THESPIANS CHOOSE WILD-WEST DRAMA

The Harvard Dramatic Club announced last night, as its thirty-fourth production, "The Chisholm Trail", a drama by Mrs. Elizabeth Higgins Sullivan. Rehearsals are being held daily under the direction of Edward Massey '15, who has had long experience with the Club, both as an undergraduate, and as a coach since his graduation. The surge of progress, the triumph of the new West over the lariat, is the motivating force of the presentation. Hard-riding, gun-toting cattlemen struggle in vain to protect their grazing lands from the invasion of foreign homesteaders. The action of the play occurs in Western Nebraska within a period of two weeks in 1886.

Mrs. Sullivan, the authoress, was born in Nebraska. Among her acquaintances on the frontier were Buffalo Bill and Major Frank North, both of whom she called "uncle". Her family was of pioneer stock, always pushing on to the new border-land of civilization. At the period of which she writes, a fierce conflict was being waged between the cattle interests and the general commercial interests that were striving to make the West a settled country. Although only a girl at the time, Mrs. Sullivan recalls vividly these stirring events in which her own family was engulfed.

Literary fame came to Mrs. Sullivan in 1902 with the publication by Harper and Brothers of her novel, "Out of the West", which told the story of the struggle of the grange against the railroads. For 20 years she was a feature writer for Chicago newspapers. Her activities in Chicago awakened her desire for writing of a more creative nature. She came to Cambridge where she studied in the 47 Workshop during the last year of the administration of Professor G. P. Baker '87. "The Strongest Man", her first play, was produced at Agassiz House in 1925, and was published in the last series of 47 Workshop dramas. At Yale she continued her study of dramatic technique with Professor Baker. "The Chisholm Trail" is her latest piece, and, in keeping with the Dramatic Club's tradition of sponsoring works hitherto unknown on the American stage, will have its premier showing in Cambridge