Word: dramatically
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Ellen McLaughlin, a theater studies major at Yale and a member of the Dramat, says that the graduate school's attitude "has always been that the University Theater is not really the Dramat's. It belongs to the graduate school...
Times have, if not changed, at least improved. In the past few years, after a minimum of haggling, the graduate school administration has granted the Dramat the stage space it requested. But, as Cosmo A. Catalano Jr., technical adviser at the drama school, points out, "The Dramat knows enough now to limit their requests." They've learned to play the game...
Lack of contact between undergraduate dramatics and the graduate school is the other major cause for bitterness. McLaughlin and other Dramat members talk of an "environment of isolation" between undergraduates and the drama school. This isolation is particularly glaring in the graduate school's lack of interest in the "dining hall" undergraduate productions. "It's not considered respectable for graduate students to get involved in theater outside of University Theater," McLaughlin says. "Before Brustein, it used to be that graduate students would direct undergraduate productions. Now it's not common for undergraduates to stage a performance and not one graduate...
...Dramat productions at the University Theater, no faculty supervision is provided. The Dramat hires a technical supervisor from the graduate school. The Dramat hires its own directors and often these are also pulled from the school. The repertory members do not actively supervise. However, as deButts agrees, having a professional company around, if only for occasional advice, is an asset. "We don't have any formal contact, but if we want something we can go talk to them." Nevertheless, deButts points out, a professional company is mostly busy "being professional...
Again, Brustein has a different story. To the accusation of no contact he recealls his first year at Yale when he offered to "bring the Dramat into the Yale Rep" through a program similar to the program he is now offering Harvard. "I offered them training in the repertory, so they would know what they were doing when they got out on stage. In turn, they would let us identify the talented people...But at the time the Dramat was a proud institution." They turned him down...