The House is Full

Panelists addressed student gripes about lack of space for performance, rehearsal and storage. As the number of arts groups has expanded, the number of spaces has decreased. The Rieman Center for Performing Arts—the primary dance space on campus—will be retaken by the Radcliffe Institute in two years. The American Repertory Theater is losing both its off-site performance and rehearsal spaces which will exacerbate space conflicts in the Loeb Drama Center. Agassiz Theater is in danger of going offline for a time, and the Hasty Pudding Theatricals building still has not been renovated.

Jacob Hale Russell: Our panelists have the task of clarifying this nearly impossible situation for us, and talking about what Harvard has to do to perform has to do to provide adequate facilities for all its staff and student artists. I want to start by having one of our panelists help clarify what the problem is for us, and I think we’ll start with Jack Megan.

Jack C. Megan: Just so long as David [Illingworth] then solves it. [laughs] The arts at Harvard are thriving. We have many, many performance groups and visual arts organizations, and the list seems to keep growing. Theater, we have roughly 60 to 70 productions that take place annually. In dance, we have dozens of concerts, not to mention classes and rehearsals for all of these things. In music, there are over 500 concerts given a year. All of this adds up to an incredibly dynamic and interesting environment for the arts. If there’s anything you’re interested in in the arts, you can generally find it without having to look too hard. But it’s all got to go somewhere, and the problem is that as student interest in the arts has grown, and as student participation has grown—we now estimate that approximately 3,000 undergraduates participate in the arts or in the practice the arts in an ongoing way—the space has not grown with it. It’s storage space, administrative support space, rehearsal space. Everyone is vying for the same limited amount of space.

Russell: What things are there on the horizon? There’s the Hasty Pudding Theatricals building, and there’s Allston—what else?

David P. Illingworth ’71: I’d just to add a little onto what Jack was saying about the expansion of extracurricular activities. The numbers of groups has stayed pretty constant over the past ten years, but I think more students are involved in the groups that we have now; and part of the reason for that has something to do with the admissions office. The only way the admissions office has to distinguish among these very smart people in the applicant pool is to look at things other than academics, and extracurricular activities form a big part. The problem with the burgeoning activities is that the space we have is not burgeoning, and the city is becoming more and more restrictive. Harvard owns a lot of land and a lot of property, but a lot of that property can’t necessarily be developed for undergraduate use. There are all sorts of pressures on our land.

The most immediate thing, as Jacob said, is the Hasty Pudding project, which is going ahead not nearly as fast as I would have liked, but it is happening. We have a design which we’ve worked on over four years. It’s going to be a terrific small theater, and it’s going to have some space for rehearsals and other kinds of meetings. It’s going to be a place where more undergraduates can specialize in tech theater, which is a deficiency that we have right now. The things that are yet in our way before we start building are raising $23 million—if anyone would like to name a theater after themselves, give me a check after the meeting and we’ll be happy to name a theater for you—and the building project will have to through the Cambridge regulatory system.

But it’s not going to solve all the problems—it’s not going to solve the dance problem, as we all know—so we have to start looking at other areas. And, as I’ve told many of you in individual interviews, the expansion of Harvard University into Allston may only help undergraduate arts in an indirect way. If we can get someone who’s now here, in the Square, to vacate their space, we can take it over. If the transportation problem can be solved, Allston can be much more useful for undergraduates. Those of us who have worked at the Dean’s Office have a fear of spreading undergrads too thin.

Russell: Let me ask you, Rob, about what it’s like to be the Managing Director of a building that shares space between a professional theater company and undergraduates, and is probably considered the best theater space in Cambridge. What’s it like to manage the competing interests in that building?

Rob Orchard: It’s actually an exciting mix, notwithstanding the space problems, having a building in which undergraduates are coursing their way through at various times of the day, and there’s a graduate program called the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, and then professionals as well. As an ideal environment for different groups, different people, different ages, different interests, I think it’s an appropriate mix; as a space that accommodates that, it’s certainly compromised by lack of space. We’ve actually looked at adding a third level to the Loeb Drama Center, and the ART spent about $175,000 studying it and engineering it and designing it, and it came out to approximately 5,300 square feet for $4 million; and if you divide those numbers you come up with a square footage cost that I don’t think the word “obscene” is appropriate for. In your introduction, you used the word “crisis.” There’s no doubt about it, it’s a crisis. Harvard has a space crisis, not just an arts crisis. In the long run, what happens across the river is going to make a huge impact, huge impact. The question is, in whose lifetime? Luckily, we have a president who’s a pretty dynamic guy. I also think that it’s probably one of the sexiest fundraising projects Harvard has ever, ever imagined. The problem will be maintaining consistent levels of funding for everything else at the same time.

