David Hammond has returned to the position of Artistic Director for the 1999-2000 season at North Carolina's PlayMakers Repertory Company following the departure of producing director Milly S. Barranger. Hammond was artistic director from 1985-1992 and has continued with the company as associate producing director.

Dr. Millie S. Barranger resigned her positions as chair of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's department of dramatic literature and as producing director of PlayMakers Repertory Company on June 30.

In a related move, PlayMakers company member Ray Dooley has been named interim chair of the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which provides the company its administrative home.

Hammond's work has been seen at Yale Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre, Roundabout Theatre Company and the San Francisco Opera.

Barranger will remain on the UNC faculty as an Alumni Distinguished Professor and will take a leave during the 1999-2000 school year. She plans to edit a book on theatre history being translated into Korean and finish her biography on American Repertory Theatre founder Margaret Webster. Among her achievements in 17 years of service: she recruited new faculty, resident theatre artists and administrators, and led a $2 million campaign to outfit the new Center for Dramatic Arts.

Barranger is credited with bringing professional theatre to the campus of the UNC in Chapel Hill, including the world premiere of Horton Foote's The Death of Papa with Ellen Burstyn and Matthew Broderick; Judd Hirsch and Eva Marie Saint in Death of a Salesman; Pauline Flanagan in The Beauty Queen of Leenane; Kathleen Widdoes in Master Class; Frank Converse in Skylight; and Elizabeth Ashley and Keir Dullea in Two Character Play.

-- By Sean McGrath
and Christine Ehren