Undergrads Act Up

Students of theater play roles ranging from angels to lawyers

By Cassie Ferguson

Gazette Staff

Nearly one in ten undergraduates goes through a phase in which they pretend to be something that they are not. It's not something they hide. In fact, they even advertise their proclivities in fliers and newspapers, wishing for a large audience to witness their transformation.

They make up a group of the more than 700 students involved in one of Harvard and Radcliffe's oldest traditions -- theater.

Over the next fours days, ARTS FIRST festivities will showcase Harvard's theater community, including everything from puppet performances by the Onion Weavers Puppet Theater to the Hyperion Theater Company's production of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

ARTS FIRST, an annual springtime celebration of the arts at Harvard-Radcliffe, offers just a small sampling of the theatrical activities that take place here. Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club president and Mather House resident Jessica Jackson '99, a government concentrator from Jensen Beach, Fla., said that the theater scene at Harvard thrives year round.

"Especially among the first- and second-year students -- they have this sheer, crazed enthusiasm."

Undergraduates not only act in theater productions, they take part in everything from set building to costume sewing to financial management.

Some pen their own work, such as Richard Amberg '00, an English concentrator from Kirkland House who wrote the recently performed Clambake Revelations, a full-length play about a family discussing their problems on the eve of the apocalypse. Others, like the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players, stick with the work of others -- the comic operas of their namesake.

Students have little trouble finding space to put on their shows, everything from the freshman-created This End Up in Radcliffe's Agassiz Theatre to Tennessee Williams' play Clothes for a Summer Hotel. The productions are performed everywhere from the professional stage of the Loeb Drama Center to the steps in front of the Memorial Church to the spaces available in all the Houses. Students set up productions in the Leverett Old Library, and others strut their stuff beneath the chlorine-scented statue of Neptune in the converted swimming pool known as the Adams House Pool Theater. The Hasty Pudding Theatricals even takes its shows on the road.

Theater was not always so popular at Harvard. In fact, it had been banned by University officials in 1762: "No student would be an actor in, a spectator at, or in any way concerned in any stage plays, winterludes, or theatrical entertainment."

In the more than 200 years since, the University has encouraged theater to flourish.

Students receive funding from a variety of sources, including the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club, the Undergraduate Council, and the Office for the Arts. "We're especially interested in funding student's own creative work," said Myra Mayman, director of the Office for the Arts.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club also helps students find resources such as lighting, sets, and costumes.

"Unlike many schools, most productions are student-run, -designed, and -initiated," said Mayman.

Despite the lack of an academic drama department, students can still learn the basics of set design and lighting through the Visual and Environmental Studies Department and acting and directing through University-approved courses offered through the American Repertory Theatre.

Besides, says Jackson, "You learn by doing." However, she cautions, "Theater reaches into personal time. Sleep is incidental."

Students who catch the theater bug find it easy to join up.

"It's really easy to get involved. You just show up at Common Casting, join the staff of a production, or talk to someone who's doing a show," said Jackson. "There's so much here."

One student who has taken advantage of much of Harvard and Radcliffe's theatrical opportunities is Paul Siemens '98, a Dunster House English concentrator. In four years, he has appeared in more than 25 productions, a fact noted when the Office for the Arts recently announced he won the Jonathan Levy Prize for most promising actor at the University.

Even in his last month at Harvard before heading to New York City, he'll be performing in a cabaret in the Loeb called Ménage à Trois. on May 7, 8, and 9.

"For the number of students here, the amount of theater is astounding," he said. "And the stuff that goes up is wonderful. It's art."