SPOTLIGHT: Morgan A. Kruger '07

The Hasty Pudding Theatricals (HPT) aren’t just a transvestite’s game. Morgan A. Kruger ’07, a history and literature concentrator from Leverett House, is the HPT manager of the Woman of the Year/Man of the Year (WOY/MOY) celebrations. The Crimson sat down with Kruger to hear tales about Harvard’s biggest annual brush with Hollywood, and what it’s like being a woman in a primarily male organization partial to cross-dressing.

Every year, we honor one woman and one man, and I manage the events. In the fall, my time is mostly taken up by choosing the talents, contacting their publicists, and securing them for the events. In the winter, my time is consumed by organizing the actual days. That means setting up hotels, getting things fixed with publicists, agents, those who will be coming, and making sure all of it will be comfortable.

Being the chief organizer of the WOY and MOY festivities is a job that has proven to be both glamorous and taxing for Kruger.

For the days themselves, I’m the point person. I have to do everything from getting water to actually walking Ben Stiller into the theatre. It’s not just me, though—a lot of the job is delegating tasks to the many people who help out. It’s also not the kind of job where you can say, “Oh, it took me 10 hours a week.” I’m constantly on call. If I had to highlight one activity that represented the job, it’d be responding to e-mails. I’d wake up in the morning to 30 e-mails from the Pudding travel agent, publicists, and venues. I had to make sure the after-party went smoothly, the lunch, the dinner, and making sure we had venues for those. In that sense, it was an odd job because it encompasses so many things.

Perhaps that is what attracted her to the challenge of being manager, described in her own words as “not straight business.”

I didn’t want to join “Young Business Leaders of America” and wear a suit and tie to the first meeting. I wanted something to put on my résumé, but with people I could call up on a Friday night. I was attracted to the whimsy of the Pudding. It seemed like fun. They enjoy themselves, but put out a good product.

In the same vein, Kruger says that the manager gig proved to be less of a business experience, and more of a “real-world” experience.

When I’m the point person to Ben Stiller’s publicist, I realize they’re a professional who gets paid thousands of dollars to do what they do. I have to be as professional as them. I can’t say, “This isn’t my real job, my real job is writing papers.” Running these two major events, I couldn’t make excuses.

These real-world experiences required Kruger to execute interesting tasks, adapt to odd situations, all while dealing with the stress of being the one to blame if everything were to go wrong.

I had to walk Ben [Stiller] back from his tour of the Pudding. He didn’t have enough money on him, so I chipped down for some Peet’s [Coffee]. I also had to make sure that Scarlett [Johansson] could bring her dog on the plane. She ended up leaving it in L.A.

While the theatrical side of the HPT is exclusively male, there is a significant female presence in the organization. Kruger views the restrictions on females in the cast not as a matter of exclusion, but rather of practicality. The HPT’s annual show, to her, is a unique product—one that she is proud to have helped promote for the past four years.

The men are the cast and the face of the HPT. Including the cast, I’d say one-third of the company is women. It’s really not as skewed as you’d think. That being said, the majority is still men. There is a Women of the Pudding organization, though. We meet every week or so, and we do so to remind ourselves that we are women in a male organization—we realized that there should be more of a forum for the issue. Women are not a silent minority.

Kruger makes it a point to note an oft-forgotten purpose of the festivities she has now successfully coordinated.

A lot of the reason we do [the two very public days] is to advertise the fantastic show that gets put on. Ben Stiller and his wife Christine [Taylor] were blown away after the show. Christine said that the songs were so catchy she couldn’t get them out of her head. Ben said how professional he thought the actors were. It takes more than a year to make sure it comes to fruition, but a main point is to get the idea out there that, “Hey, Ben Stiller himself loved it—you, too, should come see the play.”

—Ruben L. Davis