American Repertory Theater Celebrates 10 Years at Harvard With Premiere, Fete

The American Repertory Theater (ART), which has both thrilled and alienated theater buffs with its unorthodox staging of some of the world's most renowned dramas, will celebrate its 10th year at Harvard tonight with champagne, a world premiere and a banquet after the show.

Singer Carly Simon and TV journalist Mike Wallace will be guests of honor at tonight's festivities, which are expected to draw more than 500 patrons and friends of the repertory company to Harvard's Loeb Theater.

Although the premiere of Carlo Gozzi's "The Serpent Woman" has not yet sold out, public relations officer Elizabeth A. Melvin said, "It's a good turnout."

The play is the second installment of what is expected to be a trilogy, Melvin said. The ART put on Gozzi's first piece in the series, "The King Stag," two years ago.

A 'Beautiful' Play

The ART staff chose this play because "it's beautiful, for one thing," Melvin said. The play is a fable with puppets and exotic characters. One of Japan's premiere designers, Setsu Asakura, created the set, costumes and puppets used in the play, she said.

During its 10 years in Cambridge, the ART has brought in avant garde and other non-traditional types of drama, said Henry L. Lussier, who also works in public relations. "We've brought in a kind of theater to Boston that hadn't been here before," he said. The ART complements Boston's Huntington company, which puts on more traditional works, he said. "We've created a nice niche for ourselves here in Boston."

The theater has brought many notable actors, directors and musicians to Boston for world premieres of their productions, including minimalist composer Philip Glass, Talking Heads singer David Byrne and avant garde director Robert Wilson.

The theater operates under an agreement with Harvard that allows the ART to use the University's Loeb Theater in exchange for teaching drama courses and helping Harvard-Radcliffe productions, Lussier said. He added that the ART raises all its own funds but channels them through Harvard.

"I think it's been very beneficial to both ofus," said Lussier. The Loeb Theater was unusedmuch of the time before the ART came, he said, butnow the ART puts on five shows every year, eachwith about 30 performances, as well as a fallfestival and a spring festival.

Undergraduates perform on the theater's mainstage for eight weekends a year, and haveunlimited use of the facility's smallerExperimental theater.

Having a distinguished theater is a"wonderfully healthy thing" for drama students,said Lowell Professor of the Humanities WilliamAlfred, himself a noted playwright. "Therewouldn't be any training in pragmatic theater [atHarvard] if it weren't for those courses," saidAlfred, who is one of the advisers of theHarvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club.

The ART is currently in the midst of a $5million endowment campaign, Lussier said