve had the privilege of working with over 200 creatives, on an individual level and in the classroom, helping them navigate their personal and professional finances. It’s been incredibly rewarding to support artists and storytellers in building financial stability and clarity, allowing them to focus on their craft. I’ve also recently joined the board of WAM Theatre, an organization that aligns deeply with my values of equity and empowerment through the arts, as the chair of the finance committee, contributing to WAM’s mission of creating opportunity and impact at the intersection of theater and social justice.” Michael Commendatore ’17 won Best Projection Design this past year at the Jeff Awards for his work on Iraq, But Funny at Lookingglass Theatre Company. The company, including set designer Omid Akbari ’24, is very excited and hopes the show will be picked up again soon.

(back row, left to right) Ian Scot ’16, Joey Moro ’15 (Faculty), Lucas Dixon ’12, Alexander Woodward ’16, Will Rucker ’15, Michel Gill; (front row, left to right) Camilla Tassi ’22, Laila Robins ’84, Caitlin Clouthier ’08, Jayne Atkinson-Gill ’85, Carolynn Richer ’14, and Kim Beaty YC ’77 at Dorset Theatre Festival’s “Dance Party Ball Gala.”

Rebekah (Heusel) Stasinopoulos ’17, Helen (Muller) Pospisil ’17, and Paula (Clarkson) Duffy ’17 at Helen’s wedding in Alaska.

Out of 400 applicants, Flo Low ’17 was selected as a 2025-2026 fellow for the Jewish Writers Institute’s Digital Storytellers Lab. Sarah Mantell’s ’17 play, In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot, won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2023 and received its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in November 2024. Their play, Everything That Never Happened (“Carlotta Red!”), had a reading at the Folger Shakespeare Library and its East Coast premiere at Baltimore Center Stage, where she enjoyed a celebratory reunion with Adam Frank ’17. Rae Powell ’17 shares, “Yale TD&P graduates are taking over TAIT! As the company has grown and increased its global footprint, so has the presence and role of our graduates. And the ranks keep growing, with alumni joining the team regularly. Instead of a specific shout-out, I want to celebrate the whole group that continues to work together!”

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Alumni Notes Francesca Fernandez ’18 performed in The Heart Sellers by Lloyd Suh at Studio Theatre, directed by Danilo Gambini ’20 and featuring Jeena Yi. Designers included Liam Bellman Sharpe ’20 and Marcello Martinez Garcia ’23. Additional alum on staff at Studio Theatre are Adrien-Alice Hansel ’03 and David Muse ’03, YC ’96. Spencer Jamison ’18 was selected as a 2025 WIF Writer Fellow and 2025 Film Independent Episodic Lab Fellow with her television pilot, Subpar. The series follows three women bound together through golf, but defined by love, loss, and second chances. She is currently developing her directorial debut feature, an expansion of her audience award–winning romantic comedy short, At Capacity, featuring Jake Ryan Lozano ’18. She greatly appreciates all that she’s learned from classmates and collaborators across disciplines! In September 2025, many Yale alumni were at the wedding of Erin Tiffany ’18 to Alec Parson. Set and production designer Gerardo Díaz Sánchez ’19 and guest host Antonio Caro offer an inside look at how Gerardo’s Hispanic Heritage Awards stage was imagined and built on the Fritanga Podcast by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation. The award show premiered in September 2025 and is currently streaming on PBS and YouTube.

2020s Dani Barlow ’20 started a new role as the programming director and co-lead of Producer Hub, a NYC-based nonprofit arts service organization for independent producers. Dani also recently joined the advisory council of Broadway Green Alliance. Logan Ellis ’20 writes, “I’m currently in Boston directing my first big kid regional job at the Huntington Theatre Company. It’s the musical Fun Home. It’s been intimidating and amazing to be working in a large institution and meeting a ton of new people through the project, and also to be performing this vital queer material for a large audience. I have been supported along the way by the incredible Yale dramaturg Christine Mok ’05. My company, Theatre Battery, based in Kent, WA, received a Venturous Playwright Fellowship to produce the world premiere of Jar of Fat by Seayoung Yim. This play won the Yale Playwriting award a few years ago, but has yet to be produced. I am so proud to be bringing it to my hometown for its debut.” Alums Ilia Isorelýs Paulino ’20, Adrienne Wells ’20, Devin White ’20, Logan Ellis ’20, and Meg Powers ’22 created a new production of The Threepenny Opera, which was well-reviewed in The Seattle Times

and nominated for seven Gregory Awards, including outstanding director, outstanding actor for Paulino, and outstanding overall production of a musical. Danilo Gambini ’20 directed the show Wipeout at Studio Theatre, with friends and collaborators Jimmy Stubbs ’22 and UptownWorks, which includes Daniela Hart ’22, Noel Nichols ’22, Bailey Trierweiler ’22, and The Heart Sellers, with an all-immigrant creative team, including Marcello Martínez Garcia ’23 and Liam Bellman-Sharpe ’20, and actors Francesca Fernandez ’18 and Jeena Yi.

(left to right) Danilo Gambini ’20, Francesca McKenzie ’18, Jeena Yi, and Lloyd Suh on opening night of The Heart Sellers.

Emily Duncan Wilson ’20 moved to Portland, ME, to be the new on-air midday host for Maine Public Classical and producer of their its program showcasing local music performances, Maine Stage. She is also a 2025 recipient of the 1/52 Project grant. “DGSD artistry runs deep at Oregon Shakespeare Festival,” writes Estefani Castro ’21. Alumni across generations bring their craft to every corner of the institution—onstage, backstage, and behind the scenes. This past fall, a group of DGSD graduates gathered in Ashland to mark OSF’s 90th season: nine productions, three stages, and one shared pursuit of artistic excellence. Standing before America’s first Elizabethan theater, they celebrate a legacy that’s equal parts DGSD rigor, OSF magic, and pure theatrical heart.”

(left to right) Jonathan Willis ’08, Ro Burnett ’24, Matt Davis ’18, Chris Peterson ’08, Erin Tiffany ’18, Becca Terpenning ’18, and Lily Twining ’06 at Rock Lititz Studio.

