Theater, Dance, & Media’s ‘CELLS,’ In Cast Perspectives

In “CELLS,” a play written by Sam Marks and directed by Morgan Green, real young artists acted out the complex meanings of a life in the arts. “CELLS,” which ran from Dec. 7-10, featured a cast of Harvard undergraduate students from the Fall 2023 Theater, Dance, & Media Production Studio course. The memory play follows a young man (Avery L. Hansberger ’25) who rediscovers his late grandmother Doris’s (Kristian A. Hardy ’24) paintings and reflects on his family’s several generations of commercially unsuccessful, but passionately dedicated artists. The Harvard Crimson interviewed five cast members to discuss their experiences developing the production and their growth as student artists while working on “CELLS.”

Kristian A. Hardy ’24 — Doris

Hardy plays the painter Doris throughout her life, from an idealistic teenager to the pragmatic caretaker of her daughter and grandson. A romantic at heart, Doris’s navigation through the difficulties of marriage and actualization of one’s creative dreams serves as the anchor for the young man’s reflections. As an artist passionate about following one’s dreams, Hardy grounded her performance in the ways she found Doris relatable.

“I think the key to approaching the role was to always find the truths in the role, the things that are true for myself as well,” Hardy said.

Conversely, the 40-year age gap between the actress and her character was a challenge, as Hardy had to develop an elderly posture. Exercising her versatility in her prominent role, Hardy’s confidence grew. According to Hardy, although Doris never achieved financial success, the value of her presence and artwork on her family’s identity emerged as a core theme of “CELLS.”

“In our society, it’s really easy to just stay focused on what’s next, what’s next, what’s next. But I think the play encourages people to kind of take a pause and think about their past, reflect, which I think is a really valuable skill,” she said.

Amelie Julicher ’25 — Bernice/Sophie

As Bernice, Amelie Julicher spends much of the play on the sidelines. Hired to remove Doris’s paintings from their frames and store the canvases in tubes, Bernice persists in her work in the shadows as memories play out around her. This repetitive manual task, coupled with Bernice’s neurological limp, invited Julicher to immerse herself in a niche job and physicality.

Marks’s and Green’s guidance of the class enabled Julicher to expand her understanding of Bernice beyond what was explicit in the script.

“It was really exciting to be able to ask the playwright himself all the questions about my character, especially considering this was an autobiographical play,” Julicher said. “Sam Marks didn’t just have the perspective of the playwright, but the perspective of [the young man] himself, having sort of lived through the play.”

One major challenge the actress faced was understanding her character’s life outside of the story. Envisioning Bernice as a former artist who engages with her old dream of owning an art gallery by physically handling paintings, the thoughtfulness of Julicher’s portrayal stemmed from Bernice’s resonance with the career arc of the young man himself.

Claire R. Liu ’26 — Emma

The wife of the main character, Emma accompanies the man in a single scene during which they view Louise Bourgeois’s artwork, catalyzing a shift in the man’s life goals and an argument between the two. Liu sees Emma as a mirror of her husband, in the sense of their shared love for the arts and their commitment to their family. To express Emma’s anger, hurt, and sadness, Liu fleshed out her character by imagining her as an artist who gave up her dreams to take care of her household. She views the play as sending a complex and empathetic message about such choices — not black and white, but multicolored.

“I honestly grew a lot from my own experience, debating that. I’m a dual concentrator in Econ and TDM. So this idea of, do I follow the creativity and the art side wholeheartedly? And do I give up stability for that? Or do I do a more stable, secure life, but give up that kind of dream? Is one that I grapple with on a daily basis,” Liu said.

Marks rewrote the script over the course of the class, and as a consequence, Emma shifted between sympathetic, angry, logical, and gentle. Emma’s character evolution challenged Liu, but she found adapting her acting to the playwright’s rewrites to be a thrilling taste of professional theater that is rarely accessible to students.

Ekene Chukwueke ’25 — Dave

Portraying Doris’s suave affair partner, Ekene Chukwueke made sure to leave an impression in the one scene he had onstage. In order to make his character’s brief appearance and subsequent death feel important, Chukwueke had to contemplate what kind of personality could get the audience invested. Remaining in one corner of the stage, Chukwueke overcame his spatial limitations to concentrate much of Dave’s memorable charisma into his speech and demeanor.

“How can I get the audience to be super interested in me? To the point that even though I’m not going to come back, they start asking themselves, ‘Wait, where is he?,’” he said.

Just last semester, Chukwueke was encouraged by a professor to go into theater. After overcoming his skepticism, Chukwueke now considers himself lucky, as theater triggered greater fulfillment of his artistic potential.

Mack D. W. Webb ’25 — Sneaker Guy/Joe

Webb pops up in different roles throughout “CELLS,” appearing as the young man’s grandfather, a sneaker store worker, a McDonald’s worker, and more. As an English concentrator with a secondary in Theater, Dance, and Media, Webb joined the class with a special interest in the playwriting aspect.

As an actor in smaller roles, Webb collaborated with the director and costume designer to expand upon the relatively little characterization on the page, while tapping into entirely unfamiliar acting methods. The class pushed him out of his comfort zone while teaching him about the daunting process of assembling an original play’s debut with a professional team.

“This show, I think, is meant for a Harvard audience, specifically a Harvard audience that wants to be creative in their careers. Because, I think so often, Harvard students are so singularly focused on success and what that means to them or how that’s been portrayed to them,” Webb said. “And this play is a lot of confronting the idea that that kind of success is somewhat unattainable.”

—Staff writer Isabelle A. Lu can be reached at isabelle.lu@thecrimson.com.