UNTARNISHED PLEASURES

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In your editorial on April 15, you questioned the sincerity of those interested in having a theatre at Harvard because so few of us attended Mr. Burrell's lecture. I am only one of many here at Harvard who from early childhood have passionately loved the theater in all its forms; who believe, moreover, in the urgency of our need for a theater here; and who did not attend the lecture.

We did not hear Mr. Burrell because we did not know he was going to speak. You impute to lack of interest what was due to lack of publicity. In so doing you have perhaps damaged the chances of our getting a theatre, in which case you have helped to deprive future Harvard men of one of the few untarnished pleasures of which we know.

Most of life is spent waiting for the next meal, and working on a play shares with few other activities the uncommon happiness of being lived in the present, and relished as an experience not only in retrospect, with most academic achievement, but in the joyful labor day by day. Academic work is usually done alone, but in working on a play life assumes the character it has at its beat: a cooperative endeavor by many people, joined by a common interest working toward a common goal.

The production of plays at Harvard is severely hampered by a lack of an adequate theater. How severe this lack is is not understood by most undergraduates or alumni because they, having been disenchanted by the trivial productions of Broadway and Hollywood, have little conception of the possibilities of good theatre for the moral heightening of awareness which all great art achieves. At Harvard there are many students and faculty members who have both talent and vision, and who lack the necessary facilities in order to make a most important and most pleasurable contribution to the life of the Harvard community. The CRIMSON should do all it can to further this end, in order to bring to fulfillment one of the few activities at Harvard for which real intellectual excitement still exists. Arthur Loeb '54