THEATER 1

Despite the passing of Professor Baker and the 47 Workshop, there has come about at Harvard something akin to a dramatic Renaissance. A Theatregoers' Club has been successfully organized, the Dramatic Club has decided to produce only undergraduate plays, and now a new movement is stirring in the minds of those who are deeply interested in the theatre. This is the desire for a new course, one in the history of stage design and theatrical production.

Such a course would be established to teach the drama, not from a literary, but from an appreciative stand-point. It would be a comprehensive history of stage technique and stage effect from Greek to modern times. It would be in brief a History 1 of theatrical production. Last year-Fine Arts 28 was given as an aid to instruction in acting, but it was a small course, limited to graduates, and with the discontinuance of the 47 Workshop it too became bracketed in the college catalogue.

The aim of this new course would not be a dependent one, a satellite of revived English 47. Nor would it attempt to exclude all those who did not intend to become actors. Rather it would serve as a broad medium of instruction through which the undergraduate, as well as his elders, might attain a proper knowledge and appreciation of stage production. Thus it would serve as another way for the student to round out a truly liberal education. The Fine Arts Department already has several men fully competent to teach such a course, and there are, outside of Harvard, others readily obtainable. Only official sanction is needed to convert this suggestion into a highly desirable actuality.