School Notes: David Geffen School of Drama
January/February 2012

Playwright receives prestigious award

Playwright Amy Herzog ’07MFA received the 2011 Whiting Writers’ Award in recognition of her plays After the Revolutionand 4,000 Miles, which mine material about her Marxist grandparents. The selectors noted, “The relationships are authentic, difficult, complex, funny, frustrating, real. Here is a voice of her generation, generous about, if somewhat skeptical of, the passionate political debate that fueled meaning in her grandparents’ lives.”

Since 1985, the Whiting Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Writers’ Awards, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and plays. The awards, of $50,000 each, are based on accomplishment and promise.

Herzog’s critically acclaimed new play, Belleville, which was commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre with support from the Yale Center for New Theatre, had its world premiere at Yale Rep this past fall. She is working on a second commission from Yale Rep.

Acting alumni in Broadway musical

Two School of Drama graduates, Bryce Pinkham ’08MFA and Da’Vine Joy Randolph ’11MFA, have been cast in the new musical Ghost, based on the hit 1990 film, which will open on Broadway this spring. Pinkham, who will play Carl Bruner, appeared in the Yale Rep production of A Woman of No Importance in 2008 and more recently in the Broadway production of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Randolph, who made her Yale Rep debut in 2010’s The Servant of Two Masters, will play psychic Oda Mae Brown.