George Pierce Baker

George Pierce Baker (April 4, 1866 – January 6, 1935)[1] was a professor of English at Harvard and Yale and author of Dramatic Technique, a codification of the principles of drama.

Baker c. 1886

Biography

Baker graduated in the Harvard University class of 1887, served as Editor-in-Chief of The Harvard Monthly, and taught in the English Department at Harvard from 1888 until 1924. He started his "47 workshop" class in playwriting in 1905. He was instrumental in creating the Harvard Theatre Collection at Harvard University Library. In 1908 he began the Harvard Dramatic Club, acting as its sponsor, and in 1912 he founded Workshop 47 to provide a forum for the performance of plays developed within his English 47 class. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1914.[2] Unable to persuade Harvard to offer a degree in playwriting, he moved to Yale University in 1925, where he helped found the Yale School of Drama. He remained there until his retirement in 1933.[3]

Baker was also selected to teach a seminar whose unconfirmed title was "Shakespeare" or "the English drama" at the Sorbonne University (Paris, France) in 1908.[4]

Among those he taught in his playwriting class were Rachel Barton Butler,[5] George Abbott, Philip Barry, S.N. Behrman, Hallie Flanagan, Hong Shen, Sidney Howard, Samuel Hume, Stanley McCandless, Eugene O'Neill, Florence Ryerson, Edward Sheldon, Josephine Van de Grift, Maurine Dallas Watkins, and Thomas Wolfe.[3] His Dramatic Technique (1919) offered a codification in English of the principles of the well-made play.[6][7]

George Pierce Baker was the father of George P. Baker who was dean of Harvard Business School.[8]

References
  1. American National Biography
  2. "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 5 May 2011.
  3. Banham, Martin, ed. (1998). "Baker, George Pierce". The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 72–73. ISBN 0-521-43437-8.
  4. Archival source: CARAN, Paris. AJ/16-4750 (1907) p. 67
  5. James Fisher, Felicia Hardison Londré, Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Modernism (Rowman & Littlefield 2017): 113-114. ISBN 9781538107867
  6. Styan, J L. Modern Drama in Theory and Practice I.
  7. Innes, Christopher, ed. (2000). A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre. London and New York: Routledge. p. 7. ISBN 0-415-15229-1.
  8. "Harvard Business School bio of George P. Baker". Archived from the original on 2018-07-03. Retrieved 2012-09-25.
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