Faculty May Consider Credit Drama Course

The Faculty Committee on Dramatics is willing to consider a proposal to offer an undergraduate course for credit in dramatic literature and production, Dean Ford said at a press conference yesterday.

No proposal has yet come before the Committee, which must give its approval before any suggestion for course credit can be taken up by the Faculty. But William Alfred, professor of English, said last night that he is working on a proposal, although he could not say when it might be presented.

"Solid Core" Necessary

Under the plan outlined by Alfred, students would attend both formal lectures and working rehearsals or 'labs' at the Loeb, in order to gain an appreciation of the plays as literature and as theatrical experience. Such a course would logically culminate in the full-scale production of one of the plays studied, he said.

Alfred stressed that any course in theatre would require "a solid academic core" in order to be a proper offering by a university faculty. He said he would be opposed to any purely technical courses in directing or staging such as might be given by a professional school of drama.

One suggestion, Alfred said, would be to center the year-long course around a major play, and to study some of the minor dramas that led up to it historically. In weekly workshops students could perform scenes of the major play, and wind up the course with a complete production.

50-Student Limit

Alfred said that the course should be limited to a maximum of 50 students "so that we can give everyone individual attention." He explained that getting top notch technical people to work for a year at Harvard would be a major problem; to be worthwhile the course "would have to be staffed absolutely perfectly," he added.

An important test of the plan's feasibility may be this spring's experiment at the Loeb, which will combine lectures with regular rehearsals in staging fall-scale productions of Shakespeare's King Lear and Julius Caesar, as well as concert readings of four plays by Christopher Marlowe. Daniel Seltzer, assistant professor of English and acting director of the Loeb, said he would want to see how the experiment worked out before making any formal proposal to give academic credit for a drama ocurse.