With the Players

IF I MAY prophesy a bit, the 1937-1938 season With the Dartmouth Players will be an' epoch-making year. Warner Bentley has striven constantly to build up the Players, so that now we are presenting our third subscription season to the public. Two years ago we presented our first subscription season, offering six plays, instead of five, as we had been doing in the past. Last year for the first time we brought a professional actress to the Hanover stage, in our Fall House Party show, She LovesMe Not. Gerrie Worthing scored an immediate hit, and the stories about her grew until they collapsed of their own weight. Then we wondered last spring if there was anything else we could offer to the public. And our answer is a dramatic recital by Blanche Yurka, and a dance recital by Lotte Gosslar, European dance mime.

I think we all sat back then and thought things looked very good and that they couldn't be much better. But we had another meeting and found from Warner that there was a great deal more to be done. "For several years now," Warner said, "we have devoted all our time and energy to building up the Players' season. It's just about tops now and we can turn our energies elsewhere." It seems that somewhere in the recesses of Robinson Hall there lurks a department of the Players known as the Experimental Theatre. Each spring it comes to life and produces three one-act plays, seen by numerous members of the faculty and a few fortunate students. And then it goes back into hiding. "Certainly there is great need of a really active laboratory or experimental group at a college as active dramatically as Dartmouth," Warner went on, "and it is up to us to fulfill that need." And so we have thrown our energy into a new channel, and today the Laboratory Group of the Dartmouth Players is getting under way. It will give opportunity for freshmen who do not get parts in the larger productions and will thus enable us to bring out new talent, and enable others to improve themselves and increase their versatility in acting, thereby improving the entire Players' standard.

Warner and Professor Watson knew they must find a man who had the rare qualities of being both a director and a technical man. And strangely enough they found one who was not only these two but a playwright as well. This man is Ted Packard who is known to the world at large for his published play Crab Apple. He comes from Canton, Mass., and was educated at Colby, which he attended for one year; and then Tufts where he received his B.A. He also attended the Yale School of the Drama, where he studied play-writing and play production, getting his M.A. last spring.—SlDNEY B. CARDOZO JR. '3B.