So began the legend of STARt-up WARS Episode One: The Venture Menace, this year's HBS Show, held in early April before capacity crowds in Burden Auditorium.

Spoofing the Star Wars films, STARt-up WARS poked fun at the "growing divide" between students pursuing dot-com millions and those seeking more traditional careers.

The cast of more than one hundred actors, singers, dancers, and musicians found plenty of material in the technology and Internet revolution, with songs such as "La Vida Nokia" and "The Heat Is in Dot-Com." Sprinkled throughout the three-hour production were 22 video segments, including one called "The Get Rich Project," a parody of The Blair Witch Project.

"It was a huge undertaking," said Anthony S. Marino (MBA '00), the show's producer. "It was on the scale of an off-Broadway production. There were lots of moving parts." Marino and director Shannon Kete (MBA '00) worked tirelessly on the show, often spending as much time on the production as on their studies.

Transforming the staid Burden Auditorium into a theatrical venue has often been half the battle for the show's producers. Marino brought in scaffolding to build light and sound towers for the high-tech show and bolts of black fabric to create a backstage area for the cast.

"This was only the third truly multimedia show that has been held in Burden," Marino said. "Ever year it gets more complex. It's sort of like running the new high-speed Acela trains on the old tracks. But we did it."

STARt-up WARS was the 27th HBS Show. The first was produced in 1974, when a student named Joseph R. Parrish (MBA '74) decided to stage a show in the tradition of Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals and the Law School's Review, as an antidote to the stresses of student life. The show, called Cheap Gas, featured sixteen skits and popular songs with humorously altered lyrics in a satirical look at HBS life. The organizers borrowed money to produce the show, which ran for two nights in Baker 100. A sell-out hit, the HBS Show has since become an annual tradition.

Indeed, the show has grown into a major enterprise. According to Marino, the operating budget for the 2000 production went "well into the six-figure range." Half of that money came from sponsors, the rest from ticket sales.

"This is my Hoover Dam," said Marino. "It is not a small show. Planning for the next one starts the day after the current show ends. It takes the whole year to make it happen.

"More than 10 percent of the B-School is somehow tied to the show," he continued. "It's an incredible organization. We had people here every night for weeks preparing and rehearsing, with dancers in one corner, actors in another, people going over scripts, and others working on sets. Even the spouses of the cast and crew helped. This is one event on campus that draws the entire HBS community together. It's easy to get hooked."

Marino drew many comparisons between the show's production work and the basic business concepts that he has learned at HBS. "There's the classic tension of product development versus delivering a final product. We'd come up with lots of ideas for the production, but at some point you have to stop developing and put the deliverables out there. Our challenge was to create a dazzling spectacle on time and within budget," he said, adding, "I even had a professor suggest that a case be written on it."

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