March 7, 2005
Student Scene
Students Bag Pharma in Second Year Show
In this year’s annual HMS/HSDM Second Year Show, “Into the Longwoods,” four students wound their way through an upside-down world created by a villainous pharmaceutical representative. During their travels, they sang, danced, and satirized their mentors and colleagues. The four students, Grace the Gunner, played by Kate Nelson; Culturally Competent Carla, played by Sonali Mukherjee; Free Lunch Frank, played by Babak Nazer; and Womanizing Wayne, played by Miguel Ramirez, became trapped in a fairy tale world after accepting a free lunch from a purple-caped scoundrel with a dastardly (if slightly askew) moustache.
The crew faced the challenge of evading the villain’s attempts to turn them into his “prescribing machines,” learning to think for themselves while balancing their yearnings to do research, help the needy, and, well, get some pizza.
| The crew faced the challenge of evading the villain’s attempts to turn them into his “prescribing machines” .... |
The scenes were occasionally interrupted by a sonorous Richard Schwartzstein, played by Jason Wasfy, who claimed that he noticed that the audience looked somewhat confused, and that he “just wanted to break it down for us a little.”
During the show, the Pharmaceutical Villain schemed to divide the students up, and sent temptations to lure them away from each other. Wayne was the first to leave, drawn in by a troupe of bling-laden, topless male surgical students who follow—and break dance around—Augustus White III. Carla runs off with Paul Farmer, who lives in a cloud kingdom with an entourage of female admirers. Grace is attracted to an enchanted castle, where an “Academic Beast” known as Rick Mitchell toils with his graduate students forever, cursed to a life of academic medicine. The grad students, who had forgotten the outside world, had taken to dressing as lab equipment.
Frank was left to gather his friends again and get them all back to the Quad. With the aid of a Tooth Fairy Godmother, played by Jon Clarke, Frank threw a party attended by all of the inhabitants of the Longwoods, including King Richard, aka Dean Joseph Martin; a scarecrow David Cardozo; and a Nancy Oriol bearing a striking resemblance to Tina Turner.
At the ball, Goodenough confronted the Pharmaceutical Villain, who was shocked to find the professor to be “too chill” to be deterred by the Valium thrown at him. Goodenough melted the villain with his loving vibes and sent the students back home with a new lesson: there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
“Into the Longwoods” was performed at Roxbury Community College from Feb. 24 through 26 and was directed by Alyssa Rosen.
In the Second Year Show, (from right) Sonali Mukherjee, Kate Nelson, Babak Nazer, and Miguel Ramirez starred as four medical students evading the grip of an evil drug rep.
Miguel Ramirez (left) and Kate Nelson (right) ask directions from the Cheshire Cat, aka Julian Seifter, played by Efren Gutierrez.
Tiffany McNair’s Nancy Oriol (left) and Hector Rivera’s Dan Goodenough encourage medical students to “be inspired.”
From left, Marissa Wagner, Karimi Gituma, Salil Garg, Nicole Salazar-Austin, and Ngozi Iroezi sing about the stress of working in an HST lab.
From left, Bradley Crotty, Jose Aleman, Lindsay Freud, and Andrew Singer portray Alfred Goldberg, Randy King, Robin Reed, and David Cardozo, respectively, as Wizard of Oz characters.
Copyright 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College