THE NEXT STAGE

Elle Woods, the protagonist of “Legally Blonde,” had no trouble getting into Harvard Law School: in response to surprised exclamations of “You got into Harvard Law?” Woods answered with a nonchalant “What? Like, it’s hard?”

Originally a box office hit, “Legally Blonde” is now set to open as a musical on Broadway on April 29 with three Harvard grads playing prominent roles on the production. But the jump from Harvard to Broadway isn’t as simple as Elle’s signature “bend and snap.” Harvard grads going into show business have found themselves both helped and hindered by their Cambridge background.

PERFORMING AT HARVARD

While Harvard is best known for producing a high number of I-bankers and consultants, some young artists of Harvard theater have decided to step out of the mold and onto paths less traveled. The College lacks a performing arts department, yet it is unique in that it boasts a lively hands-on theater completely culture dependent on extracurricular involvement.

Lauren L. Jackson ’07, a sociology and women, gender, and sexuality studies concentrator who acts, dances, and sings, plans to move to New York City after graduation in order to pursue her passions. A professional dancer in Los Angeles since early childhood and through her teenage years, Jackson had the opportunity to enter the performance profession straight out of high school but instead chose to attend Harvard.

“I think that having a liberal arts education is amazing and I would never give up my concentration classes or my elective classes or my core classes to take dance,” says Jackson.

“I think I analyze situations from a different perspective than I did before, and I think that coming from a school that gets your mental juices flowing really will help me get that edge,” she adds.

Karina A. Mangu-Ward ’05, who is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in theater management and production at the Columbia School of the Arts, draws a more direct connection between Harvard and her career in performing arts.

“I think part of the reason Harvard has such a vibrant theater culture is because there is no segregation between someone who considers themselves an artist and who considers themselves a student of something else,” Mangu-Ward says. “I think if you set up a department, that freedom starts to break down.”

Mike M. Donahue ’05 now attends the Yale School of Drama for directing. For Donahue, the importance of a liberal arts education is the way students learn about a multitude of subjects instead of just theater.

“You don’t want to make theater about theater. You want to make theater about the world,” Donahue says.

However, the absence of a performing arts department at Harvard does have at least one negative consequence.

“You can’t draw faculty to Harvard to teach in the theater arts if there isn’t a department for them to live in,” Mangu-Ward says. But she adds that the upside is the necessity of student involvement: “If there were a department putting on theater, then they wouldn’t have needed me as a student producer.”

As for her role in professional theater, Mangu-Ward takes a down-to-earth approach.

“My ideal situation, which is really hard to get, is to book a Broadway show or a touring show within a year to a year-and-a-half,” she says. “I don’t want a lead. I’ll take a chorus part. I’ll be a tree if I need to be a tree.”

LIFE AFTER HARVARD

After graduation, many of Harvard’s theatrically inclined alumni move to the Big Apple in order to try their luck in the New York theater scene.

“There are a lot of young Harvard alumni working in theater in New York. I think the thing that people maybe don’t know is that there are just so many of us working here,” Mangu-Ward says.

For some, the shift from Harvard to the New York theater scene is easier than it is for others. Laurence O’Keefe ’91, a script and lyric writer who wrote the music and lyrics to “Legally Blonde” with his wife Nell D. Benjamin ’93, says his experiences in professional theater have largely been similar to those he had at Harvard.

“This [Legally Blonde] is exactly like a Hasty Pudding Show, same schedule, order of things. The only difference is in the scale and the budget,” he says. O’Keefe was in the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the Lampoon, and sang with the Krokodiloes.

Still, the transition can be jarring.

Dan A. Cozzens ’03, an actor who prefers to define himself as a person in search of artistic pursuits, moved to New York six months ago after trying his hand at Boston theater. Contrasting New York with Harvard, he points out, “Here, you are bound by typecasting. At Harvard, I played a 103-year-old man and older men and younger men.” According to Cozzens, the commercialism of New York theater combined with the sheer size of its community makes it drastically different from Harvard.

“At Harvard, you have access to people who are doing work that is not commercial. Here, when someone produces a show, you have to sell tickets. You need an audience to come see it,” Cozzens says “At Harvard, you’re not doing a show to sell tickets. You’re doing the show because you want to do the show. You have a lot more experimental things happening.”

Cozzens says, “In Boston, it took me about two years, but I just about knew of everyone who was doing theater. Same way at Harvard. And here, [in NYC] I am not remotely close to knowing maybe even five percent of the people who are doing the work here. It’s just a huge, huge difference.”

“Clearly, here you can make money doing it,” he says.

The competitive nature of New York theater, however, makes it difficult for a person to actually make a living from the performing arts.

“You’d be crazy to try and make your living this way. It is not a business from someone who needs a salary,” says Thomas M. Viertel ’63, an established producer who got into show business as a hobby and has since discovered Penn & Teller and produced famed Broadway shows such as “The Producers” and “Hairspray.”

“Make sure you either have inherited money or a day job,” he advises.

Many in the theater world hold second or even third jobs in order to support themselves. Cozzens works as an SAT tutor and as a production assistant for a small theater chamber music group. David L. Skeist ’02-03, another actor in New York, graduated from the Yale School of Drama with an M.F.A. in acting. “I work at a PR firm,” he says, noting the flexible hours as an assistant allow him to attend auditions during weekdays.

Amy C. Stebbins ’07, who has acted, directed, and written while at Harvard, notes the lack of steady jobs in the business.

“My biggest concern is that I would not get enough work and I would be bored,” she says.

In a city so colossal and cut-throat, Harvard lacks a helpful alumni network. “One reason people go to Yale Drama is because it has an infamously strong network of fiercely loyal people,” Donahue says.

“As far as professional networking, I’m sure it’s there. It’s definitely there in LA in the film industry,” Skeist says.

He admits that in New York it’s just not the same. “I haven’t quite figured out how to access it.”

“There’s a generational divide. The people I am closest to in New York are the artists I know from Harvard. But in terms of alumni beyond my years, I would say I run into them very rarely,” Mangu-Ward says.

The close-knit theater communities that were created and maintained at Harvard have found themselves displaced in New York. Skeist explains, “There’s a number of people from my class and from other classes who I knew while I was at Harvard who remain a core community.”

MAKING IT BIG

What does it take to survive? “You have to be scrappy and imaginative and you can’t be waiting around for things to happen for you,” says Cozzens.

Both Viertel and O’Keefe attribute their success to hands-on experience rather than academic learning. Viertel cites his 25 years in real estate dealings as the source of his business acumen, while O’Keefe credits his extracurricular activities, saying, “Everything I learned was either with Pudding, Lampoon, Krokodiloes...I worked hard at college, but not in class.”

Although Jackson, as an outgoing senior, recognizes the challenging nature of the industry, she remains optimistic about the long road ahead of her.

“I have a worry about going into New York next year and being behind,” Jackson confesses before quipping, “But I’m not worried too much.”