68 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

Deeksha Gaur ’07, Executive Director of Theater Development Fund and Yuhan Zhang ’22, Senior Consultant at

Alumni Notes

(left to right) Tyrone Wilson ’84, Rosa Joshi ’94, Tara Kayton ’11, Estefani Castro ’21, Erica Sullivan ’09, Eric Walker ’22, Megan Birdsong ’24, Jey Seleznow ’18, Nicole Goldstein ’24, and Al Espinosa ’94. Photo by Joe Sofranko.

TDC, spoke at the opening panel of Yale Alumni Nonprofit Alliance’s Social Impact Conference in October 2025. The panel explored how nonprofits can strengthen their internal capacity to manage transitions effectively. The conference brought together over 300 attendees from the nonprofit sector, both in person and online. Methuen Drama published Latin American Plays in Translation, an anthology of six new plays from Latin America’s most exciting and incisive playwrights, newly translated for an

English-language audience. It includes A Ranch for the Lost Boys by Peruvian playwright Sebastián EddowesVargas ’24. His play Hasta Que Choque El Hueso (Until Our Bones Break), co-written with Mario Zanatta, will return to the stage in Perú, while the authors produce its film adaptation. Lucas Iverson ’24 was thrilled to have worked on the second season of The Pitt on HBO Max, alongside Patrick Ball ’22. He dedicates his work on the show to his classmate and friend, Malik James ’24.

(left to right) Logan Ellis ’20, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino ’20, Adrienne Wells ’20, and Devin White ’20. Photo by Trace Pope.

Juliana Morales Carreño ’25 was selected as the 2025/2026 Jerome Foundation resident artist at La MaMa in NYC. Roman Sanchez ’25 was humbled to be selected for the Princess Grace Foundation Honoraria in Theater. This affirmation catalyzed his freelancing career where he’s been hopping around the West Coast directing at the California State Summer School for the Arts, Linfield University, Sunstone Theatre, and Longshadr Productions. The mockumentary film he coproduced with classmate Mikayla Stanley ’25, CCC: Conflicted Cuties of Color, has found success on the film festival circuit, earning three awards thus far. He looks forward to continuing to create in 2026 and beyond!

(left to right) Yuhan Zhang ’22, Georgia Levenson Keohane, YC ’94, Deeksha Gaur ’07, and Paige MacLean SOM ’98 at the Yale Alumni Nonprofit Alliance Social Impact Conference. Photo by Silin Chen ’25.

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Newest Alumni

Master of Fine Arts/ Certificate in Drama Class of 2025 acting Edoardo Benzoni Caroline Campos Mariah Copeland Messiah Cristine Cindy De La Cruz Lawrence Henry Chloe Howard Ariyan Kassam Jahsiah Mussig Chinna Palmer Grayson Richmond Anna Roman (Vin) Tré Scott Kamal Sehrawy Marlon Alexander Vargas Lauren F. Walker design Patrick Blanchard Rea J. Brown Silin Chen Joyce Ciesil KT Farmer Christian Killada Ein Kim

Doaa Ouf Tojo Rasedoara Kyle Stamm Yung-Hung Sung 宋永鴻 Caroline Tyson Arthur Wilson George Zhou 周亦扬 directing Kemar Jewel Alexis Kulani Woodard Juliana Morales Carreño dramaturgy and dramatic criticism Sophia Carey Shyama Iyer A.B. Orme Austin Riffelmacher Karoline Vielemeyer playwriting Ida Cuttler comfort ifeoma katchy ML Roberts stage management Josie Cooper Hope Binfeng Ding Adam Taylor Foster

technical design and production Kino Alvarez Steph Burke Nickie Dubick Constanza Etchechury López Cian Jaspar Freeman Keira Jacobs Erik Keating Matteo Lanzarotta Shawn Poellet John Simone Leo Surach Alex Theisen Timothy “TJ” Wildow theater management Fanny Abib-Rozenberg Anne Ciarlone Sarah Machiko Haber Adrian Alexander Hernandez Jeremy Landes Roman Sanchez Maya Louise Shed Mikayla Stanley Andrew Aaron Valdez

technical internship certificate Gabriela Ahumada Mier y Concha Laurel Capps Nawinda Chanmalee Gwendoline Kuan Jen Chen Angie Hause Ru-Ho Hsiao Eunyeong Kang 강은영 Jada Pinsley April Salazar Jacob Thompson Eden Wyandon Tyler Zickmund Doctor of Fine Arts Class of 2025 Ryan Adelsheim Kari Olmon Sophie Siegel-Warren Alex Vermillion

photographs this page by defining studios

Minjae Kim 김민재 Ankit Pandey Patti Panyakaew Micah Ohno

Hannah Louise Jones Aura Michelle Dylke Magnien Colleen Rooney Ellora Venkat

(left to right) Joyce Ciesil ’25, Tojo Rasedoara ’25, Minjae Kim ’25

(left to right) Angie Hause ’25, Laurel Capps ’25, Eunyeong Kang

강은영 ’25, Jacob Thompson ’25, Nawinda Chanmalee ’25,

Leo Surach ’25, Eden Wyandon ’25

70 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

Graduation Prizes

Prizes are given each year as designated by the faculty. ASCAP Cole Porter Prize comfort ifeoma katchy ’25 Edward C. Cole Memorial Award Shawn Poellet ’25

Jay Keene and Jean GriffinKeene Prize Micah Ohno ’25 Leo Lerman Graduate Fellowship in Design Rea J. Brown ’25

Carol Finch Dye Prize Anna Roman ’25

Dexter Wood Luke Memorial Prize Kino Alvarez ’25 Roman Sanchez ’25

John W. Gassner Memorial Prize Daria Kerschenbaum ’26 Georgia Petersen ’26

Donald and Zorca Oenslager Travel Fellowship Silin Chen ’25 Patti Panyakaew ’25

Bert Gruver Memorial Prize Adam Taylor Foster ’25 Aura Michelle Dylke Magnien ’25 Colleen Rooney ’25

