MURDER IN THE FOGG

Fogg Museum courtyard will become a stage tonight when a recently-organized group of students present T. S. Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral." The play is not being put on by the Harvard Dramatic Club although many of its cast are members of the H. D. C. The work has had no previous organization with which to deal and has reached actual production only through the initiative of its directors and the help of influential faculty support. Already interest in undergraduate circles has been evinced by large tryouts, by submission of several manuscripts of poetry dramas, written by students, and has been confirmed by a ticket sell-out which makes necessary two additional performances. The originality which marks this attempt, the increasingly ambitious House plays, and the fact that this fall for the first time in a college generation the Dramatic Club made money are comforting assurance that Harvard drama may be actively on the upswing.

When in 1925 Professor George P. Baker and his famous '47 workshop migrated to Yale, with his course went Harvard's 25-year position as a college which at least recognized the theatre. This new Poet's Theatre is one of the more vigorous efforts to reestablish the University's prestige in the dramatic realm. The movement is the fruit of persistent labor on the part of undergraduates, for little official recognition has been given the stage at Harvard since Professor Baker's regime.

The Poet's Theatre may well usher in a dramatic rebirth among students. Verse plays are appropriate vehicles lending themselves readily to every field, ranging in subject from modern burlesque to medieval liturgy. As such they should appeal to both artistic and popular factions. Nurtured from within by undergraduates, "Murder in the Cathedral" may well give cause for hope that Harvard is once more drama-conscious.