Dramatic return

Beowulf Sheehan

Incoming David Geffen School of Drama dean Evan Yionoulis ’82, ’85MFA, previously chaired the school's acting program and was a resident director at the Yale Rep. View full image

One of the last times Evan Yionoulis ’82, ’85MFA, was on stage, she knew she was done with acting. It was a Yale Summer Cabaret production, and the company didn’t have enough women, so she stepped up. “In between my costume changes and the various musical numbers,” she recalls, she would “[run] around to the back of the house so I could watch the scenes I wasn't in.” That was the moment she knew her path lay in directing. She gets “much more joy from watching from the back.”

That joy has built a remarkable career. Her résumé includes multiple directorial awards. She chaired the acting program at Yale's David Geffen School of Drama (DGSD) from 1998 to 2003 and directed 14 productions at the Yale Repertory Theatre, where she was a resident director from 1998 to 2018. Since 2018, she’s been the dean and director of Juilliard’s drama division, and as of July 1 she has returned to Yale as DGSD’s incoming dean and artistic director of the Yale Rep.

As Yionoulis takes over from James Bundy ’95MFA, who led DGSD for 24 years, she’s keenly aware of the balance required to maintain and improve the school’s top-tier standing. “One thing that’s unique about the drama school is that there are students from all the disciplines of theater working together,” she says, “and they’re supported by a faculty of working artists and managers.” She likened the Repertory Theatre to a teaching hospital, where students can work alongside and learn from professionals.

That experience is deeply necessary in our fragmented age, when previous generations’ paths to success may be less viable for today’s graduates. At Juilliard, Yionoulis launched an initiative to help drama students build experience on professional film sets by producing short films, but she says she wants to avoid one-size-fits-all approaches. “For our lighting, projection, and sound design students, there are new technologies being used in the field and we want to make sure they have exposure to that and know how to use them,” she says. “And in other cases, people can be in a room with no technology and develop their voices and their bodies.” Ultimately, she sees these approaches as all being rooted in the same goal: “working collaboratively to create experiences in the theater that move people and uplift the human spirit.”

Marc Robinson, dean of humanities in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and chair of the search advisory committee, told me that the committee was impressed by her “clarity, her attentiveness, her intellect, empathy, pragmatism.” Robinson sees these qualities as leading her to listen deeply to all parties as she charts DGSD’s future. “She’s very gifted at building consensus.”

No one can say at the outset exactly where that consensus will lead, of course, but Yionoulis is clear on what guides her. When I asked what, for her, a successful term in the deanship would look like, she answered: “If our graduates are continuing to get what they need to lead satisfying artistic and professional lives.”