Category: Uncategorized

By Allegra C. Caldera ’17, Producer & Secretary

Over the past weeks, the board and I have been working to plan HRG&SP’s 60^th anniversary celebration – our “Diamond Jubilee.”

This festive celebration will align with our second weekend of Pinafore performances (March 30^th – April 3^rd). Events will include an Alumni Panel, a special talk on “Pinafore in America,” and, of course, our annual Victorian Ball. We hope alumni from all generations will attend, celebrate, and reminisce with us!

For those who are unable to travel to Cambridge, we would love to hear your favorite moments and stories spanning the past 60 years of mischief and patter songs. Please email hrgsp.president@gmail.com if you are interested in helping out or contributing a few memories!

Finally, a warm welcome to the cast of HRG&SP’s 60^th anniversary show, H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor! As one of the producers, I’m excited to report we’ve just finished a very successful week of common casting. Now, our team is complete – with a full roster of G&S cast veterans and newcomers – and we’re ready to set sail into the semester.

Thank you to all who joined us for Pinafore auditions! Callback lists are available from 10am Saturday 1/30 on the HRDC website.

Before your callback, please take a look at the pieces relevant to the character(s) you were called back for as though preparing for a normal rehearsal. The music will be taught to you during your callback, and there is no need to print the music as copies will be provided in the audition room.

You will need to download the files to your computer to see the full documents due to the limits of the online PDF viewer.

Continue reading “Callback Information” →

As we hurtle towards opening night next Friday, Tech Week is well underway. The Agassiz stage is morphing into the world of 1920s New Orleans under the vision of our set designers Elizabeth Pattyn and Rahul Kulka and the technical expertise of Trevor A. Mullin ’17.

The cast, staff, and board are all working together to ramp up the show process this week. After load-in on Sunday, most of the drops were up and the team began to figure out how to engineer the set change. Ruddigore is one of the more challenging technical shows in the G&S canon with the transition from the street scene of Act I to the Ruddigore mansion in Act II. Those of you who joined us for The Gondoliers last fall will recall the change of scene from the piazzas of Venice to the palace of Barataria, and we hope to enchant you again with two distinct settings! Our talented lighting designer Kat C. Zhou ’17 has been up in the scaffolding all week as the build crew works hard in the set shop downstairs. Our costumes team is in the process of sewing dresses for the gaggle of bridesmaids and clothing the ghosts of Murgatroyds past in spooky garb that will certainly be Halloween appropriate.

Tech week is definitely my favorite part of the show process—the astounding amount of time and energy our talented technicians put into their work is incredible, and we can’t wait for you all to see it soon!

Tickets for Ruddigore can be purchased through the Harvard Box Office or at the door (cash only). The show runs October 30-November 1 and November 5-8, click here for more information about showtimes and receptions.

Written by Emma Adler

Ruddigore; or, The Witch’s Curse, was the tenth penned of Gilbert and Sullivan’s fourteen comic operas. Like all of Gilbert and Sullivan’s works from Trial by Jury onward, Ruddigore debuted at the Savoy Theater, under the auspices of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. Premiering in 1887, Ruddigore followed fast on the heels of The Mikado; this would prove to have a detrimental effect on the opera’s critical reception, causing many to dismiss the ghostly comic opera as not on a par with its predecessor. The New York Times review noted: “When the curtain fell there was a hissing – the first ever heard in the Savoy Theatre.”

Continue reading “Ruddigorigins” →

Written by Raymond Ng

Behind-the-scenes of Ruddigore are the painters, costumers, designers, builders, and many other staff who work tirelessly to turn a group of college students on an empty stage into the ghosts and townspeople of Rederring. As one of the producers, I’ve had the immense pleasure of working with the staff, meeting many times to ensure that Opening Night will be spectacular. I look forward to sharing what we’ve created!

Here are our dedicated and talented staff:

Continue reading “The Ruddi-staff” →

Written by Alex Raun

The first Ruddigorechestra rehearsal took place this week! The musicians, from college freshmen to Cambridge community members, met each other and played through most of the show under the direction of Sean Rodan, our music director. They sounded incredible, and with vocal rehearsals underway, we can’t wait for the Sitzprobe, which will take place in a couple weeks! Stay tuned. (Pun intended)

Apologies for lacks of posts lately! Everyone was in the midst of finals, and then my immune system broke down as soon as I got home, but here we are with a post from graduating senior Christopher Y.M. Marks ’15. The board of directors wishes to bid a fond farewell to Angela S. Berkowitz, C. E. Chiemeka Ezie, Christopher Y.M. Marks, and Rebecca C. Rosen. Congrats also to graduating Iolanthe cast and staff Kait Boudah, Charlie Caplan, Molly Finlayson, and Kim Onah. I would also like to add a special goodbye to Chrissy Rodriguez and Evan Schueckler, who have been such a central part of the technical team, and have been such wonderful mentors to younger technicians. Congratulations to everyone, and best of luck to everyone in their future pursuits! See you at Vic Ball!

This is the last post until the fall! I hope everyone enjoys their summers!

– Kat C. Zhou ’17

Written by Christopher Marks

Written by Kat Zhou

Working on any theatrical production is an incredibly demanding endeavor. The end of a run, though sad, brings a little bit of relief. It is a return to normalcy and catching up on schoolwork and sleep. However, it is around this time of the year that I miss working on a show. Fortunately, Arts First was here to bring back light opera to my life.

