When Jonathan Tolins ’88 was an undergraduate at Harvard, he enrolled in a playwriting seminar taught by the late William Alfred, a beloved professor of dramatic literature and poetry. “One week he told us to bring in a story from the newspaper and tell the class why we picked it and how it made us feel,” he recalls. “He then said, ‘These are the things you have to write about.’ It was a great lesson because it helped sharpen my sense of what elicits an emotional and intellectual response in me, which I think is a good barometer for whether or not a subject is worth exploring.”

Playwright Jonathan Tolins.

That barometer has served Tolins well: His play The Twilight of the Golds opened on Broadway five years after his graduation and was adapted for the screen starring Faye Dunaway; off-Broadway and regionally he has earned acclaim for his plays If Memory Serves, The Last Sunday in June and Secrets of the Trade. He has written for film and TV, as well as special material for the 2000 and 2002 Academy Awards, the 2003 Tony Awards starring Hugh Jackman and concerts featuring Bette Midler.

Tolins’s latest play, Buyer & Cellar, has become this season’s sleeper hit off-Broadway, opening at the Rattlestick Theater to rave reviews and soon to transfer to the larger Barrow Street Theater. It’s a solo piece starring Michael Urie (late of ABC’s Ugly Betty) as a struggling gay actor hired to be a caretaker for the memorabilia, costumes and tchotchkes of superstar Barbra Streisand, who has housed this treasure trove in a faux arcade of shops in a basement on her Malibu estate. Inspired by Streisand’s coffee table book My Passion for Design, which recounts the architecture, construction and outfitting of the estate in endless detail, Tolins’s satirical yet affectionate script has one hilarious line after another, energetically delivered by the very winning Urie.

The Harvard Arts Blog caught up with Tolins recently to ask about Buyer & Cellar‘s unusual premise; what Streisand fans think of the play; how he incorporates humor into his work; his time at Harvard; and the best advice for aspiring writers.

During a brief prelude to the main story of Buyer & Cellar, the actor Michael Urie tells the audience that the play is a work of fiction, though the playwright did meet Barbra Streisand. Did you indeed meet her, and what was the encounter like?

The one time I met her was at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1993. She came to see a performance of The Twilight of the Golds because she was considering buying the film rights. It was a brief conversation. She complimented the play, which she had already read, and offered me a piece of her candy bar. Of course, the theater was electric that night, with everyone wondering what she thought. I didn’t see her after the show. In the end, the film rights were bought by others and I never met her again, although her son Jason Gould starred in a production of Twilight in London a few years later. I liked him very much.

As you started writing the play, were you concerned about how Streisand might react to your depiction of her? What has been the feedback from her fans? Any feedback from the icon herself?

I felt very free while writing the script because part of me doubted any producer would have the guts to put the play on and face the wrath of a litigious star. So I just wrote it for me. I didn’t worry too much about “pulling punches,” but my intention was never to mock her. I saw the play as a flight of imagination based on some of the bizarre details in My Passion for Design. I wasn’t writing about the actual Streisand but the myth of Barbra, the way I imagine her to be.

Her fans seem to love the play. I think they appreciate the research I did and that so many of the details are true and come from her history. We haven’t heard from Barbra directly but we do know that people close to her have talked to her about the play and, fortunately, told her that it is a sympathetic and loving portrait. That said, I don’t know if I could handle her coming to see it. I think I’d be too afraid.

Michael Urie in "Buyer & Cellar" PHOTO: Sandra Coudert

When writing a play, do you feel that you have to rein in the impulse to shower the audience with great one-liners? Are you comfortable letting the humor grow more organically out of the characters and story?

This may be hard to believe, but with rare exceptions, I never think about writing “jokes.” I just try to explore a funny situation as truthfully as possible. I think I have a good ear and sense of humor and know how to get a laugh, which I enjoy doing, but moments have to be grounded in character and the situation to really work.

How did your experience at Harvard prepare you for a writing career? Were there any notable influences or sources for stories, characters, jokes?

Perhaps the most valuable tool I got at Harvard was some healthy arrogance. A little arrogance is necessary if you want to do this. Writing is hard and the writer’s career is filled with rejection and failure. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that your work is worth other people’s time. You need a thick skin and the arrogance to believe that what you have to say is worthy of other people’s attention. The mystique of Harvard helps you build that necessary sense of entitlement. I also feel like I honed my verbal, debate, and communication skills at every dining hall meal, facing off with incredibly bright, impatient, and opinionated classmates with different backgrounds than mine. I’m very grateful for that.

