The DRAMA Podcast Regina Bain

Michael Walkup studied Dramaturgy at Yale and is now the Artistic Director of Page 73 whose mission is to nurture emerging playwrights. He recently helped to bring forward Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize Winning Play, A Strange Loop. We recorded this interview in the beginning of May, before George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s murder and the groundswell of action and discussion related to race in America. Nevertheless, as we discuss A Strange Loop, we discuss race as well as sex, sexuality, violence and the responsibilities and possibilities presented to an artistic director.

Tamilla Woodard studied in the acting program at Yale. Now she is the Co-Artistic Director of the Working Theater, Associate Director of the Tony-award winning Broadway musical Hadestown and a prolific artist. In this moment, the theaters are closed and will likely remain closed for months to come. What happens to the people who create art? In this interview we discuss the Yale Cabaret, social justice, Donetta Lavinia Grays’ Where We Stand, and the nature of grief and joy in New York.

Yuri Cataldo studied design at the Yale School of Drama. Now his title is Innovation Designer at Autodesk. In between he’s started a water company, designed an MBA-level program for a college and written a book about cryptocurrency. What does it mean to be a theater designer? What do you do when your life as a designer doesn’t work out as planned? And what does any of this have to do with Andrew Yang and voting rights. In a wide-ranging interview, I speak with Yuri about design, media, and entrepreneurship.

Trained as an actress at the Yale School of Drama, Adriana now works as an actress, director, producer, advocate and leader in multiple  communities including the Sol Project, Latinx Theater Commons and the Parent Artist Advocacy League. What does it mean to be trained in one discipline and continue to find your voice in others. How do you stop waiting and start creating.

Yale School of Drama alum, Jackson Gay discusses her career as a theater director and what it took to produce a live reading of the Mueller Report. We'll talk about the role of artists in politics, advice for new directors, being a mother in the theater and what it meant to be a first-generation college student pursuing an MFA.