Walker Caplan, Branford College

Walker Caplan is a young writer who precociously understands the relationship between comedy and suffering; who grasps that all plays are about love and all plays are about death, and everything else is subsidiary. Her beautiful comedy Winners looked gently and deeply at the school community surrounding a middle-school-aged yoyo prodigy who has died, as his classmates prepare for the school talent contest. The play was a Yale Dramat mainstage production, and melted many hearts, and made us see ourselves. Walker’s thesis project in the major, Rumspringa is a moving work done in collaboration with a brilliant Yale composer, and again featured Walker’s extraordinary gift of compassion. It deals with a young Amish girl’s reckoning with her identity and that of her family as she approaches the rite of rumspringa.

Walker’s study is scholarly and assiduous. She’s an improv performer, and approaches the deepest aspects of playwriting with the imagination of the actor. Walker has been a consistent, active presence in the Yale theater scene, mentoring younger theater-makers, aspiring towards excellence as a comedian, writer, and performer. She will be a voice we will hear in many media for a long time to come.