With that kind of an emotional commitment to acting it's no surprise that Gasser is willing to put herself on the line. She talks about receding into the background, incredible highs. "Because of those it makes it imperative to try." But she has one worry--unlike many other actors she says she yearns for security.

Naama Potok says one of the most exciting and inspiring acting experiences of her life was in Savage Love with Gasser. And it's because of those experiences that the Adams House senior wants to be an actress. "There are moments when I'm acting when I feel I couldn't do anything else."

But not getting into drama schools made her question her path. It wasn't that she believed the schools were the only route, but "it did throw things into a certain perspective." Potok is struggling with the decision to pursue acting professionally, unsure if the passionate need to act is really there.

The point is that she can't give up the chance to act. "If I don't give it at least some kind of shot, I'd always wonder."

There are fewer doubts for Litt. For her there is simply nothing else to do but write and act and direct.

When she was 14 Litt "just kind of decided to write a play." Completed when she was 16, the play, Epiphany, won the Young Playwright's Festival run by the Circle in the Square Repertory Theater in New York City.

When the play was staged two years later at the ART, the reviewer for the Phoenix wrote that he would have included the performance is his top 10 for the year if it had had a longer run.

"I much prefer the directing role and the writing. I like having control of the project," Litt says. Which is not to say that the Cleveland native ignores acting. The North House resident has appeared in Candide, School for Wives, the Gilbert and Sullivan production of Iolanthe. She has also directed an eclectic group of plays, from Peter Pan to the medieval mystery play The Second Shepherd's Play to her own Epiphany and The Unsupervised Infant.

Gelber is not big on stability. He took two years off after high school and hitchhiked across America. After sophomore year here the Dudley House resident took off another two years to live in Italy where "I mostly drank and read books you're not allowed to read at Harvard." In Italy "I spent everything I had ever saved and borrowed some."

Being on his own in Italy didn't convince Gelber that he could be satisfied with the uncertainties of the actor's life. He already knew that. Gelber's interests are diverse though. He wants to write and act and says jokingly that he's the only person he knows who wants to support himself as a writer by being an actor.

Gelber has appeared in 21 shows at Harvard. Before college, he was perennially cast as the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. At five foot two inches, Gelber jokes "I'm under contract; whenever there is a production of Alice in Wonderland I play the white rabbit." Ironically, he discovered theater as a calling by being cast in a play where he was killed by a white bunny from outer space. That was sophomore year in The Paranormal Review.

Since then his repertoire has expanded. He played Dodge, a 75-year-old alcoholic dying of emphysema in Sam Shepard's Buried Child, a French nobleman in Moliere's School for Wives, Trinculo in The Tempest and a tough detective in Shepard's Suicide in B Flat.

While he's supporting himself as a writer by being an actor, Gelber says he's willing to support himself as an actor by being a bartender. "I don't see a job as an end in itself; I see it as a means to supporting a creative end."

He is willing to tolerate ambiguity almost indefinitely. "Another way to say it is idiocy or a total lack of concern for oneself. Things work out, and if they don't you can always get a job at a restaurant."