School Notes: David Geffen School of Drama
July/August 2013

Yale School of Drama at the Tonys

At the 2013 Tony Awards June 9, Christopher Durang ’74MFA received the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play for Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which was also recognized with nominations for Best Actor David Hyde Pierce ’81 and Best Actress Kristine Nielsen ’80MFA. Courtney B. Vance ’86MFA won the Best Performance by a Featured Actor Tony for his performance opposite Tom Hanks in Nora Ephron’s Lucky Guy. Tony Shalhoub ’80MFA was nominated in the same category for his role in Golden Boy, which was also recognized with nominations for set designer Michael Yeargan (’73MFA and cochair of the design department), costume designer Catherine Zuber ’84CDR, and lighting designer Donald Holder ’86MFA. John Lee Beatty ’73MFA received the Tony Award in set design for The Nance, and William Ivey Long ’75MFA won the Tony for his costumes in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Set designer Scott Pask ’97MFA was nominated for his work on Pippin, and playwright Richard Greenberg ’85MFA was nominated in the best play category for The Assembled Parties, as were set designer Santo Loquasto ’72MFA and Lynne Meadow ’71MFA, artistic director of Manhattan Theatre Club, which produced the play. And The Dodgers, led by Michael David ’68MFA, was nominated as a producer of best musical nominee Matilda along with the Royal Shakespeare Company. YSD faculty members were also honored, including lighting designer Jennifer Tipton, nominated for The Testament of Mary, and Ming Cho Lee, who received a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater.

Shakespeare rocks next Rep season

In the upcoming Yale Rep season, Pulitzer- and Emmy Award–nominated playwright Rolin Jones ’04MFA teams with Green Day songwriter and frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, and director Jackson Gay ’03MFA for the Yale Rep–commissioned world premiere of These Paper Bullets, a rocking and rolling new version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Opening the season is a new production of Tennessee Williams’s masterwork A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Mark Rucker ’92MFA and featuring René Augusen ’96MFA as Blanche DuBois; followed by Owners, an early and rarely seen dark comedy by Caryl Churchill, directed by Evan Yionoulis ’82, ’85MFA; Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Dario Fo’s explosive political farce; and The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, by Whiting Writers’ Award winner Meg Miroshnik ’11MFA. And Marcus Gardley ’04MFA returns to Yale Rep for the world premiere of The House that will not Stand, directed by Patricia McGregor ’09MFA.