Wherefore Art Thou, Drama Support Line?

When you call Alan P. Symonds '69 at the Agassiz Theatre, a taped voice on the answering machine claims you've reached "the Harvard-Radcliffe Technical Support Line."

But some say there is no technical support line at Harvard. For the past year and a half, Symonds has been the sole ever-present professional resource for undergraduate theater.

And with the decision two weeks ago to replace Symonds, the technical director for students at the Loeb Drama Center and the Agassiz, many students fear theater at Harvard will become an even more difficult endeavor.

Now, members of the Standing Committee on Dramatics say they may propose to Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 the addition of a technical director for the houses, with Symonds in mind for the job.

While administrators say Harvard is firmly committed to the dramatic arts, students complain of the University's hands-off attitude. Inadequate curricular offerings and a lack of support from the American Repertory Theater (ART) and the College point to Harvard's mismanagement of the arts, Harvard thespians say.

In 1979, Harvard negotiated an agreement with the Yale Repertory Theater to relocate to Cambridge as the American Repertory Theater. In exchange for managing student productions in the Loeb and teaching courses in practical dramatic arts, the ART moved into the Loeb as a professional theater company.

Although the company received many other offers, including one from Lincoln Center in New York City, it came to Harvard to work with students, says ART Managing Director Robert J. Orchard.

Faced with the lack of a formal curriculum, tenured professors and professional support, the Harvard student theater community is faced with...

"We've always been a teaching organization. The people in the organization have always functioned both as professionals and mentors," he says. "Our desire to continue to be an evolving and vital organization really depended on there being young people around."

Fourteen years later, many students say that while the ART provides valuable resources and expertise to student productions, the professionals at the company are no surrogate for a formal theater program or for tenured professors of the dramatic arts.

And students and staffers charge that by placing the mantle of supporting Harvard theater squarely on the ART, Harvard has neglected its responsibility to the arts and to the hundreds of students involved in the dozens of theater productions around campus.

"The general feeling is that no one is there for us; that the ART is not these for us; that the Committee on Dramatic Arts is not there for us," says Kathryn D. Smith '95, stage manager for several undergraduate productions.

Students point to Symonds as one of the only professionals concerned with student productions on campus. His responsibilities officially entail overseeing the technical aspects for student productions at the Loeb and Agassiz, but he has voluntarily assumed work far beyond his job description.

"His job is the Loeb and the Agassiz, but he does basically everthing for every undergraduate theater person on campus. The houses basically couldn't survive without him and neither could City Step," says Jennifer D. Talbot '94, a student theater technician and veteran of 25 shows on campus.

"He helps even shows which are going up in weird places on campus that aren't really theaters; he helps in pre-production, organization, last-minute things, light fixtures," she says.

Symonds estimates he spends "ten to twelve hours, six to seven days a week," working on undergraduate productions and a class, Dramatic Arts 31, he co-instructs with his predecessor Donald R. Soule.

Symonds took the job of technical director at the Loeb when Soule retired in January 1992. Previously he had worked part-time managing technical theater at the Agassiz.

But earlier this year, the Standing Committee on Dramatics decided to expand Symonds position to "technical director and lecturer of the dramatic arts," the position Soule held before he retired.

After a nation-wide search that began in December, the committee voted two weeks ago to replace Symonds with J. Michael Griggs, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland and award-winning set designer.

Both Professor of English Robert J. Brustein, director of the Loeb Drama Center and Senior Lecturer on English and committee Chair Michael S. Shinagel say it was Symonds--and not the committee--that demanded the position be expanded.

"He refused to take the technical director position without teaching the design course. He forced the search," Brustein says, indicating that Symonds' lack of teaching experience was at issue.

Brustein says the committee offered Symonds the technical director position in response to "students' enthusiasm about Symonds," but Symonds says he was never clear on the committee's offer. He also says that the committee seemed unwilling to renegotiate his position.

"I tried to arrange every appropriate use of my skills and talents on a permanent basis and found substantial disinterest in talking about it, in any compromise," he says, later adding that the real problem was a lack of communication between the committee, the ART, and himself.

The decision to replace Symonds angered many drama students who say they feel their opinions were not taken into consideration.

"We were very upset, very angry because it feels like no matter what the students did, no one paid any attention," says Smith.

