Hasty Pudding Theatricals

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The Hasty Pudding Theatricals, known informally simply as The Pudding, is a theatrical student society at Harvard University, known for its burlesque musicals. They present original student-written and -composed musicals with near-professional production values. Formed in 1795 as a fraternity, the Pudding has performed a production every year since 1844, except twice during World War I and twice during World War II. Each production is entirely student-written. Previous members of the Theatricals have included Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Randolph Hearst, lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, Oscar winner Jack Lemmon, and former Massachusetts governor William Weld. Although the cast remains all-male (with female parts performed by actors in drag), women participate in the productions as members of the business staff, orchestra, and tech crew. Each spring, the Theatricals tours to New York City and Bermuda. The 2006 production is titled Some Like It Yacht.

The name comes from a Colonial Era (originally British) cornmeal dish called Hasty Pudding, which is something like porridge.

The Pudding's long and continuing history has served two seemingly contradictory functions. On the one hand its deliberately retro theatrical trappings (all-male cast, all-live pit orchestra with no computers or synthesizers, no sound amplification, silly plots full of crude jokes, collegiate humor and ancient puns which seem odd or unfunny to non-Harvard or non-Boston audiences) seem to preserve a museum-piece approach to musical theater. Yet the Pudding has served for decades as an incubator of new talents: Pudding graduates are leaders in the fields of writing, directing, and performing in theater, television, movies and the other arts. The last three winners of the prestigious annual Ed Kleban Award for achievement in lyric writing have each been graduates of the Pudding. Mark O'Donnell won a Tony Award in 2003 for co-authoring the book for Hairspray. (Mark's identical twin brother Steve was head writer for many years for the David Letterman Show on both NBC and CBS.) David Javerbaum has won several Emmy Awards as head writer for The Daily Show, which also featured comedian Mo Rocca, Paris Barclay wrote two Pudding shows and later won two Emmys for directing NYPD Blue. Bat Boy: The Musical composer/lyricist Laurence O'Keefe and his wife, Pudding graduate Nell Benjamin, are co-writing the score to the upcoming Broadway musical Legally Blonde, and Mark O'Keefe co-wrote and co-produced the 2003 movie Bruce Almighty.

The society is notable for their annual selection of famous actors as Woman of the Year (since 1951) and Man of the Year (since 1967). These awards are usually treated with great seriousness by the honoree, who always attends the awards ceremony, despite the tradition that some of the performance be done in drag.

In 1969, John Wayne was invited to be the Hasty Pudding's annual parade marshall and dinner speaker, for which he rode into Harvard Square atop an M-113 armored personnel carrier.

Below is a list of those who have received the award: