Harvard Drama Thrives on Limitation

I had an English teacher once who said that the reason for writing poetry with rhyme and meter was that it made you think about what you were trying to say. The explanation seemed inadequate at the time, but when I tried writing verse of my own, I found that, as far as it went, the statement was true. By the same token, there seems to be an advantage in putting on plays in the Adams House Dining Room or the Loeb Experimental Theatre. This year, at least, Harvard drama thrived on limitation.

Of the five straight plays performed on the Loeb main stage this year, only Jonathan Black's production of The Seagull was outstanding--and that, ironically enough, was a play the Faculty Committee on Theatre had originally rejected as too difficult (only after the Harvard Dramatic Club reiterated its desire to do the play did the committee give in).

Peter Skolnik's production of A View from the Bridge, the other fall HDC production, was only a limited success. The spring productions were bombs.

All four offerings of the Adams House Drama Society--three plays and a concert reading--on the other hand were stunning. The Beggar's Opera, directed by John Lithgow, old out halfway through its run, and won the coveted Commencement slot at the Loeb. Of the plays I saw at the Ex, three--The Public Eye, directed by Michael D. Schlesinger, The Forced Marriage, directed by Lithgow, and The Chambers, written and directed by Barry Forman--ranked with the Adams House shows.

In large measure the failure of the spring season at the Loeb, which reportedly set record lows on ticket sales, results from the choice of plays. Buechner's Danton's Death proved far too rhetorical, and a play with a passive protagonist must inevitably drag. James A. Culpepper's Phyllis Anderson Award-winning Treason at West Point combined inept dialogue and inadequate characterization. It was barely competent. Anthony Graham-White's adaptation of Johnson, Marston, and Chapman's Eastward Ho! had more potential--it suffered most from a lack of good comic actors. But the play is hardly an old standby.

The scripts cannot explain the diffuseness of these and other Loeb shows, however. There seems to be something wrong with the Loeb itself, or the way it is used. People have been mumbling that for years now, and for some, it has become an obsession. Some of the best actors and directors at Harvard prefer not to work on the main stage. A few refuse to work in the building at all. Behind this winter's reorganization of the HDC was the realization that the Loeb still isn't the center it's supposed to be.

One of the standard theories is that the Loeb scares people, that the prospect of a movable stage, good acoustics, plenty of space, and one of the most modern lighting boards in the world, overwhelms them, reduces them to the most elementary set designs and uninspired lighting. I have never actually found someone who claimed to have been overwhelmed, but a lot of people think others have been, and a few directors have admitted to vague uneasiness.

There is probably a lot of truth in this idea. For all their supposed bravura, Harvard's actors and tech men know pretty well how good they are. They have seen plenty of professional productions, they live in an academic community in which excellence is mere entree, and they carry or hide within themselves large quantities of insecurity or humility. Under such ideal conditions as the Loeb appears to provide, they are made particularly aware that their ineptitudes will be revealed. So they worry, and limit their imaginations, and, I would bet, spend far too much energy trying not to make mistakes.

There is something very freeing about adversity. Given the difficult job of putting on a play, in one end of a House dining room or in the cramped Experimental Theatre, these same anxious students can assume they will be forgiven their lapses; in consequence they often make fewer.

Of course there is a lot in the argument people overlook lapses in House shows that would be unforgivable on the main stage. The design of the Loeb itself, the carpeted stairs, the comfortable seats, set up expectations few shows can meet. In the dining room, any skill is impressive. When, occasionally, a successful House production is transferred to the Loeb, it often seems tacky, or flat.

A third theory is that the Loeb dwarfs actors and productions. The stage is awfully big, and the bulk of the seats are further back than in the makeshift theatres. Harvard's actors are generally much better at expressing things with their faces than with body movement. The quivering of the mouth that works in the Ex is lost to the main stage audience, and directors often complain that an actor who seems full of vitality and charm in a practice room, and thereby wins a part, turns out not to be able to project his warmth on the stage.

Perhaps in an attempt to make contact with the audience, directors have moved their staging forward into the theatre. Two of the five productions this year were done in three-quarter-round, with actors frequently entering through the side aisles. Of the other three, two employed sets that stopped close to the edge of the stage; only The Seagull had deep sets.

