For the past several months, A&E reporter Maddy Kloss has been interviewing members of the cast and crew, sitting in on select rehearsals, and speaking to Varsity Show alumni about their experiences to examine the culture surrounding the beloved campus tradition. This installment of the series investigates the social dynamics behind the scenes.
Believe it or not, one of Columbia’s most beloved and glorified traditions, the annual Varsity Show, could be termed a cult. The word “cult” tends to connote obsession and zealotry, and the social atmosphere of the Varsity Show, as evidenced by observation of this year’s group, is not terribly lacking in either.
A Show Divided Somehow Stands
An investigation of V115’s social scene should begin with the least startling aspect—the clear division between the cast and the crew. A CC student involved with the Varsity Show who wished to remain anonymous said, “There are two separate camps, the actors and the behind-the-scenes people. There’s only real camaraderie within those two camps.”
According to interviews with the cast and crew, there is apparently little association between actors and production or design team members, who tend to work separately, especially during rehearsals. Speaking on behalf of her fellow actors, one of this year’s principals, Nina Pedrad, CC ’11, put it simply: “We just don’t see them [the crew] that often.”
Another one of this year’s principal actors, Giselle Gastell, CC ’09, concurred. “We [the actors] don’t always know their [crew members’] names, which is bad. There are so many people involved it’s hard to keep track,” she said.
But while this divide between the students in the spotlight and those backstage is acknowledged as unfavorable, many of the actors still profess great affection for the crew. V115 principal Emma Goidel, BC ’12, said of the production team, “They’ve all become my best friends.”
In interviews, she and several other cast members were quick to point out that they try to involve every member of the show equally, regardless of his or her position. As Gastell said, “Even if I don’t know them [crew members] 100 percent, they’re still part of the family.”
Better Than the Rest?
Just as the actors explain that they work to cultivate camaraderie with the crew, the Varsity Show as a whole also claims to find common ground with other campus arts groups. When interviewed, numerous cast and creative team members repeatedly asserted that the rest of the campus theater crowd should not consider themselves excluded from, or inferior to, the Varsity Show in any way.
“The entire creative team is trying especially hard not to conduct ourselves with any degree of superiority... We’re really not trying to communicate that we’re better than any other group on campus,” choreographer Claire Halberstadt, BC ’09, said.
Some involved with the production, however, suggest that the show’s do-or-die mentality hints at how intensely the members of the Varsity Show care about both their reputation and their status as the longest-standing theater organization on campus. An anonymous CC student involved with the show said of the cast and creative team, “I think they’re taking themselves a little too seriously... It’s all people who think if it [the show] doesn’t go well, it’s the end of their lives.”
“My least favorite thing [about the Varsity Show] is the egotism it can breed. There’s a sort of self-indulgence the Varsity Show just oozes and brings out in people which you just don’t see in the other theater projects on campus,” Carly Hoogendyk, CC ’07 and Varsity Show alumna, said.
Secrets, Secrets Are Some Fun
Despite some of the social divisions among the cast and crew, every student involved in the production unites to keep the Varsity Show’s secrets. This duty is backed by a clause in a contract everyone involved with the production must sign as soon as he or she is recruited—it makes each cast and crew member promise never to divulge a single melody, line, or plot detail until after opening night.
Many of the cast members relish the idea that they know juicy inside information about which their friends can only guess. Some report they have to employ a great deal of self-discipline to prevent themselves from tormenting Varsity Show outsiders with the classic third-grade “I know something you don’t know” tactic.
“People ask all the time about the plot, and it’s fun to be like, ‘Oh, I can’t tell you anything,’” Adam May, CC ’11 and a principal actor in the show, said. His fellow cast member Goidel agreed. “It’s difficult not to taunt my friends,” she said.
Other V115 actors say they have resisted the desire to taunt their friends with classified information, though they still acknowledge that they rely on the secrecy clause to keep their mouths in check. “The clause is more of a reminder, like an electrical fence of secrecy,” Pedrad said.
Luckily, the V115 cast members report that they have successfully avoided breaching the secrecy clause thus far. According to Gastell, the punishment is harsh for anyone who breaks the contract—if she were to give away any gossip on the production, “the Varsity gods would come and kill me!”
Don’t Burst Their Bubble
Although Gastell’s comment was made in jest—she promises that the innumerable hours of rehearsal time have yet to make her and the rest of the cast become entirely delusional—there is one condition that seems to leave hardly a single Varsity Show member unaffected: the self-diagnosed “Varsity Show Syndrome.”
According to principal actor Patrick Blute, CC ’12, he and the rest of V115 suffer from “the Varsity Show syndrome, bubble, clump, whatever...” Blute explained that, in essence, after months of lengthy rehearsals, the Varsity Show becomes its own little world within the University in a form of self-induced social isolation.
As Gastell explained, it’s hardly surprising that the group, especially the actors and creative team, is so tight-knit, since they spend almost every waking hour together. “Every day I see people [from the Varsity Show] for 12 hours straight. When I haven’t seen them for eight hours it’s like, ‘What am I going to do with my life?’” Gastell said.
Gastell estimated that she spends about 50 hours each week with her Varsity Show cohorts, both in and out of rehearsal. But cast members report that these bonds will not break after the last curtain call—V115 cast and creative team members who aren’t graduating this coming May are all rooming together for the 2009-2010 school year. This housing situation is seen as the ideal solution for what many V115 cast members identified as their least favorite part of the Varsity Show: the fact that it ends.
But despite the questionable conduct of the Varsity Show “cult,” it’s necessary to remember that Columbia has pretty much let them get away with it. After all, for the past 114 years, people have come to see the show in droves—and therefore willingly participated in the cult’s biggest ritual.
The Varsity Show is playing in Roone Arledge at 8 p.m. on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with an additional show at 3 p.m. on Sunday.
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