Ushering in the Millenium

Once on a trip to Africa, Elizabeth Swados witnessed a ritual ceremony where a priest was "absolutely magnificent and fantastic" in the crowd. Curiously, Swados noticed this very same priest sulking under a tree the next night. She later learned that the village elders decided he could no longer entertain because he was "no longer possessed." Swados has since adopted this rule for her own work: To work with one of her productions "you have to be 'possessed' or you don't get to perform."

The accomplished director and composer has brought this approach to her directing debut at Harvard. Cantata 2000--composed, adapted and directed by Swados--opens this weekend on the Loeb Mainstage. Elizabeth Swados is the second professional director to work on a major undergraduate production as part of the Harvard-Radcliffe Visiting Director's Project.

Best known for her 1977 hit musical Runaways, Swados boasts a prolific and diverse career on Broadway and off-Broadway. She has also toured, written two novels and non-fiction works and taught at New York University. Swados claims to have been interested in musical theater ever since she wrote her first song at five and her first musical in the second grade. As the next endeavor in her "moment-to-moment, improvisational life," Swados chose to come to Harvard because "it was a group of young people who wanted to explore the theater in a serious way."

Swados has long been interested in working with young people in the theater. She argues that the fresh approach of youth energizes a production. "What I try to do is find people who are fresh and raw and whose energies themselves feed the material and who bring a new kind of look, a new kind of interpretation to the material," Swados said.

Inspired by and largely based on writings done by people in their 20s and early 30s, Cantata 2000 is, in Swados's words, a "circus of words." She hopes it portrays "what it's like to be twenty-something and live as the millenium is being pushed in your face."

"What we're doing is taking poetry and prose and we're doing acts, we're doing feats with the words," Swados explains. "You wouldn't expect them to be sung the way they're being sung. There's a lot of different scenes and energies that are going on."

As described by co-producer Elena Jacobson '99, Cantata 2000 is performed cabaret style with no single plot strand and consists of about 35 different songs of various musical styles, moods and words. Issues dealt with in the show include bisexuality, AIDS and the identity struggle of "Generation X." Next to these serious issues the show places more comical matters to "reflect the conflicting nature of the turn of the millenium," Jacobson says.

Swados chose the unconventional format for Cantata to ensure authenticity. "When people play characters, you can always tell," she says. Swados prefers music and singing because "someone is an instrument and someone is really conveying music and the person gives the energy."

Through work on the production, Swados has learned a great deal about the young in the '90s. Particularly she has noticed that young people are under greater pressure to produce and attain specific goals. "People are trying to squash their imaginations. Of course, the kids that I've worked with won't let that happen. But for the most part, their sense of time is much more urgent than mine was," Swados says.

Along with new insights into youth, working at Harvard has provided Swados with a refreshing emotional environment. "I come from the world ravaged by AIDS. I work in neighborhoods that are ravaged by drugs and poverty," she says. "It's good to be in an atmosphere where people are interested in things, where they're not fighting all the time."

For those interested in pursuing a career in the theater, Swados reccomends a do-it-yourself approach. While she would not advise against the pursuit, she warns against becoming a "passive victim of the theatrical system" and constantly waiting for directors, producers and actors to accept your material. Instead, Swados advocates creating one's own company and venue to get a piece of work performed. She argues that "theater can be made now by people who want to do it" rather than subjecting oneself to the "neurotic, cruel system" of "legitimate" theater.

The experience with Cantata 2000 and Harvard students has added Swados's optimism for the future. Upon seeing the energies and talents of the students she's worked with, Swados remarks "I think I'll feel less alone because I'll know the generations that are coming up are not so distant from me. I can reach out to them and they're there."