'Quad' Complicates Stereotypes

With an added risqué make-out session here and a beer pong tournament there, “The Quad” may, at first, seem like a Harvard version of “High School Musical.” But “The Quad” is a much more substantive production than a bunch of young adults breaking out in song in the middle of their day; it is a rock musical that realistically and thoroughly portrays the current of emotions from those college years and beyond.

An original rock musical written and composed by Zoe S. N. Sarnak ’09 and directed by Jordan A. Reddout ’10, “The Quad” explores the tumults of the college experience against a background of upbeat rock music and piano music. Although it is made by college students, performed by college students, and presented to a college audience, the play explores a series of universal themes: conformity, infidelity, loss and renewal of respect, inability to express emotions, loneliness, death, and love.

The two-act play opens with the entire company singing “Starting Today”; it is in this atmosphere of new beginnings that the audience is initially introduced to the characters. The music is cheerful and catchy throughout the play, but the lightheartedness is much more prevalent in the first act, capturing the novelty and the delirium of new experiences that dominate that first year of college.

The actors, as college students themselves, possess a natural ease with which they play their, at first, stereotypical roles. There is the timid Tenley, her outspoken and party-hopping roommate Parker, the prideful Claire, her clingy sidekick Reese, nerdy and lanky Paul, self-absorbed Liam, preppy Charles, and perky Maitre d’. But these labels do not predict or dictate the plot of the story.

With the start of the second act, the complexity of the characters becomes much more apparent, as the characters’ stories unravel and their initially typified personalities acquire layers. Complicated relationships are formed, both romantic and platonic, emotions and personal problems go unsaid, and tensions arise.

Certain songs repeat, in order to illustrate the cyclical nature of various situations and the parallels that are made between the characters, adding further depth to “The Quad.” Though the melody and lyrics are the same, songs like “Exactly What I Wasn’t Looking For” develop the plot of the play by placing these pieces in different contexts. The juxtaposition of such different characters and the parallels made between their situations is effective in creating a microcosm of the college experience.

The set is comprised of three partitions; stage right contains a marble stone bench and a streetlight, the center is strung up with holiday lights framing a long table strewn with red Solo cups and near-empty rum bottles, and stage left depicts a dorm room with a bunk bed and a cluttered wooden desk.

While condensing the college scene into these basic settings, the partitioning also represents the integration of the characters’ very different lives into one continuous narrative.

In front of these raised, partitioned sets, the stage is used as a unifying setting in which all the characters come together. The front stage serves as both an extension of the characters’ individual stories and a forum in which to integrate them all.

This musical, however, is less of a chronicling of college students’ escapades and drama than it is an exploration of human emotions and the raw struggle that all individuals face. Though it contains scenes bordering on the cliché, the acting, humor, and storyline are not contrived, but they are both entertaining and provocative.

“The Quad” neatly packages a four-year experience into a 2-hour performance. Just as the play began with the fresh optimism of that first year of college, it ends with the relief of a happy, hopeful ending after the continuum of conflicts in the second act.

“The Quad” faithfully traces the lives of college students in these formative years, avoiding brash exaggeration that would make the characters merely unrealistic caricatures. The production is easy to view, easy to follow, and easy to digest, but is simultaneously deep enough for the audience to reflect, not only on their own college years, but present lives as well.