The American premiere of "The Family Reunion" by T. S. Eliot '10 will be the first of a series of plays to be offered this year by the Harvard Dramatic Club in its new expanded production schedule, A. George Rock '41, club secretary, announced yesterday.
In addition to the usual two full-scale productions each year, the Dramatic Club will undertake two others "of more experimental nature worthy of production." This new policy is intended to give would-be playwrights and directors among the undergraduates an opportunity to test and develop their theatrical efforts in actual production. Several student-written manuscripts have already been submitted and are now being considered by the Club.
The Club intends to continue the work of the famous 47 Workshop, which was transferred to Yale in 1925. The Workshop was an experimental laboratory of the members of English 47, the course given by Professor George Pierce Baker '87, and was responsible for discovering some of the most outstanding contributors to the American theatre today. From this group have emerged Eugene O'Neill, John Does Passos '16, Robert E. Sherwood '17, H. M. Behrman, the late Sidney Howard, and the late Thomas Wolfe.
London Praised Play
The "Family Reunion," to be presented November 8 and 9 in Sanders Theatre, was written by T. S. Eliot, who was an editor of the Advocate in his college days. His play was first produced in London, where it was well received, the New York "Times Book Review" praising it as the "greatest verse play since the Elizabethans." Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral" was produced by the Dramatic Club in 1937.
Directed by Rock and Roger Sheppared ocC., "The Family Reunion" is set in a contemporary English background and is the study of a family curse. Evident in the play are elements of Greek tragedy such as a chorus and the Eumenides, who were ancient Greek furies.
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