Word: stage
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Axminister is one of those plays within a play that so intrigue and confound modern authors. In this case there is even an audience within the audience--two raspy-voiced men who sit-in front-row seats and occasionally talk with the actors on stage...
...ceremonies, played by Blyth Danner, announces that three hobos will re-enact the scene in which they discovered and buried the body of Joseph Axminster, another vagabond, so that his two friends in the audience will know what became of him. She also announces that the back of the stage--bare except for a crate that becomes Axminster's coffin and some stools--is the municipal garbage dump and that off to the right is a jail. Her best acting is done later in the show when she play's Axminster's dead body...
Furthermore all main stage productions would suffer from the HDC plan, not just misplaced House productions, because all plays would have lower budgets. Increasing the number of shows would entail cutting the budget for each from $2500 to $1700. This is supposed to encourage experimentation and improvisation of sets, props, and costumes. But this kind of corner-cutting is more appropriate to House drama than to the main stage...
...budget the Loeb would never again be able to underwrite anything as elaborate as last Fall's The Tempest or Utopia Limited the year before. A show requiring several complicated sets or expensive costuming could not be produced for $1700. This year, only the revived Leverett House operas were staged at the Loeb for less than that amount; in that instance money was saved because flats and costumes from the House production were used on the main stage...
...Executive Committee will begin meeting next week to choose next year's main stage directors. The HDC's bylaws require main stage directors to have directed two plays already. Many of the applicants will have had experience only in the Houses or the Experimental Theater, and these should be given generous consideration. But the committee should not authorize an increased number of undergraduate-directed plays if it can do so only by lowering the quality of Loeb productions. The Committee should discard its earlier plan: twelve main stage shows could be everybody's loss and nobody's gain...