Pudding Selects Vampire Script

Hasty Pudding Theatricals this week selected "Fangs for the Memories"--a blend of James Bond characters, a Transylvania-type setting and bomb shelters--for its 153rd season's production, continuing a tradition of outrageous spoofs

Ben S. Forkner '01, Sarah C. Haskins '01 and Young K. Lee '99 wrote the 1950's spoof together during 1999.

"After 153 years you kind of run out of things to spoof," Forkner said. "We realized there'd never been a kind of vampire-ish spoof. The genre wasn't completely pummeled into the ground."

"We haven't done a Transylvania monster type theme yet," said Chris M. Hans '01, president of the Pudding theatricals.

He, like the play's three authors, said he is excited by the freshness of the theme.

Since the play was rejected for the 152nd season, the three authors have been revising and polishing it for re-submission.

"They tightened up, added a lot more jokes," Hans said.

But for the three authors, the work has just begun.

They had their first meeting Tuesday to discuss preliminary changes to the lyrics, and they have been corresponding by telephone and over e-mail with Lee, who now lives in California.

"Basically it involves intense revisions," Forkner said.

Forkner, who will also produce the play, is a member of On Thin Ice and his block mate, Haskins, is a member of the Immediate Gratification Players.

Forkner has appeared in two Pudding plays as Denise Ofan Uncle last spring and as Geriatrick in the spring of 1999.

Haskins said she hopes to get more involved in acting after she completes her thesis in American History and Literature.

"I'm just an author. This is really the first year I've been involved [with the Hasty Pudding]," she said.

Despite only recently joining the circle of theatricals, Haskins' sense of humor is already recognized.

"Obviously she's hilarious," Lee said.

Haskins and Forkner gave Lee credit for conceiving the original idea for the play.

The trio of authors submitted their script to the Pudding Saturday, and it was accepted Sunday.

Hasty Pudding officers are already searching for professionals to do the costumes and technical work for the play, which is usually performed 40 times in Cambridge before going on spring tour.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences announced last spring it had reached a deal to acquire the Hasty Pudding Building from the Institute of 1770, the theatrical group's parent organization.

Details of that deal have yet to be worked out, but Pudding members said yesterday that they are confident the ongoing negotiations will not affect the play's schedule.

"We've been assured we're going to be in the Hasty Pudding theater," Forkner said

The company will choose actors in late November, and the Pudding plans to open the play in its Holyoke Street building on Feb. 15, 2001.