College Musical: 'The Quad'

“Sixteen Candles.” “Pretty in Pink.” “Mean Girls.” There are many interpretations of high school life. For whatever reason, though, most stories about college tend to be full of one-sided, hard-partying characters.

Zoe R.N. Sarnak ’09, writer and composer of new musical “The Quad”—which opened in the Loeb Ex last night and will run until this Saturday—has taken it upon herself to rectify this one-sidedness. “We still have three dimensions. We aren’t all in Animal House,” Sarnak says. “The Quad” looks to prove this by taking a deeper look at both the seriousness and the silliness that is college.

Sarnak has always been interested in stories that juxtapose extreme positive and negative emotions. With “The Quad,” she hopes to present all of the highs and lows of college, not just the stereotypes of frat life. At the same time, the show acknowledges that beer pong and drunken hook ups are a part of college life, and includes them, often to humorous effect. “It would be silly not to pick up on the light aspects,” Sarnak says.

The Quad that the musical’s title refers to is not the Radcliffe Quadrangle. Rather, it is the four main female leads that the musical tracks from their freshman (Act I) to senior (Act II) years. Along the way, they discover sketchy parties, the “Walk of

Shame”, and, eventually, themselves. Although the musical is not set specifically at Harvard, it bears such hallmark phrases of the alma mater as “TF” and “Freshman Week.”

But “The Quad” also tackles serious issues like anorexia and the death of a loved one, something that Sarkin says keeps the musical from “becoming ‘High School Musical Goes to College.’” Director Jordan A. Reddout ’10 says that when given the choice between realistic and campy, she tried to stick to a realistic portrayal of college life. At the same time, scenes like a freshman girl trying to strike a pose leaning on a beer pong table while an experienced (and sleazy) sophomore woos her with his guitar are downright silly and provide comic relief.

Sarnak has been writing songs since middle school and loves musical theater. However, being a Molecular and Cellular Biology concentrator and a member of the soccer team for her first two years at Harvard, she hadn’t been able to make much time to get involved in theater. A self-proclaimed “theater outsider,” Sarnak had never even seen a theater production at Harvard before she starting writing this musical in the summer before her senior year.

Working in a lab her sophomore year, Sarnak would set up experiments and then run next store to play the piano.

The musical started with a song, which Sarnak then built a character around. Then came more songs, and more characters, and a storyline started to develop. But Sarnak was only beginning to see that she could do something more with her passion for writing songs. In her junior year she finally enrolled in music classes, which made her feel capable of starting a larger project.

Being such a newcomer to Harvard theater, Sarnak wasn’t sure how she would stage what she had or even if she wanted to stage it at Harvard. Molly D. Swenson ’10, who plays Kelsey, convinced her to contact Reddout and try to stage the musical.

The resulting production calls for college students to play college students, which allows for a greater overlap of fiction and reality than most plays.

“We cast people who were already sort of their characters,” Reddout says. Because the script was a work in progress, the actors had the chance to make the parts their own.

“Everyone has had a lot of agency in creating who they are,” Swenson says. “The actors made the show a lot funnier than it was intended to be.”

With funding from the Office for the Arts, the show was able to bring in people such as producer, director, and screenwriter Larry Cohen to help develop the show. Casting was done in February, and the show held a workshop in March, to provide audience insight into the show, a rare step for Harvard shows to take.

All of the actors except for two are involved in a cappella, giving the show a very strong vocal background. But such a heavy focus on music and singing abilities is little surprise given that Sarkin is primarily a songwriter, and that the musical evolved from one of her songs.

While only a year ago Sarnak wouldn’t even play a song for someone, next week she’ll be playing the piano as a full cast performs a musical she wrote and composed. As the characters in “The Quad” find their place, Sarnak says she’s finally found hers as well. After all the things she’s tried at Harvard, Sarnak says, “I’ve found what I want to do.”