Noted stage and screen actor Sam Waterston '62 will return to his alma mater on Sunday, April 20, to talk about Shakespeare, who created many of the roles in which he appeared during his student days and in his professional career.
Mr. Waterston's talk, "An American Actor Talks About Shakespeare," is the 1997 Maynard Mack Lecture, named in honor of the Sterling Professor Emeritus of English and a scholar of Shakespeare and Pope. It will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the lecture hall of the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St. The public is invited to attend the free event.
Mr. Waterston is currently in his seventh season as Jack McCoy in the NBC television series "Law and Order." As a screen actor, he is probably best known for his roles in "The Great Gatsby" and "The Killing Fields," for which he was nominated for an Oscar. He has also acted in several Woody Allen films.
A drama major at Yale, Mr. Waterston played the King in Shakespeare's "Henry VI, Part 3" for the Yale Dramat. His professional Shakespeare roles, with the New York Shakespeare Festival, have included the lead role in "Hamlet," Prospero in "The Tempest," Silvius in "As You Like It," Cloten in "Cymbeline," and Benedick in "Much Ado About Nothing," for which he won both a Drama Desk Award and an Obie Award. His stage portrayal of Abraham Lincoln at Lincoln Center was nominated for a Tony Award.
The Maynard Mack Lecture is endowed under the auspices of the Elizabethan Club and is designed especially for speakers about performance of the drama of Shakespeare's period. Previous lecturers have been Joanne Akalaitis, John Barton, Tony Church, Lisa Harrow, Michael Kahn, Mark Lamos and Carey Perloff.
A longtime member of the faculty and former chair of the English department, Professor Mack earned his B.A. in 1932 and his Ph.D. in 1936 from Yale. He was recently presented the first Lifetime Achievement Award of the Modern Language Association of America.