Yale University and Repertory Theatre

Yale University and Repertory Theatre, New Haven, Conn. There were theatrical performances annually at this American university from 1771, among the first productions being Steele's The Conscious Lovers, Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem, and in 1785 an original play, The Mercenary Match by ‘ Mr Bidwell’, a student in his senior year. There has long been an amateur dramatic society for the students, the ‘Yale Dramat’, and in 1925 a Drama Department was inaugurated, George Baker being its first director, with an excellent little experimental theatre, and a curriculum comprising a wider-anging schedule of instruction in all branches of professional theatre, including design, direction, administration, playwriting, and dramatic criticism. The library, which houses the personal papers of Eugene O'Neill, has a theatre collection which includes a vast dossier of photographs of theatrical material collected from all over Europe, begun under Allardyce Nicoll during his term of office as head of the Drama Department and constantly being extended. In 1966 the then Dean of the School of Drama, Robert Brustein, founded the Yale Repertory Theatre. Originally intended as an adjunct to the School, it left the university premises in 1968 and moved into a church converted into a flexible theatre. In 1975 it was reconstructed to provide four auditoriums, of which the two smaller ones are used exclusively by the School, which also shares a third with the repertory company. The fourth, seating 491, with a thrust stage, is for the sole use of the repertory theatre company, among whose more adventurous productions have been an adaptation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound by Robert Lowell, Kenneth Cavender's adaptation of Euripides' Bacchae, Aristophanes' Frogs (1974) with music by Sondheim, presented in the Yale swimming pool, and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1975) incorporating music from Purcell's The Fairy Queen for the first time. Modern plays have included the world premières of Eric Bentley's Are You Now or Have You Ever Been…? (1972), Arthur Kopit's Wings (1978), and many plays by Fugard and August Wilson, as well as the American premières of several plays by Edward Bond. An annual Winterfest of new plays, in addition to the regular repertoire, was inaugurated in 1981.