Tag Archive: Alumni

  1. Eli picked to lead National Endowment for the Arts

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    It turns out Harold Hongju Koh won’t be the only Yale affiliate to vie for Senate confirmation this spring.

    Former School of Drama professor Rocco Landesman DRA ’76, a producer who brought hits including “Angels in America” and “The Producers” to Broadway, has been nominated as the next chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House announced today.

    Landesman, 61, taught for four years at the Drama School as an assistant professor after receiving his Ph.D. in dramatic literature and more recently has served as a lecturer in theater management. Click here for more coverage from The New York Times, which first reported Landesman’s selection.

    In 2007, Landesman and Robert Brustein DRA ’51, the former Drama School dean and founder of the Yale Repertory Theatre, hosted a discussion at the Drama School on the state of non-profit theater in the United States, and the National Endowment for the Arts was among the topics the two dicusssed.  The session is available as a podcast on the Yale Web site; click here for part one and here for part two.

    (Photo: BroadwayWorld.com)

  2. Mory’s seeks city approval for expansion

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    Representatives of Mory’s gave a presentation in front of the New Haven Board of Zoning Appeals  last night to ask for permission to expand the club’s physical footprint.

    The project was officially presented by Richard Wies of Gregg, Wies & Gardner Architects, said Mory’s Association Treasurer Melanie Ginter ’78 GRD ’81, who was present at the meeting along with several other board members, including Tony Fitzgerald ’66 and School of Management professor Douglas Rae.

    “We’re very interested in getting these variances because we think this is really what we need Mory’s to do in order to go forward in a successful way,” Ginter said today.

    (more…)

  3. ‘Growing Up Buckley’

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    Christopher Buckley ’75, the speaker at next month’s Class Day, has a lengthy excerpt from his upcoming book, “Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir,” included in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine.

    Buckley writes that his book is “an account of becoming an orphan,” after the death of both of his parents in an 11 month span. Buckley spends a considerable amount of space describing his relationship with his father, famed conservative and former News chairman William F. Buckley ’50, who died Feb. 27, 2008 at 82. (Read the News’ obituary here, and coverage of his memorial service here.)

    “Recently, I was driving behind a belchy city bus and suddenly found myself thinking, not for the first time, about whether Pup is in heaven,” Buckley, the co-founder of the Yale Daily News Magazine, writes in the excerpt. “He spent so much of his life on his knees in church, so much of his life doing the right thing by so many people, a thousand acts of generosity. I hesitate to put it this way, but I’m dying of curiosity: how did it turn out, Pup? Were you right, after all? Is there a heaven? Is Mum there with you? Grumbling, almost certainly, about the ‘inedible food,’ and saying, ‘Bill, you’ve got to speak to that absurd St. Peter creature about getting Christopher in — I mean, it’s all too ridiculous for words.’ ”

    (Photo: The Collection of Christopher Buckley, via The New York Times)

  4. Barbara Bush ’04 to marry fellow Eli, report says

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    Former First Daughter Barbara Bush ’04 is said to be engaged to marry fellow Eli Jay Blount ’05 (above) this summer at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, the Web site StyleList.com reported Tuesday.

    “Barbara and Jay are getting married this summer in Kennebunkport,” the Web site quoted a source as saying. “It’s very quiet, but their friends know.”

    A spokesman for former President George W. Bush ’68 did not immediately respond to a request for comment, the Web site said.

    (Photo by Dennis Brack-Pool/Getty Images)