For Yale School of Drama students with interdisciplinary interests, choosing one department in which to earn an MFA may seem like prematurely committing to one professional path, leaving other talents and passions behind. But some alumni have parlayed their training into the kinds of careers they never envisioned as students. Here are the stories of five distinguished alumni who transformed their career trajectories and became leaders in fields quite different from what they studied at Yale. Their success stories are living proof that the creativity and resourcefulness that students cultivate at Yale are just as valuable as the technical skills and professionalization they receive. It is never too late for students and alumni to broaden their possibilities, find their true paths and create exciting second acts for their professional lives in the theatre and beyond.
Alex Witchel
Photo by Fred R. Conrad.
Who would have guessed that journalist, novelist, and memoirist Alex Witchel ’82 earned a degree in theater management from Yale School of Drama? In fact, she has written four books, profiles theatrical luminaries for The New York Times Magazine, and interviews authors, comedians, chefs, vintners, and restaurateurs. Alex arrived at her writing career unexpectedly, when nothing else worked. After YSD, she became an apprentice Broadway house manager but quickly hit a glass ceiling. “About a year into it, Bernie Jacobs said that I had gone as far as any woman was ever going to go at the Shubert Organization,” said Alex. “That was 1983. So I thought: I am really sunk.” On the advice of a “very expensive” career counselor Alex went on 165 informational interviews, and almost became a junior account executive at an advertising firm. A secretarial agency advised her to remove YSD from her resume to avoid seeming overqualified. She finally got a job as an assistant to the editor in chief of Elle magazine. When her boss was fired three months later, the interim editor invited her to publish a story every month and build a portfolio. “I didn’t think I could be a writer,” Alex remembers; her father read her early work and wasn’t exactly a fan. She took an assignment to interview Bernadette Peters over the phone. Later, watching a higher-level writer read the article, “I could tell from the way he was standing. I knew immediately it was no good.” She reworked the draft—less formal, more conversational—and it ran. And her writing career was born.
YSD 2013–14
39