Ever mindful of the needs of the community, Harvard’s thespians have been adding a little raunch and raciness to the theater scene in a city severely lacking in adult entertainment. In the past two weeks, student actors have served up a double-helping of sexcapades with the student-written buck and the Loeb Mainstage’s Titus Andronicus.
Two weeks ago, in the Adams Pool Theater, buck traced the exploits of a tragically well-hung post-emancipation sharecropper through his graphically depicted tricks with the wives of the white folks in his county. While the actors may have been doin’ it like it was their job by the time the curtain went up, getting it on under the watchful gaze of a room full of strangers was a new experience to most of them. Stephen N. Smith ’02 admits to having terrible bouts of stage fright before entering the limelight for his starring role in buck, but the challenge appealed to him. “I liked how [the show] pushed the envelope,” Smith says. “You can be as ‘actress’ as you want to be,” says his co-star Abigail L. Fee ’05, “but it’s still awkward.” She recalls that in the early stages of rehearsals, Frankie J. Petrosino ’03, buck’s writer and director, would have the actors hold hands as they read through the play’s many sex scenes. Fee says it was a good way to become comfortable with physical contact with her co-stars. When holding hands became blasé, Petrosino and her cast began to create the optical illusion of sex. “When we were rehearsing,” says Smith, “I thought the sex wasn’t as realistic as it could have been.” However, by the time it got on stage, there was not too much left to the imagination—down to the ever-so-conscientious way the men would reach their hand under the sheets every time they began to do the deed. For the actors of buck, any embarrassment they may have felt was worth it to tell the story. Fee’s attitude seems to reflect that of the whole cast, saying, “This is what the director wants us to do, this is her play, so we’re going to do it.”
Far from the bedroom intimacy of the Adams Pool, the Loeb Mainstage offered sex writ larger in Titus Andronicus’s 15-person undie-clad orgy. With cast members still being recruited just days before opening night, there was no time for touchy-feely get-to-know-you games. “The idea of being in a mock orgy was weird,” says James L. Stillwell ’04, “because we didn’t know each other.We were all cracking up. That was a way for us to diffuse the tension.” Apparently, it worked. According to Stillwell, by Friday night the debauchery in the background was so scandalous that it was distracting the audience from the action going on downstage. “I thought about going nude,” says Stillwell, “but decided against it.” An emergency meeting had to be held last Saturday—the afternoon before the final performance—to reign in the madness.
Now that the curtain has fallen on Titus’ and buck’s theatrical runs, Harvard’s Puritans can breathe a sigh of relief. For the rest of us, it’s back to the video store.
