"OBSESSIVE PURSUIT"

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The supplement by Caldwell Titcomb in your recent issue is a valuable and convincing survey of Harvard theater written by one of the few people on the Cambridge scene able to be both knowledgeable and impartial concerning this confused subject.

Mr. Titcomb persuasively argues for undergraduate concentration in drama and intimates strongly his approval of professional direction and supervision in the new theater. Although he presents some arguments against both of these positions, they do not reflect quite accurately the concern felt by many undergraduates interested in theater.

The primary objection to concentration in theater is that it is direct and overt training for a profession, exactly analogous in this respect to a major in journalism or physical education. Harvard has never encouraged narrow preparation for law or medicine and it should not do so for the stage. Mr. Titcomb argues that theater, in embracing many arts, conforms to the spirit of General Education. It seems to me, on the contrary, that the theater is a hierarchy and combine of specialties whose interrelations are strictly pragmatic, designed for efficiency in production, not for artistic cross-fertilization. Furthermore, the theater is a peculiarly obsessive pursuit, requiring professionally almost total personal commitment. College represents one of the destined actor's few opportunities to learn about intellectual and artistic areas beside his own.

The great virtue of Harvard theater is the versatility and wide range which the present fluid situation makes possible. The reason for the vast number and variety of the productions Mr. Titcomb enumerates is the freedom from imposed standards of any sort which the Harvard director now enjoys. It is felt by many that the advent of concentration in drama together with strong faculty supervision in the new theater will result in the loss of this freedom. This is why the request for continued student autonomy in productions, so churlishly and peremptorily rejected by the Faculty Committee For The New Theatre, was included in the report made by the student theatre committee.

Finally, it cannot be too much emphasized that the great majority of those who work in Harvard theater do not intend to become professionals. They like local drama for its camaraderie, its opportunities for self-expression in many ways, its abundance of different ideas, and the thrill of producing near-professional results with non-professional material. They fear that a situation in which doctrine was expounded in the classroom and enacted in the new theater would leave no room for them and their successors. John Washburn '59

(Mr. Titcomb did not advocate professional direction as a general policy, either in or out of the new theatre. He was careful to say that non-student direction is desirable only "occasionally."

He also pointed out that the Loeb Center could not accommodate ALL productions. Those outside would naturally enjoy all the present fluidity and "freedom from imposed standards." But he expressed a confidence, seconded in Professor Levin's letter on Monday, that even in the new theatre the University would offer students all possible latitude.

In no way did he intend to close activity to those who are not professionally-minded. He only hoped the University would make a more thorough training available to those who convinced the Faculty of their serious desire and talent.--Ed.)