Elizabeth A. Little ’03 is making skulls. Hundreds of skulls.

“We don’t have the money to buy them,” she explains. “But the [American Repertory Theater (ART)] did leave us plenty of chemical foam.”

The molded foam skulls are to be mounted on wood frames.

“They’re actually sewage pipes, but we’re doing our darndest to make them look like wood,” Little says. The skulls form part of the backdrop for the main stage production of Richard III, which opened last weekend.

Little is one of this year’s recipients of the Louise Donovan Award, which recognizes students who have done outstanding work “behind the scenes” in the arts.

But Little, who estimates that she’s worked on at least 20 Harvard shows, hasn’t always been backstage. She acted in high school and during her first year.

But in her first-year spring, she was offered a producer’s role, which she says suited her perfectly. Little has worked on shows as both producer and set designer.

“Set design is my true love,” she says. “I was always the nerdy little kid who liked to design houses in her spare time.”

In the meantime, Little finds plenty of work to fill her 12-plus-hour days in the prop room, where she paints sets and cuts foam.

“I’m practically living here,” she says. “There are not a lot of technical theater people on campus.”

Despite her harried schedule, Little says she finds the theater to be a wonderfully relaxing way to get away from academics.

“Focusing lights is so much fun,” she says. “[It’s] a great antidote to academic work…You get to work with your hands.”

Little’s dedication to her craft shows through in her paint-splattered clothes and her habit of occasionally bringing wrenches and drill bits home by accident. Once she even wore a pair of safety goggles out of the theater without noticing it.

Little says she enjoys the collaborative nature of theater to balance the solitary research she does for her social studies concentration. But academics have won out—after a three-month stint in summer theater at the ART, Little will attend the University of California at San Diego next fall for her doctorate in political science.

But until then, skulls await. They’re a bit macabre, Little acknowledges, but they will look great.