Try Composing, Orchestrating And Directing One as Well. One Senior Did.

Most seniors' these require hours spent in the depths of Widener stacks and slaving away at a Mac in total isolation.

But Todd J. Fletcher '91 has been able to escape the dry and lonely world of academic research.

Instead, the Music and Dramatic Arts special concentrator chose a "hands-on" approach to his senior thesis. Fletcher's thesis project is the upcoming musical, "The Errols."

A Full-Scale Production

Set in North Carolina in the 1930s, the musical, inspired by the novel "Little Lord Fauntleroy," tells of the reconciliation between a mulatto teenage boy with his white grandfather. More than 20 years before the play's story begins, the boy's grandfather refused to recognize his white son's marriage to a Black woman. Now, the Black woman, Elizabeth, and her 18-year-old son, Cedric, leave New York for North Carolina, because the ailing grandfather wishes to meet his grandson.

It was in Lowell Professor of the Humanities William Alfred's playwriting course two years ago that Fletcher found inspiration for "The Errols" and support for his musical thesis.

The current project was composed, directed and orchestrated by the senior. "It started off as just a few songs and then developed into this musical," Fletcher says.

After composing songs based on the "Little Lord Fauntleroy" story for Alfred's course, Fletcher more fully developed some of the ideas he had worked on in class: he added lyrics, developed characters and changed the setting of the story.

"In tutorial I just decided there was something missing--an immediacy, kind of," Fletcher says about the setting of the original story. "What did I know about England in the 19th century?"

"It just became more meaningful for me when I moved it to the South," he says.

And then it was just one more step to a full-scale production.

"I figured since I wrote it, I might as well produce it. But it makes it that much more difficult," he says. "It's not only an activity, It's my thesis."

A Thesis, But A Bearable One

But the "activity" part makes the "thesis" aspect more bearable. After all, Harvard students usually become involved in activities because they're enjoyable. Fletcher's project is no exception.

In particular, Fletcher says he enjoys the show's racial diversity. "Half of the people in the show are black; half are white," Fletcher says. The musical includes both a Black chorus and a white chorus. "When they sing together, it's very powerful," he says.

"In theater, so much is either African-American or white," Fletcher explains. "It's very rare that things are a mixture. This show is, and I'm very happy about that."

The theme of race in "The Errols" is important to the cast as well. "One of the interesting things about this show is the issues it deals with. It creates an interesting dynamic within the cast itself," says Alexis Toomer '93, who plays Elizabeth.

Peter W. Wardle '92, who plays an "evil racist lawyer," says, "I think it's cool because the subject matter is racial."

"I get to act completely racist and that makes me think about all the themes," he continues, "especially because sometimes racist acts are not as overt these days."

It is also the novelty of the project which Fletcher and the cast members say they enjoy about working on "The Errols."

"I feel that we're all taking part in a creative process because this is an original. It's a neat feeling to have been a part of this," says Edward J. Collins, Jr. '94, who portrays Cedric.

Charlie W. Cardillo '91 also enjoys "the chance to sing original stuff," he says. "[Fletcher's] music is beautiful. I guess my greatest fear is that I really want to do it justice." Cardillo plays the grandfather.

And getting to work with a director who actually wrote the script is a rare and fortunate opportunity, cast members agree.

"[Fletcher] definitely knows what he wants," says Cardillo. "I really feel like I sound better after he explains more and more to me about the character."

Like Any Other Thesis?

Yet before anything else, "The Errols" remains a thesis project. And like any other thesis, the musical provides Fletcher with challenge and even pressure.

"In a sense it was more difficult because it all had to come from himself," says Alfred, who is Fletcher's thesis advisor.

"It's stressful because first of all I have to write it. Second of all I do the stage and music direction," Fletcher explains. "Because it's my baby and I've spent so much time with it, I'm involved in every single aspect of the production."

Balancing the project as an academic project and as an actual theatrical production can be difficult, he explains. For example, when trying to decide whether or not to make changes in the show, Fletcher thinks to himself: "It may work intellectually, but will it work for the audience as well, and can the cast member learn this? At what point do I stop changing things?"

"Most challenging is the fact that I have to please my advisors and I also have to please myself and the audience and the cast," Fletcher says.

But changes, though they may be frustrating for a real-live cast, according to Alfred have consistently improved the musical academically. "It gets stronger with each draft," he says.

It is challenging, Alfred says, to write songs which not only achieve characterization, but also move along the action of the musical. "That's a very difficult thing to do," he says.

The advisor explains that at first he feared Fletcher's rhymes "were too easily arrived at." But experience has greatly improved Fletcher's rhyming ability, says Alfred.

"He's gotten better. That's a skill that takes years. He certainly has the talent to do that," says Alfred. "I think he's largely achieved that in the songs he has."

A Special Concentration

The project as a whole was something Fletcher knew he wanted to do, but he never dreamed it would be one he could pursue as an academic endeavor, he says.

After a year as a Music and English concentrator, Fletcher says he realized at the end of his sophomore year that it was time to change. "There wasn't as much opportunity to do the kinds of things I was most interested in," he says.

Making the switch in concentrations wasn't easy. "The special concentration people want to make sure your program is not too specific, nor too general," Fletcher says. He also needed written statements from faculty certifying that he could not satisfactorily "pursue his goals" in the Music and English departments.

As a Music and Dramatic Arts concentrator, Fletcher has been able to study what he wants to. "I have always been interested in music," Fletcher says. The director and composer started playing the piano at age five, and discovered the theater at age six. "I've been interested in the combination of the two. When I got to Harvard, I was interested in a combination but I didn't think it was possible," Fletcher says.

"So much of our life combines language and music, and that's what I'm interested in," he continues. "I really wanted to study that--existing forms, and creating original works: songs, musicals and opera."

So the switch was a good idea: and according to Alfred, Fletcher is well suited to the world of the stage. "He does have a working sense of the shape of a dramatic action. He showed he could grow with the genre, which is what you hope for with someone just beginning to write for theater," says the professor.

Making the Grade

Now that Fletcher has created an original work, he says that he believes "there is a lot of anticipation for this project because it hasn't been done before; in my time it hasn't been done as a thesis."

And when all is said and done, the musical will, like any other thesis, have to be graded. Fletcher's graders will attend a performance of "The Errols." But luckily for him, if someone should come down with laryingitis, that won't mean automatic failure for Fletcher.

"If the actors happen to have a bad night when the graders come, that won't affect my grade. What really counts for my thesis is what's written--the score and libretto," Fletcher explains.

But regardless of whether his project is a summa or not, someday, Fletcher says, he would like to play the role of director again--but in front of an orchestra. After a year or two as a music and theater teacher at Andover, Fletcher wants to apply to conservatories in order to study conducting, he says.

"It's very difficult and it's going to take lots of work and discipline, which I have to develop," Fletcher says. But the challenge doesn't frighten him away from setting high goals, as it did not frighten him in choosing to pursue his offbeat thesis.

When considering the concert halls and opera houses where he'd most like to conduct, Fletcher laughs, before answering: "the big ones."