Wandering Minds Returns to Its Origins for 20th Anniversary Celebration

Senior Phoebe Oler (CAS) (from left), grad student Madeleine O’Keefe (CAS’18, COM’19), and sophomore Sebastian Bolanos (COM), members of student theater group Wandering Minds, rehearse a scene for Greekfest, which goes up tonight, March 29, at 7 pm in Jacob Sleeper Auditorium. Photo by Jacob Chang-Rascle (COM’22)

“Theater! Friends! Fun!”

Those are the words Amanda Hiller shouts each year at BU’s annual student activities fair Splash to entice students to stop by the table for Wandering Minds, one of the University’s extracurricular theater groups. “That’s the entire pitch,” says senior Hiller (CAS). “And then Liam talks to them.”

Junior Liam McParland (CAS), the current president of Wandering Minds, then provides a little more detail about the group. “Wandering Minds is a democratic student-run theater organization,” he tells them with pride.

One quality that distinguishes the group from many others on campus is its willingness to accept students who have no theater background. In fact, two thirds of this year’s executive board had never been involved in theater prior to coming to BU.

“All we require is a lot of joy,” says McParland.

Wandering Minds got its start more than two decades ago when a group of students who’d been in College of Arts & Sciences Core Curriculum productions of classical Greek plays wanted to continue staging productions. The Core Curriculum, which integrates humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, frequently collaborates with the classics department to perform classical plays.

In 1999, the students began recruiting from outside of Core and registered Wandering Minds as a student organization. Their first show was a version of the Aeschylus tragedy trilogy The Oresteia—dubbed The Coresteia. Next came the Aristophanes comedy The Clouds.

To mark the club’s 20th anniversary, Wandering Minds is returning to its classical roots with a one-night-only event titled Greekfest. On Friday evening, March 29, 16 actors will perform scenes from five ancient Greek plays: Antigone, Medea, Alcestis, The Frogs, and Agamemnon.

The idea came from club vice president junior Mimi Luo (Questrom). Members loved the prospect of a big project that could honor their beginnings and involve many members (affectionately called “Wanderers”). “It’s really a project where everyone helped and pitched in—tech, directors, actors,” says Luo. “I’m really appreciative of everyone’s work and effort, and I think it will be great.”

In addition to special projects like Greekfest, Wandering Minds puts on two mainstage shows a semester. And the repertoire has expanded to include contemporary dramas and comedies. This spring, they are producing Who Am I This Time? & Other Conundrums of Love, an adaptation of three Kurt Vonnegut short stories by playwright Aaron Posner, which runs April 18 to 20 in the LAW Auditorium. The following week, from April 25 to 28, it’s Tom Stoppard’s award-winning drama Arcadia, at the Student Theater.

The theater club also joins in on events hosted by other theater groups on campus, like Stage Troupe’s COMBAT, the Shakespeare Society’s Tech Olympics, and the BU Theatre Formal.

And then there’s the Magical Days of Fun—MDoFs (pronounced em-doffs) for short. These are social events for Wandering Minds members—and most of them have nothing to do with theater. “We like to joke that we can do anything. It’s not just a theater club,” says production manager junior Lili Tucker (COM), who is in charge of planning MDoFs. She says the events, which range from a board game night to a Chinese New Year party to Fancy Feast outings, where club members in formal dress dine out at a fast food restaurant, let members working on different shows socialize.

Wandering Minds also hosts a members-only book club (recent reads: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Eugène Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano). Details for upcoming events are posted on the group’s Facebook page.

It’s not just the Wandering Minds repertoire that’s expanded over the last 20 years. The club is larger, it has a more diverse membership, and productions have gotten more ambitious as well. Last fall club members designed and built a one-and-a-half story set—the first time ever. McParland says he’d like to see the group stage more special projects in the future, like shadowcasts (where actors perform a movie as the film plays onstage behind them—think Rocky Horror Picture Show), and more one-act festivals.

Sophomore Sharvari Bhat (COM, CAS), who is directing a scene from The Frogs for Greekfest and is tech director for Who Am I This Time? says she’s found an unexpected community in Wandering Minds. A self-described introvert, Bhat always assumed theater wasn’t for her. The club convinced her otherwise. “The thing I like the most about Wandering Minds is that it’s very accepting of every single person, and there’s no judgment,” she says. “Here, I felt like I could be the way I was. I didn’t have to fit in, because no one fits in and everyone is different.”

Sound like a friendly, creative, welcoming atmosphere? Club members are always looking for new recruits interested in acting, directing, and producing, they say, as well as lighting, costume, and sound design.

“We’re a really tight-knit family at Wandering Minds, which is great in a big university,” says Tucker. “Everybody here is really fun-loving and really dedicated. It’s hard to have friends that you can also work with, and that’s one thing that I’m really glad to have.”

Wandering Minds’ Greekfest is tonight, Friday, March 29, at 8 pm, in Jacob Sleeper Auditorium, 871 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. The event is free and open to the public; reserve tickets on Eventbrite. Follow Wandering Minds on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Graduate student Madeleine O’Keefe (CAS’18, COM’19) can be reached at mokeefe@bu.edu; follow her on Twitter @OKeefeMadeleine.