Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals celebrates its 175th student production

In 1844, James K. Polk was elected president, the first electrical self-winding clock was invented and the Hasty Pudding Theatricals was founded. The theater organization is an institution at Harvard College, and has staged musicals nearly every year since its founding. This year, the group is putting on their 175th show.

Every production has been written and acted by Harvard students. This year's zany and madcap musical is called "Heist, Heist, Baby."

WBUR's All Things Considered host Lisa Mullins spoke with Harvard student and president of Hasty Pudding Theatricals Josh Hillers, and Peter Sagal, host of of NPR's Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!, who starred in and wrote Hasty Pudding shows in 1985 and 1986 when he was a student at Harvard.

Highlights from this interview have been lightly edited for clarity.

On the 1985 and 1986 shows:

Peter Sagal: "I acted in the role of Lou Suffer. Get it? Lucifer — in a show called "Witch and Famous" that was a rollicking comedy set during the Salem Witch Trials. And then, when I was a junior, I co-wrote, along with my dear friend — now he's the Supreme Court reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Jess Bravin — I wrote the book and lyrics for a show called "Between the Sheiks." The plot of the show, as I remember, was a group of crusaders head off to fight the crusade in the Holy Land, and they get lost. And they end up in a very backwards kingdom, and things look bleak. But it turns out that this backwards corner Arabian kingdom has all this goopy, oily stuff. And we were sending up fossil fuels. That was our, ah, satirical target. ... There was a love story. We had an ingenue crusader who of course falls in love, and then there's villains, and I believe in the end, virtue triumphed."

On the requirements for making a Hasty Pudding show, which is written by students and selected in a contest:

Joshua Hillers: "Well, there's kind of a pretty simple formula, which is, you need to have a ten-member cast in your show, able to be played by anyone, as we now have gender-inclusive casting as of five years ago. And your show title has to be a fun name, and other than that, just make it a comedy musical and throw in what we like to call a 'dirty love duet,' which is just a purely, you know, innuendo-based song between two characters that expresses their love. That's about it."

Sagal: "The big change, though, is something that Josh just mentioned — that until five years ago, the cast was all male and had been for — let me do some math here, again, English major, not my strength — 170 years then. It was an all male drag show. All the female characters were played by men. That was part of the appeal of it."

On the impact of allowing women into Hasty Pudding Theatricals:

Hillers: "I think it's been a really great change for our organization, because now it's kind of, when we do our casting, it's like we have the opportunity to put women in the role of men and highlight that in our show and ensure that it adds to, you know, this whole spectacle of our comedy musical."

On the level of the production and the joy in the experience:

Sagal: "If you've never seen a Hasty Pudding show, it is amazingly professional. There are professional designers and directors working on the show. There are amazing resources devoted to the sets and props and staging. So it's this extraordinary thing to find out what it is to work in the professional theater when you're an undergraduate. And that made me want to end up pursuing that as a career, which I did for a long time. So it was, to be serious for a second, it was a huge event in my life.

"For most people, and I hate to say this, this is as good as it gets. It took me a long time, even though I was pursuing theater professionally ... to get back to just the level of — I don't know how best to put it — happiness that I had working on that Pudding show. And everything was a joy. And this, it turns out, is not often the case in the American theater. So if you do go into it, Josh, for whatever reason, keep your Pudding experience as the goal, but don't expect it as the standard.

"I mean, I know this is getting a little sentimental, but if people who have resources — if universities have access to resources — invest them in the arts. Because it shouldn't just be Harvard students who get into this ancient organization that have the opportunity to put on fabulous shows with the kind of backing and resources that the Hasty Pudding has always had. I just wish the same thing for more and more people."