When you call Alan P. Symonds '69 at the Agassiz Theatre, a taped voice on the answering machine claims you've reached "the Harvard-Radcliffe Technical Support Line."

But some say there is no technical support line at Harvard. For the past year and a half, Symonds has been the sole ever-present professional resource for undergraduate theater.

And with the decision two weeks ago to replace Symonds, the technical director for students at the Loeb Drama Center and the Agassiz, many students fear theater at Harvard will become an even more difficult endeavor.

Now, members of the Standing Committee on Dramatics say they may propose to Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 the addition of a technical director for the houses, with Symonds in mind for the job.

While administrators say Harvard is firmly committed to the dramatic arts, students complain of the University's hands-off attitude. Inadequate curricular offerings and a lack of support from the American Repertory Theater (ART) and the College point to Harvard's mismanagement of the arts, Harvard thespians say.

In 1979, Harvard negotiated an agreement with the Yale Repertory Theater to relocate to Cambridge as the American Repertory Theater. In exchange for managing student productions in the Loeb and teaching courses in practical dramatic arts, the ART moved into the Loeb as a professional theater company.

Although the company received many other offers, including one from Lincoln Center in New York City, it came to Harvard to work with students, says ART Managing Director Robert J. Orchard.

Faced with the lack of a formal curriculum, tenured professors and professional support, the Harvard student theater community is faced with...

"We've always been a teaching organization. The people in the organization have always functioned both as professionals and mentors," he says. "Our desire to continue to be an evolving and vital organization really depended on there being young people around."

Fourteen years later, many students say that while the ART provides valuable resources and expertise to student productions, the professionals at the company are no surrogate for a formal theater program or for tenured professors of the dramatic arts.

And students and staffers charge that by placing the mantle of supporting Harvard theater squarely on the ART, Harvard has neglected its responsibility to the arts and to the hundreds of students involved in the dozens of theater productions around campus.

"The general feeling is that no one is there for us; that the ART is not these for us; that the Committee on Dramatic Arts is not there for us," says Kathryn D. Smith '95, stage manager for several undergraduate productions.

Students point to Symonds as one of the only professionals concerned with student productions on campus. His responsibilities officially entail overseeing the technical aspects for student productions at the Loeb and Agassiz, but he has voluntarily assumed work far beyond his job description.

"His job is the Loeb and the Agassiz, but he does basically everthing for every undergraduate theater person on campus. The houses basically couldn't survive without him and neither could City Step," says Jennifer D. Talbot '94, a student theater technician and veteran of 25 shows on campus.

"He helps even shows which are going up in weird places on campus that aren't really theaters; he helps in pre-production, organization, last-minute things, light fixtures," she says.

Symonds estimates he spends "ten to twelve hours, six to seven days a week," working on undergraduate productions and a class, Dramatic Arts 31, he co-instructs with his predecessor Donald R. Soule.