From informal beginnings, Vassar theater takes off

The vibrancy of Vassar's theater community is self-evident: Last semester's productions ranged from Shakespeare to Charles M. Schultz, with experimental single-acts performed hand in hand with musical farce. But the seven student theater organizations and the Drama Department that students are familiar with today did not exist when the College first opened its doors in September of 1865.

An editorial in the student publication Vassariana in 1886 articulated a dilemma faced by students in the College's inaugural year: "There were no societies, literary, social and athletic, ready to receive us into their membership, without our even pausing to think in what manner or by whom they were organized." No outlet for theater existed as a student organization, nor was it in the College's curriculum. The closest thing to a drama instructor the school had was Professor Henry B. Buckham, who taught Rhetoric, Belles Lettres and the English Language.

Students ended the dearth of student societies with the College's first student organization: Philalethea, renamed Philaletheis in 1890. It was not the prolific theater ensemble that it is today when it was founded in November of 1865, but was rather a literary society. Its main devotion was holding weekly meetings during which members would debate and read original poetry and essays. The group also organized semi-annual festivities and brought lecturers to campus, the most notable of which was Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1867. According to Violet Edelman '12, production manager for Philaletheis and assistant to the Vassar historian, "The organization used to be split up into different chapters." As each one began to write and perform plays they gained reputations: Delta was fun-loving, Beta boasted the most attractive members, and Alpha was the most prestigious. The chapters disbanded in 1908 in favor of a more united organization.

Philalethea's association with theater began in the late 1860s, during which they began to perform informal plays during meetings and wrote original works of their own. "If you look at old time Phil it was really playful and geared toward pageantry," said Edelman, noting that productions were also performed outside. The society found a venue for their theatrical base in the Calisthenium and Riding Academy—now the Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film—in a small theater named Society Hall. By 1876, Philalethea was giving its undivided attention to the production of four plays every year. The weekly readings of poetry and prose were too dull to continue, and were phased out over the next two decades, albeit with much complaint from the original founders.

The society found other venues in which to perform over the years. The Alumnae Gymnasium—now Ely Hall—opened in 1890, and boasted Philalethean Hall in its second floor for theater. The Students' Building opened in 1913, and it immediately became the home for Philalethea's productions. Rockefeller Hall was built in 1897; its purpose was purely academic, but students soon began requesting the use of its lecture halls for theatrical purposes. Rockefeller Hall is the oldest venue that is still regularly used for theater today.

It was not just Philaletheis who used these venues; starting in 1916, the Vassar Dramatic Workshop became another outlet for theater. The program was founded by Professor of English Gertrude Buck and provided the first faculty-driven outlet for students to practice theater. Professor Buck taught a popular playwriting class, one of a few classes devoted to drama during a time when theater was not considered a legitimate field of study. With the creation of the workshops, students such as Edna St. Vincent Millay '17 had an opportunity to hone their plays onstage at Vassar and beyond; the playwrights traveled to New York City and Pittsburgh to perform for alumnae.

Although the workshops only lasted for four years, they were a pivotal step in the inclusion of the performing arts in the College's curriculum. The very next year, the first acting class was introduced in the course catalogue: Dramatic Production. The experimental class headed by Professor Mary Cochran only allowed four senior students to register. This quartet became dubbed The Vassar Players, and they went on a national tour performing one-act plays to raise money for endowment funds of alumnae associations.

Hallie Flanagan Davis was the successor of Gertrude Buck's trailblazing effort to elevate the status of theater as a discipline. She introduced the Experimental Theater of Vassar College in 1927, which still exists today as part of the Drama Department. The program specialized in avant-garde theater, as was evident from its first performance. The group performed Chekhov's "Marriage Proposal," in Avery Hall using a different lens of interpretation for each performance: realist, expressionist and constructivist.

Davis left Vassar in 1935 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked her to head the Federal Theatre Project, part of the Works Progress Administration to employ Americans in public works projects. Davis's efforts paved the way for the creation of the Drama Department in 1939, which was chaired by the renowned educator's colleague Winifred Smith. The new department marked Vassar as the first amongst the Seven Sister colleges to recognized theater as a legitimate field of academia.

Vassar's theater culture was also changed with the introduction of the first non-Philaletheis student theater organization, Independent Productions in the 1950s. The group was comprised of students who desired something different from the formality of Philaletheis productions. The creation of Independent Productions marked a change in the theater culture at Vassar; in 1958, when Philaletheis temporarily disbanded, there were multiple other organizations in addition to Independent Productions to take its place.

The theater landscape today at Vassar is largely defined by the distinct venues; besides Rockefeller Hall, none of them were built before the 1970s. In 1974, an old powerhouse behind Main Building that had provided the campus with electricity was converted into the Powerhouse Theater. More than a decade later in the summer of 1986 the first Powerhouse Theater season kicked off, starting a tradition that lasts today. In 1994, architect Jeh Jonson converted some old coal bins behind the Powerhouse into what is now the ALANA Center and The Susan Stein Shiva Theater, a black box theater for student theater productions and other programming. The primary venue for the Department, the 330-seat Martel Theater, was created during Cesar Peli's 2003 renovation of Avery Hall into what is now the Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film.

Today, the student organizations using these venues range from the political and experimental (Unbound) to the Shakespearian (Shakespeare Troupe, Merely Players). These nascent companies already boast their own unique stories and origins, and along with the ongoing work of the Drama Department, continue to mold Vassar's vibrant theatrical landscape.