Theatre Legacies
Includes: BA in Theatre, MFA in Playwriting, and Theatre Faculty
Renowned American theatre director, producer, and drama critic Harold Clurman was also a beloved and influential Hunter College faculty member from 1967 to 1980. During his tenure at Hunter, Clurman brought colleagues like Arthur Miller and Walter Kerr to teach Hunter students as visiting faculty.
Award-winning actress Rhea Perlman graduated with a BA from Hunter College in 1968. Having studied theatre and drama as a Hunter student, she began her prolific acting career with small roles in Off Off Broadway productions and bit roles in films. One of her first notable performances was a recurring role on the television show Taxi, playing Zena, the girlfriend of Perlman’s future husband, Danny DeVito.
Actress Ellen Barkin is known for her powerful performances and versatile roles on both stage and screen. Born and raised in the Bronx, Barkin grew up in a middle-class Jewish family, where her passion for acting developed at a young age. She actively pursued theater while attending Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts, then enrolling at Hunter College, where she graduated with a double major in drama and history.
An esteemed director, educator, and actor—and one of the most important figures in American theatre during the latter half of the 20th century—Lloyd Richards was also a beloved Hunter College professor. A committed acting coach, he was instrumental in the careers and lives of countless students, including actress and Hunter graduate Ruby Dee, a student and collaborator.
Award-winning film producer, actor, writer, and director Sam Feuer got his start when he was discovered by Steven Spielberg and cast in the Oscar nominated film Munich (2005). Before arriving in Hollywood in 2002, Feuer lived in New York City and graduated from Hunter College with honors after studying theater and film.
Born and raised in the Bronx, Nuyorican actor and writer April Hernandez-Castillo explored her interest and talent for acting and performing while attending Hunter College as an undergraduate student.
Award-winning playwright Tina Howe served as the head of Hunter’s MFA in Playwriting program from 2010 until 2015. An esteemed educator as well as a formidable playwright, Howe was a beloved member of the artistic community to which she belonged, and well-known to have infused her art into the everyday. Most recognized for her Tony-nominated play Coastal Disturbances, Howe wrote 14 full-length plays, including two Pulitzer prize finalists, Pride’s Crossing and Painting Churches.
In-demand playwright and screenwriter Lindsey Ferrentino graduated from Hunter College with an MFA in Playwriting in 2013. Her plays include Ugly Lies the Bone (Roundabout Theatre Company and The National Theatre, UK), the barrier breaking Amy and the Orphans (Roundabout Theatre Company), This Flat Earth (Playwrights Horizons), and The Year to Come (La Jolla Playhouse).
Hunter College Playwriting MFA alumna Charly Evon Simpson is a playwright, educator, and TV writer based in Brooklyn. Her plays include Behind the Sheet, Jump, form of a girl unknown, and it’s not a trip it’s a journey. In TV, Simpson has worked as a writer on Showtime's American Rust and currently has an overall deal at HBO, where she has been a consulting producer on the second season of Industry, and a writer for several other limited series.
Hanna Novak is a New York City-based playwright, director, and theater producer. She is a 2018 graduate from the MFA Playwriting program at Hunter College, where she studied with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Annie Baker.
Mara Vélez Meléndez is a playwright born and raised in Puerto Rico. She earned her MFA in Playwriting at Hunter College in 2019, where she began to develop her play Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, which made its Off Broadway debut in 2022 at the Soho Rep.
Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, John J. Caswell Jr. graduated with an MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College in 2020. He went on to attend The Juilliard School as a fellow at Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwright Program.
New York-based playwright Liz Appel graduated from Hunter’s MFA program in Playwriting in 2021, where she was awarded a Roberts Foundation Fellowship. Originally from Toronto, Appel also holds an MA and an MPhil from Yale University. Upon finishing her degree, Appel described her experience at Hunter College as “a decade’s worth of learning in two years—I’m exhausted, but thrilled.”