Roberta Jafet ’23 says her enthusiasm for the arts began as a child in São Paulo, Brazil. She was involved in every arts-related activity possible, from theater to choir. When it came time for undergraduate school, she pondered a musical theater career but went a different direction, studying architecture and urban design at Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado instead. One year into the program, however, she made a deal with her parents: She would stay in Brazil and continue her education if she could begin her musical theater career. She missed performing too much to set it aside. She began auditioning and soon landed a role in The Addams Family Broadway franchise in Brazil. “There was a lot of night and weekend work,” she explains. “I was really young at the time, and I was torn while having to work when all of my friends were having fun. Between performing and architecture school, I was drained.”
After that one-year stint on stage, she decided to focus solely on architecture once again. Finding a job in architecture at Coltro Ferrari, she designed shopping malls while she finished college. Jafet was heads-down on her chosen career path when an audition announcement for Wicked grabbed her attention. “I couldn’t let it go,” she says. “The theater was pulling me back in. I had to audition for it, and I ended up being cast as the understudy for Elphaba.” She started her work on Wicked after graduation. After that, she landed roles in Les Misérables, Annie, and School of Rock—one right after the other. “Over time, I started to realize that the musical theater market in Brazil felt limited,” she explains. “While there’s so much untapped potential, we still end up seeing the same monopoly of producers and actors, and this repetitiveness was making me lose my passion for being on stage.”
Roberta Jafet in Wicked
Instead of leaving the theater, however, she decided to launch a production company to put her own spin on the industry. Inspired by the Broadway Princess Party concert series, she was set on creating something similar in Brazil. Just as everything seemed poised to take off, the pandemic brought the idea to a halt. At the time, it seemed devastating. But, in retrospect, Jafet says it was a blessing in disguise. “I didn’t know a lot about production. It allowed me to take a pause to realize what more I needed to learn. I knew the creative, but I didn’t know the business.”
Later in 2020, she pulled a live stream of the show Era Uma Vez together, followed by a small season. These served as prequels to the full event, which was performed at Brazil’s Bradesco Theater with a 30-piece orchestra. While it was a dream come true, she also recognized struggles along the way, including issues involving paperwork and budgets. “If I didn’t learn these things, I would always need someone with me, and I didn’t want that,” she says. “I needed to take my business into my own hands and learn how it really works.”
When she discovered Northwestern’s MS in Leadership for Creative Enterprises (MSLCE) program, she knew it would give her the arts-related business skills she needs—plus much more. “So many people in the program are artists or have an artistic edge, but we come from different places,” she explains. “We’re all different, yet we’re all the same. We all wanted to take our careers into our own hands.” Jafet says she learned how to do that through courses like Adjunct Lecturer Laverne McKinnon’s The Power of Pitching + Persuasion. “That class brought out the best in us. My final pitch was based on a project I actually had to pitch for my company. It doesn’t get any more real than that.”
Today, with business partner Sara Sarres, Jafet regularly applies what she learned in the program to continue to run Rosa Entertainment, her production company. The company focuses on executive production and funding for theatrical and audiovisual projects. “While we plan on licensing international products into Brazil, we also want to focus on getting original Brazilian works into the United States,” she explains. “We’re opening doors with producers here in New York in order to solidify this pathway and also to invest in upcoming musicals. I strongly believe that what I’ve learned in the MSLCE program is helping me prove to clients that we’re good at what we do so we can sell and excel at our work.
Three classes that influenced Roberta’s career:
1. Arts and Entertainment Law and Ethics, taught by Associate Professor Rick Morris
2. The Power of Pitching + Persuasion, taught by Adjunct Lecturer Laverne McKinnon
3. Business Models, taught by Clinical Assistant Professor Allison Henry
Five skills Roberta gained through the program:
1. Talking to investors and clients
2. Selling projects and creating compelling concepts
3. Reading and interpreting contracts
4. Identifying competitors and target markets
5. Understanding profit and loss
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