The art of belonging

Why do we put ARTS FIRST at Harvard? Students share their insights and experiences. 

By Alicia Anstead, NF '08

For those of us who work in the arts at Harvard, this week is one of the most exciting of the entire year. The kickoff to ARTS FIRST, the college’s annual festival of the arts that we produce at the Office for the Arts, reminds us all why we do this work. The creativity, imagination, physical labor, tireless discipline and generosity of spirit that goes into ARTS FIRST – from students to  custodial services to festival founder John Lithgow '67, ArD '05 to festival producer and OFA director Jack Megan, who dreams up much of the activity – propels us all to be our best selves through the expression of and support for the arts at Harvard. Ask a student what his or her most glorious arts moment has been, and you might be surprised to find that they range: private exchanges with other artists, communities that arise from collaboration, creativity that propels self-awareness, the warmth of belonging. These experiences have come up time and time again on our student-driven Harvard Arts Blog. This week, we asked our bloggers: What arts moment gave you a sense of belonging at Harvard? Their answers are below. Similar answers are writ large this week during ARTS FIRST, which runs April 28-May 1. Our mission is to create compelling arts experiences for Harvard students during their undergraduate and graduate years in the Yard. We hope you enjoy their responses to that as you travel through the ARTS FIRST world of performance in Harvard’s iconic and historic venues. And we hope the festival compels you to consider how you can live a more performative life and make art.

Anita Lo ‘16
Every year, the Harvard Pops Orchestra gives a holiday concert – Jollypops – in which we inevitably play Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bells and Sleigh Ride. For the violas, the latter piece consists mostly straightforward double stops on beats two and four and sometimes on one and three. Not unexpected for a popular song arrangement, but still mildly boring. I honestly don't remember if my stand partner started it or if I did, but during one rehearsal, after pages of two and four and one and three and the occasional two and three, we began a synchronized swaying on a third run-through.

I've never been a particularly talkative person, and in rehearsals I feel even more timid. What can I say to my stand-partner that isn't an apology for not practicing? But this seemed particularly natural: viola scrolls drawing short parabolas back and forth, both of us bouncing slightly in our seats – and together, too, as if it were choreographed. A sudden synchronous sleigh ride, precipitated by major thirds. If I had to point to a moment that convinced me to stay in this orchestra for all four years, it would be this. 

Ian Askew ‘19
The director’s notes for Black Magic began with “We wrote this play for ourselves.”

When I say Black Magic, I don’t think of a production or a script. I think of people. Like many productions, it started as a small team of scriptwriters, producers and designers. Then we added a cast of 11, nearly doubling the team. Soon we had more and more people helping out. The team, now a community, kept growing.

This is how many productions work, especially on the scale of the Loeb Center mainstage. You simply need all the hands you can get. But there was a growing sense that what we were doing was important and that the black community at Harvard was paying attention. People were checking in. There was buzz. There were expectations. We ended up creating more than we had expected.

Rooms are spaces. Theaters are spaces. But a strong community is a space in itself. I realized this when I saw how many people, especially how many queer black students, came to see Black Magic two or three times. We had created a space that was not just a performance space. It was a space in which people felt a release, an affirmation, a beauty. You didn’t need to have seen the script or touched a drill to be part of the community that was created around Black Magic. If you felt it, you were in it.

Olivia Munk ‘16
The Harvard theater community has been an important aspect of my undergraduate career. Each show has provided me with a chance to work and grow alongside incredible student artists who have taught me so much over the last four years. Each production brings a new sense of community, belonging and further understanding of the medium. My first foray into Harvard theater was my freshman fall, when I was in HRG&SP's The Mikado. This semester, I returned to G&S to direct the 60th anniversary production of H.M.S. Pinafore. 

I made many of my closest friends in the show my freshman fall, and many of them returned to work on the production this spring. Alums who worked on The Mikado came to our Alumni Night show. It was a wonderful feeling to see how much we've all grown together over the past few years. It felt as if my Harvard theater career had come full circle, and I will graduate knowing that I've been supported by a fantastic community that not only encourages personal development while at college, but returns to support undergraduates long past commencement.