NEW HAVEN, CONN.: Yale School of Drama has announced that Victoria Nolan, the deputy dean and theatre management professor at Yale School of Drama, and managing director of Yale Repertory Theatre, will end her 27-year tenure on June 30, 2020. When Nolan steps down next summer, she will have been managing director for more than 150 productions and for exactly half of the theatre’s 54-year history. She plans to work on other projects and spend more time with her family.

“Working closely with Victoria Nolan for the past 17 years, I know that her commitment to supporting artistry and developing more effective management strategies is passionate and lasting—there have been no significant initiatives here in the last quarter century to which she was not a selfless contributor,” said James Bundy, dean of Yale School of Drama and artistic director of Yale Repertory Theatre, in a statement.

Nolan arrived on campus in 1993 to serve as managing director and lecturer in theatre management. Since then, she has become a professor and has directed the administration, production, finance, personnel, marketing, and outreach activities of both the School of Drama and Yale Rep. She was appointed as the program’s first deputy dean in 2002, and served as the interim chair of the department from 2005 to 2006. She also co-founded the Arts Industry Coalition for Greater New Haven. She received the Betsy L. Mahaffey Arts Administration Fellowship Award from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and the 2005 Elm/Ivy Award for distinguished service to the community, jointly awarded by the University and the City of New Haven. Before her time in Connecticut, she served in multiple leadership positions at Baltimore Center Stage and Indiana Repertory Theatre. She has also been an active with the League of Resident Theatres, served as a board member of Theatre Communications Group, and has chaired grantmaking panels at the National Endowment of the Arts. In 2019, she was awarded the Kennedy Center Medallion for dedication to the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

“The greatest joy of my time at Yale has been mentoring the extraordinarily talented students from whom I have learned every single day,” said Nolan in a statement. “To count them among the most cherished and trusted colleagues I have had the privilege to work alongside in the field is icing on a very rich cake. The unique relationship between the School of Drama and Yale Rep has meant that there is always a new boundary to push; and we are lucky to have the support of a world-class university that allows us, in fact, expects us, to make those explorations. It is thrilling to watch our graduates carry on that charge as they continually reimagine the landscape of the American theatre.”