Freshman Takes Risk of 'Fall'-ing

J. Jack Cutmore-Scott ’10 walks in with a bit of a swagger. Wearing a long tweed jacket, faded fringe jeans, a silver ring on his hand, he’s the very image of a London hipster, yet Cutmore-Scott is also unassuming and unpretentious, qualities that become all the more suprising given that he’s ambitiously written and directed this year’s first original play, “Fall,” in which he will also play its leading role.

Conceived in the early months of last semester, “Fall” takes its name from Cutmore-Scott’s first term at Harvard. In particular, the comedic play centers on his experience as a displaced Londoner in an American university, and emphasizes the unique aspects of Harvard life that students often think of as normal, such as the frenzied pace of life or the compulsion for underage binge drinking.

“It would be inaccurate to say that all the scenes are directly from real life. But it would be true to say that the vast majority of them are inspired from events that occurred,” he says. “As a foreigner essentially, there’s an element of being an outsider to the culture here.”

Early on, Cutmore-Scott began to think that some of his college experiences would make for some funny scenes in a play. In October, he teamed up with friend Robert E.T. Tainsh III ’10 to begin creating a framework for the script of “Fall.”

Cutmore-Scott says that “Fall” was greatly influenced by a play that he saw last summer which lacked typical structure and formality.

“Up at Edinburgh [Festival Fringe], I saw this play, an original piece, and the actors in it did not take themselves seriously at all. They were just having so much fun,” he says.

“And as a piece of literature or theatrical art, the play was dreadful; it had no substance or plot. But it was hilarious all the way through because they were loving every single second of it. You could tell that they were enjoying it so much. That’s what I kind of wanted to get, but with a little a little more structure. I wanted to get that freshness.”

To that end, Cutmore-Scott provides only a loose framework of a script for his actors. Though sections of the play are entirely scripted, many parts are left open to theatrical improvisation.

He says he believes that through improvisation, actors can bring more life and energy to the performance.

“My opinion on acting, if I had to sum it up, is that it’s a lot more about an outward focus, about responding to someone,” he says.

“No one wants to see someone up there just expostulating and internalizing. It’s only interesting to watch when you’re communicating with someone, when the audience is engaged and you’re responding to them in the process.”

Cutmore-Scott wanted to experiment in “Fall” by combining two forms of theater. Throughout the play, each of the four cast members (Cutmore-Scott, Sophie C. Kargman ’08, Zachary B.S. Sniderman ’09, and Simon J. Williams ’09) portrays different characters, transitioning from soliloquies addressed directly to the audience to more traditional cinematic scenes, all the while using unconventional improvisational techniques.

“There are two sorts of extremes to theater which I have experienced,” Cutmore-Scott says. “One is total audience interaction, communication with the audience, kind of soliloquizing, taking Shakespearian asides, the characters talking to the audience. And I also like the typical cinematic way of doing things, which is when they’re just not looking at the audience, and there’s a fourth wall there.”

Cutmore-Scott says he wanted to create something unique by bringing the two forms together in a surprising way.

“What I wanted to do was to combine the two in the most extreme forms,” he says. “The structure of the play is not normal.”