James Bundy, who has led David Geffen School of Drama at Yale (DGSD) for nearly a quarter century, plans to retire as dean next year, Yale’s top leaders announced on Feb. 27.
He will also step down as artistic director of Yale Repertory Theatre but will continue to teach.
“James’s long service to DGSD is unprecedented — no prior dean of the school has held the role as long,” President Maurie McInnis and Provost Scott Strobel wrote in a joint message to the university community. “His tenure is marked by outstanding achievements as an artist, administrator, teacher, and fundraiser. In addition, his visionary leadership has fostered extraordinary advancements in graduate conservatory theater education and professional practice, fundamentally transforming DGSD and Yale Rep and positioning both institutions for ongoing preeminence.”
A Yale alumnus who was first named dean in 2002, Bundy retires from his leadership roles on June 30, 2026. He will continue to teach in both David Geffen School of Drama and in Yale College.
In their message, McInnis and Strobel underscored Bundy’s success in attracting philanthropic support for the dramatic arts at Yale, work that expanded student access to “premier theater education.” During his deanship, they said, he has played a lead role in establishing 70 of the school’s 91 named scholarships. “Most significantly,” they wrote, “in 2021, the school received $150 million from the David Geffen Foundation — the largest single gift in the history of the American theater — eliminating tuition for all degree and certificate students in perpetuity.”
[H]is visionary leadership has fostered extraordinary advancements in graduate conservatory theater education and professional practice, fundamentally transforming DGSD and Yale Rep and positioning both institutions for ongoing preeminence.
As dean — formally the Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean — Bundy transformed David Geffen School of Drama’s leadership structure, the president and provost noted, recruiting a team diverse in backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences, appointing all 10 chairs of the school’s programs of study, and cultivating its board of advisors.
Bundy also led the school through the COVID-19 pandemic, when health precautions effectively halted live theater. In response, the school temporarily lengthened its three-year M.F.A. program, fully subsidizing a fourth year to provide students with “meaningful production assignments, a core tenet of the school’s conservatory training,” McInnis and Strobel wrote.
“James’s care for theater makers and audiences has also resulted in new training and production practices, creating a community of students, faculty, and staff who promote an environment of mutual respect, dialogue, and continuous learning,” they said.
As Yale Rep’s artistic director, Bundy has “immeasurably enriched the cultural life not only of our campus and our city, but of the American theater at large,” they said.
Under Bundy, 10 Yale Rep plays and musicals have been honored with the Outstanding Production of the Year Award by the Connecticut Critics Circle. The group has also recognized Bundy himself with the Tom Killen Award for lifetime dedication to the theater and Connecticut theater, as well as the Outstanding Direction Award for his staging of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Working in this community has been a sustaining source of joy since my first day as a student here in the fall of 1992. My three years of training at Yale completely changed the course of my life.
While at Yale, Bundy has produced four world-premiere plays that advanced to Broadway and collectively received a total of 11 Tony nominations and two Tony Awards; two other plays were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. He also helped establish Yale’s Binger Center for New Theatre, which develops and underwrites new plays.
And with other university leaders, Bundy has to date raised more than $100 million toward a new Dramatic Arts Building. It will be home to David Geffen School of Drama, Yale Rep, and the undergraduate Program in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. It will also include dedicated rehearsal space for the Yale Dramatic Association.
“Working in this community has been a sustaining source of joy since my first day as a student here in the fall of 1992,” Bundy said. “My three years of training at Yale completely changed the course of my life.
“On top of that,” he continued, “I’ve been fortunate to have my dream job right here for nearly 23 years. I feel a near-overwhelming sense of gratitude to all of the students, interns, faculty, staff, alumni, friends, members of the board of advisors, guest artists and artisans, donors, audience members, critics and reporters, university colleagues, and professional colleagues, in Connecticut, across the United States, and internationally, who have enriched my life over many years.”
The provost’s office will form a search advisory committee this spring to help identify Bundy’s successor.
McInnis and Strobel estimated that more than 1,500 students have received “a world-class theater education” under his leadership — “and scores of faculty, staff, alumni, artists, and visitors have benefitted from his dedication to making Yale a center of theatrical excellence.”
“We offer profound gratitude to James,” they said, “for the myriad ways he has transformed the dramatic arts at Yale over these last two decades.”