Michael D. Rosenbaum '94, president of the Gilbert and Sullivan Players, says he received more than 100 signatures on a petition in Symonds' support and embarked on a telephone campaign to committee members and top administrators.

Several students and Symonds say his situation points to a larger problem, Harvard's hands-off relationship with student theater.

According to Brustein, Harvard has a long-standing tradition of treating theater as an extracurriculur activity and not as an academic discipline.

"The tradition of undergraduate theater is that it's not been connected with any courses or training," he says. "There has always been a great deal of hostility to the idea of curriculur drama."

But according to administrators, Harvard's commitment to the dramatic arts is evidenced by its contract with the ART, an agreement many students say should never have been negotiated.

As part of the agreement, the ART receives free use of the Loeb for professional theatrical productions as well as an annual lump-sum payment earmarked for undergraduate theater production--which usually amounts to about a half-million dollars.

In return, the ART manages the Loeb, supervises undergraduate theater and teaches undergraduate courses in the dramatic arts.

Most students interviewed acknowledge that the ART does provide resources that they might otherwise not have. The courses the professionals teach comprise a bulk of the dramatic arts curriculum currently offered.

Prior to the ART's arrival, Harvard's offerings in drama were confined to a few literature courses in the English department, with no courses in the practical dramatic arts.

Since the arrival of the ART, the course offerings have grown dramatically. This year, there were seventeen courses offered in the dramatic arts, including ten taught by ART professionals.

"They were consummate professionals, hired to do classes we never had," Soule says. "It allowed students to work with professionals."

Students focus most of their criticism not on the ART but on the College, which has only one tenured professor, Brustein, teaching dramatics courses. For the past two years, the HRDC circulated petitions calling for increased curricular offerings, and most recently for an endowed professorship, according to Declan Fox '94, HRDC president.

Administrators say there is no money to expand the curriculum or tenure another professor who can also teach dramatic arts, Fox says.

Jennifer G. Uphoff '93, one of five special concentrators in the dramatic arts, says her course of study was shaped by the courses ART lecturers decided to give.

"There are whole areas of theater I don't know about just because no one has happened to teach courses on it in the past four years I've been here," says Uphoff, former HRDC president who directed Love's Labors Lost this semester.

Shettle also says the administration should establish a formal and full arts curriculum and that most of the current courses offered are "esoteric to most and not enough to go around."

'The tradition of undergraduate, theater is that it's not been connected with any courses or training...There has always been a great deal of hostility to the idea of curricular drama.'

Robert J. Brustein, professor of English and director, Loeb Drama Center

"I think in terms of the College, the University should absolutely create a dramatic arts curriculum. It's as essential as any other academic endeavor," Shettle says. "I don't know why the administration is so reticent on this topic."

"I've been calling for [a drama concentration] for thirteen years," Brustein says. "We now have eight, ten, twelve courses, but it's not enough. There is no sequence of dramatic literature. These are things that have to be taught to any people seriously interested in theater.

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles said last week he did not want to address the issue, referring questions to Dean of Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buell. Buell did not return numerous phone calls this week.

Harvard faculty and administrators say they had hoped the ART's presence as a professional company in the Loeb would be an asset for undergraduate theater beyond the curriculum.

"In bringing the ART, we felt that we were importing a degree of professionalism which should be accorded to the Loeb," says Glen W. Bowersock '57, associate dean of the Faculty for undergraduate education when the ART contract was negotiated.

But student opinion about the ART's contributions to Harvard dramatic arts beyond the curriculum varies tremendously.

Some view the ART's presence as a valuable opportunity for students to receive instruction from professionals, gain access to the production resources of a theater company, and in some cases, work directly on ART productions.

John B. Weinstein '93, director of Into the Woods, sought advice from ART Director Robert Scanlon and ART Institute graduate student Timothy Banker as part of the ART's buddy system.

Although he never met with Scanlon, Weinstein says his conversations with Banker were very helpful.

"Much of his advice was really useful and a lot of his suggestions we followed through on. Had I done it again I would have had him come in even earlier because it was very helpful," he says.

"Having a professional company in residence is definitely a benefit to the students for a million different reasons," Talbot says. "Everything from the actual facility being kept up, the costume shop is stocked and functioning, the wood shop, helping at the box office."

