David Jaffe

David Jaffe serves as Professor of Theater at Connecticut College, where he has been a faculty member since 2011 (having previously taught from 1989-1997). He currently chairs the Theater Department and teaches courses including Acting I: Preparation, Acting II, Directing I: Coaching the Actor, and Advanced Acting rotations in Heightened Text, Shakespeare, and The Realists: Chekhov & Ibsen.

His educational background includes a B.A. from Connecticut College, training at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, the Actors Theater of Louisville Apprentice Company, and an M.F.A. in Acting from Yale University School of Drama.

Jaffe's research and artistic interests center on actor training methodologies, collectively created performance, theatrical adaptation processes, and specialized work on Anton Chekhov's plays. His professional approach emphasizes the intersections between theatrical practice and broader humanistic inquiry, viewing production opportunities as faculty/student research into what it means to be human, in relationship to others, and part of a community. He believes theater education develops communication skills, collaborative problem-solving abilities, and empathy while providing concrete technical theater skills.

As department chair of this small liberal arts program, Jaffe personally mentors every theater student at Connecticut College, developing individualized approaches to their artistic growth. He co-chairs the Season Planning Advisory Committee that selects productions balancing genre diversity, writer representation, and production considerations within a four-year framework.

Jaffe has directed numerous productions at Connecticut College including Wendy Wasserstein's 'Uncommon Women and Others,' Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'Carousel,' and 'Four Dead in Ohio: Antigone at Kent State,' an adaptation collectively created with students that meshed Sophocles' tragedy with the Kent State massacre of 1970. Prior to his current position, he served as Director of the O'Neill Center's National Theater Institute for eight years and as the Frank B. Weeks Visiting Professor of Theater at Wesleyan University.