Pierre-André Salim Prize Doaa Ouf ’25

Allen M. and Hildred L. Harvey Prize Tatsuya Ito ’20 Rajiv Shah ’20 Alan Hendrickson Award Shawn Poellet ’25 Lawrence and Rita Holder Lighting Design Award Ankit Pandey ’25 Elizabeth Rhodes Holloway Prize Hope Binfeng Ding ’25

(left to right) Nickie Dubick ’25, Steph Burke ’25, Kino Alvarez ’25, Keira Jacobs ’25, Alex Theisen ’25, Shawn Poellet ’25

Bronislaw (Ben) and Laraine Sammler Mentorship Award Steph Burke ’25 Frieda Shaw, Dr. Diana Mason OBE, and Denise Suttor Prize for Sound Design Minjae Kim 김민재 ’25 Oliver Thorndike Acting Award Marlon Alexander Vargas ’25 George C. White Prize Mikayla Stanley ’25

(left to right) Kamal Sehrawy ’25, Chinna Palmer ’25, Lawrence Henry ’25, Edoardo Benzoni ’25, Anna Roman ’25

Herschel Williams Prize Lauren F. Walker ’25

Pamela Howard Prize Christian Killada ’25 photographs this page by defining studios

Morris J. Kaplan Prize Maya Louise Shed ’25 Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize Juliana Morales Carreño ’25

(left to right, back row) Adrian Alexander Hernandez ’25, Sarah Machiko Haber ’25, Maya Louise Shed ’25, Andrew Aaron Valdez ’25, Anne Ciarlone ’25, Fanny Abib-Rozenberg ’25; (left to right, front row) Roman Sanchez ’25, Mikayla Stanley ’25, Jeremy Landes ’25

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Fellowships & Scholarships

The recipients for the 20252026 academic year were:

Caris Corfman Scholarship Kieron J. Anthony ’27

Nina Adams and Moreson Kaplan Scholarship Rebecca Rivera ’27

Cheryl Crawford Scholarship Christopher Thomas Pow ’27

John M. Badham Scholarship Andreas Andreou ’26 John Badham Scholarship in Directing Héctor Flores Komatsu 27 Mark Bailey Scholarship Rhayna Poulin ’28 George Pierce Baker Memorial Scholarship Jordan Allyn ’27 Abraham E. S. RebolloTrujillo ’26 Elliot Valentine ’26 Herbert H. and Patricia M. Brodkin Scholarship Rosie Victoria ’26 Board of Advisors Scholarship Constant Dzah ’26 Patricia M. Brodkin Memorial Scholarship Rethabile Headbush ’26 Robert Brustein Scholarship Thando Mangcu ’27 Paul Carter Scholarship Yun Wu 26 Joan Channick Scholarship Claudia Campos ’26 Ciriello Family Scholarship Aaron Frongillo ’27 Class of 1979 and Friends Scholarship Amanda Blitz ’27 Emma Steiner ’26

Edgar and Louise Cullman Scholarship Ruben Carrazana ’28 Cullman Scholarship in Directing Tess Cruz ’28 Destyne R. Miller ’26 Andrew Rodriguez ’27 deVeer Family Drama Scholarship Fund Jonathan Fong ’27 Richard H. Diggs ’30 Scholarship Claire Young ’27 Holmes Easley Scholarship Zendell Addai ’28 Seth Byrum ’27 Eldon Elder Fellowship Tricie Bergmann ’26 Elihu Scholarship Whitney Renell Roy ’27 The Friends of DGSD Scholarship Emma Steiner ’26 Wesley Fata Scholarship Yishan Hao ’27 Foster Family Graduate Fellowship Carter Sundown King ’28 Burry Fredrik Design Fellowship Jessie Baldinger ’26 Arthur Wilson ’25 Dino Fusco and Anita Pamintuan Fusco Scholarship Sarah Lo ’26

August Coppola Scholarship Mithra Seyedi ’26

72 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

Annie G.K. Garland Memorial Pamintuan Fusco Scholarship Scholarship Sarah Lo ’26 Caileigh Potter ’26 Annie G.K. Garland Memorial Mollie Gassner Scholarship Scholarship Aaron Magloire ’27 Caileigh Potter ’26

Sylvia Fine Kaye Scholarship Nancy Kimball ’27

Earle R.Gassner Gister Scholarship Mollie Scholarship Mark Yarde ’27 ’27 Aaron Magloire

Jay and Rhonda Keene Scholarship for Costume Design Kristen Taylor ’26

Randolph Goodman Earle R. Gister Scholarship Scholarship Mark Yarde ’27 Celia Weiqing Chen ’26 Randolph Goodman Stephen R. Grecco ’70 Scholarship Scholarship Celia Weiqing Chen ’26 Emily Breeze ’26 Stephen R. Grecco ’70 Jerome L. Greene Scholarship Scholarship Amrith Jayan’26 ’26 Emily Breeze Juice Mackins ’26 Erik Manuel RoblesScholarship ’26 Jerome L. Greene Darius Sakui Amrith Jayan’26 ’26 Henita Telo ’26’26 Juice Mackins Erik Manuel Robles ’26 Julie Harris Darius SakuiScholarship ’26 Liam Beveridge Henita Telo ’26 ’27 Stephen J. Hoffman ’64 Julie Harris Scholarship Scholarship Liam Beveridge ’27 Shannon Dodson ’26 Stephen J. Hoffman ’64 Sally Horchow Scholarship Scholarship for Actors Shannon Dodson ’26 Hiếu Ngọc Bùi ’26 Sally Horchow Scholarship William and Sarah Hyman for Actors Scholarship Hiếu Ngọc Bùi ’26 Gib Gibney ’27 Geoffrey Ashton Johnson/ Geoffrey Ashton Johnson/ Noël Coward Scholarship Noël Coward Ameya NarkarScholarship ’27 Ameya Narkar ’27 Pamela Jordan Scholarship Pamela Jordan Scholarship Daria Kerschenbaum ’26 Daria Kerschenbaum ’26 Michael and Anna Kalafut Michael and Anna Kalafut Scholarship Scholarship Dorottya Ilosvai ’27 Dorottya Ilosvai ’27 Sonam A. Kapoor Scholarship Sonam A. Kapoor Scholarship Jack Kelley ’27 Jack Kelley ’27

