The announcement of courses for next year in the Cambridge School of the Drama shows an unmistakable tendency on the part of the directors to make the instruction practical rather than academic. To establish such a method, however, naturally presupposes considerable equipment which they do not at present own and the chief problem that presents itself in this situation is just how extensive such program of expansion should be at such an early period.

Although not officially a Harvard institution, the first and natural comparison is with Professor G. P. Baker's Forty Seven Workshop which was at Harvard several years ago. At that time the basement of Massachusetts Hall sufficed for a training school for a group of men who are today one of the most prominent forces in the American theatre, and most of whom are at present on the board of the new school. Today, however, with the increasing complexity of the dramatic situation and the spreading and growth of complete dramatic schools elsewhere, such simple equipment as that at the disposal of Professor Baker would have small chance of success.

It would be foolish to enter into competition with such elaborate and well established institutions as the present Yale School of the Theatre especially when such expansion would necessarily be based on such a short period of trial as the Cambridge School of the Drama has had. The problem is to provide adequate and effective material for instruction which will be sufficient but which at the same time will leave an opportunity for the student to develop ingenuity which would be capable of meeting the individual problems which will arise in the practical theatre world.

Half way measures would not be enough. Rather than fall into the error of presenting an emasculated form of instruction in production with ostentatious amateurism it would be better to confine the scope of the school to merely play writing. It would be a considerable, misfortune if Harvard's second attempt at instruction in the drama should exhaust itself in a diffusion of inadequate and meaningless dabbling in the manner of a ladies' dramatic club.