Others, however, complain of feeling estranged from the Loeb--which was originally built for student theater--and say ART workers have little regard for student productions. Some undergraduates say there is tension between students and ART professionals, whose primary commitment is to produce their own shows.

"It is very antagonistic always space contraints and ART people not being very trusting of students," Talbot says.

"They don't have the time," says Diana R. Graham '94, a member of the Gilbert and Sullivan Players board of directors who co-produced Into the Woods earlier this year. "And the reason is that it's not their priority. Their priority is to do their own shows."

Adams House drama tutor Arthur F. Shettle also says students have approached him about "bad experiences with the ART."

Even Fox and Uphoff acknowledge that students feel alienated and neglected at times. Both say approaching one of the professionals may be intimidating but that the ART employees are always willing to help.

"I've heard complaints that the Loeb is a student theater and that the ART is almost trying to get students out of the building," Fox says. "But I think that it's the attitude that perpetuate the problem."

Brustein acknowledge that problem occasionally arise, but he attribute them to the natural competition arising from the existence of student and ART groups in the Loeb.

"If you have various groups occupying a building there's no such thing as a perfect, peaceful arrangement," he says.

Brustein also says ART professional are ready to help students when they have the time but that they already have many responsibilities to fulfill during their working hours.

"At the ART, whoever has the time gaves, the time [to students]," he says. Brustein says the professionals are already overextended in their work, trying to "stay alive as a professional theater at a time when finances are terrible.

Many students say there is little support for theater beyond the Loeb. With the exception of a handful of house drama tutor, there is no official supervisor for house drama productions.

Although there are some indications of a renewed commitment to theater in the houses including the conversion of the Adams House pool and Lowell lecture hall into theaters--many students say the loss of Symmonds who had been an unofficial advisor to the houses well hurt future productions.

"The University will be lucky if someone's not killed working on house shows because there's no one there advise them," Graham says.

In response to safety and efficiency concerns, Kiely and Shinagel say they may propose hiring Symonds to a new position as technical director for house productions.

"As a house master, I feel very strongly that student should be encouraged to do drama as much as they can but also that there be adequate support to avoid risks," Shinagel says.

"There might even be savings in the long run because if there was somebody really overseeing the tech work and the technical equipment there wouldn't be so much wash in renting things and losing things," Kiely says.

Although both Kiely and Shinagel say the proposal create a house technical director position look proposal to create a house technical director position looks promising, students involved in the dramatic arts have little concrete commitment from the College in term of improving the curriculum or smoothing relations with the ART.

"If properly managed, the ART Harvard relationship could be a productive, workable environment for student theater," says Symonds.

"But a combination of the lack of priority toward undergraduate theater on the university's side and ART artistic and financial concerns for itself has led to imperfect situation," he says.Crimson Jamie W. BillettTechnical Director ALAN P. SYMONDS '69

Faced with the lack of a formal curriculum, tenured professors and professional support, the Harvard student theater community is faced with...

"We've always been a teaching organization. The people in the organization have always functioned both as professionals and mentors," he says. "Our desire to continue to be an evolving and vital organization really depended on there being young people around."

Fourteen years later, many students say that while the ART provides valuable resources and expertise to student productions, the professionals at the company are no surrogate for a formal theater program or for tenured professors of the dramatic arts.

And students and staffers charge that by placing the mantle of supporting Harvard theater squarely on the ART, Harvard has neglected its responsibility to the arts and to the hundreds of students involved in the dozens of theater productions around campus.

"The general feeling is that no one is there for us; that the ART is not these for us; that the Committee on Dramatic Arts is not there for us," says Kathryn D. Smith '95, stage manager for several undergraduate productions.

Students point to Symonds as one of the only professionals concerned with student productions on campus. His responsibilities officially entail overseeing the technical aspects for student productions at the Loeb and Agassiz, but he has voluntarily assumed work far beyond his job description.

"His job is the Loeb and the Agassiz, but he does basically everthing for every undergraduate theater person on campus. The houses basically couldn't survive without him and neither could City Step," says Jennifer D. Talbot '94, a student theater technician and veteran of 25 shows on campus.

"He helps even shows which are going up in weird places on campus that aren't really theaters; he helps in pre-production, organization, last-minute things, light fixtures," she says.

