Profile: Brophy at the Helm of the HRDC

Aislinn E. Brophy ’17, a theater, dance, and media concentrator, is the president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club, which sponsors and organizes most of the theatrical events on campus. The Harvard Crimson had the chance to sit down with Brophy and discuss her plans as the head of Harvard’s largest student theater group, her experiences in the new TDM concentration, her ongoing theatrical work, and the current HRDC season.

The Harvard Crimson: How is your HRDC presidency going?

Aislinn E. Brophy: I think it’s a really exciting time for us, especially because our new board is very young as opposed to the old board.… Two of us are juniors and the rest are sophomores. So it is six people who are all very excited and very new and really raring to go and get things done.… Our major platform is diversity and inclusion and trying to make sure that people feel comfortable in our community, which goes into creating a stronger social scene for HRDC as well.

THC: Could you tell me about HRDC’s upcoming season?

AEB: We have our two main-stage shows, which are the “The Wonderful World of Dissocia,” which is directed by Garrett [C.] Allen [’16], and “Black Magic,” which is directed by Kimiko [M.] Matsuda-Lawrence ['16]. "Black Magic" is a partnership with BlackCAST [The Harvard Black Community and Student Theater Group].… It’s really exciting for us to expand our partnership with them for this semester, because the [Loeb] Mainstage is a huge undertaking. We were so excited when they decided to apply and we are really excited to see these kinds of things on stage.… It’s really exciting to see a Mainstage season that is that strong. I think the Ex [Loeb Experimental Theater] season is also super interesting—at the end of the semester we have “In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play” being directed by Caro [P.] Ribeiro [’18], which is super interesting and about women.… We have “SHE” at Oberon, which is a musical being written by two students who are incredibly talented. It’s about the experience of being a woman in 2016…. I’m in “SHE,” which is also really exciting because I really enjoy personally female narratives and seeing that on stage.

THC: What do you think HRDC’s role on campus is or should be?

AEB: I think that it’s important as a student theater organization to provide a safe space for people to experiment in.… I think that’s what the role of student theater should be: people trying new things, pushing the envelope, and trying their hand at things they’ve never done before—and trying to get their friends to come and see theater in a way that they might not be able to in the future. Because theater can be expensive, but here it’s almost always free.

THC: Are you currently writing anything?

AEB: I’ve started writing two pieces. One is a longer work, which may be my thesis. The other is shorter, probably only going to be 20-25 pages, one act.… [The shorter play is] a little bit inspired by “No Exit”—it’s about these two characters and one of them is dead. It’s unclear what the situation is for a good amount of time into the play, and it becomes clearer that this is sort of this man’s version of hell, and he’s being punished by being forced to confront people in his past in his life that he had mistreated in some egregious way.

THC: What has your experience been like with the TDM concentration?

AEB: It’s a really exciting time for them and for us, because everything is new and everything is happening.… I think one of the things that’s really marking the department right now is that it is a lot of people who have been really wanting this forever and just wanting to make something that students are happy about and excited about. They are always asking for our input and asking how things are going and they want to be super open to suggestions.… It’s a great thing to be able to finally properly fold into my extracurricular experience, which in some ways for me was my academic experience, before this. Because I want to go into theater after I graduate, me doing theater extracurricularly is not really an extracurricular at all because it’s putting me on track for my future career and giving me super valuable life experience. It’s nice to be able to actually say that I’m getting academic credit for the thing that I want to be doing anyway.

—Staff writer Amy J. Cohn can be reached at amy.cohn@thecrimson.com.