Peruvian director with an offer to collaborate. “I told him: ‘This is how I work,’ and he said, ‘That’s exactly why I want to work with you.’” To ease her eventual transition back to Ireland, Tanya Dean has made a point of staying informed about Irish theatre while at YSD and hopes to crosspollinate that knowledge with the best theory, plays, and practices learned at Yale. The very difference and diversity that drew her to Yale, however, may pose a bit of a challenge in securing a job back home. “The DFA is a very different program from the PhD,” Dean notes. As she enters the homestretch of her degree, she’s tailoring her work to address this fact: “I have to create a strategy right now of how to make myself attractive to an Irish institution.” Barbara Tan-Tiongco’s path back to the Philippines included a stop in Singapore last July; there she was in residence at the Esplanade Technical Theatre Training (a program founded by Cheng Heng Lee ’99), partly to research her MFA thesis and partly with an eye to the eventual creation of a technical training school at home. She views her plans to return as “a responsibility. Yale has provided me this opportunity. And there are no conditions to it. But when I accepted it, I told myself, this is not something anyone can just play with—it is a responsibility.” And for some YSD graduates, making work that spans the globe also means traveling it. Because her post-graduation visa did not allow her to work in Equity theatres, Jennifer Lim spent her first years in New York acting in non-union productions with such directors as Young Jean Lee and Richard Schechner, in shows that often toured abroad, including Schechner’s Mandarin-language Hamlet, in which Jennifer played Ophelia. Anna Jones has made the goal of bridging cultures an explicit part of the mission statement of the theatre company she cofounded in 2010 with her husband, actor Jamel Rodriguez ’08. Its name, NYLon, is a nod to the cities—New York and London— where she’s worked since leaving Yale. Though she moved to New York City immediately after graduation, she’s now London-based, having met more internationally trained collaborators there. A NON-CITIZEN ARTIST As with all things related to non-citizen artists in the United States, immigration status comes into play with the ability to work around the world. Jennifer Lim received a green card two years ago on the strength of her status as an internationally recognized theatre artist, the result of years spent touring abroad when work options in the United States were limited. This documentation came just in time for her to originate the role of Xi Yan in David Henry Hwang’s ’83 Chinglish at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and then on Broadway, where her performance earned a Drama Desk nomination for Best Actress. Paradoxically, attaining more permanent status in the United States can make returning home to work easier. Roberta Pereira, who is always on the lookout for American musicals to recommend to her producer friends in Brazil and is developing a project with a multinational theatre collective, observes, “If I wanted to go and work in Brazil for a year, I’d basically have to give
(clockwise from above) TD&P student Barbara Tan-Tiongco ’13 weighting a lineset in the University Theatre; Jamel Rodriguez ’08 acts in a research and development workshop of Tally Ho at The Roundhouse Studio, produced by NYLon Productions, photo by Stefan Lacandler; Anna Jones ’06, photo by Stefan Lacandler
up my current visa. Until I have a green card, I won’t have that flexibility, because if I leave now, it’s much harder to come back.” LOOKING AHEAD This greater international visibility of and interest in Yale School of Drama is a point of pride for many students and alumni. Several alumni remarked to me about how many of the students who come to YSD from abroad are flourishing in their chosen fields within and beyond our borders. This upturn in numbers also suggest that the School will continue to welcome new students from around the world. To them, Anna Jones offers the following advice: “Keep hearing your own voice. Be reflective about the fact that you’re bringing in a lot of experience that those around you may not understand. Hold on to that and be proud of it, but also be open to all the outgoing new people you’ll be meeting!” As Jennifer Lim sees it, embracing the multilingual, international background that made her stand out from a crowd is exactly what helped her land a meaty, complicated, stereotypedefying Broadway lead: “It will always be special, because it was a chance for me to bring to the table something that I’m not sure an American actor could have brought. Not because I’m better than them, but because of circumstance, because I didn’t grow up American.” Y YSD 2012–13
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