James Bundy announced in February that at the end of the 2025-26 theater and academic seasons in June 2026 he will be stepping down from his dual roles as artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theatre and dean of the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.
Bundy has served in both capacities since 2002. The three people who previously held those jobs each served for around a dozen years. Bundy has doubled that. He still intends to teach at the drama school but is in the process of winding down his administrative duties. This month also marks the last play Bundy is directing as the artistic director of Yale Rep: Henrik Ibsen’s ever-timely social drama “Hedda Gabler.” The production stars Marianna Gailus as Hedda and uses a translation by Yale professor Paul Walsh, who teaches dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at the Geffen School.
Under Bundy’s leadership, the Yale Rep has bolstered its support of both classics and new works. He founded the “Will Power” program, which brings school groups to see one Yale Rep show a year, typically a Shakespeare play or occasionally a more recent classic like an August Wilson drama. He also created the Binger Center for New Theatre, which commissions and helps produce new plays from leading contemporary playwrights and just as importantly helps get those plays more productions following their world premieres. Some of the plays developed through the Binger Center — Paula Vogel’s “Indecent,” Amy Herzog’s “Mary Jane” and Will Eno’s “The Realistic Joneses” — moved on to Broadway, while others had success at other regional theaters around the country.
A promotional photo of Marianna Gailus in the title role of Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler.” (Bryan Derballa)
Among Bundy’s other innovations as the leader of the Yale Rep and the drama school were raising funds to allow free tuition to the school’s students — leading to the school changing its name from the Yale School of Drama to credit the donor that made the tuition-free move possible, David Geffen — and overseeing plans for a new building to house the school and theater.
The building project is still in progress. His teaching — which currently includes courses in text analysis, directing and Shakespeare — and management duties still occupy his time but the work consuming him at the moment is “Hedda Gabler.” It’s a fitting choice for Bundy, who’s previously directed a number of plays about strong-willed women who are unjustly challenged by traditional, patriarchal societies: Oscar Wilde’s “A Woman of No Importance” in 2008, Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” in 2011 and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” in 2022 and newer works such as Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” in 2014, Lillian Groag’s “The Ladies of the Camellias” in 2004 and Amy Freed’s “The Psychic Lives of Savages” in 2002. You could also include Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days,” which starred Dianne Wiest in 2017. Themes of women struggling against the system date back even further to Bundy’s time as a student in the directing program at the drama school in the mid-1990s, when his thesis project was Chekhov’s “Three Sisters.”
“I really do love directing, and I also believe in a multiplicity of voices,” said Bundy, which explains why he hasn’t done even more directing. Since the drama school has access to many directors who specialize in new works, experimental theater and other areas, he has found that his place in the directorial firmament is doing carefully considered new productions of timeless classics that reflect changing social values.
Yale Repertory Theatre announces 2025-26 season of Zora Neale Hurston, Ibsen and Ionesco
Bundy sees how the graduate students, who spend one third of the three-year program studying verse drama like Shakespeare, need a balanced program of old and new works, including the chance to perform in them. “I find myself in a sport where I provide a play audiences think of as more traditional,” Bundy said. It’s important to him that these choices are also relevant to modern audiences.
There have been two major student productions at the drama school of “Hedda Gabler” during Bundy’s tenure: One in 2014, directed by Katherine McGerr using the Walsh translation and one in 2005, directed by Christopher Carter Sanderson using one that director Doug Hughes created for a production at the Long Wharf Theatre in 2000.
“Why do we need a play like this?,” Bundy said of “Hedda Gabler,” which was first staged 135 years ago and concerns a woman whose marriage, social life and financial security are all in disarray. He answers the question with another question: “Why does our society continue to manifest misogyny? The characters Ibsen imagined in 1890 are still alive and compelling and disturbing in 2025.”
While a lot of productions of “Hedda Gabler” make the characters seem older or give them an old-world formality, Bundy is going for a youthful approach, highlighting how big life changes can affect people in their 20s and 30s. “Hedda is 29, six months married and pregnant,” he said. “It’s a very particular thing. Age is both a number and a hugely subjective experience.”
Bundy finds the script especially intriguing because “Hedda’s motivation is not easy to divine. It doesn’t answer questions about the other characters either.”
Beyond Gailus, who went to Yale as an undergraduate history major, Bundy said the “Hedda Gabler” cast is filled with “people I knew before. I haven’t directed them all before but I love their work.” As the head of one of the most prestigious graduate theater programs in the country, Bundy has been able to see hundreds of young actors at the start of their careers. This production finds him working with Austin Durant, Stephanie Machado, Max Gordon Moore and James Udom – all graduates of the drama school during Bundy’s time there — as well as Felicity Jones Latta, who has done 11 shows previously at Yale Rep, four of them directed by Bundy, and Mary Lou Rosato, who lectures in acting at the Geffen School of Drama and will be a Beinecke Fellow at Yale University in the spring.
Marianna Gailus rehearses to play the leading role in “Hedda Gabler,” playing at the Yale Repertory Theatre from Nov. 28 to Dec. 20. (T Charles Erickson Photography)
“I am genuinely interested in how to keep a classic work alive. It’s a sweet spot for me. It’s fun for me, and it can be a different sort of challenge for the students,” Bundy said. “Working on ‘Hedda,’ the others are so respectful of the poetry of the play.” He said he is delighted to be using the Walsh translation, which he points out “is not an adaptation but translated from the original Norwegian.”
Following his departure from his artistic director and dean gigs in June, Bundy looks forward to spending more time with his wife — the singer, actor, theater instructor and cabaret performer Anne Tofflemire — and seeing what the future will bring.
“I know I will miss many things about the drama school but I will still be around,” he said, adding that he is open to directing at other theaters. “I love so many more plays than I will ever get to direct.” With “Hedda Gabler” as the final Yale Rep show of his time there, he gets to go out with a bang.
“Hedda Gabler” runs from Nov. 28 through Dec. 20 at the Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven. Performances are Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m. $15-$65. yalerep.org.