The Harvard-Radcliffe merger, official as of last Friday, seals the fate of Agassiz House: it belongs to the new Radcliffe Institute.

Student groups that used the building's ornate second-floor theater for decades will still mount productions there for the next five years, according to an agreement negotiated between the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Radcliffe.

After 2004, Radcliffe can do as she pleases.

"Agassiz makes our show what it is," says Harini K. Reddy '01, co-president of the South Asian Association and co-producer of this year's Ghungroo performance. "It breaks our hearts to think future generations of Ghungroo won't be able to use it."

Since Nancy-Beth G. Sheerr '71, who brokered the merger for a $350 million Radcliffe Institute, envisions conferences and symposia in Agassiz, Harvard will need to make new plans so the shows can go on.

With scores of dramatic productions fighting over three--soon to be two--major theaters, stage space is a hot commodity on campus each year.

Students and some administrators are thinking aloud about dramatic changes for the Loeb Drama Center. A mere four undergraduate productions appear on the Loeb Mainstage, a space originally endowed for student use but overtaken by the American Repertory Theater (ART) in 1980. Even the black-box Experimental Stage (the Ex) at the Loeb, which hosts a different undergraduate production almost every weekend, turns directors away because there just isn't enough space on the calendar.

There has been a move in recent years to find alternate stages.