BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A former Stanford student who had an affair with Palo Alto Councilwoman Julie Lythcott-Haims is putting on a musical based on their experience.
“Part love story, part cautionary tale, ‘Mimi & Jo’ is a queer coming-of-age play set to original music that explores the intimacy of creative collaboration, exposes the pain of hindsight, and attempts to reconcile the gray space between attachment and abuse,” former student Olivia Swanson Haas wrote in a tagline for the play, which she will present on Sunday in San Francisco. The play looks back to 2012, when Haas was 22, and Lythcott-Haims was 44 working as Stanford’s dean of freshman and undergraduate advising.
“The dean was a school celebrity – charismatic, adored – and I was the kind of young person who craved attention from powerful people. When a close friend ship between us turned physically intimate, I was convinced I was in love and so I lived a double life,” Haas said in an essay, published in July 2024.
Haas said her essay was read by over 100,000 people.
She recapped their sex in detail — at luxury hotels, nearby motels and a cabin south of campus.
“I barely knew my own body, but I did what I imagined felt good,” Haas wrote.
Lythcott-Haims said she checked Stanford’s policies to make sure they weren’t breaking any rules, “but it was clear that what we were doing put her job at risk,” Haas said.
The affair led Lythcott-Haims to leave Stanford in 2012. She went on to write three books about parenting and youth development, including a New York Times bestseller, and was elected to council in November 2022.
Lythcott-Haims announced on May 11 that she won’t be running for re-election to focus on her career as an author and public speaker.
After the essay came out, then-Mayor Greer Stone and Councilwoman Vicki Veenker urged Lythcott-Haims to step down from three committees dealing with youth mental health, schools and Stanford.
Stone and Veenker approached Lythcott-Haims to counter calls for her resignation, Lythcott-Haims said in a text message to City Manager Ed Shikada.
Lythcott-Haims declined an interview about the essay at the time, instead emailing a statement that confirmed the affair and apologized to her family and former colleagues.
“While I was not in a position of authority over her grades or academic status at the university, being in a relationship with a student was inappropriate when it happened 13 years ago, and it would be inappropriate now,” Lythcott-Haims said.
Reactions
Former mayors Larry Klein and Liz Kniss stood by Lythcott-Haims while former councilwoman and retired judge LaDoris Cordell said she found Lyth-cott-Haims’ conduct to be “very troubling.”
“I’m disappointed. I expected better,” Cordell said at the time.
Lythcott-Haims’ husband knew about the affair, Haas said in the essay.
“Just don’t buy her a car,” he once joked to her, Haas recalled.
Haas said she ended the affair after confessing to her boyfriend and deciding to be with him.
When Haas told her parents about the affair, she said they were “horrified,” and her mom anonymously reported Lythcott-Haims to Stanford.
“Suddenly words like ‘manipulated’ and ‘abuse of power’ were being used,” Haas said.
Lythcott-Haims emailed Haas in the early months of the pandemic to privately apologize.
They got back in touch, “although some days I’m not sure we should be,” Haas wrote.
Haas said her play looks at reuniting with Lythcott-Haims a decade after the end of their affair.
The play “travels sideways and backward in time through pivotal moments of the two women’s relationship as music collaborators,” Haas said on her website.
The play has two cast members and a 90-minute run time. Haas received a $2,500 grant from Theatre Bay Area in December and has done readings with actors in New York City.
The play is directed by Wynne Chan, managing director of Golden Thread Productions in San Fran-cisco. Haas won a scriptwriting competition based on her story in 2024 from a group of Stanford alums working in entertainment. She’s raised $6,197 on her way to a $35,000 goal to finance the play’s development and a reading to industry professionals.
“If I can just gather the resources and support to continue developing ‘Mimi & Jo,’ commercial or nonprofit partners will take note and get involved to carry this play to its next stage,” she said on her web-site.
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