Rebecca R. Kastleman ’05 says she thinks the lack of a dramatic arts concentration at Harvard partially explains these difficulties in securing resources for the arts. Problems also arise because theater is primarily an undergraduate enterprise.

“One failing of that system is that theater can get thrust to the sidelines,” said Kastleman.

Minster says that although the school’s administration is “very supportive” of art on campus, “there’s a lot more the University could do” to aid the arts community.

And outside of theater, Harvard’s dance community stands to lose the Rieman Dance Center, its most important rehearsal and performance space, in 2005.

The dearth of space has prompted members of both communities to recognize a new impetus for interdisciplinary work.

“The community holds much more power if we’re united,” Donahue says of the different arts constituencies on campus. “We can do much more together,”

Minster and Donahue both emphasized that the need for space resources is not a primary reason for promoting interdisciplinary art, but that they think working together can produce better art.

Marcus Stern, HRDC faculty advisor and ART associate director, says this collaboration can create political leverage.

“I do think bringing the overall artistic community together to lobby as a whole for more rehearsal and performance space on campus is probably very helpful,” he says.

More importantly than the power in numbers that it provides, the reason for collaborating interdisciplinarily is to produce good art, students say.

“The key to the future of art at Harvard is this collaboration,” says Minster. “We all have stuff to learn and we all have stuff to contribute.”

Geordie S. Broadwater ’04 calls other artistic groups “a totally untapped resource” for the HRDC.

Behind the Velvet Curtain

But students say next semester’s HRDC must also strengthen its own community.

The HRDC is a nebulously defined group. Any student who has participated in a show is automatically a member of the HRDC—a rule that, members say, has meant a lack of cohesiveness a within the group.