Rachel Dratch '88 saw her career trajectory take a fundamental turn during her sophomore year when she joined a then-new student improv group at Dartmouth called Said and Done.
"I felt like, 'Oh my God, these are my people,'" the Tony-nominated comedian, actor, writer, and podcaster said at last year's Arts Are Essential panel discussion celebrating the reopening of the Hopkins Center for the Arts, where she serves on the board of advisors.
Now Dratch—famed for playing Saturday Night Live's chronically buzz-killing Debbie Downer (cue sad trombone)—will return to Dartmouth to address the Class of 2026 and receive an honorary doctorate of arts at Commencement on Sunday, June 14.
"Rachel Dratch's steadfast commitment to the arts, and to the arts at Dartmouth, is anything but a downer—it's a joyful testament to the power of comedy to unite people across differences," says President Sian Leah Beilock. "I am proud to honor her impact and look forward to welcoming her back to Hanover in June."
It's possible to trace Dratch's success back to her days with Said and Done, which practiced creating full-blown sketches from words tossed out by audiences in Collis and traveled to Chicago to visit the comedy mecca, Second City, over sophomore summer.
(Video by Office of Communications)
That trip made the drama major and psychology minor think, "Maybe when I graduate, I'll come back here and try this," Dratch recently told fellow SNL alum Amy Poehler on Poehler's Good Hang podcast.
"I was like, OK, I'm just going to go out and try Chicago, and I won't make it, and then I'll come back and be a therapist in suburban Boston," she recalled. But when she didn't make the cut at her first Second City audition, she persisted—and ultimately landed on the Mainstage. "Everything I did, I didn't get the first time around," she told Poehler.
Four years at Second City led to SNL, where she wrote and performed from 1999 to 2006 alongside Poehler, Tina Fey, Fred Armisen, and Jimmy Fallon, among others.
Dratch has had numerous roles in theater, film, and television, including 10 cameos on NBC's 30 Rock (from a cat-wrangler to a near-unintelligible impression of Barbara Walters) and appearances on Parks and Recreation, Inside Amy Schumer, Portlandia, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, King of Queens, Shameless, And Just Like That, and many more. She has lent her voice to Bob's Burgers, Harley Quinn, Teen Titans Go!, and Grimsburg with Jon Hamm. Her film work includes Down With Love, Click, Just Go With It, Sisters, and Wine Country, and she also co-wrote, produced, and performed in the 2021 holiday TV-movie parody A Clüsterfünke Christmas.
In 2009, Dratch had an unexpected pregnancy. She wrote about the experience of becoming a mother in her 40s and co-parenting with a former romantic partner in a 2012 memoir, Girl Walks Into a Bar . . .: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle.
Theater appearances include numerous New York stage productions, from Love's Labour's Lost at Shakespeare in the Park to Privacy at the Public Theater with Daniel Radcliffe. She was nominated for a Tony for her role as Stephanie in the 2022 Broadway production of POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, a farce about a White House public relations fiasco. And she currently plays the narrator in a production of The Rocky Horror Show that runs at Broadway's Studio 54 through July 19.
For the past three years, Dratch has hosted the podcast Woo Woo With Rachel Dratch, in which she and a range of comedy friends discuss stories of the supernatural.
In addition to Dratch's address, Commencement will feature valedictory remarks from President Beilock, who will confer degrees on undergraduate and professional and graduate students of the Class of 2026.
Beilock will also confer honorary degrees on Dratch and several other individuals—to be announced soon—who have made major contributions in their respective fields.
Commencement Dates to Know
Saturday, May 9
9 a.m. Geisel School of Medicine Investiture, Lebanon Opera House, Lebanon, N.H. Odette Harris '91 will deliver the keynote address. Harris is the Paralyzed Veterans of America Endowed Professor of Spinal Cord Injury Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and a member of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees.
Saturday, June 6
10 a.m. Tuck Investiture, Tuck Hall steps. The keynote speaker will be Debi Brooks, Tuck '86, chief executive officer and co-founder of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.
Friday, June 12
2 p.m. Geisel Health Sciences Education Investiture, Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts. Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean of the Emory School of Medicine and Grady Health System and a distinguished professor of medicine in Emory's Division of Infectious Diseases, will deliver the keynote address.
Saturday, June 13
9:30 a.m. Thayer School of Engineering Investiture, Dartmouth Green. Mathematician, computer scientist, and educator Maria Klawe, president of Math for America and former president of Harvey Mudd College, will deliver the keynote address.
10 a.m. Senior Class Day, the Bema.
2 p.m. Baccalaureate, a multifaith, multicultural celebration for graduates and their families, Rollins Chapel.
4 p.m. Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies Investiture, the Green. Reception to follow on the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center Lawn.
Sunday, June 14
9 a.m. Academic procession to the Green. The Commencement ceremony begins at 9:30 a.m.