Lakeside School

by Jim Collins

When Genevieve Joers was a sophomore at Lakeside, the drama department began staging one-act plays written, directed, and acted entirely by students. Joers already had a serious interest in acting. (She had worked with directors Alban Dennis and Michael Place at both Lakeside and at the Young Actor Institute at the Seattle Children’s Theatre.) But those spring Circus! productions, performed in front of large audiences in St. Nicholas Hall, powerfully affected her. She recalls how special it was to be in a place that gave her the room to create original material and explore new facets of theater and be taken seriously. “I loved that we got to do something entirely ourselves,” she told a Tatler reporter last summer. “It shaped me into an actor who was capable of taking on any type of project.”

At Lakeside, from the very first acting class, it was made clear that the work we did in theater was important, and that what we had to say was valued. — GENEVIEVE JOERS ’16

Joers has performed in musicals, cabarets, sketch, improv, and stand-up comedy on stages across New York City, including an off-Broadway run as the lone “guest” human performer in “Sesame Street: The Musical.” She has worked behind the scenes in writing and production at “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.” She recently finished filming a guest appearance on Mindy Kaling’s upcoming Hulu series, “Not Suitable for Work.” You can catch her every second Monday performing with the “Reunion Tour” house sketch team at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York.