Leverett House--The Leverett House Arts Society was created last spring. Its inaugural production. The Roar of the Greasepaint--The Smell of the Crowd, has just closed after playing to consistently sold out houses. Leverett House is the only one at Harvard which has its own stage: it was constructed in the Old Library as a project of the Leverett House Spring Arts Festival of 1971.
There is enough support from the House as a whole to have little trouble in staging plays, and the newly revamped facilities should encourage the already vigorous state of the performing arts at Leverett House. Another musical is projected for the spring.
Lowell House--A more relaxed manifestation of House drama appears in Lowell House. Chris Conte '73 approached the drama society with an idea and now is directing a staged reading of Dylan Thomas's radio play Under Milk wood. Most of the cast was found among friends who haven't done anything in drama since high school. They hope to have an intensive weekend of rehearsal in New Hampshire right before their opening in the first week in December.
Mather House--Guy Rochman '73, terms the Mather House dining hall,"...the most exciting room in the University. It presents almost limitless possibilities." Starting December 9, a huge box will be suspended from the ceiling of the dining hall, stopping about four feet short of the floor. Inside this box Waiting for Godot will be performed. The director, Rochman, hopes to use an all-female cast; the play as written calls for five men.
"The people who come to see a Beckett play will already be aware of his 'message'," Rochman explained. "But a female cast will make them see the characters less as types, more as people. The woman is a kind of obstacle; the audience will have to project through the women to the meaning of the play. They have to realize that a female instead of male cast doesn't matter."
The Mather House Drama Society hopes to stage the musical Jacques Brel in the spring, also to be directed by Rochman.
North House--The King, the Grand Vizier and the Chancellor of the Exchequer oversee the year-old North House Drama Society. On the second weekend in December they will present a new play by George Herman. A Company of Wayward Saints in the Holmes Hall Living Room. "Our main problem," said the King, Paul Harrison, "is getting people to come up to Radcliffe for a play." But they also have to use flashlights for spotlights.
Quincy House--One of the few self-supporting drama societies is in Quincy House. It owes its solvency to a number of quite successful productions in the past two years. During the first two weekends in December, the Quincy House Drama Society is renting the Leverett House Theatre for a production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night directed by David Richmond '72.
Winthrop House--A medieval mystery play straight off the "English 100" reading list, the Second Shepherd's Play along with a reading from The Stuffed Doll will be staged in Winthrop House just before Christmas. The Winthrop House Drama Society is a strictly ad hoc group in this not strongly arts-oriented House.
One cannot abandon Winthrop House to the jocks too hastily, however, for it is the only House to offer a course in drama: "Hum 96v"--Society and Politics in Western Drama. Given by four tutors in the House, Hum 96v will work on a play (yet to be selected by the members of the course) as a class exercise and will eventually present it in the Loeb Ex in the spring. Hum 96v is one of the only courses for credit at Harvard which includes some practical work in the theatre. (The others are: George Hamlin's freshman seminar in acting, William Alfred's course in writing plays, and a Vis Stud seminar-workshop in design for the stage given by Franco Colavecchia.)
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In spite of all this student commitment to drama, the question of the place of theatre at Harvard keeps recurring. The old aristocratic view that applied arts are servile has left no place at Harvard for preprofessional training. The ostensible faculty position is that a play is a thing which is written down, and that theatre is a trade.
Almost 50 years ago, George Pierce Baker spoke of what he felt the university's role in theatre should be:
"What we need, and need very badly, is a teaching of the Fine Arts in our colleges and universities with a view to creation...Ask artists where they got their first stimulation for their work. I think they will tell you in college. Ask them how they have gained their special equipment for their work and I feel sure they will say 'with difficulty and as best we could'...They probably will make very clear their belief that education should help the man and woman of strong, instinctive, artistic desire to attain their ends."
More official commitment to drama is evident at Harvard now than there has ever been in the past: there is actually a faculty Theatre Committee (with two voting students); and there are funds for bringing professionals to the College occasionally to work and teach in the Loeb. Harold Scott '57, currently acting in The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, has been hired for the Spring term to do a Loeb production of Pinter's The Birthday Party, and will also probably conduct a seminar in directing.
Many students at Harvard enjoy just what they're doing in drama. And an undergraduate theatre concentration here could definitely take some of the joie de vivre out of dramatic activity and could result in a gradual restriction of drama to those majoring in it.
Still, the regrettable notion that talent will irrepressibly manifest itself prevails among the faculty. Harvard offers opportunities for experience in the theatre, but not nearly enough for learning about it: imagination cannot take the place of discipline and guidance. Roger Sorkin, faculty advisor to the Currier House Drama Society, commented, "I don't think many people with dramatic talent have actually been squashed here, but it takes tremendous drive not to be discouraged."
Ideally, drama resources at Harvard should be as readily available to every student as Widener and the IAB. Drama in the Houses is part of the solution, but more and better ways of channeling theatrical energy need to be found