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Drama Over New Concentration

The technical glitches that may plague a theater concentration can be fixed with some practice and ingenuity, believe the proponents of the program.

Of the potential scheduling conflicts, Merenda suggests reduction of the number of plays. She puts forth the model of other performing arts colleges, in which during the first two years students would not be allowed perform, but would instead focus on training and learning about skills. The last two years would be the time to put on performances. In this manner, not only would students be given an intensive exploration of technique, but the competition for performance space would be diminished.

Kiely invokes the success of the music program as an exemplary balance of academic and student performance interests. “Extracurricular music clubs absolutely flourish on this campus and the number of music majors on the campus is very small,” he says. “I don’t see why that wouldn’t be the same in theater. If you’re a good actress or good director, you would find plenty of things to do.”

According to Assistant to the Chair of the Music Department Mary Gerbi there are approximately 45 music concentrators. As to why no conflict exists between student groups and academics, “the activities of the music department and those extracurricular groups are quite different,” she says.

Additionally, a performance concentration is not offered and theses are generally focused on one of four academic areas: composition, musical theory, ethnomusicology and historic musicology. Those composition theses that will be performed are scheduled far in advance at Paine Hall, a space reserved for the music department.

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Some skeptics may doubt the legitimacy of a theater program at Harvard or wonder how a rigorous academic structure can be applied to a creative process. According to Kiely, the integrity of artistic degree programs was also questioned during the development of the visual and environmental studies concentration. In terms of scholastic intensity and liberal arts approach, one can look again to the music department, in which joint concentration gives students an opportunity to research a broad range of topics. Recent joint theses have included such diverse fields as mathematics, social anthropology, romance languages and psychology (theses in the latter two won Hoopes Prizes in 2003 and 2004).

Dramatic arts concentrators certainly will be able to articulate ideas, comprehend thematic structures and cultivate kinesthetic intelligence. Furthermore, an interdisciplinary and studious approach to acting is second nature to the typical over-achieving Harvard student looking to be a great dramatist.

Kargman says that her class with the A.R.T.’s Marcus Stern—“Dramatic Arts 18r. Advanced Acting: 20th-Century Texts” —is so much work that she decided to hold off acting in one of HRDC’s plays until the spring. With the actor’s expectation that his students come to class with only their best work, Kargman and her peers (whom she says are mostly seniors) have a considerable amount of studying to do.

Outside of reading the script and learning a text completely, a great actor will do an enormous amount of research for his or her character. In performing a piece from Tom Griffin’s A Boy Next Door, Kargman extensively researched the daily life of autistics, the emotional structure of autism and the scientific rationale of the disease.

Some vocational discussion does come up in the dramatic arts classes, including instructional talk on auditioning and how to get into the difficult businesses of theater, film, or entertainment. Harvard seems to avoid pre-professional programs in every discipline, considering the lack of pre-business, pre-law or pre-medicine tracks, as well as the absence of traditional journalism or communications classes from the course catalogue.

The question arises as to why it is that students with a more definite plan for their future cannot explore vocational possibilities through a Harvard liberal arts curriculum. As Merenda exasperatedly exclaims, “MIT has a theater major for heaven sake!”

A major theme in the curricular review, in both the humanities and sciences, is the augmentation and/or overhaul of the academic advising system. While first-year pre-meds-to-be endured a seven hour day of science advising in their first week, humanities and social science students must be considerably more proactive to craft their curricular program and plan life after college.

If administrators are willing to facilitate discussion with Harvard drama students and members of the extracurricular dramatic community, student input may have a profound effect on the construction of a theater concentration. It should be after all for the benefit of Harvard students that new concentrations are created and with their best interests in mind.

Interdepartmental work with the English, VES and music departments—preexisting fields in which creative students are given more license to combine academics with arts—will help formulate a truly interesting dramatic arts concentration. In the interdisciplinary collaboration, Harvard will also be given the chance to examine what emphasis the academic community places on the arts and how it can better serve its visually, kinesthetically and creatively intelligent students in forming plans for their futures.

There may be some grumbling from the rafters as changes are made to the existing drama community, but from many current and prospective drama students, the idea of a new theater concentration receives a standing ovation.

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