Nights in Drag: Hasty Pudding Theatricals

"My sophomore year, I played an evil Irish communist potato called Spud Nick, and I had this giant costume—a blob of a costume—and I couldn’t move my hands around in it. Because the costume was so big, I just took up a wing offstage, and before my first entrance every night I had to catch a prop that was thrown offstage because I was there. So during one performance, my friend throws this aluminum hanger directly at my face and, since I can’t move my arms, it hits me in the mouth and knocks out a piece of my tooth. This was 10 seconds before I had to go on stage and I had a piece of my tooth in my hand—I ended up singing my song and doing a cartwheel in this potato costume with my tooth in my hand the whole time.

With these costumes you have to be a puppeteer because they’re so huge and so lavish; they can wear you if you don’t wear them, so you have to really embody not only the character but also the costume. You have to be believable as a character that’s larger than life."

—Ryan P. Halprin ’12

“I’ll always be a beautiful, proud, strong woman—it’s the best way to live your life.” ­

—Ethan D. Hardy ’14, on what he learned from drag

“We’re all scrambling to put our makeup on. We do our own makeup, but we have costumers to help us zip everything up. In an ideal world you would arrive 45 minutes before to shave and do everything, but realistically they’re like ‘Places!’ and you’re throwing on your makeup and begging someone to put on your wig.”

—Benjamin K. Moss ’13, on backstage prep