Cary P. McClelland ’02, former president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC), said financial resources would best be spent on bringing in additional professionals to mentor students.
“I think it doesn’t matter how much money we have,” he said. “I don’t think...money is as beneficial as to bring in people.”
He said Carr should work directly with students in the HRDC, rather than solely through the OFA, because the student group would design projects better targeted toward student actors.
McClelland said the HRDC should use the next two years to prove to Carr that students are “competent enough to work with them” in the reopened Market Theater.
HRDC President Dan A. Cozzens ’03 also said any available resources from Carr would best be used in providing mentorship.
“The money should go towards bringing professionals into established mentorship programs, where the nature of the mentorship is laid out beforehand,” Cozzens said. “When these things are left nebulous, they stay nebulous.”
The HRDC finances nearly all student productions in the Loeb Drama Center, which is home to the ART, and the club prohibits production teams from soliciting outside funding in order to keep shows on equal financial footing.
Only two student shows each term in the Loeb Experimental Theater are paid for without HRDC money. These productions—the first and the last in each semester—would provide a chance for Carr to invest in collaborative work, Cozzens said. He added Carr could also contribute to shows in Harvard’s smaller performing spaces, such as the Adams Pool Theater.
Dancers at Harvard, who have long complained of inadequate performance spaces and opportunities, might also benefit from the new Market Theater; Carr says the new space will be designed so that it can easily be turned into a dance floor.
Carr, a 1986 graduate of the Kennedy School of Government, runs a foundation which gives money to the arts and to human rights causes. In 1999, he gave $18 million to start the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School.
—Staff writer J. Hale Russell can be reached at jrussell@fas.harvard.edu.