Symonds took the job of technical director at the Loeb when Soule retired in January 1992. Previously he had worked part-time managing technical theater at the Agassiz.

But earlier this year, the Standing Committee on Dramatics decided to expand Symonds position to "technical director and lecturer of the dramatic arts," the position Soule held before he retired.

After a nation-wide search that began in December, the committee voted two weeks ago to replace Symonds with J. Michael Griggs, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland and award-winning set designer.

Both Professor of English Robert J. Brustein, director of the Loeb Drama Center and Senior Lecturer on English and committee Chair Michael S. Shinagel say it was Symonds--and not the committee--that demanded the position be expanded.

"He refused to take the technical director position without teaching the design course. He forced the search," Brustein says, indicating that Symonds' lack of teaching experience was at issue.

Brustein says the committee offered Symonds the technical director position in response to "students' enthusiasm about Symonds," but Symonds says he was never clear on the committee's offer. He also says that the committee seemed unwilling to renegotiate his position.

"I tried to arrange every appropriate use of my skills and talents on a permanent basis and found substantial disinterest in talking about it, in any compromise," he says, later adding that the real problem was a lack of communication between the committee, the ART, and himself.

The decision to replace Symonds angered many drama students who say they feel their opinions were not taken into consideration.

"We were very upset, very angry because it feels like no matter what the students did, no one paid any attention," says Smith.

Michael D. Rosenbaum '94, president of the Gilbert and Sullivan Players, says he received more than 100 signatures on a petition in Symonds' support and embarked on a telephone campaign to committee members and top administrators.

Several students and Symonds say his situation points to a larger problem, Harvard's hands-off relationship with student theater.

According to Brustein, Harvard has a long-standing tradition of treating theater as an extracurriculur activity and not as an academic discipline.

"The tradition of undergraduate theater is that it's not been connected with any courses or training," he says. "There has always been a great deal of hostility to the idea of curriculur drama."

But according to administrators, Harvard's commitment to the dramatic arts is evidenced by its contract with the ART, an agreement many students say should never have been negotiated.

As part of the agreement, the ART receives free use of the Loeb for professional theatrical productions as well as an annual lump-sum payment earmarked for undergraduate theater production--which usually amounts to about a half-million dollars.