Catrin Lloyd-Ballard

When Catrin M. Lloyd-Bollard ’08 auditioned for her first play the summer before high school, a local production of “The Tempest,” it may have been difficult to divine where her nascent ambitions would bring her. “I auditioned and I really screwed up my audition,” she says. “I completely blanked on the monologue, but they forgave me, I suppose, and decided to give me a chance.” Last-minute cast shuffling left her with a turn as King Alonso, a meatier part than her original role as the Boatswain. Every summer from then on, Lloyd-Bollard performed in Shakespeare Under the Stars, the community theater group in her hometown of Hampshire, Mass. Arriving at Harvard, Lloyd-Bollard was more certain about her theatrical goals than about how to attain them. College drama presented new challenges for her: “I knew I wanted to keep acting. I had trouble getting cast freshman year—it’s really kind of a hard scene to break into.” But friends in the theater encouraged her to pursue her passion, especially Aoife E. Spillane-Hinks ’06, who directed Lloyd-Bollard in one of her first shows. “She has been a huge inspiration for me,” Lloyd-Bollard says of her friend. Recently, the pair worked together on 2006’s “The Playboy of the Western World.” In the past four years, Lloyd-Bollard has risen in the ranks of the Harvard theater community. Her most recent work was directing this month’s production of “Blasted” at the American Repertory Theatre (ART). The play, filled with moments of sexualized brutality, served as her senior thesis along with a writing component, entitled “Theater of the Abject: The Powers of Horror in Sarah Kane’s ‘Blasted.’” Lloyd-Bollard, who is a Women, Gender, and Sexuality concentrator, stumbled upon the intersection of her extracurricular and academic interests, saying, “I got really interested in where the two [disciplines] meet and theories involving performativity of the self and of identities and of gender identity and sexuality and how you can explore these theories and concepts through performances in the theater.”As thrilling a prospect as the thesis was, directing a play to supplement a critical thesis proved a daunting, if not equally rewarding, task. “It was an incredibly large amount of time—directing this play was like having a full-time job… so it really took first place in my priorities,” she says. “I would have enjoyed the writing more if I had had more time with it, but I think the play in a lot of ways speaks for itself and it’s been pretty well received.”Student thespians often find academics frustrating at Harvard; there is no concentration offered in theater. Whether because of or in spite of this, Lloyd-Bollard found the experience of using a dramatic piece as a part of her thesis all the more fulfilling. “It was all on my own… And also, just the fact that it was just this incredible opportunity I did not think I would have at this point in my life or ever. I mean to use this space, to do this show, to have these resources, to have it be a part of my thesis, to have the amazing advisors of the ART…it’s just been incredibly, incredibly rewarding,” she says.As a dramatic artist, Lloyd-Bollard believes that studying the craft can never replace experience, and for that reason she never considered an arts-related concentration. Theater, for her, is something that can’t really be taught. “I feel like it’s stuff that can’t necessarily be learned in the classroom, and I just like learning by doing and learning from the people I work with…it’s always something that I love to do and want to do,” she says.For Lloyd-Bollard, graduation may only be the beginning. “There’s some talk about me and some other of my friends starting our own theater company—we’ve gotten some support from some members of the ART and some directors, really encouraging us and [willing to] offer us support, and that’s been sort of really fantastic,” she says. For a young talent such as herself, Lloyd-Bollard seems poised for success.Despite her natural inclination for the stage, Lloyd-Bollard has an abiding love for all the arts. “I do all kinds of creative things,” she says. “I write, I play the guitar, I do a lot of visual art.” She hopes to use other media in her work. “In ‘Blasted,’ we incorporated video into the theater. I’m really interested in doing that.” For her, the theater seems to be the great middle ground, a place where the artistic community can come together to appreciate all its many facets: “What I love about the theater is that you can combine all of these things together, and it just seems like such a great way to keep up on all my passions.”– Ryan J. Meehan