What advice would you give to aspiring playwrights and screenwriters?

The success of Buyer & Cellar has been a lovely surprise, especially because I wrote it to please myself, without concern for “the marketplace.” As I said, I really didn’t expect to ever see it onstage. And now it is the most widely appreciated and applauded work of my career. There’s a clear lesson there for younger writers. Write for yourself. Burrow in and write in your purest voice, the one that most fully expresses who you are and what you think. Delight yourself. That is the voice people are waiting for. And that freshness and singularity of your talent will open doors.

Buyer & Cellar reopens at the Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow St. in New York’s West Village, on June 18. Visit the website or call 212.868.4444 for more information and tickets.

Last summer, there was one song, one YouTube video and one dance routine everyone knew, from your baby brother to your aging grandmother. K-Pop sensation PSY’s dance tune Gangnam Style could be heard from speakers world-wide while partygoers learned to trot like a horse across the dance floor. A smash hit, the song garnered one billion views on YouTube, making it the first video on the Internet to reach that milestone. (It currently has 1.6 billion views.) On May 9 at Harvard’s Memorial Church, in an event co-sponsored by Harvard University’s Korea Institute, the Office for the Arts Learning from Performers Program and the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, the YouTube sensation addressed a crowd of about 800 Harvard students, faculty and community members. After introductions by professors Carter J. Eckert and Alexander Zahlten, PSY cracked jokes about his English language skills, reminisced about his failings as an undergraduate at Boston University and recalled how Madonna permitted him to “touch her anywhere” during their performance together at Madison Square Gardens last year. After the talk, while students enjoyed free Korean food (compliments of PSY) outside Mem Church, the Harvard Arts Blog had an exclusive backstage interview with the entertainment star about his career, his future plans and his advice for aspiring artists.

You were making music a decade before Gangnam Style became a YouTube sensation in America. How has the music you produce changed over your career?

YouTube sensation PSY with OFA blogger Josh McTaggart '13

Because of the Internet and because of YouTube we can share things with each other very easily at the same time. A lot of people compare [Gangnam Style] with the Macarena, but honestly I think the Macarena is a lot stronger than my song because they didn’t have any kind of sharing tools or platforms. That song was just famous, but [Gangnam Style] got a lot of help from these platforms.

Can you talk about your relationship with the Gangnam District, and how it came to inspire your song?

Honestly, we are making a joke about someone who says “I’m Gangnam style,” which is basically a fancy sense of fashion. It’s a joke when someone who doesn’t look like Gangnam style keeps saying “Gangnam style.” It’s very funny in my country. I lived in Gangnam, but I know I don’t look like Gangnam style. I wrote that song with this kind of twist, but I didn’t expect that twist to work in other countries.

Do you have a name for your style?

A name for my style? I guess: approaching my body shape.

Do you watch any of the Gangnam Style parodies on YouTube?

I saw the parody that MIT did. It was great. They were at their campus by the Charles River, which was so exciting because I am so familiar with all the scenery. I was also really excited that last Halloween in the United States there were all these tubby guys wearing a tux and sunglasses.

You talked about Madonna earlier. What other American artists would you like to collaborate with?

Of course there are a lot, but as a composer and a producer I don’t think about collaborating artists, first I think about making the track, and after that is done, if I can think of someone then I should ask him or her. I don’t do that before making music.

So there is no one dream artist you want to work with?

Earlier in the day, PSY met with Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust - and then posted this image on his Twitter account.

Everyone is a dream artist.

Tell us a bit about your newest song, Gentleman.

In Gentleman, he keeps saying he is a gentleman, but he doesn’t act like a gentleman. There’s a similar twist to Gangnam Style. If I had made a video with a real gentleman, it would have been really boring. In the video, he’s a real jerk. A lot of people in the YouTube comments are saying, “Hey, be respectful to ladies!”

What’s next for PSY?

I’ll be in America until the end of May promoting Gentleman. I have an offer from the U.K. to play at Capital FM Summer Ball in Wembley Stadium. The reason why that occasion is so special to me is that my first and last role model was Freddie Mercury from Queen. Their last concert footage is from Wembley Stadium, and I grew up with that specific scene at Wembley. Now I have a chance to be there as a singer. Wow! In the mean time, I’m making an album that will be my 7th in Korea, but my debut album in the rest of the world.

Finally, what advice do you have for Harvard students hoping to make music their life?

