ACTING FOR CREDIT

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The Loeb Drama Center's proposal to offer a course for credit that will include debated before a decision is reached. The CRIMSON'S recent editorials representing conflicting points of view raised many of the important questions this subject.

The CRIMSON'S majority opinions favoring such a course, expressed the idea that offering credit for acting in Loeb productions would give talented undergraduates an opportunity to devote great attention to the productions without being put in an impossible bind academically. Thus, the editors reasoned, the need for graduate and professional actors would be eliminated. (By "professional actors," I mean, and assume the CRIMSON means, qualified people able to devote the major part of their time and energies to improving as well as exhibiting their craft.)

This statement troubles me for several reasons. First, Harvard undergraduates with talent have as a rule come forward and expended much time and energy without being given academic credit. True, undergraduates have, with classic exceptions, devoted less than all of their time to theater. But one course producing one play per year will not release students from enough academic obligations to cast and staff a full year of Loeb productions. A curriculum of many courses would make a significant difference, but we are told that Harvard will not create a drama department. (Obviously such a department has no place in the College.) No doubt those undergraduates who are given academic credit for a course that includes working in a production will participate in more than the one "academic" production. But the remaining Loeb plays, those that are not produced by the course, will probably have even less faculty direction and supervision then those presently being done there, and consequently won't provide "professional" training.

If the new course proposal is designed to improve the general level of Loeb productions it is clearly inadequate. The best men in the profession can't make actors of professional quality from raw undergraduates in one year. But if the course is available as a full course to the same student through two, three or four years, it will become in effect a major field of concentration. Since qualified professional teachers will be unwilling to stay in Cambridge indefinitely, especially if they must begin with a new batch of sow's ears every year, the administrators of the course will be faced with the continuing problem of maintaining a consistently high level in the quality of teachers.

Assuming these problems can be overcome, the selection of the proper students must be faced. If truly fine teachers are brought in, and a splendid course of instruction instituted, some students will be drawn to the College as undergraduates in order to become actors. Thus the College ought now to decide if a professional actor is like a professional lawyer or doctor and similarly better trained after a liberal arts education. Furthermore, some prospective applicants will come to Cambridge only for dramatic training, applying for admission as special students to this course alone. Previously untrained and uninterested undergraduates will be even more estranged from the main stage than before.

I don't necessarily condemn the idea of an Olympian troupe in the Loeb disguised as students. But its implications should be faced. George Pierce Baker's 47 Workshop attracted special students of magnificent promise--Eugene O'Neill, for instance. But Baker was teaching playwriting, a more appropriate subject for a liberal arts college. If profesional acting teachers are brought in on a temporary basis and special students comprise the essential core of the course, why offer it to Harvard College? If such a group were to stage only one play a year, the value of the College qua audience is hardly worth the money and the withdrawal of facilities from regular undergraduates.

Even assuming only "real" undergraduates were taken into the course, the nature of the course proposal itself illustrates the critical conflict which the Loeb administrators are attempting to resolve. It would combine elements of English literature courses with elements of actor training. Putting a course in acting into a course in dramatic literature does not make acting a proper subject for formal study in Harvard College Many great actors have been uneducated and inarticulate. Many of Harvard's best actors have not been concentrators in the Humanities. Will an A student in English honors who can't act and is all thumbs be given preference in admission to this course over student in social relations who has acted professionally and is perfect for a major role in the proposed production? Suppose the Soc Rel student is known to have no interest in anything said about dramatic literature or about acting except what the director will say to him about his immediate role in the play. If he does well in the course it is only because he has done well in his role, thus he has been hired at the price of academic credit and a good grade. If our nontheatrical, artless English student is admitted instead, the net gain to the Loeb stage is zero, and he might well have learned more of value in a regular dramatic literature course. One could object that I have drawn polarized caricatures, and that a really good actor must have a broad interest in the drama. Both objections can be countered by interviewing the cast of almost any theatrical production here, in New York, or anywhere.

Finally, it is dangerous to think that one course can be offered now and expect that there will not be a multiplication of acting courses in the curriculum. The Loeb was, as I remember, originally to be run by three professionals: a director, a technician and a secretary. It opened in 1960 with seven professionals, adding a costume staff of two, an assistant director and a house manager. The program for the Inspector General, produced this season, listed ten professionals, including an assistant technical director, another costumer and an assistant house manager. The theater is a demanding hand craft with a healthy appetite for talented workers and cannot be compromised once the commitment of professionalism is made in a branch of that craft. If the standards of professionalism are applied to acting, an increased demand like that which already is enlarging the technical staff can be expected to arise. Historically Harvard theater has seemed most professional when in fact it was so. For example, many of the Harvard undergraduates involved in the excellent productions of the Veterans Theater Workshop, HDC and Brattle Theater group after the Second World War had acquired theatrical experience and maturity before they arrived in Cambridge.

If the College wants professional theater now it can buy it and install it in the Loeb. But the more existence of the Loeb Drama Center does not demand or justify the addition of professional acting courses in the undergraduate curriculum any more than the existence of oldiers Field demands professional football. Joel F. Henning '61   President, HDC 19

Finally, it is dangerous to think that one course can be offered now and expect that there will not be a multiplication of acting courses in the curriculum. The Loeb was, as I remember, originally to be run by three professionals: a director, a technician and a secretary. It opened in 1960 with seven professionals, adding a costume staff of two, an assistant director and a house manager. The program for the Inspector General, produced this season, listed ten professionals, including an assistant technical director, another costumer and an assistant house manager. The theater is a demanding hand craft with a healthy appetite for talented workers and cannot be compromised once the commitment of professionalism is made in a branch of that craft. If the standards of professionalism are applied to acting, an increased demand like that which already is enlarging the technical staff can be expected to arise. Historically Harvard theater has seemed most professional when in fact it was so. For example, many of the Harvard undergraduates involved in the excellent productions of the Veterans Theater Workshop, HDC and Brattle Theater group after the Second World War had acquired theatrical experience and maturity before they arrived in Cambridge.

If the College wants professional theater now it can buy it and install it in the Loeb. But the more existence of the Loeb Drama Center does not demand or justify the addition of professional acting courses in the undergraduate curriculum any more than the existence of oldiers Field demands professional football. Joel F. Henning '61   President, HDC 19