Stanley Kauffmann Scholarship Timothy Hartel ’27

Ray Klausen Design Scholarship Richard Lee ’27 Gordon F. Knight Scholarship Emilee Biles ’26 Nicky Brekhof ’27 Ming Cho Lee Scholarship Anthony Robles ’26 Lotte Lenya Scholarship Lolade Agunbiade ’26 Frederick Loewe Scholarship Shawn Bowers ’27 Frederick Loewe Scholarship for Directors in Honor of Floria V. Lasky Jasmine Brooks ’26 Lowe Family Scholarship CeCe Smith ’28 Helene A. Lindstrom Scholarship Gretta Marston ’26 Victor S. Lindstrom Scholarship Jacob DeSousa ’28 Lord Memorial Scholarship Jocelyn Lopez-Hagmann ’27 Edward A. Martenson Scholarship Joy (Xiaoyue) Chen ’26

Fellowships & Scholarships

Virginia Brown Martin Scholarship Catherine Young ’27 Stanley R. McCandless Scholarship Finn Bamber ’27 Larry Ortiz ’26 Alfred McDougal and Nancy Lauter McDougal Endowed Scholarship Tyler Clarke ’26 Ke Xu 许可 ’26

Donald and Zorka Oenslager Scholarship in Stage Design Dwight Bellisimo ’27 Romello Huins ’27 Qier Luo 罗绮儿 ’27 Rebecca Pietri ’27

Barbara Richter Scholarship Jazzmin Bonner ’27 Sarah Saifi ’26

Stephen B. Timbers Family Scholarship for Playwriting Andrew Rincón ’28

Rodman Family Scholarship Robert Salerno ’27

Eugene O’Neill Memorial Scholarship Mireya Sánchez-Maes ’28

Pierre-André Salim Scholarship My Le (Le Dieu My) ’28 Steph Lo 盧胤沂 ’26 Md Fadzil “Fed” Hanafi Md Saad ’27

Jennifer Tipton Scholarship in Lighting Amanda Burtness ’27

Benjamin Mordecai Memorial Scholarship Kavya Shetty ’26

Ong Family International Travel Fellowship Seth Byrum ’27 Jeremy Fuentes ’27 Dorottya Ilosvai ’27 Héctor Flores Komatsu 小松輝 ’27 Caleb Krieg ’27 Kay Nilest ’27 Jiawei Pei ’28 Audrey Regan ’28 Andrew Rodriguez ’27 Layla Williams ’28 Claire Young ’27

Kenneth D. Moxley Memorial Scholarship Lilliana Gonzalez ’26

Mary Jean Parson Scholarship Amanda Whiteley ’27

Alois M. Nagler Scholarship Lara Priya Sachdeva ’26

Raymond Plank Scholarship in Drama Thomas Nagata ’26

Robert D. Mitchell Scholarship Wenjin Zhang ’27 Tom Moore Scholarship Victoria McNaughton ’26

G. Charles Niemeyer Scholarship Hannah Fennell Gellman ’24, DFA ’29 Gabrielle Hoyt ’24, YC ’15 Victoria Nolan Scholarship Iyanna Huffington Whitney ’26 Dwight Richard Odle Scholarship Kiki Gordon ’27 Donald M. Oenslager Scholarship in Stage Design Jennifer Yuqing Cao 曹语晴 ’26 Xi (Zoey) Lin 林曦 ’26

Alan Poul Scholarship John Hardy ’27 Jeff and Pam Rank Scholarship Tamara Morris-Thompson ’26 Mark J. Richard Scholarship Surrey Houlker ’27 Lloyd Richards Scholarship in Acting Francisco Morandi Zerpa ’26

Tisdale Family Scholarship Taylor Ybarra ’26 Frank Torok Scholarship ty ruwe ’26

Bronislaw “Ben” Sammler Scholarship Cathy Ho 何家寶 ’26

Nancy and Edward Trach Scholarship Karen Loewy Movilla ’26

The Todd Salovey Scholarship Andreas Andreou ’26

Ron Van Lieu Scholarship Michael Saguto ’26

Scholarship for Playwriting Students Gloria Oladipo ’28 Nia Akilah Robinson ’27 Richard Harrison Senie Scholarship Jinling Duan 段珒苓 ’27 Wiktor Freifeld ’26 Daniel and Helene Sheehan Scholarship Sarah Saifi ’26 Eugene F. Shewmaker and Robert L. Hurtgen Scholarship John Hardy ’27 Shubert Scholarships Jessie Baldinger ’26 Georgia Peterson ’26 Emma Steiner ’26 Howard Stein Scholarship Victoria Barclay ’28 The Taft Family Scholarship Payton Gunner ’27

Leon Brooks Walker Scholarship Jeremy Fuentes ’27 Richard Ward Scholarship Raekwon Fuller ’27 Zelma Weisfeld Scholarship for Costume Design Caleb Krieg ’27 Constance Welch Memorial Scholarship Kimberly Vilbrun-Francois ’27 Grace Wissink ’27 Rebecca West Scholarship Bella Orobaton ’26 Max Sheldon ’26 The Jessica Wolf Scholarship Olamide Oladeji ’27 Audrey Wood Scholarship Matthew Chong ’26 Albert Zuckerman Scholarship Tia Smith ’26

ANNUAL MAGAZINE 73

Donors Donors

January 1, 2025–March 1, 2026

1940s

Joan Kron ’48

1950s

Joy Carlin ’54 Sami Joan Casler ’59 John Cunningham ’59* Evelyn Huffman ’57 Amnon Kabatchnik ’57 David McNutt ’59 Raymond Sader ’58 Edward Trach ’58 Edwin Wilson ’57*

