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MIT Engineer, Acting, and Hazardous Waste -- all in a Day's Work for
MIT Alumna Helen McCreery
Cambridge, MA...Each year, a handful of MIT
graduates complete demanding requirements to major in theater,
music or art in addition to one of the engineering or
science disciplines for which MIT is so well known.
Not many manage to juggle careers in both fields.
Helen
McCreery, 23, is following her passion for both environmental
engineering and theater arts. Cleaning up hazardous waste by
day for a Cambridge consulting firm, McCreery acts in her spare
time.
McCreery's screen debut is in the soon-to-be-released film,
"Radio Cape Cod," produced and directed by MIT alumnus Andrew
Silver (Class of 1964), who also plays a role in the film. The
intertwined love stories of four couples, the film, set in Woods
Hole, will begin a two-week run at the Coolidge Corner Theater
in Brookline, Mass., on May 23.
The movie is based loosely on the book, "Black Apollo of Science,"
written by MIT professor Kenneth R. Manning about American marine
biologist Ernest Everett Just, who died in 1941.
For the film, McCreery and the entire cast and crew lived for
several weeks near the scenic, decidedly unpolluted Woods Hole
seashore. McCreery plays Chip, whose friends Ana and Virgil
do not see eye-to-eye on their budding summer romance.
After graduating from MIT in 2006 with dual degrees, McCreery
completed an MIT master's degree in environmental engineering.
"I think theater requires a lot of creativity, and so does science
in a way," she said.
"I always enjoyed math and science, so engineering made
a lot of sense for me. And I've always felt a strong connection
to nature and the environment," said McCreery, who grew up in
Worthington, Ohio, near Columbus. She said it was "quite a surprise"
that she ended up doing so much theater at MIT, partly because
she hadn't expected to find so many alluring offerings in the
subject. Her favorite project was "Felutopia," a satirical
piece dissecting racial tensions in the United States.
A theater arts professor she had worked with at MIT connected
her with Silver, who was looking for a young female actor to
play Chip. "I had a great experience filming the movie. All
of my previous acting experience had been on stage, so I learned
a great deal on the shoot," she said.
Acting "is really important to me," McCreery said, so,
difficult as it is with a demanding full-time job, she acts whenever
she can. "People at my job think it's funny," she said.
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