KDS Fall 2019 Cast
1 2022-05-03T00:55:42-04:00 Ellie Grueskin c0152cdcbc79536e21f3a641e91923b4a97f694d 12 1 plain 2022-05-03T00:55:42-04:00 181825 20191028 20191028 181825 Ellie Grueskin c0152cdcbc79536e21f3a641e91923b4a97f694dThis page is referenced by:
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2022-03-09T14:30:14-05:00
Ellie Grueskin - Story of Self
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2022-05-03T00:57:26-04:00
My name is Ellie Grueskin, and I am a senior in Kirkland House concentrating in Economics with a secondary in Educational Studies. Outside of classes, I have spent the majority of my time co-directing Kirkland's Drama Society, serving as Co-President of Satire V, and throwing baseball watch parties in Kirkland's basement. Coming into college, I was interested in exploring comedy but was anxious about my lack of experience, aside from watching hours of The Office. During my first year, I joined Satire V as a graphics member and started to develop my comedic voice through a mix of pitch meetings, edits, and socials with incredibly talented folks. When I entered Kirkland House as a sophomore in the fall of 2019, I spent the first month feeling rather lukewarm about house life. I missed living in close proximity to my classmates and felt anxious about beginning conversations in the dining hall with other Kirklanders, as social groups were more defined than they had been in Annenberg.
Through word of mouth, I began hearing more and more great reviews about a Kirkland-only drama organization aptly named "Kirkland Drama Society," or KDS for short. After receiving welcoming emails from KDS leaders over the Kirkland House email list inviting us to come audition, I reached out to my friend Andrea who also seemed interested. We decided to try it out, excited that it was a no-cut cast and one week rehearsal period. Neither of us came into it having any drama experience, unless you count some background roles in elementary school plays.
Acting in KDS's fall 2021 production, Twelfth Night, will forever remain a highlight of my time in college. Under the wonderful leadership of Matthew Holloway and Nathan Sharpe, I was able to meet a cast of 15 Kirklanders of different ages, discover a joy for acting, and feel included in the house life I had been looking for.
Since Matt and Nate were graduating in the spring, they reached out to me and Andrea to ask if we would be interested in being the next co-directors and shadowing for the spring. We began our 2020 spring at the KDS writers' room, learning about their creative process in scripting the play. Unfortunately, we had to leave campus on March 10th, 2020 due to Covid-19, but we were still able to put together a "KDS movie" with recordings taped together.
During my tenure in KDS with Andrea, we ran a live virtual production in the spring of 2021 along with live in-person plays in Fall 2021 and Spring 2022. Although our time has certainly been different from expectations, I have felt extremely lucky to learn more about comedy, acting, directing, and leadership through Kirkland Drama Society. While it has been one of the most rewarding and genuine activities I have been able to join at Harvard, it has also been a taxing responsibility. KDS is a student-written, produced, and acted show led by two students and two House Tutors. I personally found it challenging to focus on the traditional duties of a director when also carrying roles such as head writer, producer, treasurer, and stage director. As an outgoing Co-Director for KDS, I have been thinking carefully about what could have been better during my unusual tenure. Through this research project, I hope to use interview and survey data from members within and outside KDS to create a current pulse report of KDS and leave tangible ideas for how to improve the KDS leadership structure.
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2022-04-26T23:37:20-04:00
KDS - Story of Us
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2022-05-10T15:47:35-04:00
Kirkland Drama Society (KDS) is a semesterly student-produced, acted, and often written show open to all students of Kirkland House at Harvard College. KDS’s fall play is traditionally based on a famous Shakespeare play and the spring play oscillates between being based on a movie or musical. Kirkland House started performing winter plays from its beginning years, the 1930s, and this eventually grew into a Kirkland Drama Society. It continued until around the 1980/90's and was revived in Kirkland House in the early 2000's under Faculty Deans Verena and Tom Conley. It involves no cuts in acting or writing, so it is known as a staple of Kirkland’s inclusive and quirky house community.
I had the pleasure of interviewing three KDS alumni - tutor and former Co-President Wilson Qin, former Co-Director Nathan Sharpe, and former Co-Director Matthew Holloway - to learn more about the modifications KDS has undergone in the last decade. When Wilson Qin was a Kirkland student, KDS was led by a Co-President who would sometimes direct the show but also had the option to appoint directors for a given show. Leaders were sometimes appointed by successors or nominated and elected by KDS members at the beginning of the semester. Over the years, the positions seems to have melded such that the President also serves as the Director, with the title "Director," and the election process has been constant as an appointment.
After Jacob Sherba led the KDS show through 2017 Fall, he appointed Nathan Sharpe to be the next Director, and Nathan invited his roommate and close friend Matthew Holloway to make the responsibilities more manageable. They spent the spring of 2018 shadowing Jacob, helping with various tasks along the way. Prior to Nathan and Matthew's tenure, the President/Director typically enlisted an individual or small group of Kirklanders to write the entire ~60-page script. Matthew reformed this structure by opening a writers' room to all Kirklanders who were interested in helping build the script.
Currently, the leadership structure involves two student co-directors and two Kirkland tutors. The tutors primarily help with lighting, sound, staging, communication with House administrators, and other logistical details that come up. In a complementary style, the co-directors oversee writing, directing, casting, producing, publicizing, and financing the play. The writing process takes about a month, which entails co-directors leading a writer’s room of about 10 Kirklanders, scheduling weekly meetings, and producing a 60-page script that includes as many characters as actors. During the writing process, the co-directors host no-cut auditions and modify the play if they need to add or subtract roles. The acting schedule is much more compact, involving one week of rehearsals leading up to two nights of the show.
One of the most unique parts about Kirkland Drama Society is that we are constantly surrounded by our castmates in the house. Unlike other productions where a play ends and people begin new chapters of their semester, KDS members get to run into each other in the dining halls, entryways, and laundry rooms, building a sense of continuity and family.