Perils of the Yale Dramat

As for Dramat productions at the University Theater, no faculty supervision is provided. The Dramat hires a technical supervisor from the graduate school. The Dramat hires its own directors and often these are also pulled from the school. The repertory members do not actively supervise. However, as deButts agrees, having a professional company around, if only for occasional advice, is an asset. "We don't have any formal contact, but if we want something we can go talk to them." Nevertheless, deButts points out, a professional company is mostly busy "being professional."

Again, Brustein has a different story. To the accusation of no contact he recealls his first year at Yale when he offered to "bring the Dramat into the Yale Rep" through a program similar to the program he is now offering Harvard. "I offered them training in the repertory, so they would know what they were doing when they got out on stage. In turn, they would let us identify the talented people...But at the time the Dramat was a proud institution." They turned him down.

Furthermore, Brustein observes he was hired as dean of a graduate school. "Graduate and undergraduate schools only get confused in the arts. You wouldn't expect the dean of the med school to take responsibility for undergraduate chemistry majors."

Graduate courses offer the other link between the two groups. Undergraudates may take courses in all programs in the graduate school except acting and directing. The programs open to them include the areas of technical design, set design, dramaturgy, dramatic criticism and playwriting. Brustein explains that undergraudates are excluded from the acting and directing classes because the intensive level of instruction and the time commitment involved makes it practical only for full-time graduate students. Graduate actors and directors spend 25 hours a week in class practicing. "Undergraduates would feel out of it. The intense professionalization we have here at the school makes it inappropriate for them.

Clashes between the drama school and the Dramat have eased, or at least mellowed, in the last two years. Bailey remembers her freshman year--when both the Dramat and the graduate school always kept their separate corners of the University Theater building locked. By her senior year, the locks were gone. "It was just one hassle after another, she says. "Every disagreement escalated into a violent issue. Who left the trash can in the lobby was grounds for a major battle."

Both deButts and Bailey attribute the improvements in part to the unflagging campaign of the Dramat and in part to the cooperation of the associate dean--Jonathan Miller this year and his predecessor, Howard Stein--as well as Dramat supporters within the graduate school. "There were a lot of people in the drama school who worked hard for us," Bailey says. "Brustein was not one of them."

However, balanced with what Catalano calls "a distaste for the dean's policy" is an almost unanimous respect for his genius as a director, a drama critic and leader of a creative movement in American theater. John J.G. Rubin, a second-year acting student at the drama school, organized a student search committee to consider possible replacements for Brustein when he leaves next year. "We went through lists of likely candidates. And, honestly, we found very few people who had that same drive and desire to transform American theater. If there is one thing I'll regret losing when he leaves next year, it's going to be that vision he's taking with him.

That's why I gave up acting in New York and came to school here."

Bailey agrees that Brustein is a man with a vision. But that vision often blinds Brustein to--or offers him an excuse to ignore--the little realities of the day-to-day theater world. Those realities include more democratic scheduling, realistic rehearsal and stage time and, beyond that, simple fair play with the bare minimum of backroom politics.

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The resolution: Bailey recommends Harvard students insist an agreement be hammered out in writing, before Brustein takes over the Loeb. Included in the agreement should be a guarantee that Brustein will sit down in person one or two times a year with the HRDC to negotiate. An advisory board, such as the present faculty standing committee on drama, should be retained as a body to which they can appeal. The Dramat has a similar advisory board made up of faculty and administrators. Yale President Giamatti sat on the board at one time. The board could not overrule the drama school administration, but it could apply pressure. "If they hadn't been around," Bailey says, "we would have been sunk."

By a prior written contract Bailey thinks Harvard might avoid a repeat performance of the Brustein-undergraduate drama.

Even so, as Bailey looked back over the years, she shook her head. Yes, Brustein's professional approach might work in an undergraduate setting, given the right conditions. Even at Yale, the past year has been more or less complacent. "But when you think of how long it took, how many hours we spent arguing. That's what Harvard will have to face."