Speeches, festivities, and a special performance of Troilus and Cressida will mark the open-tonight of the Loeb Drama Center.

Posting nearly $2 million and made possible by a from John L. Loeb '24, New York financier, the theatre is considered the finest and most flexible in country. Loeb's gift, and those of other Harvard Radcliffe benefactors, built a brick and glass shown on Brattle Street, containing two theatres and a attitude of workshops, rehearsal rooms, and offices.

Tonight's performance will inaugurate the Center's theatre, a 588-seat auditorium, with a stage together for different styles of production. After an 8 p.m. by President Pusey, the Prologue will say, "In there lies the scene", speaking from an Elizabethan reminiscent of the theatres in which Shakespeare's were originally performed.

Flexible Theatre

For other productions the main theatre can be contend into a theatre-in-the-round or the conventional stage. Special wagons and hydraulic lifts by George C. Izenour of the Yale School of Drama possible the moving of 13 tons of seats, to effect transformation of the theatre.

This flexibility and modernity, which make the main the finest in the country, also keynote the rest building. A 100-seat experimental theatre, to be for training actors, directors, and technical person and for producing original plays, is even more than the main auditorium. Its stage can be made any or shape and placed anywhere in the room. Both primental and main theatres have special electronic control systems designed by Izenour. tonight's invitational the formally-clad audience of of the theatre and alumni will the Center during a President's The Center public opening of Troilus Cressida will be tomorrow evening the production will run through Oct. 22.

for a theatre at Harvard goes at least to George Pierce Baker '87. of Dramatic Literature and of the 47 Workshop in which many American playwrights studied, pleaded with the University for years for a theatre. Edward S. offered President Lowell $1 to set up a drama school, but was turned down and Harkness the money to Yale. Baker soon went Haven to head the School of

Pressure for a theatre began to build again after the Second World War. Committees professors, reports, and trials all advocated building a home burgeoning theatre activities. Little opened until the advent of Pusey in Unlike Lowell and Conant, the new president actively desired a theatre and backed fund-raising for the His encouragement bore fruit June 1957, when Loeb's gift of $1 was announced.

for the new building were drawn Hugh A. Stubbins Associates in with a Faculty committee, construction started during 1959.