An Alternative Theater Experience

It's 10 p.m. and all is silent outside Lowell House. From the Tower Room high above the courtyard, an actor's bellowing voice echoes eerily across the deserted quadrangle.

"When you put your arm around Hilda, imagine she is Ginger Rogers."

"With no teeth? You try!" another actor darts back.

"Good. I like those expressions," interjects a third voice--that of play director Kenneth W. Johnson '87.

And so begins another rehearsal of Athol Fugard's Master Harold...and The Boys, the latest in a series of plays produced by the Black Community and Student Theater (CAST)--the only undergraduate drama group for Black students on campus.

Black CAST is a forum for scripts by Black playwrights and others who portray the Black experience or race relations, says CAST's President Monica D. Sams '88.

CAST differs from other College theater groups not only because of its choice of works performed, but also because it allows members of the Cambridge community to participate, says former president Inger D. Tudor '87, producer of Master Harold. Although the focus is on the Black experience, participation in a CAST production is open to everyone.

Origins

Some CAST members say that there is a dearth of roles for Black actors in campus productions, citing a problem which many minority actors face in Hollywood. Unless the script specifically calls for Black characters--like Shakespeare's Othello or Alex Haley's Roots--Blacks usually aren't cast into plays. That's why Black CAST was created in the 1960s, says Sams, who calls the organization an "alternative drama experience."

"CAST is important because there aren't the roles for Black people," says CAST vice-president Cheryl Nelson '89. "The issue isn't discrimination. The issue is that for some plays, it's clear from the start that a character should be played by a white, not for appearance but for cultural reasons."

"Except for a Black person's attempt, you don't see a predominantly non-white cast at Common Casting," Nelson says about the weeklong auditions. She says that directors select plays about cultures with which they are familiar.

That doesn't mean minority students don't appear in other productions. Monica Sams, for instance, has played roles in several Loeb Mainstage productions, including Wuthering Heights and most recently, as a goddess in The Tempest.

On the Upswing

When the group was first founded, it staged two or three shows in a year. Recently, however, Sams says CAST has had only about six regular members and staged only one student play. "Minority organizations in general have been suffering," she says. "People don't seem to care about them as much."

But this year things are different. Membership has increased from six to 30 members, and for the first time, the group has an executive board of directors, Sam says. "Hopefully we'll turn the thing around."

Not only will the group bring a Black theater group to Harvard this winter, as it did last year, but new board members say they are planning to expand CAST's role by offering drama workshops and staging a spring production.

This fall's production, Master Harold is about a 17-year-old South African boy in the 1950s and his relationship with the two Black, middle-aged servants who have raised him. The play was written four years ago and is a fictionalized account of the childhood of its author, Fugard.

Master Harold, which opens in the Lowell House Lower Common Room November 13, marks the directing debut for veteran actor Kenneth W. Johnson '87. The Leverett House senior says he has wanted to see the play performed at the College since his freshman year. "It's set in South Africa, but can apply anywhere," says the Government concentrator. "The play subtly lets you see how racism is ingrained in an institution, how a young boy doesn't realize it and then how he has to confront it," he says.

Sullivan calls the play shocking in its violent portrayal of racial discrimination. He says that the play is "incredibly realistic. It's as if you walk into a room of apartheid."

Benston also calls the play a challenge. "I've never had a workout like this before," says the Mather resident. "The cast is so tiny."