I really hate to regret, but honestly the only thing that I regret these days is that I tried too hard with Gentleman. There was a lot pressure after Gangnam Style. So what I can say to those who are making art, please do not try too hard. It’s got to be natural and it’s got to be casual.

Jennifer B. McDonald PHOTO: Brent McDonald

Guest blogger Jennifer B. McDonald is a 2013 Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and an editor at The New York Times Book Review. She joined The Times as an editor on the national desk in 2005 and was previously an editor at The Washington Post and at CNET News.com in San Francisco. Before becoming a journalist, she danced ballet for 13 years.

I’d like to begin this item with a list, followed by a confession.

The list: Addison, Adorno, Barthes, Bell, Benjamin, Brooks, Burke, Cixous, Coleridge, Derrida, Emerson, Foucault, Freud, Frye, Gilbert & Gubar, Goethe, Greenberg, Hazlitt, Hegel, Horace, Howe, Hume, James, Kant, Keats, Lacan, Lessing, Longinus, Macdonald, Nietzsche, Pater, Plato, Ransom, Richards, Rosenberg, Sartre, Saussure, Shklovsky, Sidney, Shelley, Staël, Trilling (Diana), Trilling (Lionel), Wellek & Warren, Wimsatt & Beardsley, Wordsworth.

The confession: Before my year as a Nieman fellow at Harvard, I’d had little to no exposure to the critical work of these authors. Yet when I arrived here, people insisted on calling me a “critic.” Ann Marie Lipinski, the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, called me a critic. My fellow fellows, journalists from all over the world, called me a critic. It was odd, because throughout my career, including my five years at The New York Times Book Review, I’d thought of myself as an editor and a journalist — and, yes, an avid reader of literature — but almost never as a critic. Did these people, relative strangers, know something about me that I didn’t?

When I applied for the fellowship, I proposed a course of study — literature, philosophy, psychology, poetry, history and rhetoric — that I now recognize as an attempt to assuage the anxiety provoked by the “critic” label. In a year at Harvard, I dreamed, I would do some serious educational gap-filling and emerge a bright, shiny new ball of knowledge, a highly calibrated critical machine. Voilà!

During the final round of interviews, one of my interrogators told me my plan was ridiculously ambitious. You’d need at least six years to get through this, he said. He was right, of course.

In 10 months, I ended up accomplishing something much more modest: I spent a lot of time thinking about the way I think.

Worried over labels, I kept coming back to questions: How does a person become a critic? What does a critic need to know? What should a critic read? How should a critic read? What and how should I read if I’m ever going to live up to the word that keeps getting assigned, inexplicably, to me?

So it was that I landed in Literary Criticism: Major Approaches, a course taught last fall by James Engell. I knew I’d be reading major critical essays by many of the writers listed above. What I didn’t anticipate was that Engell would utter two sentences with the power to resonate far beyond this year: “Criticism is not, ultimately, something one does. It gestures toward who one is.”

Suddenly, the mode of inquiry shifted. It was not only about what and how, but also who and why: Who am I? Why do I think the way I do? How do I come across, in life and on the page? What do people read in my gestures, why do they read them this way, and is this the person I want them to see?

It strikes me that “criticism,” in Engell’s statement, can be replaced by any other form of art and still make sense: Writing … gestures toward who one is. Dancing … gestures toward who one is. Painting … gestures toward who one is. The playing of music … gestures toward who one is. The “who” behind the “something one does” is what makes the “something” original. To me (and here I cop to my own biases, formed through my experience as a dancer), the “who” is what turns the “something” — the dance, the music, the writing — into “something interesting.”

In the past few months I’ve read critics who regard their work as science, not art. I’ve encountered artists who believe in depersonalizing art, in erasing from the picture the subjective “who,” the mysterious “why.” The opportunity to argue with these people, across the seminar table or across page and time, has been one of the great gifts of this year. I leave with a reading list significantly longer than the one I brought in (demonstrating the wonderful paradox of education: the more you learn, the more you know you don’t know). By continuing to grapple with these writers’ methods, I hope to inch closer to a critical approach that makes sense to me.

For now, the approach I admire embraces the idea that the critic, like everyone else — student, teacher, reporter, editor, dancer, musician, author — is forever a work in progress. If that’s what my Nieman colleagues meant when they started calling me a critic? I’ll take it.

