The extraordinarily gifted nucleus of the VTW-HTW contained, besides Kilty, Robert Fletcher '45, Michael Wager '45, Thayer David '47, Peter Temple '47, Bryant Haliday '49, Albert Marre (Law '47-48, GSAS '48-50), and Miles Morgan '50.

In the spring of 1948, members of this group purchased the Brattle Theatre from the Cambridge Social Union and staged its subsequent productions there. Upon graduation, they formed the Brattle Theatre Company, a professional repertory group that achieved national renown. Unfortunately, it was forced to disband in 1952 owing to an accumulated $35,000 deficit.

The HTW thus lapsed into inactivity in June of 1949. The following year J. David Bowen '51, unhappy with the HDC, resigned and decided to revive the HTW under the name of the Harvard Theatre Group. The HTG incurred all the outstanding obligations of the HTW, in return for which the Brattle gave it assistance both tangible and otherwise.

The HTG proved a worthy successor to the HTW, and managed to rub out all debts and build up a surplus. The talented pillars of the group, besides Bowen, were John G. Kerr '52, P. Michael Mabry '53, Donald Ogden Stewart '53, and Theodore L. Gershuny '54.

Starting off with a good production of Beaumarchais' Marriage of Figaro, which toured all seven Houses and the Union, the HTG reached its peak in April, 1951, with a compelling production of Kingsley's Darkness at Noon, which had a run in Sanders simultaneously with the play's Broadway run. Resourceful designer David A. Hays '52 coped with the inadequacy of Sanders by constructing his sets on two revolving stages. The show was rightly described as "undoubtedly the finest undergraduate drama presented at Harvard in more than two years."

Having concentrated mainly on modern plays, the HTG performed a noble parting gesture to the cause of new drama just before the founding members' graduation in 1953. As its swan song, the Group decided to give the premiere of The General, written by Robert H. Chapman, associate professor of English. Directed by the author, the performance was excellent. But the play was weak, and the production lost $3000 (though a New York manager picked up the tab). Nevertheless, all agreed that the HTG could take pride in its exit as well as its previous record.

And what of the HDC all this time? Well, it struggled along an uneven course, never managing to put on a really top-notch show. This is not surprising, since the group had only the second-best talent to work with. The HDC also had recurring financial trouble. The 1948 spring show was the first HDC production to have its whole run downtown; the group rented the Plymouth (now the Gary) Theatre for Irwin Shaw's The Survivors, and went $5,000 into the red. The next fall production also lost heavily. In a desperate gamble, the HDC undertook an ambitious $9,000 mounting of Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner, with Monty Woolley as imported guest star. Thanks largely to Woolley, this was the best show the HDC staged during this period, and it drew huge crowds. The artistic success was forgotten. however, as soon as it was discovered that $4,000 had been embezzled from the receipts.

The HDC does deserve praise, though, for some of its ancillary activities. In 1946-47 it instituted the HDC Reading Theatre for a series of informal shows. After a lapse, the Reading Theatre was revived in the fall of 1949 and remained active through the spring of 1953. In 1949-50 the HDC also sponsored an Acting Class, under the direction of Mrs. Alexander Samoiloff of the Tufts faculty, which met weekly and gave informal performances.

As long as the VTW-HTW-HTG flourished, Harvard was the scene of a great deal of acrimony and bitterness among students. In December, 1946, the HDC even expelled some of its members for working with the VTW. The next fall, just before becoming the HTW, the VTW proposed a merger with the HDC, suggesting that "all resources, financial, technical and artistic, be pooled under a general production scheme." The HDC caustically refused. This proved to be a disastrous decision. Talk of a merger cropped up from time to time there-after; and, in the fall of 1951, the HDC made the proposal. But it was too late then. By this time the HTG had a fine reputation, a monetary surplus, and the backing of the professional Brattle company. Quite understandably the HTG saw no sense in risking these assets by taking on less talented students and their debts. The contrast is epitomized in the efforts of the two groups to stage the same play. In November, 1947, the HDC staged Ibsen's An Enemy of the People in Sanders; the result was a drab, dull show. But when the HTG gave it in the cramped Pi Eta Theatre in the fall of 1951, it enjoyed a dynamic and exciting production.

Interest Surges

The disbanding of Idler and the graduation of the HTG core in the spring of 1953 left the debt-ridden HDC all alone. Since the HDC had been able to squeak out only one major show in each of the previous two years, it looked as though 1953-54 might sink to a theatrical low. But a number of coincidences brought about quite a different result.

The Radcliffe students now turned to the HDC as the major dramatic organization. So did the 15 or 20 non-graduating members of the defunct HTG (there was no formal merger; for, head high to the end, the HTG just quietly disbanded). In addition, there was a large increase that fall in theatrical interest on the part of the general student body. Not only this, but the entering freshman class contained more theatrical talent than any other class in Harvard history--including, as it happened, a notable quartet of students who would soon be generally recognized as a Big Four: Stephen A. Aaron, Colgate Salsbury, Harold R. Scott, and D.J. Sullivan.

When the HDC announced tryouts for its first fall production, no fewer than 150 hopefuls turned up; and the final cast did quite well in The Male Animal, which was soon followed by an even better production of Pirandello's Henry IV. And President Pusey chose this time to announce his approval of an unofficial drive for a Harvard Theatre (but more of this later in its own context).

Much encouraged, the HDC initiated a Harvard Acting Laboratory, which Professor Chapman consented to direct. The Lab was an extra-curricular course for Harvard and Radcliffe freshmen and sophomores in classical acting technique, ballet and fencing. About two dozen students survived the screening of over 100 applicants. The Lab, which took four hours a week, performed an invaluable service. When Professor Chapman was away on leave the following year, Mrs. Mark A. DeWolfe Howe (formerly with the famed Abbey Theatre in Dublin) assumed direction of the Lab; and in 1955-56 the Lab was taught by Harold Scott '57, Colgate Salsbury '57, and Clare Scott '56.

The real start of the current "renaissance" of student theatre here can, I think, be rather exactly pinned down to the last week of February, 1954. It was then that the HDC, having ripped out the floor seats of Sanders Theatre, opened a semi-arena production of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. This was a show of tremendous power, and gave clear notice that, once again, Harvard students were capable of providing a superlative theatrical experience.