Loeb: A Drama School?

Harvard is slowly and unsurely providing itself with a drama school. Whether good or bad, this fact should be realized by all concerned with Harvard theatre.

The Loeb Advisory Committee has decided to take all decisions concerning the choice of both plays and directors out of the hands of undergraduate organizations. An expanded Committee of five faculty members and four undergraduates (three from the HDC) will now put out a list of acceptable plays and choose directors for them from a list of acceptable directors--prepared, of course, by the Committee. This was done to avoid the inefficiency and wasted effort which have, since the construction of the Loeb Drama Center, hampered the selection of plays. The unfortunate effect of this new change--designed to reform genuine abuses--is to give the Committee total control of organized undergraduate drama.

The scheme is a blow to student organizations and to student initiative. Until now, organizations like the Gilbert and Sullivan Players, the Opera Guild and the HDC, and others more ephemeral, such as House groups, have been the life of Harvard Drama. Under the new system these groups have no choice but to accept what the Committee gives them in the way of plays and directors. The alternatives are taking their productions elsewhere or disbanding. Members who wish to produce in Loeb will have to spend their time getting on the Committee's list of acceptable directors. And the make-up of the new Committee makes one wonder if there will be any Loeb musical productions at all in the next few years.

Clearly the Committee thinks that the HDC will remain the voice of the undergraduate: three of its four undergraduates are from the HDC and it will retain control of the Loeb experimental theatre. But the HDC should not have settled for so little. The experimental theatre has not yet become significant in Harvard drama, and the student members of the Committee are likely to find themselves mere recipients of faculty ideas, just as the present student members of the Committee have readily accepted the new Loeb plan.

Confusedly, perhaps without realizing it, Harvard is heading towards a drama school.