I had an incredible time working on Mariah MacCarthy‘s “Honors Students” at the Wild Project in the East Village over the last couple of months. I had the good fortune to work on several roles for a script that was equal parts brutal and beautiful.

All the members of the team on this project were a dream. Mariah and the director Leta Tremblay refer to one another as art wives and it was nice to be adopted by them! The rest of the cast (Thanh Ta, Olivia Levine, and Arielle Goldman) brought it every night. The design and production teams made this a top-notch and cohesive indie theater production. Special shout out to our stage manager Michelle Navis and house manager Cassy Lynch who made the show a home away from home each night.

Moments from the six characters I played in “Honors Students.”

I got to play six very different kinds of roles: an absent father, an arrested development waiter, a woke(ish) professor, a Buddhist nurse, a tough scary guy (possibly mob related), and an older blind woman. Through much of it, I felt like I had one foot in clown and the other in Pinter. I very much appreciated how Leta and others let me explore choices that brought the roles to life physically. When I first got the script for the audition, I was inspired to write monologues for the two roles coming up with a backstory for both of them. The dialogue and the scenes I had always had me peeling layers to the end of the run. 

One kind soul texted me, “You have a range like a MFer!” And to paraphrase our mighty playwright Mariah MacCarthy, “If you have a show that calls for one guy to play a bunch of parts in your show, get Chris Harcum.” 

Hearing things like that can keep you going.