1960s

John Badham ’63, YC ’61 Warren F. Bass ’67 Carol Bretz Murray-Negron ’64 James Burrows ’65 Mary Jane Cassidy ’69 David Copelin ’69, DFA ’72 Michael S. David ’68 Ramon L. Delgado ’67 John Duran ’68 Robert H. Einenkel ’69 David Epstein ’68 Ann Farris ’63 Richard A. Feleppa ’60 Hugh Fortmiller ’61 Richard Fuhrman ’64 John Guare ’63 Ann Hanley ’61 Stephen Hendrickson ’67 Vernon Hinkle ’61 Elizabeth Holloway ’66* Laura Mae Jackson ’68 Abby Kenigsberg ’63 Allan Knee ’69 Harriet Koch ’62* Irene Lewis ’66 Sandra Manley ’68 Donald Michaelis ’69 Michael Posnick ’69 Barbara Reid ’62 Talia Shire Schwartzman ’69 John Wright Stevens ’66 Douglas Taylor ’66 David Toser ’64 Russell L. Treyz ’65 Richard Trousdell ’67, DFA ’74

74 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

1970s

Sarah Albertson ’71, ART ’75 Michael Annand ’75 John Lee Beatty ’73 Thomas Bruce ’79, YC ’75 Victor Capecce ’75 Bill Conner ’79 Joseph Costa ’74 Dennis Dorn ’72 Nancy Reeder El Bouhali ’70 Peter Entin ’71 Femi Euba ’73 Marc Flanagan ’70 Robert Gainer ’73 David Marshall Grant ’78 Stephen R. Grecco ’70 Michael E. Gross ’73 William B. Halbert ’70 M.G. Harris ’71 Jane Head ’79 Jennifer Hershey ’77 Nicholas A. Hormann ’73 Alan Kibbe ’72 Eugene Kimball ’79 Fran Kumin ’77 Mitchell L. Kurtz ’75 Rocco Landesman DFA ’76 Charles E. Letts ’76 Martha Lidji Lazar ’77 George N. Lindsay, Jr. ’74 Jennifer K. Lindstrom ’72 Mark Linn-Baker ’79, YC ’76 Robert Hamilton Long II ’76 Brian R. Mann ’79 Neil Mazzella ’78 John McAndrew ’72 Lawrence S. Mirkin ’72, YC ’69 James Naughton ’70 Patricia Norcia ’78 Richard Ostreicher ’79 Jeffrey Pavek ’71 William Peters ’79 Joel Polis ’76 William Purves ’71 Jeff Rank ’79 Pam Rank ’78 William J. Reynolds ’77 Peter Roberts ’75 Steven Robman ’73 Howard Rogut ’71 Robin Pearson Rose ’73 Ben Sammler ’74 Suzanne Sato ’79 Robert Sandberg ’77 Joel Schechter ’72, DFA ’73 Michael Sheehan ’76 Benjamin Slotznick ’73, YC ’90 Jeremy T. Smith ’76

Edith Tarbescu ’76 Carol Waaser ’70 Eugene Warner ’71 Carolyn Seely Weiner ’72 Steve Zuckerman ’74 Scott Yuille ’77

1980s

Michael G. Albano ’82 Amy Aquino ’86 William Armstrong ’80 Angela Bassett ’83, YC ’80, DAFH ’18 James Bender ’85 Mark Bly ’80 Katherine Borowitz ’81, YC ’76 Andrew Brolin ’89 Bill Buck ’84 Lawrence Casey ’80 Joan Channick ’89 Geoffrey Cohen ’83 Scott Cummings ’85, DFA ’94 Campbell Dalglish ’86 Rick Davis ’83, DFA ’03 Kathleen Dimmick ’85 Sasha Emerson ’84 Terry Fitzpatrick ’83 Walter Frankenberger III ’88 Judy Gailen ’89 J. Ellen Gainor ’83 Dana Graham ’82, YC ’79 Charles F. Grammer ’86 Rob Greenberg ’89 Babo Harrison ’89 Don Holder ’86 Nadine Honigberg ’86 Kathleen Houle ’88 Charles R. Hughes ’83 Chris P. Jaehnig ’85 Bruce Katzman ’88 David K. Kriebs ’82 Kenneth Lewis ’86 Peter Gray Lewis ’87 Andi Lyons ’80 Cathy MacNeil-Hollinger ’86 David E. Moore, Jr. ’87 Arthur E. Oliner ’86 Carol Ostrow ’80 Frank Palmer ’87 Laila V. Robins ’84 Lori Robishaw ’88 Russ Rosensweig ’83 Cecilia Rubino ’82 Kenneth Schlesinger ’84 Theresa Snider-Stein ’88 Barbara Somerville ’83 Mark Stevens ’89 Stephen Strawbridge ’83 Mark L. Sullivan ’83

Donors Jane Savitt Tennen ’80 Patrice Thomas ’81 John Turturro ’83 Courtney B. Vance ’86 Adam Versényi ’86, DFA ’90, YC ’80 Jaylene Wallace ’86 Darryl Waskow ’86 Robert M. Wildman ’83 W. Courtenay Wilson ’85 Alex Witchel ’82 Steven A. Wolff ’81

1990s

Narda E. Alcorn ’95 Bruce Altman ’90 Angelina Avallone ’94 Tom Broecker ’92 James Bundy ’95 Kathryn Calnan ’99 Juliette Carillo ’91 Enrico Colantoni ’93 Sean P. Cullen ’94 Sheldon Deckelbaum ’92 Fran Egler ’95 Connie Evans ’93 David Gainey ’93 Naomi S. Grabel ’91 Susan Hamburger ’97 Alexander Hammond ’96 Kevin Henderson ’96 Mercedes Herrero ’95 J.J. Hickey ’95 Christopher Higgins ’90 John C. Huntington ’90 Carla L. Jackson ’99 Kimberly Jannarone ’96, DFA ’00 Kristin Johnsen-Neshati ’92, DFA ’02 Elizabeth Kaiden ’96 Glen Knapp ’90 Malia Lewis ’97 Chih-Lung Liu ’94 Sarah Long ’92, YC ’85 Suzanne Cryer Luke ’95, YC ’88 Tien-Tsung Ma ’92 Ann Malloy ’96 Trui Malten ’93 Maria E. Matasar-Padilla ’99, DFA ’05 Marya Mazor ’92 Mark McCullough ’91* Dw Phineas Perkins ’90 Amy Povich ’92 Sarah Rafferty ’96 Peggy Sasso ’96 Jennifer Schwartz ’97 Patrick Seeley ’93

