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This fall Sami Harper ‘16 combined her passion with entrepreneurial spirit to found the student-run Experimental Theater Company (ETC). Since the young age of five, Harper has been acting and singing and knew she wanted to continue to follow these passions after high school. She ended up at MIT, obviously an elite school for her academic desires, but also one that has a welcoming and diverse theater community that includes student organizations like Shakespeare Ensemble, Dramashop, and Musical Theatre Guild.

While Harper participated in these other groups in years prior, she wanted to fill a void she felt existed in this community. “I have been looking for an opportunity for students to not only act in, but also design and produce contemporary and experimental theater on campus,” she said. “We also wanted to encourage the incorporation of other media in theatrical performance.” With this in mind, Harper teamed up with Nathan Gutierrez ‘17 to cofound the ETC.

This fall ETC debuted its first production, Now Then Again, described as a“romantic comedy with a brain.” The story followed the love of two physicists navigating time-bending quantum mechanics and was set at Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory. The performance utilized the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, allowing its creators to play with its structure of time; the first act began at the same point in time as the second act ended with both timelines meeting in the middle. Actors wore roller skates to signal a different pace of time of particular individuals to the audience. “This play reminded the community (and me) that you can never take yourself too seriously, even as a ‘serious business’ professional scientist,” said Harper. Three of four performance sold out with 153 MIT students, faculty, and community members in attendance.

ETC opens the door for its members to incorporate their scientific interests into its productions. “I am really excited to work in the field of water, sanitation, and sustainability in the developing world,” said Harper. “My personal academic interests haven’t surfaced in [ETC’s} work yet, but they might in the future.”After graduation Harper hopes to remain heavily involved in aspects of theater while employing her Course 1 education.

The multiple theater groups on campus are very collaborative with one another, sharing resources such as props, costumes, and advertising materials. Students even move from club to club to help out. “[MIT] has an amazing, diverse, and very caring theater community. I didn’t realize the extent to which they are truly wonderful people until starting ETC this year,” said Harper. “Everyone has been so supportive and willing to help out our new group.”

In the spring ETC will unveil a student-created collaborative production in the STATA Amphitheater. To see more detail on the making of Now Then Again and ETC, check out Peter Downs’ ‘18 web documentary project.