Theatre Stuart Vaughan

TO READ Stuart Vaughan's book A Possible Theatre is to wonder how anyone ever managed to procure his services as the first Visiting Professor in theater at Harvard University. Within the first two chapters, he makes several bitter attacks on "academic theatre," using such terms as "a bore," "an evasion," and (my favorite) "fierce suspicion." I can't say that I disagree with his terms, but I am glad that he decided to come: the current production of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, directed by Vaughan, is certainly the best thing to appear on the Loeb mainstage in some time.

Vaughan did not turn to academics out of desperation, for his career to date has been a milestone in the serious professional theatre life of this country. With Joseph Papp, he helped found the New York Shakespeare Festival in the fifties, thus creating the single good reason for staying in New York during the summer. The Festival's greatest triumph, the three-play repertory Wars of the Roses presented last summer (two parts Henry VI and one part Richard III ), was both adapted and directed by Vaughan. Between stints with the Festival, he helped organize the repertory company of the Phoenix Theatre in New York-and launched repertory theatres in both Scattle and New Orleans. He is firmly committed to-and has played a major part in the renaissance of-the nonprofit professional theatre company movement, what he calls "the only signfiicant form of theatre organization in the United States." In keeping with his commitment to west-of-the-Hudson, the premicre of his own play Assassination 1865 -he will direct-will be in Chicago this fall.

The question remains, then: why is he at the Loeb? I talked with Mr. Vaughan last week after the opening of Tis Pity and was surprised at his directness on the subject. "It's a pedagogical experience, not an artistic one," but he seems to have enjoyed his contact with students in the play and those taking his non-credit acting seminar. "I find it pleasant to work with actors attuned to historical and intellectuals" of a work like 'Tis Pity . The same sort of response is, of course, shared by the largely academic audience at the Loeb, and Vaughan finds such an opportunity occasionally refreshing. "The demands of such an audience are high, which is good"; then he smiled: "Sometimes, however, they're a little pedantic. I can't get used to audiences who never laugh, but just snigger politely."

Vaughan is totally unimpressed with the Loeb as a physical plant. Like most people who have worked with the mainstage, he finds it quite inflexible-essentially good for nothing but proscenium staging. "A lot of money was spent to little effect," he claims, "for an arena capability that doesn't exist." He pointed out that no director could manage a genuinely three-sided staging even when the stage is thrust forward and the seats rearranged. "Who's going to direct for the hundred-odd people on either side when you have six-hundred out front?" The size of the Loeb exasperates him, because of its unfairness to non-professional actors. "These are people-sometimes very talented but who have little or no voice training, and they're being asked to appear in this cavernous auditorium !" (The Ziegfeld, now a cinema but the largest built-for-legitimate theatre in New York, has fewer seats downstairs than the Loeb.)

The question of "unfairness" to non-professional actors came up again when Vaughan spoke of Harvard's lack of a resident professional company. "There's something about the Loeb that can never be theatre-under the present circumstances. No one would ever consider hanging only student art in the Fogg Museum." A professional company at the Loeb, he feels, not only would be able to use the mainstage to better advantage-but also could begin to provide some adequate training models for students. Harvard's cherished opinion of itself as something more than a trade school struck him as absurd; he asked if anyone noticed the inconsistency of Carpenter Center with that ideal.

"Actors are out-of-the-kitchen socially," he complained, "but not academically-at least not here." Putting forward the idea that the University as it is now formed doesn't recognize the "nobility of making things" (making Protestant clergy doesn't count), he nevertheless hopes that that situation is changing. To push the change seems to have been one of his major reasons for accepting this post. "I'm not sure I'm really trusted," he sighs, and claims that he often finds himself mentioning his M.A. from Indiana "rather inverse snobbishly." "But at least they have me here," he said as he dug into his wallet, "and are evidently planning to have a few more like me. See: I have my little plastic card with 'officer' stamped on it. That's an admission of something, isn't it?" May he be the first of a long line-out of the kitchen and with little plastic cards.