Dana Gives Talk On Soviet Drama

Soviet drama is an integral part of the war morale of the Russian people, Professor H. W. L. Dana, literary lion of greater Boston, said in a talk at Agassiz Hall at Radcliffe yesterday afternoon. The theatre has always been closely bound up in the life of the average man and the war has not changed its position, except perhaps, to intensify it.

In conjunction with the new play, "Mashenka," which is being prepared by the lately merged Harvard Dramatic Club-Radcliffe Idler group, Dana described the attitude of the Russian people toward their drama to members of the two organizations and their guests.

This intensification is not only true of the drama, but of music as well, Dana stated. As Shostakovitch has said, music and bullets go together in the Red Army. Drama is similarly an almost physical necessity for the Soviet people. In the absence of the vast volume of motion pictures which we have in America, it is their chief form of visual entertainment.

For the soldiers at the front there are touring companies which include in their repertoires plays of all nations, Dana said. One of the favorite writers is Shakespeare, who is probably produced more in the Soviet Union than in either England or America.

Dana also devoted some time to a discussion of "Mashenka," which he discovered for the club, and to the new plays based on Russia's military past, which are now very common in Moscow.