Arlo D. Hill ’08

“Of Arlo-hill (Who knowes not Arlo-hill?)”

Arlo D. Hill ’08 first stumbled across this verse from Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene” after searching his name on Google, although he says that his name was probably more inspired by folk artist Arlo Guthrie than the Elizabethan poet.

“My parents didn’t know of the reference,” says Hill, whose first name also happens to mean “hill.” “They wanted an ‘A’ name after my great-grandfather, Alec. The first person who ever mentioned it to me was Helen Vendler when I was interviewing for her freshman seminar.”

A familiar face among the cast of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club’s Mainstage productions, Hill is the 2008 recipient of the Radcliffe Doris Cohen Levi Prize. The medal is awarded by the Harvard Office for the Arts to “the Harvard undergraduate who combines talent and energy with outstanding enthusiasm for musical theater at Harvard.”

Hill, who is currently playing the title character in this semester’s production of “Sweeney Todd,” has previously performed in campus productions of “The Pirates of Penzance” and “The Fantasticks” and is a member of the Krokodiloes, Harvard’s prestigious a cappella group.

One senses a certain thoughtfulness behind the measured tones of Hill’s low, melodious baritone; it’s no surprise that he got into musical theater through singing. Growing up, Hill sang in school, but only began exploring musical theater after landing the lead role of Curly in his middle school production of “Oklahoma!” While Hill’s father grew up on Rodgers and Hammerstein, his mother was less enthused about musical theater.

“My mother hated musicals. She thought they were stupid,” Hill says. “It wasn’t until she had children that she started liking musicals.”

Starting in high school, Hill became serious about musical theater. Under the guidance of James Thornton, the chair of the Shaker Heights High School’s Theatre Arts Department, Hill worked to develop self-awareness for physical theater and movement on stage and, for his senior project, staged a one-man cabaret.

“Doing your own cabaret is one of the hardest things,” Hill says, comparing performing in musicals to performing in a cabaret. “There’s no one else but you. You engage with the audience—shape a whole evening. If you’re able to do that, stepping into a role that’s prescribed for you on stage is nothing.”

Unsure whether or not he wanted to devote his life to the stage, Hill decided against attending a conservatory after high school in favor of a liberal arts education. The path has not always been clear, as he bounced from physics to linguistics to literature, but Hill now notes that much of his studies have been related to theater.

Hill considered going directly into a graduate program for theater performance but now plans to move to New York to start auditioning for professional productions.

While looking ahead, Hill recalls his first audition for an off-Broadway show. During the middle of final exams period in 2006, he traveled down to New York for a casting call for the revival of “The Fantasticks” in 2006. “I had said that if it comes back, I’m going to drop everything and audition. It’s my favorite show,” he says. But with little time to prepare, the audition was admittedly a disaster.

Sitting along the side of Quincy House two years later, Hill started singing a verse from “Something’s Coming” from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” and reenacted his audition. As his voice began to swell, Hill suddenly stopped short of the refrain and motioned silently as if trying to grasp the words.

“I completely forgot the words to the song,” he recalls. “It was pretty embarrassing. But more than embarrassing, it was a lesson that you need to know your song completely cold.” Still, despite this rather ungracious start, Hill is determined to try his luck again.

And while he takes a more unconventional route than his peers who are bound for New York for careers in business and finance, Hill doesn’t plan to fall into the role of starving artist. “I’ll probably do SAT tutoring while in New York. It’s a real good thing to do if you don’t do investment banking or consulting,” he says. “Flexible hours too.”

“Hopefully, I’ll get lucky with an off-Broadway or Broadway show,” Hill says. “Or not.”

—Emily G.W. Chau