Dramatic Club Initiates New Theatre Workshop

In an effort to revitalize theatrical activity in the University, the Dramatic Club yesterday initiated a permanent theatre workshop to train local actors and actresses.

Called the Harvard Acting Laboratory, the workshop will have a faculty of four, including Rabert Chapman, assistant professor of English, and Mrs. Mary Howe, a former member of the Abbey Theatre and actress with the now-closed Brattle Theatre. Instructors in ballet and fencing will be appointed soon.

The Poets' Theatre is co-operating with the HDC in sponsoring the project. Mrs. Howe, a director of this theatre, is the wife of Mark DeWolfe Howe '28, professor of Law.

To Offer Year Course

The laboratory will offer a full-year course in acting techniques for 24 to 30 Harvard and Radcliffe students. Preference will be given to freshmen and sophomores, although exceptionally qualified juniors will be accepted.

Neil Smith '55, HDC president, said yesterday he expects more than 100 applicants for the places in the program. He based this estimate on the fact that 115 actors and actresses were turned down for parts in the HDC's first fall production, "The Male Animal." They were told about plans for the lab and many showed interest.

Large Turnout for "Male Animal"

"The exceptional turnout for "The Male Animal," said Smith, "was one of the many recent indications of the need for a laboratory of this kind. There are many people who would like to participate in theatre at Harvard and who cannot be cast in HDC or Poets Theatre productions. The lab will keep these people active in theatre while also giving them valuable basic training."

"We hope," he added, "that the lab will be a reincarnation of the '47 Workshop of George Pierce Baker in that it will be a center around which theatrical activity at Harvard can build. It could well be the sort of impetus which theatre here so badly needs."

Chapman said yesterday he wants to teach the "classical rather than the naturalistic, Stanislavsky technique of acting which it the dominant method used on the American stage." The classical technique, he explained, is the style of acting which should be used in the plays of Shakespeare, Moliere, Racine and the Greek dramatists. "The difference in the two styles is the distinction between rhetoric and ordinary conversation in diction, and between ballet and touch football in movement," he added.

"I hope," said Chapman, "that the lab will be an impetus to acting of this kind in America as well as a training place and proving ground for undergraduate productions."

The lab will focus on basic techniques of diction and pantomime. Chapman said he and Mrs. Howe would spend two hours a week in acting instruction. Students will be asked to spend at least two other hours a week, probably divided between fencing and ballet instruction and memory work for the acting classes.

No Meeting Place

As of now, the lab still has no place to meet. Until a permanent location is found, the acting classes will meet either in Chapman's room in Eliot House or in Mrs. Howe's home.

If a large enough group is interested in the program, classes will get under way next week, Smith said