East of Eden, another garden?
Christl Maier, associate professor of Old Testament,
left the Divinity School in January to accept a senior position on the faculty
of the University of Marburg in her home country, Germany, where she will
combine historical-critical interpretation of Old Testament texts with feminist
biblical hermeneutics. In leaving, though, she threw some garlands in the
direction of YDS. She likened her departure to "leaving the Garden of Eden" and
said she hopes to bring "the imperishable fruits of wisdom" harvested at YDS to
Marburg with her, including the "varied faith traditions and perspectives
brought to Yale by smart and interested students." She concluded, "East of Eden
I have found another garden to irrigate. I am grateful for having experienced
the abundance of YDS, which fostered my skills of planting and reaping [from]
the tree of wisdom." The recipient of a prestigious Henry Luce III Fellowship
in Theology while at YDS, Maier has not cut her Yale ties entirely: she will be
collaborating with Associate Professor of Hebrew Scriptures Carolyn Sharp ’00PhD
on a Book of Jeremiah commentary for the International Exegetical Commentary
on the Old Testament.
Sterling Divinity Quadrangle: where art and social
justice meet
Most of the time, the main courtyard of Sterling
Divinity Quadrangle is simply a place where students can read in the shade of a
tree, take some quiet time on a wooden bench, or toss a Frisbee around with friends.
But of late the Quad has been put to another use: an outdoor art gallery with a
focus on issues of social justice. First, in October, there was the Eyes
Wide Open exhibit,
when pairs of empty boots filled the courtyard, each pair representing a New England
soldier who died in Iraq. Not long afterwards, beginning in mid-January, came
the Global Village Shelters installation, displaying inexpensive yet sturdy shelters
for the homeless made of laminated corrugated cardboard that is waterproof,
fire resistant, and biodegradable. The Quad might not have the same crowd
appeal as some of the other locations for the exhibits, including such venues
as Central Park and the Museum of Modern Art. But in both cases the Quad became
a destination for a number of people who under normal circumstances would not
have occasion for a visit.
Capital punishment close to home
As a matter of life and death, capital punishment is
an issue of great intellectual interest for most students of theology. But for
two current MDiv students, the death penalty is more than a subject for
theoretical debate. Student Robin Theurkauf, who earned a PhD in political
science from Yale in 2001, was married to a victim of the World Trade Center
attack. And Michael Norko, a YDS student and associate professor of psychiatry
at the School of Medicine, gave expert testimony in the highly publicized
murder trial of Michael Ross, whose execution in 2005 was Connecticut's first
in 45 years. Both wrote about their experiences in the 2006-07 issue of Spectrum, YDS's yearly report to alumni and
friends. Theurkauf, who testified in the penalty phase of the trial of Zacarias
Moussaoui, wrote, "Creation is gripped in a continuous stream of violence that
flows over every time and place. We need not contribute to it. Killing
Moussaoui would not bring any of the victims back. Rather, it would have
dehumanized us all." Based in part on Norko's input, the courts found Ross
competent to stand trial. Norko wrote, "He [Ross] found comfort in the rituals
and exercises of his faith tradition, for which he was nonetheless ridiculed in
popular judgments. The common reaction was to exclude from him the possibility
of redemption, a notion that curiously seems to burden God with the limits of
vengeful humanity."
School of Drama
James Bundy, Dean
www.yale.edu/drama
A "new voice" in playwriting
Several months before he receives his MFA in
playwriting from Yale School of Drama, Tarell McCraney is already experiencing
tremendous professional success with his Brother/Sister trilogy of plays: The Brothers
Size, In the Red & Brown Water, and Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet. The first play in the trilogy, The Brothers Size,
was developed at YSD as a second-year studio production. Several of McCraney's
classmates, wanting to see the student production have a further life,
endeavored to shop the play to other theaters. Forming Bulldog Independent
Group, theater management students Malcolm Darrell ’07MFA, David Roberts ’08MFA,
and Stephanie Ybarra ’08MFA partnered with the Off-Broadway Foundry Theatre to
produce the play at the Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar Festival
of promising new works in January 2007. The YSD production was moved intact to
New York under the direction of Tea Alagic ’07MFA with the cast consisting of
Brian Henry ’07MFA, Gilbert Owuor ’07MFA, and Elliott Villar ’07MFA. The New
York Times reviewed
the sold-out engagement, saying that the "absorbing and emotionally resonant
drama, set in the bayou country of Louisiana and loosely based on West African
myths, is decidedly the work of a young writer. But there is evidence in his
richly drawn characters and colloquial poetry, which manages to sound both epic
and rooted in a specific place, to suggest that he has a long career ahead of
him."
In February New Jersey's McCarter Theatre mounted its
own production of The Brothers Size as the centerpiece of their In-Festival while
simultaneously staging readings of In the Red & Brown Water and Marcus; or The Secret of
Sweet. At YSD McCraney was represented in last
year's Carlotta Festival of New Plays with a production of In the Red &
Brown Water and
will be featured again this year with a staging of Marcus; or The Secret of
Sweet. The New
York Times advises,
"Listen closely, and you might hear that thrilling sound that is one of the
main reasons we go to the theater, that beautiful music of a new voice."
Theater beyond the stage
Yale
Repertory Theatre hosted the international tour of the AIDS drama In the
Continuum, written
and performed by Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter, in January and February. The
production, which received support from Bank of America, provided tremendous
opportunity for the Yale Rep to conduct outreach to various segments of the
Yale community and New Haven's community at large. A tour-de-force tale
recounting a weekend in the life of two black women -- one a middle-class
newsreader in Zimbabwe and the other a teenage poet living in Los Angeles -- the
play exposes the silent epidemic that has made HIV the primary cause of death
for black women aged 25 to 34. Yale Rep partnered with AIDS Project New Haven,
Yale's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, AIDS Walk New Haven, Yale
AIDS Watch, Yale's Afro-American Cultural Center, Yale's divinity and medical
schools, the Women Faculty Forum at Yale, and AIDS Interfaith (among other
organizations) to host events and discussions to disseminate the play's
powerful message. Yale Rep welcomed more than 2,000 area high-school students
to In the Continuum through the theater's innovative Will Power! education initiative. Both of the
performers/playwrights participated in "Talk Backs" with the students after
each of the five added student matinees.
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