“Smoking Lesson” Hopes to Resonate with Harvard Students

Simultaneously sweet and perverse, “Smoking Lesson” is a paradox. The play, set to run in the Loeb Ex, depicts the dynamic and drama between three teenage girls–Tare, Mary Kate, and Lisa Ann– and an older man, Tom, whose interaction with the girls sets the stage for the trio’s undoing.

For director Lelaina E. Vogel ’15, the production presents an opportunity to explore a message that is normally forgotten by Harvard students. “I’m telling a story that is…about a part of the country that a lot of Harvard ignores and a part of ourselves that Harvard students live to ignore,” Vogel says. “Namely, the Midwest and what it means for us to grow up too fast or sometimes grow up not at all.”

The complexity of the production’s thematic underbelly is what attracted the cast and crew to this production. “I think that it’s rare to have a story where two people can come out of it and think, ‘Wow, that is such a tragic story for Tom’ and other people can be like, ‘Wow, that story about Tare really touched me,’” actor Archie I.H. Stonehill ’17 says.

“[The plot] is...shifty. It moves very quickly,” Vogel says.

Sass agrees. “No one will be bored.”

The multifaceted plot goes hand in hand with the complex characters that populate the world of “Smoking Lesson.” “I think for me it’s been really amazing to work on a character whose sort of veering on the edge of being a child and figuring out who she is.” says Juliana N. Sass ’17, who plays Tare. “There’s this supreme confidence that exists in an ironic way because she doesn’t really know what she’s doing.”

“Smoking Lesson” looks to be a unique play guaranteed to fascinate and inspire. As Vogel emphasizes, “We [Harvard students] sit on a strange divide where we feel like we have to behave like we’re incredibly mature adults…and what this play shows is that the facade of being perfect and polished and pristine is so false.”