In Memoriam: Tim Vasen

TIM VASEN, director of the Program in Theater and a lecturer in the Lewis Center for the Arts, died Dec. 28 from injuries suffered in an accident at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was 51.

After earning a master’s degree from the Yale School of Drama in 1993, Vasen was hired to teach part time by Michael Cadden, then director of Princeton’s Program in Theater and Dance, who said he was impressed by Vasen’s “passionate commitment to working with students as artistic collaborators on the kind of work that demanded their full investment.”

Vasen left Princeton a few years later to pursue directing in several professional theaters, but returned to the faculty in 2003. His courses were often cross-listed with other disciplines, and he was an authority on directing world premieres of unproduced Soviet-era projects. After becoming director of the Program in Theater in 2012, Vasen helped bring renowned theater artists to the University as faculty members. “Tim was everything you could want in a teacher, a mentor, and a colleague,” said Lewis Center lecturer Robert Sandberg ’70.