Symonds estimates he spends "ten to twelve hours, six to seven days a week," working on undergraduate productions and a class, Dramatic Arts 31, he co-instructs with his predecessor Donald R. Soule.

Symonds took the job of technical director at the Loeb when Soule retired in January 1992. Previously he had worked part-time managing technical theater at the Agassiz.

But earlier this year, the Standing Committee on Dramatics decided to expand Symonds position to "technical director and lecturer of the dramatic arts," the position Soule held before he retired.

After a nation-wide search that began in December, the committee voted two weeks ago to replace Symonds with J. Michael Griggs, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland and award-winning set designer.

Both Professor of English Robert J. Brustein, director of the Loeb Drama Center and Senior Lecturer on English and committee Chair Michael S. Shinagel say it was Symonds--and not the committee--that demanded the position be expanded.

"He refused to take the technical director position without teaching the design course. He forced the search," Brustein says, indicating that Symonds' lack of teaching experience was at issue.

Brustein says the committee offered Symonds the technical director position in response to "students' enthusiasm about Symonds," but Symonds says he was never clear on the committee's offer. He also says that the committee seemed unwilling to renegotiate his position.

"I tried to arrange every appropriate use of my skills and talents on a permanent basis and found substantial disinterest in talking about it, in any compromise," he says, later adding that the real problem was a lack of communication between the committee, the ART, and himself.

The decision to replace Symonds angered many drama students who say they feel their opinions were not taken into consideration.

"We were very upset, very angry because it feels like no matter what the students did, no one paid any attention," says Smith.

Michael D. Rosenbaum '94, president of the Gilbert and Sullivan Players, says he received more than 100 signatures on a petition in Symonds' support and embarked on a telephone campaign to committee members and top administrators.

Several students and Symonds say his situation points to a larger problem, Harvard's hands-off relationship with student theater.

According to Brustein, Harvard has a long-standing tradition of treating theater as an extracurriculur activity and not as an academic discipline.

"The tradition of undergraduate theater is that it's not been connected with any courses or training," he says. "There has always been a great deal of hostility to the idea of curriculur drama."

But according to administrators, Harvard's commitment to the dramatic arts is evidenced by its contract with the ART, an agreement many students say should never have been negotiated.

As part of the agreement, the ART receives free use of the Loeb for professional theatrical productions as well as an annual lump-sum payment earmarked for undergraduate theater production--which usually amounts to about a half-million dollars.

In return, the ART manages the Loeb, supervises undergraduate theater and teaches undergraduate courses in the dramatic arts.

Most students interviewed acknowledge that the ART does provide resources that they might otherwise not have. The courses the professionals teach comprise a bulk of the dramatic arts curriculum currently offered.

Prior to the ART's arrival, Harvard's offerings in drama were confined to a few literature courses in the English department, with no courses in the practical dramatic arts.

Since the arrival of the ART, the course offerings have grown dramatically. This year, there were seventeen courses offered in the dramatic arts, including ten taught by ART professionals.

"They were consummate professionals, hired to do classes we never had," Soule says. "It allowed students to work with professionals."

Students focus most of their criticism not on the ART but on the College, which has only one tenured professor, Brustein, teaching dramatics courses. For the past two years, the HRDC circulated petitions calling for increased curricular offerings, and most recently for an endowed professorship, according to Declan Fox '94, HRDC president.

Administrators say there is no money to expand the curriculum or tenure another professor who can also teach dramatic arts, Fox says.

Jennifer G. Uphoff '93, one of five special concentrators in the dramatic arts, says her course of study was shaped by the courses ART lecturers decided to give.

"There are whole areas of theater I don't know about just because no one has happened to teach courses on it in the past four years I've been here," says Uphoff, former HRDC president who directed Love's Labors Lost this semester.

Shettle also says the administration should establish a formal and full arts curriculum and that most of the current courses offered are "esoteric to most and not enough to go around."

'The tradition of undergraduate, theater is that it's not been connected with any courses or training...There has always been a great deal of hostility to the idea of curricular drama.'

Robert J. Brustein, professor of English and director, Loeb Drama Center

"I think in terms of the College, the University should absolutely create a dramatic arts curriculum. It's as essential as any other academic endeavor," Shettle says. "I don't know why the administration is so reticent on this topic."

