Even though her first theater experience didn’t exactly go the way she had planned, things worked out just fine for Melissa E. Goldman ’06.

“I tried out for the theater group freshman year and was asked instead if I wanted to stage manage,” Goldman says. “I didn’t know what that meant, but I said okay and got enveloped in the community.”

In honor of her extensive accomplishments in technical theater, Goldman has been awarded the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts by the Office of the Arts.

At Harvard, the multi-talented Goldman has worked behind the scenes on countless shows, contributing her expertise as a set designer, stage manager, and even puppet designer. She served as president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players last year, and has also played the cello for the Mozart Society Orchestra for four years.

“I love both music and theater, but theater’s where I really find my home,” she says.

Goldman has been involved with three Loeb Mainstage shows—”Lulu,” “Oresteia,” and “The Physicist”—as well as “Hedda Gabler,” “Antigone,” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” She cites her work with “The Physicist,” which she collaborated on with last year’s Sadler Prize winner Michael M. Donahue ’05, as one of her proudest accomplishments.

“For ‘The Physicist,’ I designed a huge plastic roof thing that came out over [the stage]. There was this amazing moment of color that lit the whole stage…it was the best vignette of any show I’ve done so far,” she says.

Goldman based her English and American Literature and Language senior thesis on her behind-the-scenes experiences. She examined a 19th-century British phenomenon called toy theatre, in which children could construct miniature theaters and put on productions in their own homes. One show she analyzed, “Alice in Wonderland,” led to her latest production, coming out this spring in the Loeb Ex.

“I talked to John T. Drake ’06, and we both wanted to do one big last production, so the two of us chose ‘Alice in Wonderland’ because I had so much background in it,” says Goldman, who will serve as production designer and set designer for the show.

Goldman is applying to graduate school in architecture and design, but also plans to set aside some time for relaxation and travel in the near future.

Looking back on her experiences at Harvard, Goldman expressed her sadness at leaving Harvard’s theater community.

“The arts community is so amazing here, and I’m so awed and inspired by the people all the time,” she says.

Ultimately, though, she says that what she’ll really miss is the process of collaborating to put a show together.

“Although the final product is great, the dialogues behind everything, and working with the directors, casts, and tech crews has been the biggest learning experience,” Goldman says. “Everyone brings something new to the table.”

—Pamela T. Freed