Theatre on the Charles

The excellent proposal to found an Arts Center on a stretch of riverbank land adjoining Soldiers Field Road has come to seem less a cultural crusade than a political power play. Plans drawn up by the Metropolitan Boston Arts Center ("MeBAC"), a group formed to direct the project, threaten not only to ruin local classical drama companies by excluding them from the Center, but also, because of this apparent inequity, to founder the whole project before it gets under way.

The scheme calls for the Commonwealth to lease the land to MeBAC and to construct foundations for a theatre (an expenditure of some $200,000). This theatre, as well as a projected center for visual arts and opera house, would then be run by MeBAC and the original debt to the Commonwealth paid off, hopefully, by box office receipts.

While this idea seems completely laudable, its execution is open to question. For it happens that the plan's originators were officials of the Cambridge Drama Festival, a non-profit repertory theatre of the sort for which the Arts Center theatre is intended. The CDF is certainly to be thanked for this initiative, and it is understandable, though perhaps unwise, that three of the nine MeBAC members are CDF representatives. MeBAC has now ruled, however, that exclusive use of the Arts Center theatre during the first season is to be given to the CDF, and it has refused to offer equal time (even on an alternate season basis) to the only other non-profit classical drama group in the Boston area--the Group 20 Players of Wellesley.

MeBAC argues that the CDF is the only local organization equipped to carry on a theatrical season of high artistic quality. But the fact is that the CDF has not produced a play since the summer of 1956, when it staged three very fine productions in Sanders Theatre. Mean-while Group 20 has been running for the past six summers with equally high marks from the critics.

MeBAC contends that the CDF is "financially responsible." This may be, but its '56 season resulted in a considerable financial loss, while Group 20 has been operating in the black for the past two years.

MeBAC goes so far as to say that the Arts Center, far from damaging other local theatres, will stimulate all drama trade in the area. But the prestige of state support, which MeBAC would give to the Cambridge Drama Festival, would surely hamper the fund-raising and actor-recruiting programs so vital to organizations like Group 20 in competition with the CDF. And financial records show that competition between two repertory theatres in the Boston area means a loss for both.

Such damaging competition would of course raise no objection if waged on a purely private basis. This, however, is a case of state aid being used to boost one private organization at the expense of another. If the Commonwealth is to delegate broad responsibility to a group such as MeBAC, it should make certain that no one theatrical company is given a monopoly on its board such as the Cambridge Drama Festival now holds. This would not only dispel the charges of unfairness that now jeopardize the Arts Center project, but the valuable theatrical experience of a boader range of people on the MeBAC board might well benefit the Center in its hazardous task of launching a repertory theatre.