HISTORY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE

Teaching and producing theatre at College Park already had a 70 year history when the Board of Regents established the Department of Theatre on October 19, 1989 by approving the separation of the former Department of Communication Arts and Theatre into distinct departments.

The first known campus theatre activity began in 1919 when Prof. C.S. Richardson formed an extra-curricular group called The Players. Around 1924 the group changed its name to The Masque and Bauble Club. This group must have disbanded in 1926 because there are no subsequent records of the organization.

During 1927-28, according to the 1928 yearbook, Dr. Charles B. Hale and Prof. Richardson organized the Footlight Club with no apparent connection to the previous groups. In 1944 the Footlight Club left the sponsorship of the Department of English for the Department of Speech. The Footlight Club officially changed its name to University Theatre in 1947, and the theatre production program moved into its first "real" theatre, Tawes Theatre, in 1965.

The Department of Speech and Dramatic Art, with the Division of Theatre as one of its three units, became the Department of Communication Arts and Theatre in June 1977. In addition to its regular season in Tawes Theatre, University Theatre began producing a second series of plays in the Gallery Theatre during the 1978-79 season. The Gallery Theatre became the Rudolph E. Pugliese Theatre, named for Professor Emeritus Pugliese, in June 1986.

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Department of Theatre, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742-1610