Newsmaker

Every Friday, we choose an alum who has been making headlines—for better or for worse.
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Emily Jenda ’10

By the staff | 10:54am January 07 2011

“There’s no greater rush for a critic,” writes Erik Haagensen, “than encountering a blazing new talent.” He speaks of none other than Emily Jenda ’10, whose turn as an upper-class cat burglar in Drat! The Cat! landed her a spot as one of “Haagensen’s Heroes,” part of Backstage magazine’s list of “Memorable NY Performances of 2010.”

In case you don’t know the show (we had to look it up ourselves), Drat! The Cat! is a 1965 Ira Levin–Milton Schafer musical that spoofs Victorian melodrama. Far from being overmatched by “Levin’s twinkling wit,” Jenda “showed an astonishing facility with a musical comedy style she’s far too young to know anything about,” Haagensen writes: she “burst with intelligence and sang like a dream.”

Leaving us to wonder: did she learn that in The Gay Ivy, or in That’s Why I Chose Yale?

Filed under milestones, alumnae, theater, performing arts, comedy
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