Paul Selfa ’92 Thomas W. Sellar ’97, DFA ’03 Catherine Sheehy ’92, DFA ’99 Christina Sibul ’94 Paul Spadone ’99, YC ’93 Susan Stevens ’96 Erich Stratmann ’94, YC ’93 Sy Sussman ’94, YC ’87 David Sword ’90 Benjamin Thoron ’92 Erik Walstad ’95 Rich Whittington ’98 Marshall Williams ’95* Liza Zenni ’90

2000s

Alexander Bagnall ’00 Pun Bandhu ’01 Ashley Bishop ’02 Frances Black ’09 Scott Bolman ’03 Amy Boratko ’06 Josh Borenstein ’02 Mattie Brickman ’09 Ashley Bryant ’08 Christina Bullard ’07 Jonathan Busky ’02, SOM ’02, YC ’94 Ji-Youn Chang ’08 Sarah Bartlo Chaplin ’04 Aurélia Cohen ’09 Shoshana Cooper ’09 Matthew Cornish ’09, DFA ’13 Rachel Cornish ’08 Sarah DeLong ’08 Ted DeLong ’07 Derek DiGregorio ’07 Janann Eldredge ’06 Dustin Eshenroder ’07 Laura Esposito ’09 Gia Forakis ’04 Shannon Flynn ’02 Sarah Fornia ’04 Jacob Gallagher-Ross ’09, DFA ’14 Marcus Gardley ’04 Deeksha Gaur ’07 Jackson Gay ’02 Hannah Grannemann ’08, SOM ’08 John J. Hanlon ’04 Judith Hansen ’04 Heidi Hanson ’09 James Guerry Hood ’05 David Howson ’04 Rolin Jones ’04 Bryan Keller ’05 Tarell Alvin McCraney ’07 Melissa Mizell ’08 Alice Moore ’04 David Muse ’03, YC ’96

Rachel Myers ’07 Arthur Nacht ’06 Phillip Owen ’09 Maulik Pancholy ’03 Jon Reed ’07 Kevin Rich ’04 Sallie Sanders ’02 Christopher Carter Sanderson ’05 Kathleen McElfresh Scott ’06 Shira Turner ’06 Carrie Van Hallgren ’06 Amanda Wallace Woods ’03 Paul Whitaker ’02

2010s

Emika Abe ’16, SOM ’16 Trent Anderson ’19 Michael Barker ’10, SOM ’10 Sonja Berggren ’13 (Special Research Fellow) Walter Chon ’10 Caitlin Crombleholme ’19 Brett Dalton ’11 Matt Davis ’18 Laura J. Eckelman ’11 Whitney Estrin ’12 Ben Fainstein ’13 Adam Frank ’18 Shannon Gaughf ’15 Eric Gershman’15, SOM ’15 Robert Grant ’13 Markie Gray ’20 Ethan Heard ’13, YC ’07 Al Heartley ’18 Rachel Spencer Hewitt ’10 Ashton Heyl ’14 Mohamed Izmir M. Ickbal ’16 Rasean Davonté Johnson ’16 Kelly Kerwin ’15 JooHyun Kim ’17 Chiara Klein ’17, SOM ’17 Steven Koernig ’17 Katie Liberman ’13, SOM ’13 Meg Miroshnik ’11 Belina Mizrahi ’10, YC ’02 Bryan Merrylees ’16 Jason Najjoum ’18, SOM ’18 Jennifer Harrison Newman ’11 Shelby North ’18 Dan O’Brien ’14 Rory Pelsue ’18 Helen Pospisil ’17 Nathan Roberts ’10 Alexander Roll ’13 Anne Seiwerath ’12 Devon Smith ’10, SOM ’10 Katherine Touart ’18 Hannah Wasileski ’13

ANNUAL MAGAZINE 75

Donors Jonathan Wemette ’13 Ariana Venturi ’15 Jennifer Woods ’10 Yi Zhao ’12

2020s

Alyssa Anderson-Kuntz ’20 Dani Barlow ’20 Rea J. Bown ’25 Claudia Campos ’26 Matthew Chong ’20 Wendy Davies ’21 (Special Research Fellow) Sam Douglas ’24 Will Gaines ’22 Annabel Guevara ’24 Mia Haiman ’23 Natalie King ’24 Chloe Knight ’24 Matteo Lanzarotta ’25 Matthew Lewis ’20 Jocelyn Lopez-Hagmann ’27 Gwyneth Muller ’20 Neil Qiu ’23 Roman Sanchez ’25 Yu-Jung Shen ’24 Kavya Shetty ’26 Matthew Sonnenfeld ’23 Mikayla Stanley ’25 Leo Surach ’25 Ashley M. Thomas ’23 Caitlin Volz ’20

Friends of DGSD and YRT Gifts of $500 and above

Actors’ Equity Foundation Nina Adams GRD ’69, NUR ’77 and Moreson Kaplan Americana Arts Foundation Americans for the Arts Anand S. Ahuja and Sonom A. Kapoor Anonymous Debby Applegate GRD ’98 and Bruce Tulgan Rudy Aragon LAW ’79 Paula Armbruster The Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation Sallie A. Baldwin Alice Baxter GRD ’72, Ph.D.’74 and Richard Baxter GRD ’72 Ed Barlow YC ’56, LAW ’64 John B. Beinecke YC ’69 Karen I. Bedrosian-Richardson Sonja Berggren ’13 (Special Research Fellow) and Patrick Seaver YC ’72 Deborah S. Berman

