When David Treatman, GS/JTS ’20, and Alan Koolik, SEAS ’19, met while working as the assistant director and assistant producer for the 123rd Varsity Show in October 2016, the last thing they expected was to be attending the Tony’s together less than a year later for their role as co-producers of an off-Broadway comedy.

When Harrison Gale, BC ’20, auditioned for the 123rd Varsity Show, she forgot half of the words to the song she was singing. Despite the mishap, she was cast as the cheeky, eccentric WBAR DJ, Barbara.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show, embraced as a Halloween cult classic for decades, will again be performed this October by the Columbia Musical Theatre Society.

Everyone who has gone through the nerve-wracking, yet exhilarating act of auditioning for a show knows it to be a memorable experience, but few know that at Columbia there is a similarly distressing process for directors.

Despite being Columbia’s oldest performing arts tradition and a melodic encapsulation of the school year—as well as the deciding factor in many noteworthy alumni’s decisions to attend this university—the history behind the Varsity Show remains unknown to many students.

The 123rd rendition of Columbia’s favorite musical showcase may not have lived up to its reputation on Friday night. Interspersed with distracting lighting mishaps, microphone complications, and disjointed scenes and character dynamics that came from a largely inaccessible and underdeveloped plot, the energetic show was met appreciatively by the audience, but not as enthusiastically as in past years.

Plays by students from Barnard’s Theatre Department were performed over the weekend of April 20 to 22, when four senior directors from Barnard and Columbia took the stage to conclude a year and a half of work. Each piece was performed multiple times over the weekend to allow theater-goers to enjoy the full range of theses, spanning genres from magical realism, to absurdist theatre, to political drama.

“The Varsity Show is a self-selecting group of insane motherfuckers!” exclaimed cast member India Beer, BC ’20, citing wisdom that writer Amelia Arnold, BC ’17, had passed on to her. “Which I think is pretty accurate,” Beer continued, “but they’re also some of the best people that I’ve ever met.”

Babneet Lakhesar, an Instagram-famous artist with over 35,000 followers, might have seemed an unlikely participant alongside two veteran civil rights advocates in a panel on South Asian feminism hosted by Soch: Columbia Pakistani Symposium. But her story of finding her place and identity as a South Asian artist in her 20s growing up in diaspora was a perspective that was particularly relevant to members of the Columbia community in attendance.

At the first of two sold-out performances this Friday night, audiences were treated to a lighthearted yet heartwarming celebration of the musical theater endeavors of this spring’s graduating seniors. The room was packed and awash with sometimes ironic, always harmonic voices, and the scene was set.