Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2007 - 43

You attended graduate school at the Yale University School of
Drama. Was it Eldon Elder who suggested you go to Yale?

The Playboy of the Western World,
Great Lakes Theater Festival, 1982.

Eldon Elder was, I guess, a mentor of mine, although he became a
very good friend of mine as well. It was really Elder who sent me in the
direction of The Yale Drama School. One summer when I was a junior in
college in St. Louis, I had a girlfriend who was in the chorus at The Muny.
She knew I was interested in stage design, and said, "You need to meet
Eldon Elder." He was the designer that summer at The Muny. So actually
she set up a meeting for me, and I took my stuff, such as it was, over to
his studio at The Muny. It was the ﬁrst time I was backstage there, so that
in itself was memorable. He took some time to talk to me then. He looked
at my stuff and said, "When you're ready, get in touch with me and I'll call
Donald Oenslager, and you can go to New Haven."
The Saint of Bleecker Street, Yale University School of Drama.
"The composer, Gian Carlo Menotti, told me he 'liked this
design.'"

Did you attend Yale right after graduating from Washington
University?
I had to go into the Army for two years after I graduated. When I got
back and was applying to Yale, I wrote to Eldon in New York. I told him
I hoped he would remember me-and he did. He promised to write to
Donald Oenslager at Yale on my behalf-and he did. I was in.
The ﬁrst day I met Donald Oenslager face to face was at a formal
punch bowl reception on the ﬁrst day of school. They had a receiving line
of all the faculty members. And I thought to myself, "Oh, God! I'm going to
meet Donald Oenslager!" I was weak in the knees. So when I ﬁnally got up
there to him, and shook his hand and told him who I was, the only thing I
could think to say was, "Mr. Oenslager, I know Eldon Elder."
Over the years I kept in touch with Eldon, and we became very good
friends. I was very fond of him. He helped me throughout my career in
times when I needed advice.
I wanted to teach like Donald Oenslager, but I think I really wanted
to be like Eldon Elder. He was so good looking. He had blonde hair that

THEATRE

DESIGN

looked like spun gold, and when I was still a student at Yale he would
sometimes come for a play at the Drama School. You could always tell if
he was in the audience, because you could see this blonde hair just kind
of glowing in the dark-Eldon Elder is here tonight!
What were Donald Oenslager classes like?
The ﬁrst class I tried to teach was a disaster because I wanted to
teach like my teacher had taught. I wanted to teach like Donald Oenslager.
He was brilliant-he was charismatic and he would come to New Haven
once a week, on Thursday mornings, and he would criticize the weekly
assignment of the design students for the ﬁrst hour and then he would lecture on some period of design history. Then, as a result of that, he would
make next week's assignment. So I would sit in class with a blank piece
of paper and a pencil in my hand. He would start to speak and by the end
of the hour he would make the assignment for next week and my paper
would still be blank. He was spellbinding and charismatic and a kind of
fountain of information, but it was nothing you could write down. In a way,
it was so elusive.
Copyright 2007 United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Inc.

TECHNOLOGY
WINTER

2007

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