76 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

Eugene and Margaret M. Blackford Memorial Fund for the Blind, Bank of America Santino Blumetti SOM ’99 Carmine Boccuzzi YC ’90, LAW ’94 and Bernard Lumpkin YC ’91 Lynne Bolton James Bridgeman GRD ’69 Reginald J. Brown YC ’89 and Tiffeny F. Sanchez Burry Fredrik Foundation Frank and Nancy Bynum YC ’86 Anne and Guido Calabresi YC ’53, LAW ’58, MAH ’62 Lois Chiles The Roy Cockrum Foundation Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development Bill Connington Daniel Cooperman and Mariel Harris Bob and Priscilla Dannies MAH ’90 Wendy Davies ’21 (Special Research Fellow) Elwood and Catherine Davis Robert Dealy YC ’70 Kelvin Dinkins, Jr. Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation Charley Ellis YC ’59 and Linda Lorimer LAW ’77 William J. Evans, Jr. YC ’56* Lily Fan YC ’01, LAW ’04 Barbara and Richard Feldman Barbara Franke Deborah Freedman YC ’82 and Ben Ledbetter Anita Pamintuan Fusco YC ’90 and Dino Fusco YC ’88 David Geffen Foundation Howard Gilman Foundation Melanie Ginter Ruth and Charles Grannick Jr. Fund Mabel Burchard Fischer Grant Foundation The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Megan Haller and Peter Rice Andy Hamingson F. Lane Heard III YC ’73, LAW ’78 and Margaret Bauer YC ’86, ART ’91 Cheryl L. Henson YC ’84 Mark Hollinger LAW ’85 Sally Horchow YC ’92 Ellen Iseman YC ’76 JANA Foundation David G. Johnson YC ’78 Pamela C. Jordan Ann Judd and Bennett Pudlin LAW ’78 The Ethel and Abe Lapides Foundation Lucille Lortel Foundation

Sharon and Jim Lowe YC ’85 Cheryl MacLachlan and Fred Gorelick Victoria Mars YC ’78 Drew McCoy Lara Meiland-Shaw YC ’99 Kathryn Milano Estate of Robert D. Mitchell YC ’51 David and Leni Moore Family Foundation Chiyo Moriuchi and Mark Haber James Munson YC ’66 Talya Nevo-Hacohen YC ’81 NewAlliance Foundation Barbara and William Nordhaus Brian Ong YC ’06 F. Richard Pappas YC ’76 Louise Perkins and Jeffrey Glans Jeffrey Powell MAH ’87 and Adalgisa Caccone GRD ’86 Kathy Priest The Prospect Hill Foundation Alec Purves YC ’58, ARC ’65 Faye and Asghar Rastegar MAH ’88 Sharon Reynolds Chantal Rodriguez Daphne Rubin-Vega and Thomas Costanzo YC ’88 Abigail Roth YC ’90, LAW ’94 and R. Lee Stump Robin Sauerteig Florie Seery Tracy Chutorian Semler YC ’86 The Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation The Shubert Foundation Lorraine Siggins The Carol L. Sirot Foundation Anna Deavere Smith DFAH ’14 Sanda Stein and Harvey Kliman Shepard and Marlene Stone Woody Taft YC ’92 Stephen Timbers YC ’66 Andrew Tisdale Julie Turaj YC ’94 and Robert S. Pohly YC ’94 Trust for Mutual Understanding Esme Usdan YC ’77 Donald Ware YC ’71 Shana C. Waterman YC ’94, LAW ’00 Jessica Weiser-McCarthy, M.D. YC ’96 and Timothy McCarthy Kim Williams Walton Wilson Vera F. Wells YC ’71 Guy and Judith Yale Nancy Yao SOM ’99 Grace Zandarski

Donors James Bundy and Anne Tofflemire Yale Repertory Theatre Production Fund Marion Abbott Nina Adams GRD ’69, NUR ’77 and Moreson Kaplan Rudy Aragon LAW ’79 Sallie A. Baldwin Pun Bandhu ’01 Ed Barlow YC ’56, LAW ’64 John B. Beinecke YC ’69 Sonja Berggren ’13 (Special Research Fellow) and Patrick Seaver YC ’72 Deborah S. Berman and Bruce Berman LAW ’79 Frances Black ’09 Lynne Bolton Carmine Boccuzzi YC ’90, LAW ’94 Hansen Bundy Family Fund Will and Paula Bundy Stephen Bundy and Cynthia Colvin Lois Chiles Susan Clark Michael David ’68 and Lauren Mitchell Wendy Davies ’21 (Special Research Fellow) Sasha Emerson ’84 Lily Fan YC ’01, LAW ’04 Terry Fitzpatrick ’83 Barbara Franke Anita Pamintuan Fusco YC ’90 and Dino Fusco YC ’88 Eugénie I. and Bradford S. Gentry The Jerome L. Greene Foundation F. Lane Heard III YC ’73, LAW ’78 and Margaret Bauer YC ’86, ART ’91 Ellen Iseman YC ’76 Carla L. Jackson ’99 David G. Johnson YC ’78 Debby and Rocco Landesman DFA ’76 Sarah Long ’92, YC ’85 Linda Lorimer LAW ’77 and Charley Ellis YC ’59, LAW ’77, MAH ’97 Cathy MacNeil-Hollinger ’86 Neil Mazzella ’78 Jennifer Harrison Newman ’11 Talya Nevo-Hacohen YC ’81 Victoria Nolan and Clark Crolius Richard Ostreicher ’79 Carol Ostrow ’80 Chantal Rodriguez Florie Seery Tracy Chutorian Semler YC ’86 Riki and Michael Sheehan ’76 Catherine Sheehy ’92, DFA ’99

Anna Deavere Smith DFAH ’14 Jeremy T. Smith ’76 Woody Taft YC ’92 Stephen Timbers YC ’66 Andrew Tisdale Edward Trach ’58 Julie Turaj YC ’94 and Robert S. Pohly YC ’94 Esme Usdan YC ’77 Donald Ware YC ’71 Shana C. Waterman YC ’94, LAW ’00 Amanda Wallace Woods ’03 Nancy Yao SOM ’99

