MORE CULTURES

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Rarely have I known the CRIMSON, whose editorial stands I ordinarily admire, to take so short-sighted a view of an important issue as the one demonstrated in the editorial "Theatre on the Charles," attacking the administration by the Cambridge Drama Festival of the proposed Metropolitan Boston Arts Center.

Sheer lack of sophistication is evidenced by the argument that the CDF-run MeBAC would represent "unfair competition" to independent drama groups, apparently on the theory that all the arts are in constant cutthroat competition and that a customer for one theatre is a customer lost to another. We are sure the CRIMSON does not seriously think that the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger museums subtract their visitors from the sum-total of gallery-goers, or that someone who buys a ticket for the Budapest String Quartet will not patronize the Boston Opera Group.

During the summer when the Cambridge Drama Festival was playing to packed houses across the Yard from us, the Brattle Theatre made more money than at any other period in its existence (we celebrate our sixth anniversary on February 1). A lot of people who had never heard of the Brattle Theatre as an art movie theatre came to Cambridge to CDF performances and then returned to Cambridge to visit the Brattle. Excitement over the arts stimulates furthe interest; it is narrow-minded to suppose otherwise.

The CDF is, to use an expression from my own metier, thinking wide-screen. This new project should not be a watered-down brew of local semi-professional theatre, governed by an enormous and unwieldly board of wrangling representatives. It is a broadly-conceived plan to bring the best in drama (and music as well) from all over the world to a superb theatre in the Greater Boston community.

The CDF and its president, William Morris Hunt, have been chosen by MeBAC as the organization best fitted to carry out such a plan. Although Mr. Hunt is producer and "theatre man" of considerable accomplishment, I am sure he does not plan to use MeBAC to advance some drama group of his own at the expense of independent theatres--he would act as general supervisor of the whole project, would act as booking agent (as he has done with John Gielgud, the Theatre Nationale Populaire, and so on), and would no doubt also hire producers to present shows which would originate here in Boston. There is no limit to the size and variety of what can be done with MeBAC, but it must get rolling right away, and an executive with vision and imagination is essential. MeBAC has picked CDF and Mr. Hunt. It's that simple. Joy A. W. Pratt   (Mrs. John W. Pratt)

(Mrs. Pratt is secretary of the Brattle Theatre.--Ed.)