Author Archives: Akbar Ahmed

This past Monday, for the first time in recent memory, representatives from every administrative office concerned with undergraduate theater production at Yale came together to allocate residential college theater spaces and arts funding for shows hoping to go up between now and the beginning of Spring Break. Spring semester meetings between students in the performing »

The casts have been chosen, the designers have been found and the directors have scheduled their first few rehearsals: theater at Yale is prepared to begin a new season. But bringing together the freshmen that are an integral part of that season has been especially complicated this year, students involved in the Yale theater scene »

In 1966, Robert Brustein, then-dean of the Yale School of Drama, founded the Yale Repertory Theatre. He served as its artistic director until 1979, when he moved to Cambridge, Mass., to become a professor of English at Harvard University. There, in 1980, Brustein founded a new theater for his new university: Harvard’s American Repertory Theater. »

NEW YORK — For the team behind the ongoing production of “Independents,” this summer has posed challenges even more daunting than preparing an original student musical for its New York debut, following the death of the show’s playwright, Marina Keegan ’12, in late May. In April, the New York International Fringe Festival informed the show’s »

At tonight’s premiere of “The Realistic Joneses” at the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Yale School of Drama will announce that it has received its largest donation ever, an $18 million gift from the Minneapolis-based Robina Foundation. The gift will go toward supporting the Yale Center for New Theatre, which was established in 2008 with a »

Last fall, the Theater Studies program underwent a thorough curriculum review in which every part of the program was “scrutinized and assessed,” said Toni Dorfman, director of undergraduate studies for the program. In doing so, the program reaffirmed what it sees as a defining characteristic of theater instruction at Yale. In Dorfman’s words: “This is »

In 2005, billionaire couple Stephen Adams ’59 and Denise Adams donated $100 million to the Yale School of Music, enabling the school to provide a full tuition award and fellowship to all students. “This generous gift will enhance the ability of the school to attract the world’s finest musicians and will support a number of »

Laurel German ’15, a lighting designer in Yale’s undergraduate theater community, worked on tech weeks for six productions in February. But, she noted, “there aren’t even six weeks in February.” Students involved in lighting design have always been scarce in the theater scene at Yale College, nine students interviewed said. But with significantly more theater »

Audiences that go to watch this weekend’s production of “The Shipment” will enter the basement of Green Hall, a venue the show’s director chose so that viewers feel as if they are in “a white dungeon.” “This show is about being at Yale and being bombarded by media [stereotypes],” said Timmia Hearn Feldman ’12, the »

Spotting a gap in the Yale dance scene, a year-old group called the Yale Undergraduate Ballet Company is reaching out to ballet enthusiasts interested in an ensemble dedicated to the traditional style. On Friday, the company will present the ballet “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” their first full-length performance, at the Cooperative Arts and Humanities High »

With help from alumni like Maria-Christina Oliveras ’01, a slew of Yale theater students are seeking to discover what makes for a functional acting career in New York City. Oliveras, who has had roles in the successful Broadway musical “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” and the Emmy Award-winning television series “Damages,” led a seminar called “An »

On a poster board leaning against a tent pole, magazine cut-outs loom large, vying for space with fangs made of a clipped up credit card and a martini glass with an ice cube labeled “propaganda.” The work is titled “Bush’s Brain.” Even as a legal battle with City Hall threatens the future of Occupy New »