Life Comes Without A Script
By AMY J. HANDELSMAN '76
There is no single memory that comes to mind when I think of myself at Harvard 25 years ago—rather a stream of images, fitful, fleeting, snapshots that capture what historian Erving Goffman would call The Theatricality of Everyday Life.
I knew so little about Harvard when I applied that I counted on being a Drama major. Since that concentration has never existed I chose Fine Arts, but spent most of my time in extracurricular activities, off and on stage, either as director or actor.
The defining moments of my life at Harvard were spent waiting in the wings: I remember counting the bodies of sailors dangling on ropes to open the Gilbert & Sullivan production of H.M.S. Pinafore at the Agassiz.
Or my proud (and fearless) entrance in pajamas as the ingénue in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter. My vampy goth get-up as a witch in the Leverett House production of Dark of the Moon.
We were decidedly ’70s in our use of drama for therapeutic ends. I explored my Shadow self in Peter Frisch’s famous mask workshop and held encounter sessions with my best girlfriends while directing Megan Terry’s Calm Down Mother at the Loeb Ex.
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