HRG&SP was delighted to have the opportunity to play in the Science Center Plaza yesterday afternoon. We performed pieces from earlier year, such as “From the sunny spanish shore” from The Gondoliers (performed by Camille Crossot ’16, Rahul Kulka G1, Asia Stewart ’17, and Jack Weyen ’16). Of course, we could not fail to include songs from our most recent production of Iolanthe, including our beautiful fairies’ rendition of “Tripping hither, tripping thither” and the much beloved Lord Chancellor’s (Aaron Slipper ’18) “Love, unrequited, robs me of my rest.” It is even rumored that John Lithgow ’67 attended the performance due to his appreciation of the role of Lord Chancellor.

Finally, we finished with songs from our upcoming season. Our president Laura A. Peterson ’16 sang H.M.S. Pinafore‘s “Sorry her lot who loves too well,” and we closed with a rapid patter “My eyes are fully open” from Ruddigore. It was all in all a wonderful show, and one that made me quite excited for our next two shows. We hope you had a chance to catch the performance yesterday! If not, see you in the fall for Ruddigore!

Written by Raymond Ng

The annual Spring Tea is definitely one of my favorite social events hosted by HRG&SP. As the semester draws to an end, members of the G&S community, old and new, gathered one last time to celebrate another incredible year. I myself had an amazing time enjoying the company of fellow cast members, staff, and musicians whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with these past two years.

And what better way to welcome the spring weather than by being surrounded by the most delicious baked goods, all tirelessly prepared by G&S Board members the day before. My personal favorite was the banana and chocolate scones smothered in jam. And of course, there were also cookies, sandwiches, and irresistible chocolate-covered strawberries – I stuffed those into my mouth as if I was preparing to hibernate for the next few months!

A hallowed tradition of Spring Tea is the Ladies’ Hat Competition and the Gentlemen’s Bonnet Bout, where men and women displayed their diverse head gear in hopes of being named the prestigious “Queen of the Tea”. The competition was fierce, with participants bringing what could only be described as their “schwenckiest” creations. But in the end, the judges rightfully crowned Rebecca Rosen, Cassie Lowell, Jack Weyen, and Aaron Grand.

Though the Spring Tea marks the last official G&S social event of the semester, the G&S spirit is still quite alive. Already, we are gathering a set of staff for our next fall show, Ruddigore; Or, The Witch’s Curse – shameless plug: if you would like to contribute to Ruddigore in any capacity, let us know! But even if you can’t, we’d love to see you at future G&S events.

And on that note, on behalf of the G&S Board of Directors, I wish you a rapturous spring season!

I’m pleased to introduce this week’s blog author, C. E. Chiemeka Ezie ’15, who was the director of this spring’s production of Iolanthe.

Written by Chiemeka Ezie

As the school year draws closer to a close, I wanted to take some time to reflect upon the experience of working on Iolanthe over the past few months. This has been my fourth semester of involvement with the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players, and I was very happy to be spending my last semester as an undergraduate in the organization helping to put up my favorite show in Gilbert and Sullivan’s canon. But, rather than subject readers to my further musings and pontifications on the merits of the show – there was plenty of that in the Iolanthe program – I just wanted to share some reflections on the experience of this show.

Iolanthe was not the first time I have had the opportunity to stage direct a production for Gilbert and Sullivan. My first directing effort was Spring 2013’s lofty Utopia, Limited. Since that show, I have gained additional experiences as a performer and a director that (I hope) have somewhat improved my effectiveness in the role of a director. Still, as this semester began and casting week approached, I found experiencing familiar anxieties. It’s not uncommon for actors who audition for plenty of shows on campus in the fall semester to decide to take a break from theatre in the spring to focus on other pursuits. Furthermore, as much as I love Iolanthe, there is no denying that among today’s audiences and performers it doesn’t seem to have as much fame and recognition as the likes of The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance, or HMS Pinafore, that triumvirate of well-known Gilbert and Sullivan operettas we sometimes refer to as “The Big Three.” So, what if not enough people auditioned for our production? What if we simply didn’t have enough performers to be able to do the show? This probably crosses the mind of many a director of shows on campus at some point or another, and in most shows things turn out just fine. And yet, every semester this fear seems all too real.

Happily, by the end of the casting period my worries were totally assuaged. We managed to assemble a remarkably talented group of musicians and actors in the process of mounting this production. Their energy, creativity, and dedication to the show made my job as director unceasingly pleasant, and they duly received hearty applause at the conclusion of each performance. However, the incredible staff that worked tirelessly behind the scenes to keep the show on track also deserve recognition. We had a small volunteer army of designers and technicians with us this semester, and I can’t thank them enough for their efforts. I’d particularly like to mention Sam Wu, the music director, who diligently and fastidiously helped the cast and orchestra, all while balancing his work on the show with his responsibilities to the various other musical ensembles on campus. I don’t know how he does it, but he does, and I learned quite a lot from watching him work.

Something else that I found particularly gratifying about this show was seeing the number of first-time cast members, staff members, and musicians who ended up becoming involved. Being a part of the Gilbert & Sullivan community on this campus has been a consistent highlight of my undergraduate experience, so I am always very happy to see that community expanding and gaining new members. It is my hope that some of them can find a home-away-from-home in HRG&SP, as I and many others have.