I think this sort of staging is a mistake. It exaggerates the problems of working in the Loeb because it breaks up the illusion. A band of soldiers, for example, parading down the center aisle, calls attention to the linoleum on the floor and the exit signs above the doors near which they enter. The shallow sets destroy the sense of a world around the actors. Flats too far forward make the action seem two-dimension, which undercuts whatever believability the actors have given the play. The stylized sets in the three spring productions also enhanced the artificiality.

Perhaps the most common complaint about the Loeb is that it feels impersonal, that it is not fun to work in, that there isn't enough going on in it. It is this problem that the students who proposed the new HDC constitution that was adopted in February hoped to solve. The history of the battle over the constitution is a good indication of just what this problem of atmosphere is thought to amount to.

Back in December, John Anderson began worrying about the chaotic state of the HDC, supposedly the college's major producing organization. It had not met all year, the treasury was in trouble, the number of people showing up to work on shows seemed to be declining. Together with David Maynard, Laura Esterman, and John Lithgow, he worked out a proposal to place control of the club in the hands of a non-elective, self-perpetuating executive committee. The four of them were to form the committee, which would have power to select all plays for main stage performance. After a discussion with Robert Chapman, director of the Loeb, George Hamlin, associate director, and Daniel Seltzer, then on sabbatical and now associate director, they invited Timothy Mayer, president of the Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players, to join the committee as "best representing the dramatic community outside the Loeb." The five of them then prepared a one-page summary of their recommendations and asked President Mark H. Bramhall to call a meeting of the club.

Knowledge of the proposal had spread; the battle lines were already drawn before the meeting. Objections centered on the autonomy of the powerful executive committee. Speaking for the five students who proposed the plan, Mayer countered by saying that the Faculty would not accept an elective committee. Speaking for the five students who proposed the plan, Mayer countered by saying that the Faculty would not accept an elective committee. In a masterly speech, he described the poor condition of the club, agreed that free elections would be nice, but asserted that so long as the HDC wanted to work in the Loeb, it had to please the Faculty directors.

What was peculiar, however, was that the new executive committee wasn't that much more powerful than the old one had been. Previously the executive committee had submitted a list of plays and directors to the Faculty Committee on the Theatre and the committee had indicated which it approved. If the students disliked the Faculty's choices, they could haggle, through the Faculty directors of the Loeb, who are members of the committee. The proposed executive committee would select the plays and directors in consultation with the Faculty directors, who would have no vote. But the season still had to get the Faculty committee's approval. Mayer and company promoted the idea that the committee's self-perpetuating status, although unfortunate, was a necessary student concession to balance the grant of power they were to receive. But it was actually the Faculty directors who were using the fluid situation to consolidate their own influence. As before, they could ask the Faculty committee to veto any student proposal they coudn't themselves block. But now they could also affect the HDC's plans from the outset, either by argument, or by suggesting that the Faculty committee would veto a proposal.

All this those who object to the plan recognized merely by saying that the executive committee would become the pawn of the Faculty directors. The price seemed slight, however, when weighed against the promise of an HDC renaissance. There were to be benefit performances to replenish the treasury; under existing arrangements the HDC made no money on Loeb shows. There were to be special benefits for HDC members: free tickets, lectures, a newsletter. The next week the constitution was ratified 39-1. An elected president was to represent the membership. At executive committee meetings, though, he would have no vote. An amendment set up an elaborate procedure allowing for a membership veto of proposed appointees to the executive committee.

The five students who had proposed the constitution took office as the executive committee. During the Spring they planned a Fall season of four plays and four related movies plus lectures and colloquia. Seen at a few months distance, the rucus over the constitution seems very strange. All that happened really was that an executive was established small enough to communicate with the Faculty advisors regularly and powerful enough to make plans. It's surprising someone didn't think of this when the Loeb first opened.

If the four-play season and the program of special events succeed in at-S-14The Loeb offers the best in modern stage equipment--but actors and directors complain that its vastness is sometimes a handicap.