The "Pippin" Company of Players. PHOTO: Michael J. Lutch

Earlier this week, the American Theatre Wing announced the 2013 Tony Award nominations. American Repertory Theater artistic director Diane Paulus ’88 was among the nominees — as Best Director of a Musical. But that wasn’t her only accolade. Her production of Pippin, which originated at Harvard’s A.R.T. and is now on Broadway,  received 10 Tony Award Nominations, 6 Drama Desk Awards nominations, 11 Outer Critics Circle Award nominations, 3 Drama League Award nominations and 2 Elliot Norton Award nominations. In an interview on May 1, I asked Paulus to talk about her years at Harvard, the new production of Pippin and her life as a trail-blazing theater artist.

What happened when you were at Harvard to secure  the path to where you are today?

Being a student and going to see professional shows at the A.R.T. – Robert Wilson’s Civil Wars, Julie Taymor’s work in King Stag directed by Andrei Serban, Philip Glass and The Juniper Tree. To see those extraordinary productions as an undergraduate – that marked me. I really feel it put a wedge in my brain about the possibility of theater, and I credit seeing those mind-expanding productions as a catalyst for me and my imagination in the theater today.

What did you see in Pippin that made you want to turn your eye to it?

I have loved this musical score my whole life. I’ve grown up with it. It’s the soundtrack to my life. I played Corner of the Sky on the piano. I danced to Manson Trio with my 7th grade ballet show. I sang With You at my brother’s wedding. The score has been woven into my life journey without having anything to do with the theater. I remember seeing the show as a kid growing up in New York in the ‘70s and seeing Ben Vereen and the Bob Fosse choreography and being touched by this theatrical, dangerous, seductive world onstage. It also marked me. I remember thinking: That’s the world I want to be part of. The revival took me to the book and to the script and to knowing the show on a whole other level. I understood in a much clearer way how far you push yourself to the extraordinary, how we make choices, what our trials by fire are – literally – what we have to go through to have a sense of meaning and purpose. That really resonated for me. I really wanted audiences to feel it

Diane Paulus '88

in all its depth.

I saw the same show in the ‘70s, and I remember it as a man’s journey with a male narrator. You’ve turned this show over to women. And not just any women – but women who are not young ingenues.

There’s nothing in the script that tells you who or what the Leading Player should be. I went to [composer and lyricist] Stephen Schwartz and asked: Do these two words come with anything attached to them? He said: No, the Leading Player can be anybody, any shape, size, color, ethnicity, sex. The only thing, he said, is the Leading Player needs to be utterly different from who your Pippin is because the Leading Player represents the world that Pippin has not experienced yet in life. I gravitated to Patina Miller because of her power, her force, her unbelievable skill as a singer and actor, and her mastery of her body. It was not an agenda to cast a woman in that role, but it liberated the role and gave options with Patina that do take us into the 21st century. And then there are the women who round out our cast: Andrea Martin, Charlotte D’Amboise and Rachel Bay Jones. All these ladies come with history, with intelligence, with real humor – and I think collectively they make an impression. Many people have asked me about the “women in Pippin” – which I love. Again, it’s not born of an agenda, but these female performers had so much to bring to the table, how could you not cast them?

What do you do to step away from this work? Where do you go to refresh?

This is going to sound so corny – but when I cuddle with my two girls. They’re 6 and 8. They’re a battery recharger – so full of energy and life. They’re so invested in the theater and the actors and Pippin. They know the whole show by heart. I also have been running and swimming. It’s a cliché but whenever you start moving, the ideas unlock. Whenever I get stuck creatively, I go outside and run maybe two miles and get the blood flowing and that helps.

This is not your first or second trip to an awards party. What do the nominations represent for you beyond encouraging your career and ticket sales?

When you’re making your work, it can never be about that kind of result. It’s so much about putting your head down and staying on track and keeping your eye on the ball and doing your work and doing it from a place of purity and integrity and work ethic. When you get a chance to come up for air and you receive this kind of recognition, it’s just a great moment to enjoy the work. I work pretty tirelessly because I’m so passionate, and this kind of recognition gives you the chance to stop and say: Maybe we did OK.

The Harvard University Choir and the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra will be gracing ARTS FIRST weekend with a performance of Bach’s monumental Mass in B-Minor at 4 p.m. Sunday April 28, at Memorial Church. Admission is free!

The B-Minor Mass is a masterpiece of the form, and I spoke with Junior Choir Secretary for UChoir Adriana Pohl ’14, who will also perform in the piece on Sunday, about Bach’s Mass and the experience of performing something so massive.

Can you talk about the Mass as a genre of music? What makes Masses different stylistically from other formats, and what do you like about them?

