Tim Vasen, Lewis Center for the Arts

(1964 - 2015)

Photo by Denise Applewhite

About

It is with great sadness that the Lewis Center for the Arts shares the devastating news of the sudden passing of our colleague Timothy K. Vasen, Director of the Program in Theater. Tim died on December 28, 2015 following an accident in Brooklyn. He was 51. Learn more ...

A community has been created on Facebook to share recollections of Tim's life and his teaching. Please visit, explore, and share your own stories.

A memorial will be held for Tim at Yale School of Drama on Saturday, February 6 at 4 pm. Learn more ...

Tim Vasen directed plays and taught classes in the Program in Theater from 1993 through 2015, and served as its Director from 2012 until his untimely death in 2015. Production highlights include the world premieres of unproduced Soviet-era Pushkin projects with scores by Prokofiev: Eugene Onegin and Boris Godunov; Le Bourgeois Bigwig — a collaboration with the Princeton Orchestra on James Magruder's new version of the Strauss/Hoffmansthal musical staging of Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme; and new work by Princeton writers including Veronica Siverd's Alice: A New Play and Annika Bennett's Eyes Up High in the Redwood Tree. In collaboration with Lewis Center Chair Michael Cadden and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, he created the recurring course "Re: Staging The Greeks" which has been a conduit between Princeton students and Greek theater artists since 2008. He had an ongoing relationship with the Yale School of Drama as an adviser to MFA directing students on their thesis projects, and he taught or directed at a number of professional training programs, including NYU's Tisch Graduate Acting Program and the Academy for Classical Acting at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington. He spent a number of years as Resident Director at CENTERSTAGE in Baltimore, directing new work and classics as well as commissioning and developing new plays and adventurous performance work. Other professional directing credits include productions at Playwrights Horizons, Philadelphia Theatre Company, South Coast Repertory and Children's Theater Company in Minneapolis. He earned a BA in American Studies from Yale and an MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama.