ADMINISTERING THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE
451
drama department for Baker. Harvard turned down the bequest. Baker
took the money to Yale where he founded what was later to be called the
Yale School of Drama.
The Yale School of Drama, like Yale Schools of Music and Art and
Architecture, is a graduate-professional school designed to offer opportu–
nities for training in the practice of the arts, as the Medical School offers
training in the practice of medicine and the Law School in the practice of
jurisprudence. This is accomplished through course work and laboratory
practice, which is to say through training in the classroom and work on the
stage, sometimes in association with the professional Yale Repertory
Theater.
Mter
three years, this culminates in a Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)
degree for dramaturgs, and for critics a D.F.A. degree. While all of these
Yale schools offer some opportunities for undergraduate participation, their
curriculum is primarily designed for would-be professionals.
Lacking a department of drama or even a drama concentration,
Harvard was understandably reluctant to accept a graduate-professional
school of drama on the Yale model. When the American Repertory
Theater came to Harvard from Yale in 1979, we originally proposed such
a model for actors, directors, and dramaturgs connected to the theater. We
were advised that the idea would never fly. It wasn't until 1987, noting the
incidence at Harvard of Institutes (the Nieman Institute, the Bunting
Institute, and so forth), that we submitted the proposal again, under the
name of the ART Institute for Advanced Theater Training. Partly because
we had stumbled on the proper terminology, we were then permitted to
develop a training program in acting, directing, and dramaturgy, provided
we asked for no money from the administration and provided we offered
no advanced degree. (Institute students do receive their M.F.A. now from
the Moscow Art Theatre School, an institution with which the ART is
currently affiliated.)
The appearance of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard in
1979 was an unprecedented event. It represented the establishment of the
only permanent professional arts organization on campus. The ART was
also responsible then for the first undergraduate credit courses in theater in
Harvard's history-in acting, directing, and dramaturgy, given by profes–
sional members of the company with teaching experiences. These were
offered on the assumption that the best teachers in any artistic field were
its practitioners. The courses were approved in what was considered to be
record time, thanks to the enthusiasm of President Bok and Dean Henry
Rosovsky and thanks to the momentum of the occasion.
There is no question that the presence of the ART represented and
represents a chink in the wall of the faculty's resistance to studio courses
in theater, though the chink was quickly filled with plaster provisos. For