The Mass is set to a text, which differentiates it from types of music that typically do not contain text, such as many symphonies, sonatas and concertos. And different from those types of works, the Mass is expressly intended to convey very specific messages. I think Mass settings are fascinating, because there are thousands of them set to an identical text, yet no two are the same. Each one has its back-story: Some are based on of Gregorian chant tunes, some are based off of popular songs of the day, some are quite jubilant, others rather melancholy, and they span all eras and styles of Western music. Each setting expresses the text differently. I think it’s also worth noting that composers of Mass settings had a higher power in mind (whether or not you believe in it). To take an example from architecture, imagine a Gothic cathedral,

Adriana Pohl '14

with intricate designs, a light-filled interior, and those famous soaring ceilings. Gothic cathedrals represent the pinnacle of a striving for heaven, and were built to try to bring the worshippers closer to God. The builders just kept going until they physically couldn’t build any higher, until they couldn’t cram in any more stained glass windows, and in this way the Gothic cathedral represents a peak in architectural design. I think the Mass generally can be thought of this way, but the B-Minor Mass especially, with its intricacies, its luminosity and its sheer complexity represents the pinnacle of an art form, at least with regard to sacred music.

The Mass in B-Minor is often cited as one of the greatest compositions of the Baroque era. Why? What makes this thing so special?

Bach is obviously one of the best known and is regarded by many as one of the best composers of all time. I hope you’ll see the concert, and I’ll let you form your own opinions, but to say he was a great composer would be a vast understatement. So that gives you a baseline: This piece was written by one of the greatest composers of all time. But Bach wrote hundreds of compositions in his lifetime. The B-Minor Mass is very unusual in a number of respects, one being that Bach was associated with the Lutheran liturgy, and generally there would have been no call for a full Mass setting. It’s rather a mish-mash of styles, as well. Bach recycled some old compositions from various points in his career, as well as composing new movements. It’s packed with symbolism and artful word painting as well, and the sheer size and complexity of it are something to behold. I imagine that performing it – and hearing it performed – is a cathartic experience; rehearsing it surely is!  It’s certainly a challenge, both technically and physically. We singers often wonder where we’re supposed to breathe. But somehow the ratio of satisfaction gained to difficulty endured is incredibly high.

Is there a specific moment or section of the Mass that is particularly exciting or challenging (or both!)?

There are many exciting and challenging moments! One of the most obvious is the transition from “Crucifixus” to “Et Resurrexit.” The former is a very harrowing and emotional and setting of the text: “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.” It ends on a low, quiet chord, then there is dead silence while the listeners contemplate this death and burial. Out of this silence, we come in with full orchestra, brass and timpani, practically screaming, “He is risen!”  (“Et resurrexit!”) It is challenging to make such a dramatic entrance without giving it away beforehand, but the effect is sublime. The culmination of the Mass, too, is a favorite section of mine. The last text we sing is “Dona nobis pacem” – “Grant us your peace.” It begins quietly with a sort of slow fugue, but by the end the trumpet and timpani have joined us to make a poignant plea for peace on earth. There are many interesting and challenging moments in this piece, and I wish I could list them all. But I guess you’ll just have to show up to hear them.

Can you talk about the experience of performing some of these pieces that are considered among the greatest ever? As a musician and an art-maker, how do you relate to and work with a piece so formidable and make it your own?

UChoir performs both small- and large-scale choral works on a fairly frequent basis, but it’s been two years since we’ve done a piece that approaches the B-Minor Mass in terms of scale and fame, and that was Handel’s Messiah. With a piece like either of these, it’s undeniably a massive undertaking, especially for choristers who have never performed it before (myself in both cases). A piece of that size is intimidating, but on the other hand, you know that once you’ve performed it you will join the ranks of choristers around the world who have shared the experience. The other night I went to a performance of Messiah, the first time that I’ve seen it in fully performed since UChoir sang it, and I felt an incredible connection with the singers because I knew what it felt like to perform the piece, to sing each movement, and I had the sensation that we the listeners were embarking on a journey with the singers.

The B-Minor Mass was a lot of grunt work for the majority of the year, but within the last month or so it has really come together as a cohesive piece. I mentioned earlier that there is a lot of stylistic variance between movements, but I think Ed [Edward Jones, Choirmaster at Memorial Church and the conductor of this performance] has done a great job of seeing and interpreting the bigger picture, while still paying attention to details. And putting the choir and orchestra together is always a special treat, which comes right near the end of the preparation period. The Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra is a fantastic group of instrumentalists and we are blessed to be able to collaborate with them as often as we do. This long journey is winding down, and we’ve only got the final performance ahead of us now, which we all await with anticipation and excitement. As much work as it is to perform a piece like this one, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my time.