"I've been calling for [a drama concentration] for thirteen years," Brustein says. "We now have eight, ten, twelve courses, but it's not enough. There is no sequence of dramatic literature. These are things that have to be taught to any people seriously interested in theater.

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles said last week he did not want to address the issue, referring questions to Dean of Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buell. Buell did not return numerous phone calls this week.

Harvard faculty and administrators say they had hoped the ART's presence as a professional company in the Loeb would be an asset for undergraduate theater beyond the curriculum.

"In bringing the ART, we felt that we were importing a degree of professionalism which should be accorded to the Loeb," says Glen W. Bowersock '57, associate dean of the Faculty for undergraduate education when the ART contract was negotiated.

But student opinion about the ART's contributions to Harvard dramatic arts beyond the curriculum varies tremendously.

Some view the ART's presence as a valuable opportunity for students to receive instruction from professionals, gain access to the production resources of a theater company, and in some cases, work directly on ART productions.

John B. Weinstein '93, director of Into the Woods, sought advice from ART Director Robert Scanlon and ART Institute graduate student Timothy Banker as part of the ART's buddy system.

Although he never met with Scanlon, Weinstein says his conversations with Banker were very helpful.

"Much of his advice was really useful and a lot of his suggestions we followed through on. Had I done it again I would have had him come in even earlier because it was very helpful," he says.

"Having a professional company in residence is definitely a benefit to the students for a million different reasons," Talbot says. "Everything from the actual facility being kept up, the costume shop is stocked and functioning, the wood shop, helping at the box office."

Others, however, complain of feeling estranged from the Loeb--which was originally built for student theater--and say ART workers have little regard for student productions. Some undergraduates say there is tension between students and ART professionals, whose primary commitment is to produce their own shows.

"It is very antagonistic always space contraints and ART people not being very trusting of students," Talbot says.

"They don't have the time," says Diana R. Graham '94, a member of the Gilbert and Sullivan Players board of directors who co-produced Into the Woods earlier this year. "And the reason is that it's not their priority. Their priority is to do their own shows."

Adams House drama tutor Arthur F. Shettle also says students have approached him about "bad experiences with the ART."

Even Fox and Uphoff acknowledge that students feel alienated and neglected at times. Both say approaching one of the professionals may be intimidating but that the ART employees are always willing to help.

"I've heard complaints that the Loeb is a student theater and that the ART is almost trying to get students out of the building," Fox says. "But I think that it's the attitude that perpetuate the problem."

Brustein acknowledge that problem occasionally arise, but he attribute them to the natural competition arising from the existence of student and ART groups in the Loeb.

"If you have various groups occupying a building there's no such thing as a perfect, peaceful arrangement," he says.

Brustein also says ART professional are ready to help students when they have the time but that they already have many responsibilities to fulfill during their working hours.

"At the ART, whoever has the time gaves, the time [to students]," he says. Brustein says the professionals are already overextended in their work, trying to "stay alive as a professional theater at a time when finances are terrible.

Many students say there is little support for theater beyond the Loeb. With the exception of a handful of house drama tutor, there is no official supervisor for house drama productions.

Although there are some indications of a renewed commitment to theater in the houses including the conversion of the Adams House pool and Lowell lecture hall into theaters--many students say the loss of Symmonds who had been an unofficial advisor to the houses well hurt future productions.

"The University will be lucky if someone's not killed working on house shows because there's no one there advise them," Graham says.

In response to safety and efficiency concerns, Kiely and Shinagel say they may propose hiring Symonds to a new position as technical director for house productions.

"As a house master, I feel very strongly that student should be encouraged to do drama as much as they can but also that there be adequate support to avoid risks," Shinagel says.

"There might even be savings in the long run because if there was somebody really overseeing the tech work and the technical equipment there wouldn't be so much wash in renting things and losing things," Kiely says.

Although both Kiely and Shinagel say the proposal create a house technical director position look proposal to create a house technical director position looks promising, students involved in the dramatic arts have little concrete commitment from the College in term of improving the curriculum or smoothing relations with the ART.

"If properly managed, the ART Harvard relationship could be a productive, workable environment for student theater," says Symonds.

"But a combination of the lack of priority toward undergraduate theater on the university's side and ART artistic and financial concerns for itself has led to imperfect situation," he says.Crimson Jamie W. BillettTechnical Director ALAN P. SYMONDS '69