Jesse Darland: Writer, designer, and all-around good guy

Insights alumni magazine

Tarantino meets The Bard in Titus Andronicus

The set of Titus Andronicusat UK’s Guignol Theatre is made from modular steel cages on wheels that can be reconfigured to create all sorts of settings. The most impressive of the mobile set pieces is a huge arch looking like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris made from steel girders. It’s huge, large enough to hold six or seven actors at a time, and its melding of ancient Roman architecture and modern-style construction methods captures the tone of the production: what the cast have called ‘Romington, D.C.’ — a modern version of a Rome that never fell.

Commerce, Language and Culture brochure

Surviving Guthrie/ Thriving Filmmaking

Actors arrive at the restaurant ready to film. The crew sets up lights, unpacks cameras and checks microphones. The cast and crew are here to film the final scene of Surviving Guthrie, a feature-length independent film they’ve been working on for nearly three months. They’ve come today because they have a passion for this film.

But what they don’t have yet is a script. The screenwriter, Jesse Harris ’06, sits at a laptop, rewriting in a hurry. The ending has to be shot today, and some of the actors aren’t able to make it. What used to be a big crowd scene is being scaled back to a more intimate gathering of a few characters. Phone calls come in with updates—which actors will or won’t be able to make it. Harris adjusts the scene again.