Editor’s note: The Nostalgics will be the featured artists at the ARTS FIRST Party on the Plaza “dine and dance” event, 5-7:30 p.m. Friday, April 26 on the Plaza (near the Science Center). Free admission with HUID and $15/general. ARTS FIRST takes place April 25-28 at Harvard and is (mostly) free and open to the public.

My bandmates and I agree that an unforgettable highlight of our soul/Motown band, The Nostalgics, was, like many great

Patrick Lauppe '13 PHOTO: Jacob Belcher/OFA

things, a mistake. We were playing Earth, Wind, and Fire’s September at the end of a late-late-late show at a hostel in snowy Nowhere, Vermont. The band was deaf and drowsy. A sizable crowd huddled inside from the subarctic winds, dancing to bring feeling back to feet.

We reached what the majority of the band thought was the last chorus of the song, but we saxes, ever the iconoclasts, thought it was the second-to-last. The rest of the band went quiet, but we continued playing our ascending rhythmic line. At first we were tentative. The band exchanged wide-eyed glances. Then we took hold. The band joined in with a crash. Everyone in the crowd beamed and danced, and our faces had gone from yikes to we totally, definitely intended that. Ever since, our cover of September has gone on for a few choruses too many.

Glorious mistakes like these are what make music breathe, and they encapsulate what has made The Nostalgics such a learning experience for me. Group interactions are inherently accidental, in music as in life. When Charles Gertler and Benjamin Naddaff-Hafrey, the founding members of The Nostalgics, started auditioning musicians for an implausible band they had in mind, they had no idea how we were going to sound together, let alone behave. The way we’ve learned to interact socially during our three years together often seems as uncanny as the musical telepathy at that Vermont hostel. The Nostalgics’ hive mind takes over whenever we gather, leaving outsiders reeling to catch references that may have lost their referents months ago.

Due to my experience in jazz bands, I always had a Hobbesian view of music-making: Music is every man for himself, and a band is nothing but a sum of its soloists. The Nostalgics proved me wrong. When a group of 10 musicians plays together long enough, a new musical organism emerges, infinitely happier, messier and more creative than a group of individual musicians playing in parallel. Chemistry happens, and, at a certain level of complexity, there is no difference between chemistry and magic.

Our ARTS FIRST performance is sure to show plenty of concrete growth from our very first gig at the Dudley Co-op in February of 2011: an expanded stage, a working sound system, at least four times the songs and 10 times the audience. One thing that I hope hasn’t changed is the nervous energy of a group of musicians not quite sure what’s going on, but loving every moment of it.

Jack Megan, director of the Office of the Arts. PHOTO: Jacob Belcher/OFA

There are hundreds of faces behind Harvard’s annual ARTS FIRST festival, but one of the most influential, dynamic and caring is that of Jack Megan, director of the Office for the Arts. During a dozen years at the OFA, he has been uniquely situated to see the ARTS FIRST festival grow and develop into what it is today. Last week, I stopped by the OFA to chat with him about his role in the festival, what it means to him and what he’s looking forward to this year. Megan’s passion for student art-making, as well as his excitement for this year’s program, came through clearly during the conversation. As Megan pointed out: ARTS FIRST content changes each year, but its sense of community and joy always remains strong.

I asked Megan, an artist in his own right, to comment on the ARTS FIRST involvement with the opening of the new Plaza near the Science Center.

“The Plaza is a big focus this year,” he said. “The idea of the Plaza is this great communal space — a social space. The Plaza is not a space that you cross through but a place that you arrive at and participate in some kind of activity.” To emphasize this, Megan described some of the events taking place on the plaza this year, including Matt Damon film screenings and a dance/dinner Party on the Plaza, bringing together music, dancing and a BBQ in the outdoor space on Friday night. The Nostalgics, Harvard’s Motown and soul band, is playing that night in one of the group’s final performances.

“We’re thrilled they’re going to play the plaza,” said Megan. “It’s the first big, all-out party on the Plaza.”

The Plaza will also feature the annual DanceFest, to be held outdoors this year. “What excites me is that the dance community at Harvard is so representative of how diverse and interesting this community is,” said Megan. “You see the variety in our community in the Bhangra or the Pan-African Dance and Music Ensemble and many other dance styles. I’m looking forward to that.”

The Plaza will also host the performance fair kick-off event featuring the River Charles Ensemble, conducted by Ec 10 professor Greg Mankiw with special guests John Lithgow ’67 and the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. “Mankiw has been incredibly fun about this and really willing to engage,” said Megan. “The project involves a lot of students and others at and beyond Harvard.”

When it comes down to it, though, what I really wanted to hear from Jack Megan was how he felt about the festival in a holistic way. What does ARTS FIRST mean to him?

“The beginning of spring,” he said. “The whole notion of rebirth and beauty. The arts, to me, are an expression of all that. So the fact that these two things coincide, this art festival and the start of spring, is like rebirth to me. The other piece that excites me is that these are students who will be leaders, public policy makers, business leaders, folks who will influence the cultural policy and arts resources in their communities.” That these students are deeply involved in art-making during college, to Megan, is “incredibly important,” because these students can “shape the world.”

On Saturday, the day of the performance fair, Megan will be dashing from venue to venue so that he can see 16 performances in four hours. This kind of action is entirely representative of Megan’s dedication to Harvard arts, student performers and the arts in general — throughout the year. With his team at OFA, he has been planning the festival for months, but when the weekend begins, he said, “all of that planning stuff goes away and you just remember why you’re doing it. And it’s an enormous pleasure.”

Fun meets even more fun in Musical: The Musical, an original one-act dramedy written by Kyla Haggerty ’13 and Lily Karlin ’13, and composed by Ben Moss ’13. Anna and Kay are two real-life best friends in quarter-life crises when they are cast as onstage besties in the newest romantic comedy turned Broadway musical sensation. Part upbeat genre parody, part contemporary drama, Musical: The Musical examines the rifts and triumphs of a platonic friendship under pressure. Antics, song, dance, tears, and love ensue. We asked each member of the creative team to tell us something about the experience and what they carry with them as artists. The show takes place April 25-28 at the Adams Pool Theater as part of Harvard’s public ARTS FIRST Festival.

Kyla Haggerty
You’re about to graduate. What about the arts at Harvard will you take with you?

In all honesty, I’ve had a pretty difficult time fitting into the arts sphere at Harvard – and the past four years have really tested my love for theater and acting. Through that struggle, I’ve found a sense of perseverance that led to the creation of Musical: The Musical, and that I think will prove very useful next year. And after sitting around for three years trying to fit, I’ve learned that in today’s arts world there’s a new norm: If you can’t find the right space for yourself, make one. Lucky for me, I knew some great people that wanted to work together to create that same space.

Lily Karlin
What did you learn about yourself and about art during this project?

A lot of times, writing is about making an idea work within the standardized structure of a medium or the specific style of publication. With Musical: The Musical, I found it really freeing to write something that reflects my own interests and sense of humor, and to organically find a form to best suit the project. My friends and I joke around about making sure to “do you”– but I honestly do think it’s the best way to make fulfilling work.

Ben Moss

What are the biggest challenges of collaboration, and how did you address them?

The biggest challenges of collaboration are figuring out how to create something that achieves the goals of both the lyricists and composer, and that’s a constant give and take. You can’t be selfish. You’re not working for yourself. You’re working in service of the art. Something that I found unique about this particular collaborative process was that we were all learning from each other all the time. I think that’s what is really at the heart of it: being both a student and a teacher at all times.

For musicians and “musiciees,” ARTS FIRST, Harvard’s annual celebration of student artists, offers plenty to faint over. Here are some of the more interesting sonorous selections that will take place during the Performance Fair, Saturday, April 27. ARTS FIRST, which is (mostly) free and open to the public, starts Thursday, April 25 and runs through Sunday, April 28 at venues throughout the Harvard campus.

• For Shiya Wang ’13, wine is an artistic medium, a painting in tastes. For her performance A Taste of Sound, she puts wine in concert with another, more conventional art: classical music. “If someone is very familiar with wine but doesn’t know that much about music,” she says, “this gives them a way to understand music through wine, or vice versa.” Wang is no newcomer to either medium; she studied piano at Juilliard for four years before coming to Harvard and is the founder of the Harvard College Wine Society. Though she will not actually serve wine to accompany Chopin, Liszt and Paganini, her detailed tasting notes of piece-appropriate wines will encourage further tasting and listening. 3:30 p.m. Saturday, April 27 , Holden Chapel.

