The Homecoming of Matt & Ben

The debate over the respective values of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Class of 1992—which is more talented, more bankable, more prone to some serious junk in the trunk—is one that will rage on until the two are starring in modern retellings of Out to Sea. Their stars have alternately shone and dimmed, based largely on whether their last hit was a Bourne Supremacy or an All the Pretty Horses, an Armageddon or a Paycheck. But regardless of their individual successes, it’s difficult to discuss one without mentioning the other. The two will forever be linked in the public consciousness, emblazoned as two iconic youngsters gripping a pair of Oscars and each other.

But Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers know the truth behind the undeserved success of this A-list duo. Not a dangling participle of their defining piece of work, the Academy-honored script for Good Will Hunting, was written by either of them. It fell from the sky, right into their then worthless laps. So Kaling and Withers wrote a play to expose these facts. They ran it in New York and Los Angeles, to the vociferous praise of critics and audiences. And now they are hitting where the heart is: Matt and Ben’s hometown of Cambridge, Mass. and Damon’s almost-alma mater, Harvard University.

THE STORY BEHIND THE PLAY

From Oct. 27 through Nov. 6, playwrights Kaling and Withers are serving up Matt & Ben, a snippy satire targeting the rise to ubiquity of the two Cantabrigians, in Winthrop House’s Junior Common Room. For $15 and $25 respectively, Harvard students and the metro Cambridge population will have the rare opportunity to witness a full professional production of an acclaimed Off Broadway work in their own town.

The play was written by Kaling and Withers in the penniless years following their graduation from Dartmouth. Their overly active participation in the first incarnation of the play was no accident.

“Matt & Ben was inspired mostly out of poverty,” admits Kaling. “We wanted to work together but didn’t want to spend any money. We figured we could save a lot of time and expense by essentially ‘hiring’ ourselves to act in the play, direct it ourselves, and use our living room as rehearsal space.”

Taking on the challenge of tactfully poking fun at the institution of celebrity, Kaling and Withers set their play in Damon’s post-Harvard years, pitting the two against one another as polar opposites whose friendship transcends their differences.

While working on a film adaptation of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the screenplay for Damon and Affleck’s alleged brainchild, Good Will Hunting, plummets from the ceiling or perhaps from the heavens. The resultant scenario finds the two reacting in unexpected ways to the discovery, amidst “cameos” by Gwyneth Paltrow and J.D. Salinger and a screwy, violent climax. Humorous references to the duo’s headline-grabbing history pepper the play and provide rich comic fodder.

Before the play even gets underway, the unorthodox casting will no doubt turn some heads. Both Damon and Affleck are portrayed by women; the two playwrights, one Caucasian and one African-American, co-starred in the New York debut.

“Having two women in the roles heightens one’s focus,” says producer Andrew Arthur, explaining that the casting also makes one question their beliefs about the traditional ideas of male bonding traditions.

Kaling and Withers have since moved on to develop a sitcom for the WB (“It should be called ‘We have no money, and we’re miserable because we have no jobs or boyfriends,’” quips Kaling). They’ve been succeeded by a pair of native New Yorkers, Jennifer Morris (Matt) and Quincy Tyler Bernstine (Ben), who met while studying theater at the University of California, San Diego. Both were called back after auditioning and, miraculously, both were cast.

Morris was drawn to Matt & Ben because it had already established itself with audiences. “I had heard so much about it,” says Morris. “It was a big hit in New York, and it’s not very often you get to audition for the role of Matt Damon.”

She also notes the uniqueness of the opportunity as a draw, professing that “great comedic roles for women” are hard to come by.

BEING MATT AND BEN

Though the show may be interpreted as a simple parody, Matt & Ben is not an extended Saturday Night Live sketch and the roles of Matt and Ben are not meant to be dead-on impersonations of the real duo.

In preparing for the role of Ben, Bernstine says she “tried to avoid watching his movies because I wanted it to be my own idea of him. I channeled high school and college guy friends to get that energy of a young guy.”

“To me it seemed more like ‘The Odd Couple’ than Matt and Ben because it is not an impression of them,” adds Morris. “He is just a character and was written as just a character because the playwrights don’t actually know him.”

