GATEWAY TO BROADWAY

Since 1929 when Professor Pierce Baker and his "47 workshop" were cold-shouldered by the Lowell administration and sought refuge at Yale, dramatics at Harvard have been living from hand to mouth. Three times alumni have offered to build a School of Dramatic Arts, and each time the University reechoed "the theatre has no place in the life of Harvard students." More interest has been focused upon the stage than ever before--upon experiment and student playwriting by the Dramatic Club, upon skits and plays of social comment by the Student Union, upon more and more productions by the Houses and the newly formed "'41 workshop". But despite this expenditure of energy Harvard has ignored requests for sets, props, and stage and refused to offer practical courses in writing, technique or designing.

With its handsomely equipped School of Dramatic Arts, or its McCarter Theatre, Yale and Princeton must look towards their Cambridge crony with pity. Harvard still inclines to a tradition of "pure" liberal arts, devoid of much practical application. But long ago colleges realized each subject can grow only in its own medium, that to write drama for an English composition course--and yet keep it divorced from the stage--is like reading chemistry without carrying on laboratory experiments. Playwrights like Sidney Howard, Eugene O'Neill and Philip Barry thrived under Professor Baker because the workshop tested their lines through informal productions and moulded them into shape; the designers and artists translated their sets and costumes from empty drawings to reality. Each phase developed with the others and each was thereby reinforced.

Refusing to believe that Harvard must always be without a School of Dramatic Arts, undergraduates vaguely hope for the time when a complete unit comprising stage, shops, and class-rooms will grace the College. In the meantime, concrete steps can easily be taken. Through a composition course in playwriting, undergraduates could test their work in collaboration with the Dramatic Club and produce informally for their own practice and self-criticism. Another course, devoted to acting, might correlate all the odds and ends of drama now spread over the English Department. A third, given by the Fine Arts Department, would concentrate on design and technique for actual production. With such progress under its belt, Harvard could atone for the past, not by waiting for a financial "angel" but by announcing that the foundation for a complete School of Dramatic Arts was at last ready. Ignored three times, alumni might yet rejoice that Harvard had cast off prejudice and would contribute to the establishment of a living theatre.