
Jimmy Tripp Scholarship Fund
DONOR THANK YOU GIFTS
Donor will be acknowledged with a VIP sponsor listing name plate in the studio's lobby and on the studio's website.
$1,000
All of the above + donor will be invited to the VIP ribbon cutting of the James Tripp Theater at the Stella Adler Studio's new facility on lower Broadway.
$3,350
All of the above + donor will underwrite the tuition of one student in the Summer Shakespeare program and receive access to previously unreleased video footage of Jimmy teaching and/or talking about acting.
$5,000
All of the above + donor will be invited to a special evening at the opera, Jimmy's favorite pastime, with staff and faculty.
James Tripp, actor and teacher, shuffled off this mortal coil on October 27, in New York City. Son of the late Ruth (Dickinson)Tripp and Arley Tripp, he was born on April 12, 1938 in Centralia, Illinois, and was forever grateful that his parents relocated to South San Francisco, California after the War. He leaves behind a beloved sister, Jenny Tripp, a niece, Cordelia Baker, a nephew, Peter Garibaldi, and a host of devoted friends and beloved colleagues. The great love of his life, Peter Coffield, predeceased him.
A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, he went straight from school to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival and worked continually in classical repertory as a young man. His acting career included leading roles in Shakespearian and classical plays for the New York Shakespeare Festival, the San Diego National Shakespeare Festival, the Great Lakes Theater Festival, and over 20 productions at Princeton University’s McCarter Theatre. On Broadway, he was featured in Hamlet, The Cocktail Party, and Cock-A-Doodle Dandy. His television credits include PBS’s The Adam Chronicles and the hit series Spin City. In 1994, Mr. Tripp received a National Endowment for the Arts Special Project Theatre Grant with Joan Evans. He taught at the New Orleans Center for Cultural Affairs (NOCCA). His numerous directing accolades included, You Can’t Take It With You and Relatively Speaking (San Diego’s Old Globe); As You Like It (Camden Shakespeare); and The Misanthrope, Cloud 9, and The Cripple of Inishmaan (NOLA Project New Orleans Theatre). He worked with artists such as Jean Renoir, Arvin Brown, John Houseman, and Ellis Raab. He loved every minute of it.
But his happiest years were those he spent as a teacher and mentor to young actors, truly an epic second act to a life in the theatre. Mr. Tripp served as the Head of Acting and Master Teacher at the Stella Adler Studio and taught at other prestigious institutions around the world, including the Universidade Moderna in Libson, Portugal, and the Stage School in Hamburg, Germany. He is fondly remembered by the many hundreds of students with whom he worked for his biting wit, his unerring eye for artificiality, and his straightforward criticisms and directions. His aim was to make them better artists, and he did. There was often laughter and occasionally tears in his classes, but if you survived, you came out a more honest and skilled actor, with a deeper appreciation for the great literature of the theater. He did not suffer fools gladly, or in fact at all.
His chief hobby was the opera, and his knowledge of it was encyclopedic. This obsession took hold of him at the age of 6, when his parents took him to his first performance at the San Francisco Opera, and never let go. As a teenager he subjected his suffering family to the Saturday afternoon Texaco broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, played at deafening volume on the living room hi fi, as he occupied the sofa with a score spread across his knees. God help you if you interrupted this weekly worship. He collected Staffordshire figures, Victorian china, books, hats, memorabilia of the British Royal Family, fine art, and walking sticks, amassing far too much of all of these. He loved good food (and junk food), great music, and his work.
He was a loving son whose every visit home was heralded like the passing of Haley’s Comet by his adoring family; an affectionate and generous uncle and mentor to his nephew and niece; a guide to all good things as a brother to his sister Jenny, and an inexhaustibly loyal and forgiving friend. Nobody who knew him will forget him, and those who loved him will always miss him.
In lieu of flowers the family requests donations be made in his name to The Stella Adler Studio, which has created a James Tripp Scholarship Fund. You may donate knowing that Jimmy would have appreciated it very much.
More information about Stella Adler Studio of Acting: The Studio's mission is to create an environment with the purpose of nurturing theatre artists who value humanity, their own and others, as their first and most precious priority while providing art and education to the greater community. The studio is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization.
Please note: Gifts may be made here via Go Fund Me. Donations may also be made via the studio's website where there is a James Tripp tribute option at https://ste-web.scansoftware.com/cafeweb/tapestry?service=external/DonationPage
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