School Notes: David Geffen School of Drama
January/February 2008

Drama School honors memory of student

Yale School of Drama suffered a grievous loss with the death last fall of a student in the technical design and production program. Pierre-Andre Salim ’09 died November 18 while unloading sets for a production at Yale Repertory Theatre, where he was serving as the assistant technical director. To honor Pierre's life and work, the school has established a scholarship in perpetuity, called the Pierre-Andre Salim Memorial Scholarship, which will cover full tuition and living expenses for one entering student each year, for the duration of his/her program. A geographical first preference will be given to applicants from Southeast Asia and a second preference for students from elsewhere in Asia; students in technical theater and design will also be given a preference.

Recent gifts will fund scholarships

With a $3.25 million donation from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation, the school has created the Jerome L. Greene Endowment, which will fully fund tuition, living, and medical expenses for four third-year students studying acting. The scholarship aims to free students of financial burden during their studies at Yale and allow them the flexibility to make significant creative choices when they graduate. The first Greene endowment will be awarded this year. Also awarded for the first time this year is the Cullman Scholarship in Directing, which will cover the tuition of one student in each year of the three-year directing program. This endowment was made possible by a gift from Trip Cullman ’97, ’02MFA, and his father, Edgar Cullman ’68. Trip, a New York theater director and member of the School of Drama's Leadership Council, was motivated by his own experience at the drama school to "help others have the training that I found to be absolutely necessary to my own development as an artist."

Alumni doings

Designer John Conklin ’59, ’66MFA, whose credits include productions on Broadway and at the Metropolitan Opera, returned to the Yale Repertory Theatre to design the set for the December production of Moliere's Tartuffe. May Adrales ’06MFA is the first recipient of the Denham Fellowship, named in honor of Broadway director Reginald H. F. Denham and granted by the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation; the $3,000 prize will support her production of Faith, Hope, and Charity in Charleston, South Carolina. Tarell Alvin McCraney ’07MFA was awarded the 2007 Whiting Writers' Award in playwriting from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, given to emerging writers of exceptional talent and promise.