I returned to Harvard, my alma mater, to collaborate with students on a theater production about the experience of coming of age during college years. Students generated material through writing exercises, movement workshops and scenework. Additional texts came from historical letters, old Harvard drinking songs, college textbooks and the like. Several professional artistic collaborators contributed original poetry, prose and music. The result was The Garden in Winter, a dance-music-theater production that explored the personal journeys of six students set against the institutional history of Harvard.

Winter became a resonant metaphor: A time of hardship, but also a time of unseen growth and germination under the snow cover. Another theme was sleep: Sleep as a hibernation to escape from pressure, as a time of dreams, as a regenerative act; but also as an unattainable pleasure to the chronic insomniac. Falling and getting up—both physically and emotionally—became a humorous and poignant theme as well. Three muses—Hanging Woman, Wandering Woman and Rooted Woman—spoke in different languages and imparted different ways of knowing as the students struggled to separate from home and find their own voice.