The Institute for Advanced Theatre Training suspended its directing program because we don’t have space in which to train directors. We’re sending 22 students to Moscow, four months a year, because we don’t have space to accommodate them here. I was able to open the American studio at the Moscow Art Theater three years ago, and add a fifth level to an adjacent building. These are buildings two blocks from the Kremlin. It’s easier to do in downtown Moscow than it is in Cambridge. But we have a crisis, and it’s not a crisis that we’re going to face in a couple years, it’s a crisis we’re facing now.

Russell: One thing you brought up is that there’s a short term dimension and there’s a long term dimension. Long term, we can talk about Allston, but that’s ten, 15 years down the road. Short term, what can be done? So let me ask the two student panelists about what students can do in terms of changing their work, in terms of employing more creative uses of space in order to address the crisis. In the last couple of semesters we’ve seen more work that’s site specific; it’s gone up in places that aren’t conventional theaters and unusual locations. How could that be used to address the crisis in the short term?

Jeremy B. Reff: In some ways I’m almost hesitant to ever use the word crisis talking about Harvard. I think “crisis” automatically puts us in a frame of mind which doesn’t utilize the flexibility and talents of the undergraduates here. I do think there is legitimately an incredible problem that is only going to be mititgated by a long-term, concerted effort; so I absolutely applaud what Rob said, because I think that only by working together in the arts community and having a vision for the allocation of space freed up by the Allston project are we going to win the game.

But in the short term, I’m excited by a lot of different projects that have gone up this year. This Arts First weekend is a great chance to see so many shows that are using very, very interesting spaces. Winthrop is having The Tempest go up, and Much Ado is going up in Tercentenary Theater, and people are doing a lot more guerilla theater and working in a lot of interesting spaces. I think the conversion of squash courts in Adams to an ArtSpace is really fantastic, and I hope that more Houses utilize perhaps under-utilized parts of their building and turn them into galleries. But I think that this is a question not so much about what any organization can do, as about having a centralized system whereby these alternative spaces are suggested and maintained. The problem with alternative spaces is they’re not necessarily connected—at the Loeb, there’s a whole hierarchy. When you talk about moving into alternative spaces, it’s fantastic because it does allow undergraduates to think, “I can do it,” and they can, and we can, and utilize that space, but there isn’t that same institutional hierarchy of support. What ways we can find to connect the locus of institutional support with utilizing these alternative spaces? Of course, this is most important for the dance community.

Adrienne M. Minster: Yes, alternative spaces have been explored and are being used. I co-directed a show that put dance and combined it with other art forms into the Loeb space. So we’re mixing with other art groups, which is very interesting, revolutionary work that’s going on. But the problem is in the short term, the dance space is going in the summer of 2005. In Harvard language, that’s short term. You can’t move a dance studio that’s 12,000 square feet to an alternative space; that size space just does not exist. Some rough calculations that we’ve done put about 22 percent of undergraduate women participating in dance this past fall. That’s an extraordinary number of undergraduates. We need a home. Luckily we have an administration that I’m confident is addressing the program, and hopefully we’ll have a solution shortly. So I don’t know what it’ll be, but hopefully we’ll have one. Rieman’s a unique space in that it converts from this enormous rehearsal room into a theater in 15 minutes. I’m afraid that we could lose that. When we’re looking for a new space or an alternative space to that, we need to make sure that it can accomodate these revolutionary programs that are happening here already. We can’t lose that; we’ve come too far; we can’t stop now; we have to keep going.

Russell: Let me also ask Jen to talk a little bit about how houses have stepped up or can step up in providing space for artists, since that’s something Jeremy touched on.

