F. Curtis Canfield

Fayette Curtis Canfield (July 29, 1903 – June 8, 1986) was an American theater director, drama professor, and the first dean of the Yale School of Drama.

Career A member of the 1925 class of Amherst College, Canfield took a teaching job there in 1927, eventually becoming Stanley King Professor of dramatic arts and, from 1938, director of the college's Kirby Memorial Theater. At Yale, he produced the premieres of several major plays, including Archibald MacLeish's Pulitzer-winning J.B., (which was chosen by the U.S. State Department to represent American university theater at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair) and staged revivals at Yale and off-Broadway, such as Stephen Vincent Benét's dramatic poem, John Brown's Body. He left Yale in 1967 to teach at the University of Pittsburgh, where he stayed until his retirement in 1973. From July to September 1949, as a pioneer in the live direction of television drama, he produced a series of eight live half-hour dramas on NBC, featuring actors in short plays by Thornton Wilder and Edna St. Vincent Millay. He produced live TV performances of Hedda Gabler, Richard III, Othello, The Rivals and Uncle Vanya.

Personal life Canfield was born on July 29, 1903, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. On May 21, 1927, he married Katherine F. Newbold. Upon retiring he returned to live in Amherst. He died at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts, on June 8, 1986.