Norma Brustein Dies at 50

Norma Brustein, actress, drama teacher, and wife of Robert Brustein, died Monday night in the Yale-New Haven Hospital following a massive cardiac arrest. She was 50 years old.

Mrs. Brustein was an assistant professor of acting at the Yale Drama School and a frequent performer with the Yale Repertory Theater, Steven Kezerian, head of the Yale News Bureau, said yesterday. Her latest role was the lead in the Yale Repertory Theater's production of Chekhov's "The Seagull," which finished its run Saturday night.

Robert Brustein will take over as director of the Loeb Drama Center in the spring of 1980, and will become a professor of English the following fall. He is currently director of the Yale Repertory Theater and dean of the Yale Drama School.

Mrs. Brustein acted on television in productions of Omnibus, of the Kraft Theater, and the Philco Playhouse, and in Off-Broadway productions in New York. She had planned to join the American Repertory Theater company at Harvard next year, which will be established under the direction of her husband when he assumes his new position.

A private funeral was held yesterday in New Haven, and a memorial service is planned for April 30.

"She was an incredible wit," Richard Ostreicher, a graduate student at the Yale Drama School, said yesterday. "Everybody in the department loved her very much," he added.