Word: brustein
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Robert Brustein has earned the label "controversial" at Yale, at Harvard, in the American theater--a brilliant scholar who is also a provocative artist, an incisive critic who also runs a professional theater, a moralist, philosopher, and a culture-watcher. If and when he comes to the Loeb in 1980, he will focus the attention of the country on theater at Harvard--and rightly so: it's in his nature to shake things...
...Robert Brustein graduated from Amherst College in 1948. From there he went to Yale School of Drama, but left after a year, "very disillusioned" by the lack of vigor and intellectual standards. He earned an M.A. at Columbia in 1950, and then began working for his Ph.D. under Lionel Trilling in Dramatic Literature and Cultural Criticism. He taught briefly at Cornell (freshman composition, where he says he "first learned to write"), Vassar, and, after receiving his Ph.D., Columbia. "I actually went into drama criticism because I thought it would get me practical work in the theatre," Brustein said...
...Brustein fails to realize that there will be many losers. The House drama societies and college-wide amateur companies such as the Gilbert and Sullivan Players will have difficulty using the Loeb technical facilities. More significantly, all those students who want to do theater but who reject the excesses of theatrical pre-professionalism may be frozen out of Loeb opportunities...
...would have been reassuring to know that the administration had investigated these problems in order to protect undergraduates as fully as possible. Instead, the administration has been swept along by Brustein's bold plan. As usual, the administration has been all too eager to pay obeisance to the "big name." As a result, a very important educational decision, affecting literally hundreds of undergraduates will be made with only one option having been presented...
...basic problem with Loeb theater, its stultifying inbrededness, has not been broached. Brustein's proposal is likely to exacerbate the cliquishness that turns so many students away from the Loeb. Only be being acutely aware of the serious threat to broad participation posed by Brustein's plan can undergraduates protect themselves where the administration has failed...