The Play's the Thing: 50 Years of Yale Repertory Theatre
James Bundy's Era Begins
James Bundy’s era begins
James Bundy (DRA ’95) has continued Yale Rep’s focus on developing new work, now supported by the Binger Center for New Theatre. He has brought thousands of middle and high school students from the New Haven area to see Yale Rep productions as part of the WILL POWER! initiative. At the start of this fiftieth anniversary season, Bundy was appointed to an unprecedented fourth term as dean and artistic director.
Adapted from Euripides, Shakespeare, and Rodgers and Hammerstein, respectively, by Bill Rauch and Tracy Young, Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella juxtaposes the three stories onstage, with music, to illuminate contrasts and resonances between them.
Rolin Jones (DRA ’04) began writing The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow while he was a student at the School of Drama. It went on to numerous successful productions, including one at Yale Rep, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The play revolves around a genius who refuses to leave her house but designs a robot to find her birth mother in China.
Sarah Ruhl at Yale Rep
Sarah Ruhl teaches playwriting at the School of Drama and has won a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship as well as numerous theater awards and nominations. Yale Rep has staged six of her plays: The Clean House (2004-05), Eurydice (2006-07), Passion Play (2008-09), Three Sisters (adapted from Chekhov, 2011-12), Dear Elizabeth (adapted from the letters of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, 2012-13), and this season’s opener, the world premiere of Scenes from Court Life (or the whipping boy and his prince).