Kaling attributes the success of the New York show—which opened “before J.Lo and just after Ben went into rehab”—to “the believability of these two women as guys more than the simple glee of ‘Let’s see Ben Affleck and Matt Damon get eviscerated.’”

The writers hope the audience will become attached to these two characters despite their myriad flaws.

Kaling describes Ben as “an idealistic, sarcastic, smart and intuitive guy who is not that self-aware. Also, he’s a guy. It’s enviable how much crap Ben gets to eat onstage. Plus he gets to wear a tracksuit.”

In addition to imagining their simple pre-fame lifestyle, the play really pays homage to the pair’s friendship.

When asked about the work’s core message, Kaling says, “The show, I think, is about the challenges of friendship and collaboration.”

“I think the great thing about the play is that it’s actually, as much as its poking fun at our obsession with celebrity, at its heart a celebration of Matt and Ben’s friendship,” adds Morris. “They’re just two scrappy guys who end up making it in Hollywood. I remember how moved I was when I first saw it.”

Despite the sometimes playful, sometimes pointed roasting of Affleck and Damon, the actresses and playwrights have a deep respect for the two and hope that they would see the show as a way to laugh at themselves.

“I think they both seem so oddly down-to-earth,” says Kaling. “On TV and in movies, Ben Affleck always seems so handsome and funny. Matt Damon’s sort of emerged as one of the great American actors of these days, hasn’t he?”

Bernstine, a self-proclaimed “fan of Ben Affleck,” says she would hope the two could watch it and “have a sense of humor about themselves. It’s not mean-spirited, and they would appreciate it.”

BRINGING GOOD WILL TO HARVARD

Even without the attendance of Matt or Ben, the production has far exceeded expectations to become one of the past year’s most talked-about theatrical debuts. Time Magazine’s theater critic Richard Zoglin deemed it one of the top five productions of 2003, and it was awarded Best Overall Production at the New York International Fringe Festival.

Following its successes at the P.S. 122 theatre in New York City and ACME Comedy Theatre in Los Angeles, Matt & Ben jetted through a series of popular runs across the U.S. and Canada. Harvard will be the cast’s last stop before taking Matt & Ben around the globe to test the show’s viability in front of international audiences.

The arrival of the show on Crimson soil is a product of the efforts of producer Andrew Arthur. A non-resident film and drama tutor at Winthrop House and director of various campus plays over the years, Arthur originally conceived of a student production of the show. He called up the playwrights to ask them to lease the rights. He was denied, but Arthur had one hand left to play.

“I shared the Harvard legend with Mindy [Kaling] that Matt’s last performance at Harvard was at Winthrop,” says Arthur. Kaling’s Boston roots and Morris’s former enrollment in Harvard Summer School were subsequently revealed, and they were sold. Through the standard approval process for campus shows, Arthur was able to rent out Winthrop’s JCR for two weeks to kick the production into gear.

Cabot House senior James Patton will serve as co-producer of the show. A former collaborator with Arthur, he says that he has been recruiting students for light and sound coordination. Patton claims everything except the acting and stage management will be done by Harvard students.

Patton cites high curiosity among the student body—with a possible future Matt Damon among them—when he discusses the production. “It’s a novel concept and everyone I’ve talked to seemed extremely interested in the show,” he says.

The players involved seem equally excited by the prospect of bringing their show to the Harvard audience, describing the various connections between the play and the college.

“It will be exciting to see how it plays especially since Matt went to Harvard,” says Bernstine. “Maybe the audience will get more of the subtle references [to Cambridge and Boston], because there are definitely references made to that area.”

Kaling says, “The fact that Ben and Matt are from Cambridge, and that Matt went to Harvard makes me feel like the show is coming home.”

Her only regret for the homecoming of her play is that she wishes “Bren [Withers] and I were performing, and then after getting a huge Bartley’s burger and shake. That is the best burger and shake in the world.”

As for how Harvard undergraduates will feel about the play’s approach to a former member of their clan, Kaling says, “Matt is the smart hero in the play bound for greatness. That’s very flattering, isn’t it?”

—Staff writer Ben B. Chung can be reached at bchung@fas.harvard.edu.