One Path, Many Directions

On Wendy Wasserstein, Mills College, and the question I stopped asking.

Years ago, Wendy Wasserstein wrote a play about a group of women from a women's college. I saw Uncommon Women and Others performed in Lisser Hall at Mills College in Oakland, California — sophomore or junior year — and it must have made an impression, because here I am, more than thirty years later, still thinking about it.

Part of why Wasserstein felt so close to me was this: she had gone to a women's college too. Mount Holyoke, class of 1971, one of the Seven Sisters. When I arrived at Mills, I was already drawn to her for that reason — the sense that this path, this particular kind of formation, had shaped someone who went on to matter.

Calia Brencsons-Van Dyk banner on the campus of Mills College, Northeastern University

And then I got to the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut in 1993, where I was beginning my own theatrical career — and I discovered that Wasserstein had been there too. What strikes me most, looking back, are the parallels I couldn't have seen at the time. Wasserstein wrote Uncommon Women as her graduate thesis at Yale Drama School — and its earliest readings happened at the O'Neill. When I arrived there in 1993, two of my most formative mentors were very much present: George White, who founded the O'Neill, and Lloyd Richards, who ran the National Playwrights Conference. Lloyd had stepped down as Dean of Yale in 1991 but he was fully alive at the O'Neill — and it was there, at that same conference, that he had helped develop Wendy Wasserstein's voice years before. I was a recent grad, star struck and wide-eyed, walking in the footsteps of someone I admired deeply, in a place that had shaped us both. I didn't take that lightly then. I don't take it lightly now.

These worlds were always more intertwined than I realized at the time. I was, without knowing it, moving through the same constellation of people and places that had shaped her.

And then there's Mills itself. Mills College in Oakland — a women's college, now absorbed into Northeastern University, and yet still celebrating what it always celebrated. Last year Northeastern honoured me with their Women Who Empower Innovator Award — an initiative spearheaded by Betsy Ludwig that is very much what the old Mills College stood for: celebrating women leaders, working with them, and helping them move forward in the world. A couple of months ago they asked for my photo for a banner. I sent it in just as my book was being published and didn't think much more about it — until Tuesday, when my friend Angelique posted a picture of my face on a lamppost on the Mills campus, under the words Visionary Leader. The outpouring of love and kindness that followed, from people I have known for thirty-plus years, has been genuinely humbling.

Some have told me that by supporting Northeastern I have betrayed my alma mater. I understand that grief. I was sad when Mills was no longer a women's college. But I am also grateful that Mills didn't suffer the fate of so many other private colleges. Since 2020, more than 49 nonprofit colleges have closed outright — and hundreds more are considered at risk. In fact, Mills itself is cited in current reporting as an example of the merger trend that has reshaped higher education. Northeastern made a difference. The campus is still there. The women are still being celebrated. That matters.

Am I the person I thought I would be when I left Mills? Probably not. Mills certainly isn't the school I left behind either — and neither of us is lesser for having changed. We are both still standing. We are both still becoming.

But am I blessed and surrounded by love? Yes — of that I am certain. Wasserstein's women spent the play asking whether they had lived up to their promise. Today's women are still asking that same question as we all continue to grow and follow our paths to becoming.

One path, many directions — and so much love along the way.