ArtsFirst, Acting and the Oscars:

While many students may know John Lithgow '67 from his numerous film and stage roles- including his Academy Award- nominated performance in the "The World According to GArp" and "Terms of Endearment" and his Tony- winning performance in M. Butterfly- most are probably unaware that he is on the Board of Overseers of HArvard. Lithgow has always maintained a strong interest in the well being of his alma mater, particularly of its arts community; and he is the chief organizer of ArtsFirst, a weekend- long and campus- wide celebration of HArvard's vibrant creative community that will take place from April 30 to May 2. ArtsFirst will feature over 85 performances in a wide variety of media, from theater to dance to film to music to a ableau vivant of Widener. (Free guides to the weekend's activitieswill soon be available in the Houses, campus arts centers, and Holyoke Center.)The Crimson recently caught up with Lithgow, and what follows are excerts of his comments about the program, and about his own artistic roots at Harvard.

Our ArtsFirst

I'll tell you a little but about [ArtsFirst's] history and its genesis. When Net [Rudenstine] was inaugurated, he went to a lot of trouble, and Angelica [Rudenstine] too, to create several wonderful occasions for the arts. They had some special are exhibits an evening of literature and music, this wonderful poetry and music event in a church...and I was just swept away by this..I proposed shortly thereafter to the Overseers that we create a Committee for the Arts. That was kind of my platform when I ran for the Overseers-that there be somebody from the Harvard alumni who was in the world of the arts.

Well, they voted this Committee into existence immediately, and my first suggestion was, "Let's create some event that highlights the undergraduate arts at Harvard." And I met with Neil, who loved the idea. In fact, he expanded it. I was thinking of just an arts banquet or something, but by the end of our meeting it was a weekend of activities...

This was all about a year ago, Since then the weekend has taken many different forms. We met with so much enthusiasm everywhere we went that one of our main challenges was limiting the scope... it was always part of my dream for ArtsFirst that it become an annual tradition, a springtime tradition at Harvard, and become an institution, modeled on something like Head of the Charles--People anticipate it, it becomes a very familiar house-hold word, and Artsfirst becomes the signature for a really important Harvard event.

I feel that this is just as important an event for Harvard audiences as for Harvard artists. And we certainly don't want to have the artists begging for crowds. It should be an event where everybody at Harvard stops a moment and contemplates the incredible creative energy of this place. We're not asking everybody to perform; We want at least half of them to come and watch (laughs)

One notion that I have always had about this event is that it should have the nature of a cross-fertilization, that actors should be working with musicians, artists should be working with dancers. In my experience at Harvard, one of the best aspects of it for me was that I worked not just as an actor, which is what I've ended up, but a director, a designer, I directed a dance prove in Leveret House. I directed two operas [The Marriage of Finger in Leveret House and The Begger's Opens in Address Houses]. I worked with dancers from the Boston Conservatory and designers from the design school, and architecture students, because I had many other interests besides acting. When I came to Harvard, I was much more interested in painting than in acting, in fact And I've gone into the acting business with this catholicity of interests and tastes. And I think that's a very good thing for any-body...

On the balance between academic and extracurricular opportunities in the arts at Harvard.

To me, from my vantage point, it seems like a happy medium. There's instruction, if you want it. There are programs, if you want them-the dance program at the Office of the Arts, the drawing classes outside the curriculum of the VFS department. I think maybe if you're inside the world of Harvard, it must be frustrating that there aren't more course offerings. But from where I stand, on the outside, it looks like a pretty good mix. I'm a great believer in kinds between 18 and 22 getting a rounded education and giving their minds plenty of options and intellectual experiments.

I'm in a business where an awful lot of the people knew at age 10 they wanted to be an actor. They got right into it and did not want to be forestalled by going to college. And they have an entire lifetime to regret it. I believe in what has evolved over centuries at Harvard. I was little but cynical about it when I was here, but now I'm a big LAN of it.

I think these are years of experiment any way, in a young man of woman's life. And I think these are precious years in which to try anything-personally, academically. I think it's very important to develop a healthy population of artistic consumers.

Referring to his debut as an 8 year old Mustardseed in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I grew up in a theater family--this was in my father's Shakespeare festival--and to me acting was a fun thing you did in the summertime, playing an extra or a bit part. I adored the atmosphere of it, and I loved Shakespeare, and as a teenager I worked as an apprentice lighting technician and property maker--I even helped make costumes. This was not to educate myself as a young actor, it was just to have fun.

And it was only when I was good enough to stand on a stage and to take charge, and feel that it was working, and hear an audience respond and applaud and laugh--and by that time I was 18 or 19 years old--that's when I really discovered what I should do I chose acting as a way of giving in to it. I tried to resist it, and I gave its. And in a way, that's the beat possible way to start. Because you don't have quite as marry illusions as all the other rulers.

On his most recently filmed movie Cliffhanger, an action thriller with Sylvester one set on a mountain.

If ended up just being a ball. It was just a wonderful job. The ultimate sort of fantasy reenactment the story involves him on one side of the mountain and me on the other. We're sort of stalking each other, and finally we come together at the end and have the huge, climactic mano a mano at the edge of a cliff. One of us loses I won't tell you which (laughs) the great extent of my working with sty was this big fight scene. Of course, he's tremendous at that. It's what he does best So it was great. You could hit him as hard as you wanted and he wouldn't even bruise.

And you?

Well, I had all of this padding on...(laughs)

On the Oscars:

I thought they were a little conservative, but predictable...I though "the Crying Game" was great. I saw it last September at the Venice Film Festival at 1 a., with three of four people in the audience. And I loved the film, but ...as a matter of fact, I sat there watching it with Ban DePalma [his long-time friend and director of his most recent release, "Raising Cain"]. I smelled something, I though something was going on, but after Jaye Davidson's first scene. Brian leaned over to me and said (adopting a deep police), "Looks like a transvestite to me." And I was furious with him, because I didn't really get a chance to test whether I'd be fooled or not. Brian said it was always the hands--the hands always give the gender of the actor away. Brian spotted (Davidson's hands) in the first scene and said "Uh uh."

On spending two years at the London Acute my of Dramatic Arts.

It's like being in physical training for two years. You come out there knowing how to fence and fight, how to use your voice, how to parse verse. You even learn how to screaming and crying on a purely technical level. Well, that's not the kind of thing they tend to concentrate on in the Actor's Studio and the Neighbor-hood Playhouse [representative American acting schools]. But that's very valid way of working, too; and the Englishmen are fascinated by that. They love American actors. The grass is always greener, I guess.

On his future plans.

Well, I leave at 300 for South Africa, where I'm going to be working on a movie for Brace Beresford called. "The good Man in Africa," with scan Cannery. It's a very satirical look at post-colonial British diplomats in a West African tinpot dictatorship. And I'm coming back for 48 hours for ArtsFirst. So if I can come back all the way from South Africa, just tell those freshmen they can come over from Wigglesworth. (Laughs)