The Play Becomes the Thing

Amidst dramatic productions by the HDC, Drumbeats and Song, and other College groups, yesterday's announcement of a new course in playwrighting spotlights an important development at the University. Along with the Drama Club's recent decision to enter television and the unprecedented naming of two Spenser lecturers on Drama for this spring, the course represents something University people have been waiting for since 1923: A full-scale revival of interest in the Theatre at Harvard.

Such a rebirth can reach only its earlier stages this spring. Necessarily, full blossoming of the dramatic arts must wait several years for the building of the new theatre, for which a committee of prominent alumni is now soliciting funds. Meanwhile, however, a generation of students is going through the College with almost no official instruction in dramatic arts. As yesterday's announcement indicates, the University can take immediate steps to strengthen College drama provisionally and at the same time to pave the way for the new theatre.

The new playwrighting course itself offers an excellent opportunity for the stimulation of creative drama. Virtually the first such course since George Pierce baker left Harvard for Yale in 1928, it can join with the HDC's New theater workshop to bring about the same sort of writer-actor cooperation that distinguished Baker's famous '47 Workshop." The best experience a young playwright can have, professor MacLeish has said, is "the blush of shame" that comes when he sees his own place produced. Such beneficial experiences could be commonplace if student-written plays were regularly produced by the Workshop.

Although College playwrights might then gin experience without waiting for the new theatre, students interested in designing scenery would still have no chance for instruction at the University.

Theatrical design is admittedly a rather technical subject. If treated historically and artistically, however, it could be acceptable to a liberal arts curriculum such as that of the Fine Arts Department, or in a more practical form it could become a part of the Graduate School of Design. In any event, a course in stage designing is needed by students-there are many in the HDC alone-who have talent and interest in theatrical designing, but no knowledge of the theories or mechanics of the subject. Fine Arts or design School administrators should begin plans for such a course as soon as possible.

The new theatre may be still some years away, but the revival of Drama at the University has already started. Immediate measures like courses in playwrighting and designing will help to strengthen the enthusiasm and will provide for current students the creative outlets they would otherwise miss.