However, Sherwood adds that some of his most rewarding work in the arts has been out of the theater. He helped institute the Loeb technical theater requirement for performers. “I believe it is a crucial step towards creating more technically solid productions as well as forming a closer community among Harvard theater participants,” he says.

Sherwood says he was convinced to pursue the requirements, which before had only been a musing, when people expressed enthusiasm for it at an open HRDC meeting. “I realized that Harvard artists were in fact very interested in helping their peers in this way,” he says. “With more than 60 theater productions on campus every year, I think it’s very important that we all pitch in and help each other create theater. It is, after all, a collaborative art.”

Sherwood has a fond place for the Loeb. “Its technical capacity far outweighs that of other spaces on campus,” he says. “Anything is possible on the Mainstage. Witches can disappear in a cloud of smoke, a Berlin nightclub can appear where there was darkness before and can disappear as quickly as it came, and a house with working electricity and plumbing can split apart and turn around before your eyes.”

Sherwood also says he enjoys his work on the Harvard Theater Database (HTDb). “It’s important that the HRDC forms relationships with its alumni and builds a historical record, and the HTDb helps both of those initiatives” he says.

While he does not plan to go into arts as a profession, Sherwood is sure that they will remain a part of his life. “As a musician, it is tortuous for me to go a week without at least playing a few notes on the piano, and attending theater is second-nature to me,” he says. “I am looking to enter a technology career, but I will always be creating, writing, innovating—I can’t conceive of a life without the arts.”

—Marin J. Orlosky