Scottish tragedies, singing pirates, and you

Yale has great athletes. Dedicated, skillful, and intelligent, the Bulldogs dominate crew races and swim meets, electrify the Yale Bowl, and boast powerhouse fencing. Ninety percent of the student population participates in some form of athletic activity, and the varsity playing fields are an integral battleground for those all-important Ivy rivalries.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH Song and satire from 'Madeline's Medea,' an original play by Stacie Lents, SY '00.

Yet for all that, Yale isn't exactly known as a sports school. If you were to open up a U.S. News and World Report or just ask your barber, chances are they'd give you the same 411 on Yale's ultimate strength: theater. From the No. 1 ranked School of Drama to the undergraduate Dramat, from the Grand Guignol of the Yale Rep to the sweaty intimacy of Nick Chapel, from Shakespeare's First Quarto to your room-mate's latest masterpiece, Yale abounds and astounds with theatrics of every kind.

"The kinds of plays vary completely," Sarah Pike, TD '00, said. "Usually they're instigated by people who've always wanted to put on a certain show, either because they just love it, or they think it will help them become better directors." With the great abundance of hopeful professionals majoring in theater studies, putting on a show is often a very serious affair. Moreover, students usually direct or perform in productions as their senior project for the major. Recent student-only productions include such diverse offerings as obscure German tragedy (The Prince of Homburg), never performed plays (Just the Summers), and bizarre reinterpretations (Shakespeare's Richard III, done without the character of Richard).

In addition to well-known and unknown scripts, Yalies are constantly mounting student-written plays. "Student playwrights are incredible to work with," Pike, who has performed in several student-written productions, said. "There's something so exciting about something so brand new." While students write in any number of styles, many of their plays tend toward the experimental. "They can get really weird," Pike admitted. "I was in one play that was actually called Misogyny." This year, even the more traditional Yale Dramat joined the trend of staging original plays, with an original adaptation of the Middle English epic Beowulf by Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum, JE '00, and Matthew O'Neill, DC '00. Adam Chaznit, TD '03, wrote and directed The Tragedy of Miggilicutty, a bizarre and hilarious comedy mocking every literary format from tragedy to Shakespeare to King Arthur stories. Another original satire debuting this year was Madeline's Medea, written by Stacie Lents, SY '00, and directed by Tamara Fisch, PC '00.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH A scandalous moment in the Freshperson show, 'Marco Polo Sings a Solo.'

Although student experimentation may not yet include Kabuki puppet theater, if you want to do it, you can probably get funding for it. The Sudler Fund is Yale's own version of the National Endowment for the Arts, a bottomless pit of money used to fund student cultural projects from photography exhibits to performance art. Student playwrights, directors, and actors have come to utter the word "Sudler" in tones of reverent awe, because this money is used to fulfill artistic dreams. Student-run theater of this sort is the most prevalent, exciting, and vital drama a college campus can foster, and Yale teems with it. On any given weekend, one is likely to find three or four new student-run plays going up around campus.

Often, students with similar dramatic interests get together to form their own theater groups. Some of the most well-established of these organizations include the Yale Undergraduate Shakespeare Company and the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Offerings from this year and past years have included The Winter's Tale, Romeo and Juliet, The Gondoliers, and The Pirates of Penzance. The Yale Outdoor Dramatic Association, on the other hand, is dedicated to bringing Yale theater out of theaters and into the outdoors, debuting this year with an adventuresome production of The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder.

Other students form groups to pursue less traditional dramatic styles. Physical Impulse explores movement-based performance. Yale Children's Theater (YCT) performs several shows a year that entertain both youngsters and their parents. YCT also conducts workshops in New Haven high schools, culminating in their annual student play-writing contest. This year, the Children's Theater offered original adaptations of James and the Giant Peach, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and The Frog Prince.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH A scene from this year's reinterpreted, Richard-less production of Shakespeare's 'Richard III.'

Those with more conservative (and expensive) tastes tend to stick to the official undergraduate theater organization, the Yale Dramatic Association (the Dramat). Every year, the Dramat mounts two lavish main-stage productions (a musical and a straight play) with professional directors, as well as four student-run experimental shows. Also producing a Freshperson Show and a Commencement Show, the Dramat's annual output is a dizzying eight plays. This year, the Freshperson show was John Guare's Marco Polo Sings a Solo, and the Commencement Show was Pippin. Other Dra-mat productions included Shakes-peare's Macbeth, directed by Peter Oyston of London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and a musical version of Charles Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

The Dramat is the oldest college theater organization in the nation, with the illustrious list of previous members including Cole Porter, '13, Thornton Wil-der, Richard Maltby, BR '59, DRA '62, and David Shire, TD '59. Maltby and Shire began their lifelong collaboration here at Yale; their most recent musical score was for the popular Broadway production of Big.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH Matthew Fogel, ES '02, rocks in the Yale Outdoor Dramatic Assocition's production of 'The Skin of Our Teeth.'

For many Yalies, the Dramat is a training ground, preparing them for careers in the professional world (recent grad Blake Lindsley, SY '96, was featured in Swingers—she's the one with the cigar). These students don't have far to look for role models: the Yale Repertory Theater on York and Chapel is one of the nation's premiere regional theaters and has won multiple Tony awards. The Yale Cabaret features a new play every weekend, written, produced, acted, and directed by School of Drama students. Other professional theaters in the area include the Shubert, where Broadway shows on tour often perform, and the Long Wharf Theater, a strong regional stage which premiered Margaret Edsel's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Wit.

From community service to late night carousing, theater pervades every element of Yale life. Yale drama rivals the 90 percent participation mark set by Yale athletics—and even more plays seem to go up every year. So, if you're looking to launch your career as a thespian, or maybe just find an empty room where you can try out your latest play, Yale is definitely the place to be.

Josh Drimmer contributed to this article.

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