Rare Opportunity to Meet David Alan Grier, BA ’78, in a visit to his alma mater

Sunday, October 18, 2009, 10:00 a.m.

Arthur Miller Theatre, Walgreen Drama Center, North Campus

Actor and comedian David Alan Grier, aka DAG, who graduated from Michigan in 1978 with a BA in theatre and went on to earn an MFA at the Yale School of Drama, will visit Ann Arbor this Sunday for a chat with students and the interested public in a discussion and Q & A moderated by theatre faculty member Leigh Woods.

David Alan Grier began his professional career on Broadway as Jackie Robinson in The First (1981) for which he earned a Tony nomination. He joined the cast of the hit Broadway musical Dreamgirls and went on to star opposite Denzel Washington in A Soldier’s Play on stage, later reprised as A Soldier’s Story for film.

Known primarily for his comedy turns, on television—the Emmy-winning In Living Color, Bonnie Hunt’s hit comedy Life with Bonnie, guest appearances on Saturday Night Live, as a stand-up comic, and, most recently as host of Comedy Central’s new The Chocolate News, a spoof of TV news magazines—and in movies—Mario van Peebles’ Baadasssss!, Boomerang with Eddie Murphy, and Bewitched with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell—Grier has also delved into serious drama, as a Shakespearean-trained actor and in such films as Robert Altman’s Streamers and opposite Kevin Bacon in The Woodsman.

And now he can add published author to his list of accomplishments, with his recently released Barack Like Me in which he tells his own story starting with growing up in Detroit all the way to Barack Obama’s inauguration, taking a look at how he and America have changed as he imagines himself tapped by our new President as Secretary of Mirth.