Firsts & Founders: Early Women in Drama at Yale

Establishing the Department of Drama and University Theatre

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Department of Drama | University Theatre | First Performances

Department of Drama

When the Department of Drama opened in fall 1925, women were present as students and faculty—more than 40 years before the first women were admitted to Yale College.

For this new department, the dean of the School of Fine Arts recruited as chairman George Pierce Baker, then teaching a well-regarded playwriting course at Harvard called English 47, or “The 47 Workshop.” Open to the women at Radcliffe, Baker’s course boasted alumni including Philip Barry, Hallie Flanagan (see next page), Sidney Howard, and Eugene O’Neill, among many others. Baker’s ambition was to create a full program for theater training.

Yale University Announces Details of Courses in New Department of Drama, March 1925 (left) and Catalog of Yale University, 1925-26 (left)

The March 1925 Yale University News Statement (above left) highlights new course offerings in all areas of drama: playwriting, producing, design, history, and criticism.

The Catalogue of Yale University for 1925–26 (above right) lists requirements for “students of both sexes” applying for course work in Drama toward a Certificate. Women, who had been admitted to the School of the Fine Arts at its founding in 1869, comprised one-third of the first Drama class.

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University Theatre

Perhaps the strongest single motivation for Baker to leave Harvard for Yale was the promised construction of a University Theatre to his specifications. The new theater building, designed by Blackall, Clapp, and Whittemore Architects and funded by Edward S. Harkness, held its first performances in December 1926.

In this special edition of 40 copies, A Prologue for the opening of the University Theatre at Yale University (below), playwright Lee Wilson Dodd wrote (and read!) playful verse in honor of the occasion.

Lee Wilson Dodd, A prologue for the opening of the University Theatre at Yale University, 1926

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First Performances

Production photograph for The Patriarch, December 1926

The opening production in the University Theatre was The Patriarch (above and below left), a family tragedy set in Appalachia. Its author, Boyd M. Smith, was a student who followed Baker to Yale from the 47 Workshop at Harvard. Smith later became the third chairman of the Department of Drama. The role of Sarah Gaunt was played by Katharine T. Clugston (see next page), one of the first women to act on—and later write for—the stage of the University.

Programs in the early years often used the same 47 Workshop cover design with masked figures and listed the entire faculty of the department, as shown in these two early programs (below).

Program for The Patriarch, December 1926

Program for Lazy, 1927

The first all-female production in the University Theatre was an invited performance by the Experimental Theatre of Vassar College of Chekhov’s The Marriage Proposal in March 1928, directed by Hallie Flanagan (see next page).

Except for the one Technician, women filled every role in this production, from director to actor to costumes and lights. Zoom in to the play's program using the viewer below to see the names and roles of the many women responsible for staging The Marriage Proposal.

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