Directors Consider Moving ART

Top officials from the Loeb Drama Center and Harvard University Art Museums confirmed this week that they have discussed moving the American Repertory Theater (ART) to a new space. The move would free up the Loeb Mainstage for full-time undergraduate use just as on-campus performance spaces are disappearing.

But Robert J. Orchard, managing director of the Loeb and the ART, said the Mainstage--a space originally endowed for students--is "not a good space for undergraduates--it's much too large."

Members of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC) beg to differ. They, and other performance groups, will face a serious space crunch when Radcliffe stops sponsoring student shows in Agassiz Theater.

They have found the Mainstage more than adequate in the past, they said.

"We currently put up four shows of high quality on the Mainstage, and we could put up a couple of more of equally high quality," said HRDC President Michael P. Davidson '00. "Given the opportunity, undergraduates could rise to the occasion."

Orchard acknowledges having looked at plans for a contemporary art museum on the swath of land just past Peabody Terrace, on the site now occupied by Mahoney's Garden Center. This museum could potentially hold a theater space, he said.

"They've been dreamy conversations" about the museum possibly containing a theater, said James Cuno, director of Harvard University Art Museums and the driving force behind the proposal to build a new museum.

Cuno said the conversations about the theater have "been among friends, people I know at the ART, over drinks and lunch."

Though the museum itself is tentative, and the theater within the museum even more so, the Harvard theater world is already debating about who would occupy that space.

A faculty-administration committee considered including an undergraduate theater on the proposed site, but determined that the site was too removed for daily student use, according to one Harvard official.

In a recent e-mail message, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 called the Mahoney land "neither a convenient nor especially safe commute from the center of undergraduate life."

"I don't buy into that argument," Orchard responded.

He argued that undergraduates, not the ART, should move, and that Loeb is "too daunting" a space for undergraduate productions.

Director of the Loeb Drama Center Robert S. Brustein, said he wouldn't oppose a relocation of the ART as long as its new theater was large enough to accommodate the company's needs.

"Theoretically, if we could find a space to work for 52 weeks a year, it would make it much easier to survive," said Brustein, who is also a professor of English. "If there were a sufficient number of seats, and the new theater was still in the area, I would not have any objections."

And HRDC director Davidson said he thinks students could greatly benefit from having full-time access to the Mainstage.

"Students learn more and have a more enjoyable experience working in a bigger space," he said.