Yale workshop

Uneasy lie the heads that administer the funds of a college.

This fall, when the Harvard authorities came to the conclusion that the space occupied by Prof. George Pierce Baker and his famed school of dramatic technique, the 47 Workshop, had best be reconverted from studios to bed rooms, the Workshop closed for the year, Prof. Baker set off for a well-earned sabbatical, and the Crimson (undergraduate daily) scored the authorities for "polished neglect" of Prof. Baker and his work. Nothing notable in this situation--until, last week, adroitly timed as such things usually are, a windfall landed in the lap of Yale University. Edward S. Harkness, Manhattan Maecenas, gave $1,000,000 to the Yale School of Fine Arts for the establishment of a dramatics department, the erection of a theatre, the gathering of a dramatics faculty. Speedily Prof. George Pierce Baker was invited to lead this faculty. Speedily he accepted. Presto--Harvard had lost the 47 Workshop altogether. Said the Crimson, bitterly : "The President and the Board of Overseers, with their shameful neglect, are accountable." Said President Lowell, laconic, sad at heart: "The gift to Yale of $1,000,000 supplies an endowment that does not exist elsewhere." Said Prof. Baker: "There has not been friction." Harvard men pondered the cause behind their loss. In the past, Prof. Baker had sought, and been refused, an experimental theatre and other adjuncts of expansion. Had it really been lack of funds that underlay this refusal? Or lack of belief in dramatics as a valid department in undergraduate instruction? Or sheer lack of sensibility?

Yale men speculated upon the future of their new school. Recent efforts of the Yale Dramatic Association had fostered an interest in the stage which could now expand enormously. Dean Everett B. Meeks of the Art School went promptly to work with a committee to plan buildings. Prof. Baker intimated that there would be a prize for the annual Yale play and Yale men recalled how plays from the 47 Workshop had reached Broadway, how Workshop graduates had become famed playwrights.

There was Frederick Ballard, whose Believe Me, Xantippe! was produced in 1913 by William A. Brady, acted by John Barrymore. Cleves Kincaid wrote Common Clay, Jane Cowl's success in 1915. Mamma's Affair was the work of Rachel Barton Butler. Two years ago there was You and I, by Philip J. Q. Barry. Other craftsmen who learned their trade from Prof. Baker are Eugene O'Neill, Edward Sheldon, Edward Knobloch, David Carb, Jules Eckert Goodman, Kenneth MacGowan (producer) and Lee Simonson (scenic director).

Prof. Baker started teaching English at Harvard in 1888, the year after his graduation. The Workshop grew out of student enthusiasm for his course, "English 47," and soon attracted members from outside the Harvard enrollment. Young women from Radcliffe College and Boston Town joined in the productions, budding playwrights from other colleges took "English 47" as postgraduate work. Theatredom and the critics cocked an eye whenever the Workshop had something new to offer, and one Broadway producer offered a standing prize of $500 for the best Workshop play each year.

Comment on the Yale windfall was chiefly congratulatory. There were some persons, however, who qualified their felicitations with the hope that young people would not be encouraged to express themselves "before they have thought and observed vitally, and during those years when they might better be acquiring a background that would enhance all that they might subsequently care to express." In a word, that Prof. Baker's expensive work at Yale be dedicated, not to the alleviation of yearnings of the undergraduate ego, but to the serious business of fostering a national drama.

Smith Workshop

In 1918 was organized at Smith College a Theatre Workshop, modeled after the 47 Workshop at Harvard. The Smith Director is Samuel A. Eliot Jr., a talented, intense, egotistical grandson of President-Emeritus Charles A Eliot of Harvard. As a Harvard undergraduate, young Mr. Eliot embraced the cause of woman's suffrage. Later, when he was a professor of English, a theatrical laboratory similar to the one he had seen operating at Harvard gave scope to his feminist enthusiasms, through the production of plays written by and for women. Last month, Mr. Eliot and associates opened the Studio Theatre in Manhattan, an outgrowth and outlet of the Smith Laboratory.