What's For Lunch? Theater.

Times are changing at Harvard University. Last Thursday, the once pristine Harvard Yard, that manicured display of Ivy League tidiness and efficiency, transformed into a bona fide outdoor disco, fit for half-naked men in sheaths of glitter and metallic booty shorts. No, this wasn’t the unveiling of a new Harvard clothing line; it was the inaugural presentation of the Common Spaces initiative, featuring the American Repertory Theater’s (A.R.T.) latest theatrical extravaganza, “The Donkey Show,” a spin-off of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“The Donkey Show” marks the first of many lunch-hour performances that will take place over the next two months as part of the initiative, which has been designed to provide more opportunities on campus for members of the Harvard community to connect; all members of the Harvard community are invited to sign up for a performance.

Leading the effort is University President Drew Faust, who began working with the director of the University’s Planning Office, Tanya Latridis, soon after she became president; another project of Faust’s, the Arts Task Force, is working to integrate the arts more fully into the Harvard community.

“The arts are a kind of common space, so I see those two different task forces as having a lot in common,” Faust said at the event.

Both Common Spaces and its arts component are meant to foster communal interaction. “How do we share this community with one another in ways that bring us out of ourselves to connect? Physically, we haven’t done enough, but when you see those chairs and the way that people have started using them that says a lot, but we just have to provide the opportunity.”

To work on this issue, Faust—the “coolest, baddest, hippest president in town,” according to the performers in “The Donkey Show”—created the Common Spaces Steering Committee, co-chaired by History Professor Lizabeth Cohen and Graduate School of Design Dean Mohsen Mostafavi. The committee then delved into research and focus groups, polling students on the need for more spaces to facilitate social interaction.

“In the focus groups, over and over again, people would say that the message they get when they walk through campus is ‘Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t talk to anybody,’” Cohen says. “I remember in one of the focus groups that a graduate student said something really poignant and sad. He said he knew Lamont is supposed to be for undergraduates, but it’s one of the only places he felt he could go and feel part of a university community.”

The co-chairs’ first step toward solving this lack of communal space were the colorful chairs now placed throughout the Yard. According to Latridis, the minute the chairs were installed, people began flocking to them. “This is because there is a thirst for sitting and belonging,” Latridis says. “You don’t have to build a new building. You just put chairs out.”

To celebrate the institution of these chairs, A.R.T. Artistic Director Diane Paulus ’87 suggested that the performers of “The Donkey Show”—the show she is currently co-directing with Randy Weiner—serve as hosts at the kick-off event.

Both Faust and Paulus have been integral in highlighting the arts on the Harvard campus, and the problem of scarce common social spaces may be addressed in a way that could potentially benefit both initiatives.

“You always see people just walking through the Yard. Now it becomes a place where people can stop. It really changes the dynamic, to be able to have the energy of the artists here, and Diane Paulus and the A.R.T. are such a big part of this,” says Lori Gross, Associate Provost for Arts.­

The energetic cast of “The Donkey Show” certainly helped attract attention to the project. As they grooved and sang such classics as “We are Family,” a spontaneous dance party sprung up in the middle of the Yard, with participants ranging from toddlers to senior citizens.

Included in the crowd of wide-eyed spectators was Paul McLaughlin, Assistant Dean at the College.

“Faust is definitely kicking Common Spaces off with a very fun first day. I think it’s a great way to make people come out—look how many chairs are full. I’ve run into 15 colleagues already, and I’ve only been out here for 20 minutes,” he said.

While walking by the dance party, Elizabeth G. Shields ’10 attempted to get the attention of her friend, who was taking part in it. “Let’s discuss our lives,” Shields called out. “I’m going to five hours of class, and you’re doing the funky chicken in the Yard.”

As were many others; looking over at an elderly woman shimmying, wedged between two “Donkey Show” performers wearing black platform boots, red bell-bottomed suits, and giant black afro wigs, President Faust laughed, “Now, there’s a picture for ‘The Crimson.’”

According to Paulus, the Common Spaces initiative reflects what she sees as one of the most important purposes of art.

“The job of the arts is to wake people up and make them present in their lives,” she says. “You’re eating lunch...and all of a sudden, there’s this ‘happening’ and you’re dancing with people you don’t even know, and you feel alive. Maybe you didn’t a half an hour ago. It’s a fleeting, ephemeral moment, which is what theater is... It makes us recognize things in life and gives us an opportunity to have an exorcism—to laugh at it.”

—Staff writer Mia P. Walker can be reached at mpwalker@fas.harvard.edu.