Class of 2012 presents “Love in the Time of the Swine Flu”

The second-year class affectionately mocked faculty while carrying on a 61-year-old tradition.

In a two-act play that featured 11 videos and a dozen scenes on stage, the Class of 2012 took aim at faculty and administrators during their second-year show in February, “Love in the Time of the Swine Flu.”

The show—whose cultural references included Sarah Silverman’s “I’m f*#@ing Matt Damon” video, the Twilight movies, and Rocky, among others—involved a plot by medical school faculty to raise money: Faculty would create a recombinant flu virus, infect students, expel the infected students, collect tuition from replacement students, and patent a cure only to be used in a new Yale-affiliated flu hospital. And the med school would invest heavily in hand sanitizer stock.

Enter star-crossed lovers Steven (played by Julius Oatts, who also directed the show) and Kate (played by Amy Schoenfeld). Can a science-driven M.D./Ph.D. student find true love with her classmate, a former humanities major? Can Kate devise a cure for the new flu strain? Will she do it in time to save her classmates from turning into zombies?

As ever, the show targeted perennial favorites on the faculty, including Dean Robert J. Alpern, M.D., played by Kevin Koo; Nancy R. Angoff, M.P.H. ’81, M.D. ’90, HS ’93, associate dean for student affairs, played by Whitney Sheen; and Margaret Bia, M.D., professor of medicine, played by Stacey Kallem.