Supertechies of the 40-60 hours per week variety sometimes go through this kind of withdrawal after a year or two or three of tech overdoes. They're seldom academically inclined to begin with, and can hide form academics enough to almost flunk out, or end up on probation.
BWANA BUS and Lighting is a small group, its regular members being only Don Blair and Al Symonds. In the summer of '67 there was a Bwana Bus with chairs and rug and ashtrays, serving both as a place for moving cast parties and as transportation to stationary ones. It seems that Bwana Bus gets thanked or credited on almost every program at Harvard. Now they work mostly for pay and are noted for extraordinary speed in hanging the lights for a show.
Actually, the workers on every production form a group; the factor of working together seems to always bring this result. Gilbert and Sullivan, musical comedies, every Harvard house--all end up with cliques which last at least one show, sometimes more.
As the permanent, central theatrical unit of Harvard theatre, it is the Loeb that people identify with cliques--the "Loebies." But it's difficult right now to detect any groups there that are solid enough to merit the term.
Indeed, the Loeb, at present, seems to bear the stigma of ingrowth--scaring people off, alienating them from other Harvard theatre--without the advantages of a core of people to depend on for solid team work.
THIS IS a down year for the Loeb, as far as techies go. It's not that there aren't any competent people, but there simply aren't enough, and shows are having trouble getting built. It already looks like Bonds of Interest will be shorthanded, and Poor Bitos' set didn't get finished for the opening. This is nothing new--Plebians had no set for its final dress rehearsal, although the parts were sitting in the Loeb shop (only to be rescued at the last minute by Peter Johnson, a revered set builder-designer, the day it opened).
A lot of the problems the Loeb is having and has had before stem from the nature and mechanics of the building. It's big and beautiful--and terrifying in its enormity and shining complicated technology.
The equipment of the huge main-stage, which can hold anything, at first seems heaven for a designer; the possibilities are unlimited. But they aren't. Randy Darwall noted that "you can't fill it, and when you try the results are grotesque." And for that reason you have to deal with lots of negative spaces. Howard Cutler mentioned that it's "so theoretically flexible that you have to design the theatre first." The theatre is "insoluble and something always screws up" every set.
THE SIZE of the stage and the level of polish the lush building demands means large outputs of time and labor for techies. Thus it requires a totally different attitude to work there than in any other theatre around.
The Loeb always needs that new blood which is scared off by the rumors surrounding the place, and often must tap house who staffs when it's short on labor. But besides being scary, there exists no attractive or formalized way to learn at the Loeb. The freshman apprentice program was not credited with great success by anybody. Donald Soule and Frank Hartenstein, the Loeb technical and assistant technical directors, are there to prevent fingers from being cut off and equipment from being destroyed; they'll answer specific questions, but they are not there to teach.
Perhaps new techies do and will feel like outsiders. Even in the task-oriented group there's no such thing as instant friendship. Or perhaps, as HDC Recording Secretary and frequent producer Jenny Tarlin feels, you just have to wait for your groups, your class, to "grow up" before you feel at home.
Still, the equipment can transcend its demanding and intimidating nature. In a way, it's beautiful: the ordered levers on the light board which make light and darkness respond to to touch of a finger, a button that makes part of the stage go up and down.
People who seek friends aren't the only ones who work in Harvard theatre, and those who do have other reasons as well. Academics don't satify these people; working on the crew is kind of a high.
As techies' elder statesman, Scott Kirkpatrick said, "Some of us enjoy doing something reasonably well, something not anybody can do--and with artistic integrity riding on it."
PRODUCER Jenny Tarlin said, "It's sort of like having a baby. You can see it and touch it. We're at Harvard at a time when all progress is in a very abstract sense; what you do in theatre is much more tangible. I like to stay close to earth."
For Career oriented people such as George Lindsay, who want to be professional techies, the Loeb may not offer training, but it does offer a chance to make mistakes and correct them for the next show.
Technical work also has immediacy. A set has to be completed by an opening. You can support an exam answer with bull, but not ten actors on a stage.
"Maybe student life doesn't provide what people are looking for," said Bill Carter, trying to explain why techies tech. Later, apologizing for sounding like Dean Ford, he mentioned the Classic Harvard experience--"growth and change." Maybe teching-it is a way to experience that change.