Thirty Undergraduates to Dramatize American History Over Radio Waves

As the newest extra-curricular activity in the College, thirty undergraduates are writing a series of ten radio programs, in cooperation with faculty members, which all dramatize American history for a world-wide audience. The programs will be broadcast beginning early next year by the non-commercial, shortwave stations of the World Wide Broadcasting Foundation, Boston.

The Radio Workshop is awaiting completion of the scripts for this series before making arrangements for production through American long-wave broadcast channels.

The students are organized as the Harvard Radio Workshop, an organization first begun last spring by Archibald MacLeish, now librarian of Congress. Officers of the group are: production director, Arthur Gnaodinger '41, of Brooklyn, N. Y., and Leverett House; continuity director, Wallace Hamilton '41, of New York City and Leverett House; and treasurer, James J. Storrow Jr., '41, of Chestnut Hill and Leverett House.

The American history broadcasts, which are being developed with the cooperation of the faculty counsellors of President Conant's program for extra-curricular study of American civilization, will include the following subjects: meaning of the westward movement; agricultural conservation; problem of immigration and foreign minorities; history of trade unionism; history of the Supreme Court; changing concepts of American destiny; economic integration of America; American idealism and religions; history of the theatre; and public health.

The dramatic programs will be enacted and directed by the students.

Headquarter of the Workshop, where weekly script conferences are held by the students, is in Holyoke House 46. It is planned to equip the rooms with amplifying equipment for auditions and rehearsals and eventually for recording and broadcasting. For the present the students are utilizing the equipment and studios of the World Wide Broadcasting Foundation.

In addition to the American history programs, the Radio Workshop is preparing special experimental broadcasts, one of them a script of the poetic drama "Inquest" by Theodore Spencer, visiting lecturer in English. Several members of the Workshop are working on individual script projects. Last spring the group produced and recorded a version of Sophocles' "Antigone" in collaboration with the World Wide Broadcasting experts.