Robert Károly Sarlós was born into an assimilated Jewish
family (a shirt tailor/ haberdasher and a saleslady/housewife)
June 6, 1931, in Budapest, Hungary, and attended the city’s
renowned Lutheran High School (EvangÈlikus Gimn·zium). Admitted
in 1949 to a select class in stage direction at the Hungarian
Academy of Theatre and Film Arts, he was after one semester
expelled for “bourgeois” descent AND thinking. He became a
lathe-operator, served in the Hungarian (“Peoples”) Army, studied
theatre history, had a small part in the 1956 revolution and then
left his native land.
Former UC Davis professor of theatre and dance, costume design,
Phyllis J. Kress of Sacramento, California, passed away on
Sunday, July 10, 2016, at 77 years of age. Kress retired in 1998
after 32 years at UC Davis.
Alan A. Stambusky (1929 – 2011) became
chair of what was then called Dramatic Art and Speech (now
the Department of Theatre and Dance) in 1964.
He retired in 1991.
The following obituary was written in 2011 by Elin Diamond,
professor of English and director of the Graduate Program in
Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. Diamond, who
specializes in feminist criticism and dramatic theory, earned her
doctorate and master’s degree at UC Davis. See the New York Times
obituary
here.
Della Davidson was a vital creative force for the Department of
Theatre and Dance for over ten years and was a central figure in
the Bay Area dance world since the early 1980s. She has been
described as one of the West Coast’s most fluent writers for the
body, a dance maker of works that ruminate with poignancy and
beauty on topics ranging from a woman’s anger to disease, death
and the fragility of human existence. Her work echoed with
references to the United States tradition in modern dance, and
yet her dancers perform with a passionate abandonment of
commitment and rage.
Robin Gray, Production Stage Manager, has worked, locally, for
Music Circus, B Street Theater, Capital Stage and for the
Sacramento Theater Company. She worked on Hugh Jackman’s
pre-Broadway show at the Curran in San Francisco in 2012. She
last toured for Kansas City Starlight with Hello Dolly
starring Michele Lee. Regionally, she stage-managed Phantom
of the Opera in San Francisco. Before moving to Sacramento,
Ms.
Thomas J. Munn, an internationally recognized Lighting Designer,
has designed for theatre, opera, ballet, television, videos, and
industrials. A graduate of Boston University School of Fine and
Applied Arts in Design, he made his Broadway debut in 1974
designing scenery for Brightowerby Dore Schary.
