Crowds Turned Away At Wilder Drama Talk

Police turned away hundreds of students and professors who wanted to hear Thornton N. Wilder, Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry, discuss Greek drama in Emerson D last night. Fire laws prohibited standees.

Wilder limited his talk to the representational aspects of Greek theatre. He compared the large part that convention played there with its role in Chinese and Japanese theatres.

"I don't recommend the performance of Greek tragedy on the modern stage," he concluded. He based this statement on our lack of Greek conventions, for in Greek drama the action takes place in the spectators' minds and is there governed by convention.

Wilder branded the modern theatre as a "dilute, cultural consomme," which one forgets in a few hours.

"Poe--Detective, Criminal, Victim" is the subject of Wilder's lecture at 8 p.m. tonight in Sanders Theatre.