Experts Laud Proposals for Theatre Here

White three experts told them why, an audience of over 200 decided during a forum at the New Lecture Hall last night that the University needs, wants, and should have a theatre.

After a reading of the Student Council's report on theatrical conditions here by Warren Brody '53, head of the committee that studied the problem, Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, Thornton Wilder, Charles Eliot Norton, Professor of Poetry, and Donald Oenslager '23, instructor in drama at Yale, discussed the place of a theatre here.

Brody moderated the forum, and emphasized that the committee recommended a Public Arts Center to include WHRB, the Poet's Theatre, as well as the Dramatic Club and the Theatre Group.

Small or Large?

A theatre that would hold about 750 was the suggestion of Oenslager, although his two colleagues felt that a larger auditorium that could be partitioned into a smaller theatre is necessary. Oenslager went on to describe the facilities other schools have in the way of theatre.

MacLeish said that people today, including students, are taking a greater interest in literature, especially plays. He claimed that plays are meant to be seen, concluding that a theatre here would forward experimentation in the art of drama and afford it useful study and criticism.

Wilder agreed that plays must be seen to be appreciated and added that although groups here have done a good job of making the best of Sanders and similar theatres, a center of informal instruction was needed.

He called theatre 'the only way humans have of talking with humans about themselves."