Students, Faculty, Alumni Make Theater Drive Plans

In a pair of full-dress production conferences, the stage was set yesterday for stepped-up action on both the national and local scenes in the drive for a Harvard theater.

Designers and directors present at the meetings included John Mason Brown '23 (second from left), leader of the alumni theater group, Deam McGeorge Bundy (second from right), Archibald MacLeish (right), Boylston professor of Rhetoric and Orator and Harry T. Levin (left), professor of English, MacLeish and Levin composed the faculty committee on the theater.

The for met first at a three hour luncheon conference to discuss progress made by Brown in setting up the framework of the unofficial national fund drive. Later in the afternoon, they held a second meeting with undergraduate members of the Harvard College Theater Committee.

At this latter meeting, the two groups exchanged reports of their work up to now. The undergraduate committee delivered a series of reports expressing student opinions on the various phases of the problem of theater at Harvard.

Most important of these was a set of recommendations on the design of the theater plant presented by Anthony Herrey '54, one of the chief designers for the Harvard Dramatic Club. The recommendations were greeted with considerable interest by both Brown and Bundy.

Make New Report

Also discussed were plans for a theatrical production at Commencement designed both to express student interest and ability and to stimulate a fund-giving spirit among outside groups. Various suggestions about the production were made, but nothing was settled beyond the site which is almost certain to be the Tercentenary theater.

Brown also asked the committee to bring up to date an estimate made in 1953 of the amount of time the new theater would be used during the year.