47 Workshop

47 Workshop (Cambridge, Massachusetts). An outgrowth of Professor George Pierce Baker's course at Harvard in playwriting (the course was listed as English 47), it offered his students a chance to produce their plays, although without academic credit. The course had been started in 1905 and the workshop in 1913. Among the many aspiring playwrights who profited from the workshop were George Abbott, Philip Barry, S. N. Behrman, Sidney Howard, and Eugene O'Neill. Other later important theatrical figures also enrolled, including critic John Mason Brown, executive Theresa Helburn, and designer Donald Oenslager. The course and the workshop are generally acknowledged to have been among the most significant academic contributions to the creative commercial stage.