In the Spotlight
Talking Tech with Alan Symonds, Harvard’s Man-About-Theater
by Hana R. Alberts ’06
Just days after Alan Symonds ’69-’76 stepped onto campus
as a freshman at Harvard, he was enlisted to run the light board for
a show on the Loeb Drama Center Mainstage. “It was kind of continuous
from there,” Symonds says of his lifelong involvement with the
theater.
Since his Harvard debut, Symonds has established himself as a master of lighting,
sound, scenery, and other elements of theater production in Cambridge and beyond.
From lighting the original Woodstock festival and Boston Ballet productions,
to designing lights at the New England Aquarium that encouraged penguins to mate,
Symonds has been involved with virtually every kind of technical work.
But he always comes back to Harvard, where he was part-time staff at Agassiz
Theatre in his sophomore year. In the early 1990s he became Technical Director
for College Theatre Programs, for which he oversees production and theater safety
for student shows in Agassiz Theatre, as well as other performance spaces.
Because of his undergraduate experience and his subsequent production endeavors
at Harvard, Symonds has a unique perspective on student theater. He says that
although space, arts faculty, and student interests have changed over the years,
the theater community at Harvard remains vibrant.
When Symonds was an undergraduate, the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) hadn’t
yet entered the picture, and the Loeb Drama Center—the A.R.T.’s home
since 1981—was entirely student-run, with continuous shows on the theater’s
Mainstage all year round. He started out as a light board operator at the Loeb,
and as he familiarized himself with the space, he worked his way up the ranks
to lighting design and technical direction. And although the A.R.T. provides
plenty of guidance—advising students on undergraduate Mainstage and Loeb
Experimental Theatre productions, presenting workshops with important theater
innovators, and giving students a chance to observe guest directors in action—Symonds
is concerned that the shortage of technical staff and training has left directors
and producers searching desperately for crews with know-how and experience.
Also, Symonds says learning in the theater isn’t as directly related to
learning in the classroom as it should be. He recalls that his favorite class
at Harvard was an equivalent to a Literature and Arts B Core course, then called
Humanities 105r, “Producing Shakespeare on the Mainstage.” “What
was brilliant about the course was that [the faculty] saw it as an opportunity
to teach the literature and also to get everyone into drama,” he says.
Although the end result of the class was a Shakespeare production, the lessons
learned in the class extended far beyond the theater. “That’s what
the Core is about, what a Harvard education is supposed to be about,” he
adds. “It helps you to be innovative and creative in any profession. Theater
is enormously enabling. I always find myself using things I learned in theater.”
Symonds wonders how many Harvard students, although they’re heavily involved
in theater, might consider professions outside the arts. However, he’s
quick to point out that theater skills prove useful for those in all professions. “You
can learn scheduling, organization, and making things work without a lot of money,” he
observes. “There are a lot of things useful in the real world if you’re
going into banking or the ministry or other careers.”
In the future Symonds would like to see more teaching. “Teaching experiences
like Humanities 105r and what is being reexamined as the Core are every bit as
vital as all of the specific classes we have in dramatic art, because Core courses
can touch a lot more people,” he states. “There are a lot of things
we could be teaching. We don’t have a balance between teaching and lots
of ways to take advantage of the theater.” He says ideally Harvard would
incorporate theater into classes with the intent of applying knowledge to the
world at large. “I would love the opportunity to teach my subject, lighting,” he
says, “to those interested in the art of lighting and its technology.”
Symonds is also excited about new spaces for theater. The renovated Hasty Pudding
building (see sidebar, above) will provide a fully equipped theater for general
student use, he notes, and adds that Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross is
working to provide additional storage opportunities for sets and other technical
needs off-campus. “Between Dean Gross and [Acting Associate Dean] Judith
Kidd, I’m encouraged by the level of understanding and support for the
arts and theater in general,” he claims.
And while he juggles his responsibilities at Harvard with passion and verve,
he adds a dose of his trademark humor. Recalling his visit to the aquarium to
see the penguins his lighting creation spawned, Symonds comments, “Baby
penguins are really cute. They’re like an Orangina bottle with flippers.”
Hana R. Alberts ‘06 is a History and Science concentrator who
lives in
Mather House.
