In Remembrance: Andrew W. DeShong ’70PhD Died on February 18 2014

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Andrew DeShong died of cancer on February 18, 2014, in Berkeley, California. Drew was a painter, set designer, theater historian, and longtime drama bookstore owner/manager.  While still an undergraduate, he had a one-person show at a major New York gallery.  At Harvard, he designed sets and costumes for Loeb mainstage and experimental theater productions, including the premiere of Erich Segal’s version of Plautus’ Braggart Warrior.  He went on to design productions at numerous Bay Area theaters.  After studying in Paris and receiving his PhD in theater history from Yale, he taught university courses in theater history, dramatic literature, and set design, and cocurated a major exhibition of twentieth-century stage design at the Henie Onstad Foundation in Oslo.  His book, The Theatrical Designs of George Grosz, is the standard work on the subject. For nearly a quarter century, Drew owned and operated Drama Books, a cultural center and meeting place for San Francisco theater people. Throughout, he continued to paint.  At the time of his death, he was working on a series of hand-bound, hand-painted books of visionary images on prestained Japanese paper—“my new testament,” as he smilingly called them. His friends will remember him for his wit, engagement, loyalty, and imagination.