Alumni and former Loeb staff said the facility provided students with opportunities to learn from its cutting-edge facilities—and later from more experienced thespians.
In the fall of 1960, the first production, Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida,” premiered on the Loeb Mainstage and presented students with an enormous learning opportunity.
“We were befuddled as we came nearer and nearer to the opening. The set just wasn’t looking right,” Henning said. The new space exposed students to dilemmas they had never seen in the dining halls and other spaces they had previously used. “We realized that the auditorium was steeply raked and the set didn’t extend far enough. We spent the next 24 hours painting the entire floor.”
But students weren’t the only ones excited about the Loeb’s dramatic possibilities.
In 1980, the American Repertory Theatre, a professional theater company founded by Robert S. Brustein, who also established the Yale Repertory Theatre, began using the Loeb for productions. Today the company is primarily housed in the Loeb, and most of the offices in the building are occupied not by students, but by the A.R.T.
Some alumni said they were shocked by this change, which raised doubts as to the purpose of the facility.
“At the time of its opening, if any of the Harvard leadership had in the backs of their minds–or the fronts of their minds–of bringing in a professional company, they kept it to themselves,” Henning said.
But with time, members of the HDC—now the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club—came to see the advantages of sharing space with the A.R.T.
“Initially, the students were reticent to have them and it was understandable; after all, it was their home and their baby. To have a strange group, especially coming from Yale, it was hard for them to get used to,” said Soule, the first technical director of the Loeb. “But in time they realized the benefits of having this professional company.”
Soule said that even with the thriving theater community on campus, students could not realistically keep the building functioning 24/7.
“It’s the kind of situation that benefits both parties,” said J. Michael Griggs, current Loeb technical director and HRDC advisor. “For the professionals it’s a way to get space and have someone soak up the cost, and the students get the benefit of having professionals to learn from.”
Overall, those involved in the Loeb over the past 50 years agreed that the facility has primarily expanded the scope of student theater at Harvard.
“There was hardly a moment when there weren’t students working there,” Soule said. “There was an incredible amount of enthusiasm that appears to be going even to this day.”
—Staff writer Erika P. Pierson can be reached at epierson@fas.harvard.edu.