Joan Channick Scholarship Nina Adams GRD ’69, NUR ’77 and Moreson Kaplan Trent Anderson ’19, SOM ’19 Alyssa Anderson-Kuntz ’20 Michael Barker ’10, SOM ’10 Dani Barlow ’20 Deborah S. Berman Josh Borenstein ’02 Andy Brolin ’89 James Bundy ’95 and Anne Tofflemire Kathryn Calnan ’99 Robert Channick Susan Clark Aurélia F. Cohen ’09 Rachel Cornish ’08 Caitlin Crombleholme ’19 Wendy Davies ’21 (Special Research Fellow) Liz Diamond Caitlin Dutkiewicz ’22 Connie Evans ’93 Rachel Fine Will Gaines ’22 Deeksha Gaur ’07 Eric Gershman ’15, SOM ’15 Betty and Josh Goldberg Melissa Goldman Naomi Grabel ’91 Markie Gray ’20 Barry and Maggie Grove Andy Hamingson Judy Hansen ’04 Heidi Hanson ’09 David Howson ’04 Kimberly Jannarone ’96, DFA ’00 Chiara Klein ’17, SOM ’17 Glen Knapp ’90 Chloe Knight ’24 Steven Koernig ’17 Katie Liberman ’13, SOM ’13

Annie Lin YC ’09 Sam Linden ’19, SOM ’19 Ed Martenson Sarah Masotta Belina Mizrahi ’10, YC ’02 Gwyneth Muller ’20 Merle and Arthur Nacht ’06 Jason Najjoum ’18, SOM ’18 Jennifer Harrison Newman ’11 Victoria Nolan and Clark Crolius Jennifer Beckendorf Oliver ’98 Joey Parnes YC ’77 Lisa Rigsby Peterson ’92 Bennett Pudlin LAW ’78 and Ann Judd Lisa Richardson ’19 Lori Robishaw ’88 Ben Sammler ’74 Sallie Sanders ’02 Daniel Schmitt Henry Schmitt Mark Schmitt YC ’83 William Schmitt Florie Seery Catherine Sheehy ’92, DFA ’99 Devon Smith ’10, SOM ’10 Matthew Sonnenfeld ’23 Flora Stamatiades ’94 Rosalie Stemer and Stuart Feldman Leslie Stone Sy Sussman ’94, YC ’87 Anne Trites Shira Turner ’06 Carrie Van Hallgren ’06 Caitlin Volz ’20 Chris Wall Donald Ware YC ’71 Jonathan Wemette ’13 Robert Wildman ’83 Harold Wolpert Nancy Yao SOM ’99 Leandro A. Zaneti ’19 Liza Zenni ’90 Yale-China Association Yuhan Zhang ’22

ANNUAL MAGAZINE 77

Donors Legacy Partners We invite you to join fellow alumni and friends who have included DGSD in their estate plans or made other planned gifts to the School. Through David Geffen School of Drama at Yale Legacy Partners, you can directly influence the future of Yale. You are eligible for membership if you have named DGSD as a beneficiary of your will, trust, life-income gifts, IRA or other retirement plan, life insurance policy, or other planned gift. To learn more about making a planned gift to David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, please contact Deborah S. Berman, Senior Director of Development and Alumni Affairs, at (203) 432-2890 or deborah.berman@yale.edu. DGSD Legacy Partners 2025–2026 Rudy Aragon LAW ’79 Cynthia Kellogg Barrington* Ezekial H. Berlin ’53* Donald I. Cairns ’63 Raymond Carver ’61 Elizabeth S. Clark ’41* Bill Conner ’79* David M. Conte ’72 Converse Converse YC ’57 Sue Anne Converse ’55* Nicholas Diggs* Richard Diggs ’30, YC ’26* Charles Dillingham ’69, YC ’65 Eldon J. Elder ’58* Peter Entin ’71 William J. Evans, Jr. YC ’56* Wesley Fata (Faculty Emeritus) Joseph Gantman ’53*

78 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

James Gousseff ’56* Albert R. Gurney ’58* Robert L. Hurtgen* James Earl Jewell ’57* Ann Judd Harriet Koch ’62* Joseph E. Kleno* Fran Kumin ’77 Stephen R. Lawson ’76* Richard G. Mason ’53* Robert D. Mitchell YC ’51* H. Thomas Moore ’68 Tad Mosel ’50* Arthur F. Nacht ’06 George E. Nichols III ’41, YC ’38* G.C. Niemeyer ’42* Dwight Richard Odle ’66* Richard Ostreicher ’79 Joan Pape ’68* Mary B. Reynolds ’55* Mark Richard ’57*

Barbara Richter ’60* June Rosenblatt* William Rothwell, Jr. ’53* Forrest E. Sears ’58* Eugene F. Shewmaker ’49* Merrill L. Sindler ’57* Kenneth J. Stein ’59 G. Erwin Steward ’60 Edward Trach ’58 Carol Waaser ’70 Elaine Wackerly ’03 and Patrick Wackerly Donald Ware YC ’71 Phyllis C. Warfel ’55* William B. Warfel ’57, YC ’55* Wendy Wasserstein ’76* Elmon Webb ’64 and Virginia Webb ’65 Zelma H. Weisfeld ’56* Marshall Williams ’95* Edwin Wilson ’57, DFA ’58 Albert J. Zuckerman ’61, DFA ’62* *Deceased

Design Spotlight

S

ound designers create many realized designs for professional productions and conceptual designs for class projects. They incorporate music composition, technology, aural imaging, and audio production into their original creations. These three designers share their personal playlists. The QR codes link to their work.

Emilee Biles ’26

defining studios

Emilee’s playlist features excerpts from rye savior, the world‑premiere musical she wrote and composed about baking and saving the world. She created and adapted the piece in collaboration with her closest friends at DGSD.

ANNUAL MAGAZINE 79

Design Spotlight Constant Dzah ’26

defining studios

Constant’s playlist features a curated selection of theater productions and creative audio projects. From immersive stage soundscapes to technical design experiments, these works highlight his approach to storytelling through sound, collaborative world-building, and high-fidelity audio engineering.

Xi (Zoey) Lin 林曦 ’26

defining studios

Zoey’s playlist features original music composition for productions of Rhinoceros by Eugéne Ionesco, The Far Country by Lloyd Suh, Kilele: Una Epopeya Artensenal by Felipe Vergara Lombana, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, The Nanke Dream (dance), Hop, hop... ins Wasser—A Sequel to Wozzeck (classical concert work), as well as programmatic orchestral pieces, and more.

80 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

Annual Magazine David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

P.O. Box 208244 New Haven, Connecticut 06520

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