DAVID A. BERRY ’68

DAVID A. BERRY, a playwright and screenwriter, died Dec. 16, 2016, at age 73. A member of the Commons Club, he enlisted in the U.S. Army shortly after graduation. He studied theater and European history, but did not set out to write plays. When he was writing a novel inspired by his Army service in the Vietnam War, his former wife, Robin Schmidt, urged him to turn it into a play. It became G. R. Point, which ran off-Broadway before moving to Broadway in 1979. The play earned him an Obie award for distinguished playwriting. In 1980 his play, The Whales of August, was presented at the WPA Theater in Manhattan, and in 1987 he wrote the screenplay for the movie version, which starred Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, Vincent Price, and Ann Sothern. After the success of his two plays he continued to write and teach at several institutions, including the National Theater Institute in Waterford, Conn., and more recently, the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. In addition to his former wife, he is survived by his sister, his brother, and a stepdaughter, Julia Lee Barclay-Morton ’86.