Drama in the Limelight

Earlier this month, when the Harvard-Radcliffe Drama Club (HRDC) regretfully announced that it could not find anyone to fill its visiting director position, the decision disappointed many students. Each spring, the project brings one esteemed director to Harvard in order to stage a dramatic show in the Loeb Mainstage. Many of HRDC’s members greatly desire the time to work with the visiting directors who provide a constructive, outside perspective of theater, strengthening the depth and breadth of students’ dramatic knowledge.

HRDC admitted its poor planning was a prime reason that a director could not be found. During the past few years, however, HRDC’s searches for suitable directors have often been marked by great difficulty. Unlike the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, whose concentrators benefit from a number of visiting professors, HRDC and drama-oriented students have no such department to easily attract visiting scholars. HRDC deserves greater institutional support to provide sufficient dramatic initiatives for drama students. To this end, the University should seek to form an undergraduate dramatic arts concentration.

Fortunately, a strong foundation already exists to supply a future department. More than two dozen faculty members are already affiliated with the Committee on Dramatics. The Committee itself offers 16 undergraduate dramatic arts courses, more courses than offered within the existing department of Environmental Sciences and Public Policy. Plus, Harvard’s art resources are plentiful; Harvard possesses many performance spaces useful for dramatic instruction.

Complementing this basic structure, extracurricular and academic choices of many students signal a high demand for a dramatic arts concentration. Semester after semester, countless students choose to participate in one of more than two dozen dramatic productions—through this optional work, they demonstrate their passion for theater. In addition, a sizeable number of students elect to pursue a special concentration in dramatic or performing arts. And of the dramatic arts courses offered, high competition exists for the limited amount of spaces available. For example, over 40 students auditioned for this fall’s course Dramatic Arts 18r: “Advanced Acting: 20th Century Texts,” with the hope of being selected as one of about a dozen class members.

Harvard’s interpretation of liberal arts has not traditionally included dramatic arts. Despite the strong foundation and high student demand for a dramatic arts concentration, some complain the main focus of a dramatic arts concentration, presumably performance skills, may not be rigorous enough to match the thoroughness of Harvard’s other concentrations. But it is important to recognize that Harvard has the means to develop a legitimate and multi-layered concentration benefiting drama students with not only practice, but also theory and history. There a number of reputable dramatic arts or theater concentrations at other prestigious universities, like Dartmouth, Duke, NYU, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale; their examples demonstrate the possibility of a successful dramatic arts concentration within the jurisdiction of an esteemed liberal arts college.

As with other concentrations, the formulation of a dramatic arts concentration must be a carefully planned process that occurs over a few years and includes the input of students, faculty and members of theater departments from outside Harvard. Practically, the realization of a dramatic arts department would best occur in the context of the ongoing curricular review. The attainment of such a concentration would sufficiently provide drama-oriented students with the appropriate resources and thus benefit Harvard academics, theater and the community at large.