Annual Fletcher Follies Brings Laughs to Fletcher
“A
pril is the cruelest month,” wrote Eliot. How true at Fletcher. Finals loom, thesis deadlines edge ever closer, internship searches grow frantic, and, almost in irony, the New England spring weather tempts and teases us by turns.
In response to the annual year-end tension, Fletcher’s student body established decades ago a highly popular tradition: Fletcher Follies. This week witnessed the 2009 installment of the event, where students and faculty piled into ASEAN auditorium for an “off the record” evening of skits, sketches, frivolity, and mirth.
The evening began with a reference to another Fletcher tradition: culture nights—student-run festivals sprinkled throughout the academic year. “We’ve had culture night themes for Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean, Latin America… Tonight,” announced hosts Christina Sass and Josh Haynes, “we’ll celebrate Americana night!” This became the theme of the evening, tying together the various acts.
Many students put together neatly edited videos, creatively blending acting, graphics, and music. One group showed off their theatre skills with a live adaptation of stage works, while another offered tongue-in-cheek “stock picks” in a routine something like a comedy “roast” of fellow students. Still others mocked U.S. airport security practices or took stories of internship searches to humorous extremes. As usual, many of the routines played on news or familiar aspects of life at Fletcher, such as a skit that parodied recent public attention paid to the role of gender analysis at the school.
The annual Follies, it should be mentioned (albeit none too loudly), always have a touch of libertinism about them. This year’s was no exception. The event details are, by tradition, strictly confidential, but, suffice to say, libations were referenced, wigs were donned, dancing was not your grandmother’s, and “law and diplomacy” were tossed aside.
The faculty and staff made their presence felt. Administrative Dean Sheehan delivered his famous “rant,” joined this year by Academic Dean Uvin. The Office of Career Services contributed talent to several sketches, including advisor Tamara Golden, who won applause for a reprise of her routine from previous years. Several professors, including Dan Drezner, Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church, Carolyn Gideon, Michael Klein, Vali Nasr, and Bernard Simonin, among others, made cameo appearances.
The Fletcher community was present in full force, with MALDs, MIBs, LLMs, PhDs, professors, and administrators all taking turns in laugh-filled teasing, taunting, and self-deprecation. The famous sense of community was palpable, with students cheering each other on and chattering in the lulls. To someone from the outside, the inside jokes and plays on tradition might have been overwhelming, except that Fletcher is also quick to welcome and include. In one skit, even, Fletcher’s newest student group—the “Januarians” admitted at the beginning of this semester—played up this very theme with a skit, set to 1920s silent film music, about the experience of joining the Fletcher family.
Alas, life as a graduate student affords only so much time for fun, and the library was ultimately not empty for long. But if finals and theses must come each year to Fletcher, thankfully so too will Follies.
Kirby Reiling F09