Jen Mergel: It’s beginning, it’s very possible, and it really can happen. In the position that I’m in now as a resident arts tutor in Adams House, I’ve seen how Houses can address this crunch for the immediate present and the short term until the long-term monorail plans set in. [laughter] It comes down to communication, coordination and flexibility. This year, there was established a network of tutors that began programs of interhouse figure drawing and interhouse exhibitions. It’s an effort that’s just beginning but I think is going to become essential in next few years. Students need to know, “Okay, I live in Adams House, but I need a space available to me that’s bigger than in my House,” and their tutor would be able to refer them to a perfect space over in Mather because they have that connection with other people who run those spaces or who at least give them references to them. I do not underestimate undergraduates’ ability to aggressively, very savvily find solutions to their problems when they feel very strongly about the programs that they want to run. But there is some support that can be given—even if it’s just a student knowing they can connect to somebody else. We are very fortunate in Adams House to have a space that is dedicated to visual arts. We also have a theater. Not every House has that, and not every House will have that. But I think it is important for House masters to listen to the tutors and the student body that says, “We would really like this storage space converted into a dance rehearsal space this term,” and to be flexible about that.

One student very eloquently put her explanation of this aggressive arts explosion: “Well, there are just all Type A personalities here at Harvard, and nobody doesn’t want to run the program; everybody wants to have their own program and make it the best that they possibly can as a student here.” I think that may be true. But I think it will take some flexibility and understanding of what’s available right now, and people communicating very clearly about taking turns with spaces. So it’s mostly in programming instead of in construction that I think we’ll be able to get through this.

Russell: Before we turn to more long-term questions of space—any other thoughts on what we ought to do in the short term to address the space needs?

Illingworth: I’d build on what Jack said about cooperation, which I think is very important—not just for those of us who work in different administrative parts of Harvard, but for students to talk about how to share space and how to use what we have. I do think there is still more that we can do with spaces that we have not yet used and spaces that maybe people are holding a little close to themselves. Maybe we can come to a more cooperative way. People can share better.

Our physical resources people are working very hard on the dance issue, and looking at a bunch of spaces that are currently here. As I see it, you’ve either got to convert some large space or you’ve got to build something. I don’t think there’s anything that’s here that we’ve overlooked. We’ve looked at everything in Cambridge. Just as crucial is the practice room situation.

Megan: We have a harp player whose harp is stored in the janitor’s closet in the basement of the Memorial Hall complex.

Illingworth: Rehearsal space is a problem. We’ve also got to be thinking about more 24-hour usage as well. Maybe some of the space can be used more efficiently. The music department is an academic department that’s facing a huge shortage of space right now. We can’t bring in professors if they don’t have a place to go.

Reff: What we do have are the man hours. Jen, you talked about communication, and figuring out a time schedule that is in some way universal. Space is not only a physical concept; especially at Harvard, space is a people construct in terms of what time and what energy are people devoting and how are they doing it and trying to coordinate it, so that it’s collaborative. It’s working to have some sort of undergraduate arts community.

Orchard: I’d like to amplify that, too, because I think that the aesthetic trends are also demonstrating a desire for more collaboration among the forms. I’m finding that younger generations are really less interested in traditional forms and more interested in hybrid forms, where music and dance and theater and visual arts collide in interesting ways. To have an environment in which all of these groups are isolated from one another would be unfortunate. I often talk about an ideal space that could function as a dance space, as a theater space, as a space for installations, as a soundstage. I once saw a production in Budapest a few years ago of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which the audience was seated on 500 individually hung swings, and the hemp that was used to hang the swings became the farce of Shakespeare’s play, and that was on night one; and all those swings were bussed up to the grid. The next night, there was a very realistic play, it took place in an operating room; the following day, it was used by a modern dance company.

Russell: Let’s say Dean Illingworth gets his wish after this meeting; someone comes up to you with a check for $23 million and we don’t have constraints. What are the advanatages and disadvantages of consolidating all the arts and putting them in one building?

Illingworth: I think that we always need to do both. I would like to see a big place built where the arts could come together. But I don’t think we’d ever want to give up our decentralized system either, where student creativity can still take a space and use it for something that hasn’t been used before. So I see a performing arts center to be an add-on. There’s no other place to put that other big space but Allston, as far as I can see. But I don’t see the decentralized nature ever going away.

Megan: I would second everything you said. There’s something so exciting about artists working together. We need for Harvard to create that kind of enivronment for artists, student artists. But I also love what you said about the sort of distinct culture that is Harvard. I never want Harvard students to think, “Gee, I can’t do theater in that little corner over there,” because some of the interesting stuff happens in those little corners.