Death of a Scapegoat

Back in November, John H. Anderson '66 decided to do something about Harvard drama. The result, after months of discussion, was the adoption last week of a new Harvard Dramatic Club constitution. The sequence was inevitable; people have been thinking about Harvard theatre in terms of power and politics for half a dozen years now. But while the issues discussed last week were familiar the tone of the debate suggests they have lost their old appeal, that the fruitless controversy over Faculty control of the Loeb is at an end.

The Loeb began to make people nervous before it was completed. During the '50s Harvard drama had flourished in Aggasiz and the House dining halls. Producing organizations abounded--and were constantly in debt. The Loeb, it was feared, with its moveable stage, its novel winch system, its fancy lighting board, would destroy the esprit and the air of crisis that had given so many shoestring productions their vitality.

Closely allied was a fear of Faculty control. Clearly a $2 million building could not be left in the charge of undergraduates. But would the professionals serve as advisors or as managers? When the Committee on the Administration of the Loeb announced that "the Drama Center will be used to produce plays for audiences," some suspected that experimentation would be sacrificed for superficial polish and respectability.

Confronted with a virtual coup d'etat last month, the HDC membership responded as expected. When five undergraduates announced their self-appointment as a non-elective, self-perpetuating executive committee that would select all mainstage plays, it was a new version of the old nightmare. Faculty influence was suspected: "Chapman and Hamlin are probably behind this, you know;" "The committee will be a pawn of the Faculty within a few years."

But when the word came down that "the Faculty won't compromise"--that it wouldn't accept an elective committee--then the HDC membership proved strangely acquiescent, and approved the constitution, 39-1. "It's this or nothing," people said. "We'd better try it." And there was the unspoken suggestion that if the HDC humbled itself at last, the Faculty and the executive committee would lead it out of the wilderness. Special benefits were promised to HDC members. The Faculty Committee, it was announced, would grant the club the proceeds from a night's performance of a mainstage production, "when necessary," to replenish the club's treasury. All manner of things would be well.

But the new constitution isn't going to solve any problems by itself. And if the HDC has merely moved from resistance to control to blind faith in organization, it will be worse off than before. But it is unlikely it has. Even after the ratification of the constitution, one faction forced through an amendment that made the membership's veto power a reality. Politics serves a symbolic function in Harvard drama, and that spirit of dissent represents the potential for artistic innovation.

Hopefully the recent debate has highlighted the irrelevance of the traditional controversy about the Loeb. It appears that the critics of Faculty control have been worrying about a largely theoretical danger. When and if the Faculty does forbid a reasonable and imaginative project--then it will be time to fight. But if the HDC is to revitalize Harvard theatre, it must turn now from institutional to dramatic concerns.