Adopted Children

Stage and Radio have had sadly diverse upbringings under the wing of the University. Stage is the stunted child. Radio is maturing all the time into powerful, rangy manhood. This inconsistent nourishment of dramatic expression is not only unfortunate, it is inexplicable.

Stage-was first adopted in 1888, when the University made George Pierce Baker a professor of Playwrighting. Harvard did not completely approve of the shady connotations of Theatre, but as long as Baker's English 47 confined itself to the theory of writing plays, it could remain in the family. Theory, however, is of little value without constant testing in workshop productions. Harvard did not agree, so Baker took his Workshop to Radcliffe and developed it there until the skeptical parent was finally convinced in 1913. Stage was no longer a child. Baker modestly taught drama to such budding pupils as Philip Barry, Sidney Howard, S. N. Behrman, George Abbott and Eugene O'Neill, when, in 1924, Edward S. Harkness offered to donate a completely equipped auditorium to the University. This time the parent was definite. Stage should be seen and not heard; taught and not acted. Harkness and Baker were told by President Lowell that "The drama has no place at Harvard College." That was that Harkness gave his theatre to Yale, and Baker left to direct it. Since that Golden Age, the Harvard Dramatic Club, which Baker founded in 1908, has been trying to carry on the "47 Workshop's" quality in an atmosphere of disinheritance.

Radio, on the other hand, was adopted in the spring of 1939 and almost immediately became the protege of the Faculty. In 1940, it did a series of programs with the Civilization Councillors over short wave station WRUL. Professor Friedrich gives a section on the radio as a social force, in Government 25. Charles Siepmann, noted authority on radio, gave a series of lectures last fall. Norman Corwin and Phil Cohen, the most brilliant men at CBS, have been guest speakers. The Crimson Network runs a full-fledged station, and the Radio Workshop has been organized specifically for the writing of drama for the air waves.

Money problems have not justified the University's differential treatment of Stage and Radio. Harkness had the money for a theatre. Nor does the argument hold that Harvard teaches only theory--for Baker, if this were true, never would have been allowed his "47 Workshop." It was childish to limit drama to the teaching of theory; it was extravagant to refuse the donation of an auditorium and lose the best dramatist of the day. But for the University to continue its stepfatherly treatment, and charge the Harvard Dramatic Club an average of two hundred dollars a production for ill-equipped, run-down Sanders Theatre is flatly ludicrous.