Summer Theater Season Opens With 'Man of La Mancha'

Harvard-Radcliffe Summer Theater (HRST) opened its 20th season last week with "Man of La Mancha," which will be showing in the Loeb Experimental Theater on Brattle St. through July 15.

The self-supporting company will produce three shows this summer with a group of more than 50 student actors and crewmembers.

HRST Managing Director Jorge Alex Alvarez '01 said that the show has been a hit.

"It is incredible," he said. "We give [Arts Mail] 10 tickets per show. They have sold 120 out of 170--the most ever."

The group's other summer shows have also received considerable attention. "Hapgood," a play written by "Shakespeare in Love"-author Tom Stoppard was listed in Boston Magazine as one of the top theater activities in Boston.

"'Hapgood' is going to be well-matched for the Cambridge and Boston community," Alvarez said. "We've been getting a fair amount of calls."

The third show, which opens August 10, is Tennessee Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Alvarez said that while he expects the show to succeed, there will likely be some criticism.

"It will have the typical problems of undergraduates doing a mature play," he said. "Also, people will compare it to the movie."

The process for putting together HRST began in March when the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC) solicited applications for the season.

Those students who were interested compiled a preliminary list of directors and shows for the summer. After HRDC chose Alvarez as the managing director, he worked through April and May to help the individual directors choose their plays and find full staffs for each show.

"It was working out what fits in the season and time constraints," he said. "We tried to flesh out a good cohesive season."

Auditions were held at the beginning of May with callbacks later that week. They were publicized on the HRDC mailing list and on posters in the Yard.

The next step, Alvarez said, was buying rights for each of the shows. Not only can it be a timely process, he said, but also an expensive one. The rights for "Man of La Mancha" cost $1,7000.

HRST exists separately from HRDC, the University and the American Repertory Theatre and has its own budget, with money coming from ticket sales.

Most people involved with HRST work for free, but some of the staff who work on shows during the day are paid salaries, since they cannot work at other daytime jobs.

In addition, HRST is housing approximately 30 students for the summer.

Past HRST shows included another Stoppard play, "The Real Inspector Hound," and Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing."