Yale School of Drama to Offers Projection Design Concentration, Fall 2010

Yale School of Drama (James Bundy, Dean; Victoria Nolan, Deputy Dean) will offer a new concentration in Projection Design under Wendall Harrington, within the Design Department (Ming Cho Lee, Stephen Strawbridge, Co-Chairs) beginning in the fall of 2010, the first such course of graduate theatre training in the United States.

Yale School of Drama is the only professional theatre school in the United States to offer the Master of Fine Arts in all disciplines: Acting, Design (Set, Costume, Lighting, and Projection), Sound Design, Directing, Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, Playwriting, Stage Management, Technical Design and Production, and Theater Management.

"The highest aim of Yale School of Drama is to train artistic leaders-in every theatrical discipline-who create bold new works that astonish the mind, challenge the heart, and delight the senses," says Dean James Bundy. "The introduction of the Projection Design concentration continues Yale's commitment to artistic and technological innovations in the field."

"The use of projection in performance is expanding exponentially," says Wendall Harrington, who has served on the Design Department faculty at Yale School of Drama faculty since 2006 and who will oversee the new Projection concentration. "The projected image is a powerful tool. Those designers at the forefront of this medium will have the opportunity and responsibility to encourage its eloquent use."

Co-Chaired by Ming Cho Lee and Stephen Strawbridge, the Design Department at Yale School of Drama is unique in training students in all areas of design, providing them with common ground in core knowledge of the field, and emphasizing that all elements of design are an integral part of the whole and cannot be conceived independently. Through classes and production, the department encourages the discovery of process in formulating the design idea, development of a discriminating standard for students' own work, and preparation for a creative and meaningful professional life in the theatre. Graduates of the program are leading designers in theatre, film, and television, and have served as teachers and mentors in leading theatres and universities around the world.

The Design Department faculty also includes David Biedny, John Coyne, Jess Goldstein, Jane Greenwood, Ilona Somogyi, Jennifer Tipton, Ru-Jun Wang, and Michael Yeargan. The Sound Design Department faculty includes Chair David Budries, Nick Lloyd, Joshua Loar, and Matthew Suttor.

Yale School of Drama is accepting Design Department applications for Fall 2010 enrollment through February 1, 2010. Complete application requirements and financial aid policies are available at drama.yale.edu.

BIOGRAPHIES

Wendall K. Harrington Broadway projection credits include The Who's Tommy (Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and American Theatre Wing Awards), Grey Gardens, Amy's View, The Civil War, The Good Body, Putting It Together, John Leguizamo's Freak, Ragtime, The Capeman, The Will Rogers Follies, Racing Demon, Company, Having Our Say, The Heidi Chronicles, My One and Only, and They're Playing Our Song. opera and ballet credits includes Ghosts of Versailles, Nixon in China (Opera Theatre of St. Louis); The Grapes of Wrath, Transatlantic (Minnesota Opera); A View from the Bridge (Lyric Opera of Chicago/Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera);The Turn of the Screw in Copenhagen; The Magic Flute in Florence, Orpheo ed Euridice in Vienna and Zurich; Manon Lescaut (DC Ballet); Othello (American Ballet Theatre); Anna Karenina for Alexei Ratmansky; Ballet Mécanique and Deconstructing English for Doug Varone; The Juniper Tree (American Repertory Theatre); and The Photographer (Brooklyn Academy Of Music). She directed and designed the premiere of Arjuna's Dilemma by Doug Cuomo and Snapshots, an evening of string quartets and imagery. Her concert work includes Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and Experience for Vocal Essence, I Hear America Sing for PBS, and tours for Chris Rock, Simon and Garfunkel, John Fogerty, and The Talking Heads. She designed the player introductions for the New York Knicks, Rangers, and Liberty at Madison Square Garden. She served as design director of Esquire magazine, producer of PBS's Words on Fire, and is a founding member of Drama Dept. She is the recipient of the 1995 OBIE Award and the Michael Merritt Award for Design and Collaboration.

Ming Cho Lee is Co-Chair of the Design Department at Yale School of Drama and Set Design Adviser at Yale Repertory Theatre. He has designed extensively for the major nonprofit resident theatres across the country, including The Public Theater, Arena Stage and the Shakespeare Theatre (Washington, DC), Mark Taper Forum (Los Angeles), the Guthrie Theatre (Minneapolis), and Actors Theatre of Louisville as well as for Broadway. He has also designed for the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, and internationally at Hamburg State Opera (Germany), Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), Buhnen Graz (Austria), and in Hong Kong. He has worked with choreographers Martha Graham, Jose Limon, Anthony Tudor (American Ballet Theatre), and with Kent Stowell (Pacific Northwest Ballet), Gerald Arpino (Joffrey Ballet), and Lin Hwai-min (Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, Taipei, Taiwan). Awards for his design include the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, Ovation and Helen Hayes. He is a member of the Theatre Hall of Fame and, in recognition of lifetime achievement, he has received the 2002 National Medal of Arts, an OBIE Award, the New York City Mayor's Award for Arts and Culture, a National Endowment for the Arts Distinguished Artists Fellowship, the American Immigration Lawyers Foundation Immigrant Achievement Award, and many others from the theatre, Chinese, and educational communities. He holds honorary degrees from Occidental College, Kenyon College, Williams College, North Carolina School of the Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts, and the Parsons School of Design.

Stephen Strawbridge has designed the lighting for productions on and off Broadway, at most leading regional theatre and opera companies across the U.S. and internationally in Bergen, Copenhagen, The Hague, Hong Kong, Linz, Munich, Sao Paulo, Stockholm, and Vienna. Recent work includes Having Our Say (McCarter Theatre); At Home at the Zoo (American Conservatory Theater); Crime and Punishment (Berkeley Rep); The Glorious Ones and Bernarda Alba (Mitzi Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center); Coming Home (Long Wharf Theatre); Prayer for My Enemy (Playwrights Horizons); Shipwrecked! (Primary Stages); and Souls of Naples (Mercadante, Naples, Italy and Theatre for a New Audience). He has been nominated for or won the American Theatre Wing, Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum, Helen Hayes, and Lucille Lortel awards. He is Co-Chair of the Design Department at Yale School of Drama and Resident Lighting Designer at Yale Repertory Theatre.

www.drama.yale.edu

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