The Play's The Thing

This column is sometimes used by editors to express their personal ideas on College subjects. These are not editorials, and they do not necessarily express the majority view of the CRIMSON.

For this year, at least, the course of Harvard drama seems clear. The HDC has announced Murder in the Cathedral for its third production, and after a seasonal curtain raiser of MacLeish, the Poets' Theatre is launched into Yeats. Evidently this will not be another season featuring the drama of Shakespeare and the wit of Noel Coward.

Not that theatre here has been authored only by these Masters--Old and New. But too many of the productions in the past, ranging through Corialanus, Candida, Blithe Spirit and Othello, have been seen and played too much to have any originality or much interest for the audience.

And for the sake of Harvard theatre in the future, student groups should shy from repeating the type of dramatic hash that sustains high school theatrics and grossly amateur stock groups. With the first faculty guided workshop under way since the days of George Pierce Baker, and increasing agitation for a University built plant to house student productions, I believe that present groups can most aid their own cause by raising the prestige of theatre at Harvard. This prestige can only come through experimentation. Lacking a drama department that would recruit talent with subsidies such as a degree for study that is essentially vocational rather than academic, Harvard cannot compete with the theatre factories of California and Florida. Productions here can be neither so lavish nor numerous; they must be more imaginative.

Only by striking out after new forms of drama, new means of expression and types of production can Harvard gain distinction. And certainly, a University is the proper place for such work. The academic community can be excited by innovation, and will more readily support new forms and ideas than would a New York audience, or one leary of the unconventional.

Besides raising the reputation of Harvard drama, a concerted program of experimentation would quite probably improve the quality of performance and production. Rather than imagining how Evans would act, Logan direct, and Mielzener design a particular play, the Harvard groups would be thrown on their own devices. In the past, when Shakespeare has been played, the few principals have been generally good. But many less talented supporting players have tried to do their parts as they had seen them done by others, and by comparison either to the original model or to the principals they were woefully inadequate.

In plays that are either new, or outside of the much done realistic tradition, the whole company is forced to create rather than mimic. If Harvard becomes known for a theatre atmosphere that demands initiative and creative ability it will sooner become respected than groups that continue to turn out replicas of Broadway.

The absence of HTG and Idler takes the pressure of competition from the two remaining groups. Until the new workshop gets under way, these groups can do much to prove that theatre talent at Harvard deserves attention from the Faculty and Corporation.