• A combination of acrobatics and live music, The Ethereals are bound to wow. This group consists of Nico Maffey ’13, a trained circus performer, and a band he has put together for the occasion, consisting of violinist Kathy Ran ’13, guitarist Kelly Robinson ’13, vocalist Patrick Wicker ’13 and drummer Corey Rosenberg ’13. One of those implausibly gifted undergraduates, Maffey will be performing a hand balancing routine to the song Lovesong, originally performed by The Cure but recently re-popularized by Adele. Maffey characterizes his relationship with the band behind him as some form of full-body conducting: “We’re basically working together, because if I speed up or slow down, they have to follow me.” The two-way interaction that results should be quite the balancing act, indeed. 4 p.m. Saturday, April 27 , Main Dining Hall, Dudley House.

• Two masters of modernism collide in Studies of Berg and Beckett, a performance by Keir GoGwilt ’13 and Benjamin Woo ‘13. GoGwilt has always found the composer Alban Berg and the dramatist Samuel Beckett to be uniquely united among modernists. “Beckett has a side of him that’s retrospective,” he says. “Berg is exactly the same way. He’s caught between the modernists and his more romantic tendencies.” This often translates into quotations from past masters in the context of brave, new works: Berg quotes Bach in his Violin Concerto; Beckett quotes Schubert’s song Nacht und Träume in his television play of the same name. GoGwilt has chosen Schubert’s piece as a compositional starting point, recomposing it “as Beckett would have.” This will serve as the first piece of the performance. Additionally, GoGwilt and Woo will perform two of Berg’s Seven Early Songs, transcribed for violin. Musical curiosity, scholarship and adventurousness combine in a peculiar modern mix. 1 p.m. Saturday, April 27, Sanders Theatre.

Every year, Harvard’s ARTS FIRST Festival brings together hundreds of Harvard community artists and performers for a weekend jam-packed with free, fun events. Those of us who have been to the festival before know that some organizations, like the Holden Choruses and Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra, return to perform each year. Many events, though, appear in only one festival. I’ve compiled a list of the five “hidden gem” performances that I’m most excited to see this year. They may be unique to this festival, so make sure to catch them in 2013 before they’re gone.

1. Films on the Plaza – To celebrate this year’s Arts Medalist, Matt Damon, ARTS FIRST will be screening two of his films on the new Science Center Plaza. On Thursday night (4/25), watch the classic Good Will Hunting. On Saturday (4/27), it’ll be The Bourne Identity. The screenings start at 10:30 p.m., which makes them the perfect post-performance, post-study activity. Harvard will provide blankets for lounging, popcorn and ice cream. You bring yourself and your friends.

2. Paint for a Cause – The Harvard Undergraduate Global Health Forum is creating a mural for a children’s hospital run by Partners in Health in an area such as Rwanda or Haiti. Come to the Science Center Plaza on Saturday (4/27) between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. to paint part of the mural. Since you can participate on your schedule, you can do some good between performances in the ARTS FIRST performance fair. All materials will be provided, and for this part of the festival, you are the artist.

3. The Dinner Party Show – The Immediate Gratification Players, one of Harvard’s improv comedy groups, will build a comedic play in real time from audience suggestions. The best part? The audience gets in on the action. Dinner is woven into the play, as a meal is served to those attending. Make sure to check it out at the Student Organization Center at Hilles in the Penthouse – I hear there’ll be Bertucci’s. Takes place 6:30 p.m. on Saturday (4/27).

4. Waiting – The Emerging Choreographers initiative of the Office For the Arts Dance Program has put together an intimate dance piece that explores student experiences of mental health. Harvard has seen a surge in student response to mental health issues in 2013, and various groups have called for greater understanding regarding mental health on campus. The performance is immersive, taking place in small rooms in Grays Hall Basement. Each of the four performances accommodates only 20 viewers, so reserve your ticket ahead of time and join the discussion. More information is available at http://whileyourewaitingfor.us/.

5. Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture – The Lowell House Last-Minute Orchestra will lead a “pick up” performance of this famed piece of music in Lowell House Courtyard at 3 p.m. Sunday (4/28). Each year, student musicians gather in the beautiful Lowell Courtyard to play a fun rendition of the beloved piece of music. It’s all there: faux cannon fire, real bells and beautiful scenery.

There you have it. Five events to get started and hundreds of others to explore. Download the full ARTS FIRST Festival Guide on the Office for the Arts website. Or curate your own personalized schedule for the weekend by downloading the ARTS FIRST festival app at iTunes (iOS 6+) and Google Play Store, and start exploring.