Alumni Profiles
Alexa Junge ’81
“I had kind of been interested in being a playwright before attending Crossroads, but my experience there really solidified it for me.”
Alexa Junge is an Emmy-nominated writer and producer of television shows including “United States of Tara,” “The West Wing,” “Sex and the City” and “Friends.” Before she was penning dialogue for Carrie and Samantha or serving as co-executive producer for a Netflix series starring Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, Alexa was the teenage scribe behind a play performed by her classmates in the Crossroads theater department.
“The play was called ‘Hocus Pocus and Goodbye,’ which still makes me cringe,” admits Alexa, who entered Crossroads as a sophomore. “But it was treated seriously and the actors were all really good. It was so lovely, such a gift to get to do that and have that process.”
After high school, Alexa moved to New York, earning a bachelor’s degree in theater from Barnard College and a master’s in playwriting from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She moved to LA after a friend she met while interning at an off-Broadway theater recommended her for a job on the Nickelodeon show “Clarissa Explains it All.” Alexa loved the collaborative nature of television writing, which drew on the skills she’d learned in the theater. She secured an agent, and more writing work followed.
“I had kind of been interested in being a playwright before attending Crossroads, but my experience there really solidified it for me,” she says. “It completely changed my life. The way the curriculum was integrated across subjects helped me develop as a writer; the way meaning was made out of what we were learning has had a huge impact on how I think. There was a really high standard that was expected of us. It was thrilling to be treated that way.”
In addition to her television work, Alexa wrote lyrics for Disney's “Mulan 2” and “Lilo & Stitch 2” (for which she also wrote the screenplay) and is a contributor to NPR’s “This American Life.” Her play “Fingersmith,” an adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Victorian crime novel, had its world premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare festival in February 2015.
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“The play was called ‘Hocus Pocus and Goodbye,’ which still makes me cringe,” admits Alexa, who entered Crossroads as a sophomore. “But it was treated seriously and the actors were all really good. It was so lovely, such a gift to get to do that and have that process.”
After high school, Alexa moved to New York, earning a bachelor’s degree in theater from Barnard College and a master’s in playwriting from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She moved to LA after a friend she met while interning at an off-Broadway theater recommended her for a job on the Nickelodeon show “Clarissa Explains it All.” Alexa loved the collaborative nature of television writing, which drew on the skills she’d learned in the theater. She secured an agent, and more writing work followed.
“I had kind of been interested in being a playwright before attending Crossroads, but my experience there really solidified it for me,” she says. “It completely changed my life. The way the curriculum was integrated across subjects helped me develop as a writer; the way meaning was made out of what we were learning has had a huge impact on how I think. There was a really high standard that was expected of us. It was thrilling to be treated that way.”
In addition to her television work, Alexa wrote lyrics for Disney's “Mulan 2” and “Lilo & Stitch 2” (for which she also wrote the screenplay) and is a contributor to NPR’s “This American Life.” Her play “Fingersmith,” an adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Victorian crime novel, had its world premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare festival in February 2015.
