Maynard Mack Lecture to feature actor John Douglas Thompson

Actor John Douglas Thompson, who most recently played the role of Becker in the Broadway production of August Wilson’s “Jitney” will be the guest speaker at the annual Maynard Mack Lecture on Monday, April 10.

The Mack Lecture will take the form of a conversation with Walton Wilson, chair of the Acting Department, and head of voice and speech at the Yale School of Drama. The event will be held 5:30-6:30 p.m. in the Yale Repertory Theatre, corner of Chapel and York streets. It is free and open to the public.

Thompson is a Fox Foundation Fellowship recipient and received a Samuel H. Scripps Award for extraordinary commitment in promoting the power of language in classical and contemporary theater (2015), as well as the 2013 Robert Brustein Award for sustained excellence in American theater

Every year, the Elizabethan Club brings to Yale a distinguished theater practitioner to speak on a topic of his or her choice. The lectureship honors the late Maynard Mack, Sterling Professor and chair of the English Department, an eminent scholar and critic of Shakespeare and Pope.