University of Pittsburgh Stages
University of Pittsburgh Stages or Pitt Stages, previously known as the or University of Pittsburgh Repertory Theatre or Pitt Rep, is the flagship production company for the University of Pittsburgh Department of Theatre Arts. Pitt Stages features students on stage with professional actors and teaching artists staging public performances of classic masterpieces, contemporary productions, and student-directed labs. The company's primary performance spaces include the University's Stephen Foster Memorial and Cathedral of Learning.
History
Thespian Society
The heritage of theatre at the University of Pittsburgh stretches back to at least 1810 when the Thespian Society was organized by students of the forerunner of the university, the Pittsburgh Academy, in order to stage popular comedies and musical entertainment. These students included Henry Marie Brackenridge, the son of university founder Hugh Henry Brackenridge; Morgan Neville, the son of Presley Neville; and future U.S. Congressman and Senator William Wilkins. The club staged their first production, Who Wants a Guinea?, at the Drury Theatre at Third and Smithfield streets in downtown Pittsburgh. This club was frequently mentioned by travelers commenting on the early culture of Pittsburgh, however it was disbanded by university faculty in 1833 because, according to Agnes Starrett's 1937 history of the university, "instead of Shakespeare, the members had begun to produce vulgar modern comedies". After the school progressed to university status, student organized dramatic theater would continue under various names and incarnations.Cap and Gown Club
Musical theatre at the university has its origins when the school was named the Western University of Pennsylvania, then commonly referred to as "WUP". On January 15, 1908, the Cap and Gown Club was founded by John S. Ashbrook and Charles R. Porter, along with students, graduates, and faculty of the Dental Department. The club was the first dramatic group at the university and staged original, all-male, musical comedies often with themes of local or university interest. The first production by the group was In Wupland, which was staged at Pittsburgh's Nixon Theater on April 24, 1908, followed by another performance at the Duquesne Theater on May 23, 1908. Early members of the group included George M. Kirk who, after the school changed its name to the University of Pittsburgh in July, 1908, penned the lyrics to the university's fight song, "Hail to Pitt", for a production of the club's Here or There at the Carnegie Music Hall in the spring of 1910. The increasing recognition and reputation of the club in the 1910s precipitated multiple performances of its productions and the touring of areas outside of the city into the surrounding areas of Western Pennsylvania as far away as Altoona and Erie, as well as in Youngstown, Ohio and Jamestown, New York. By 1929, the club's productions had become so profitable, and had gained such a level of importance, that the graduate club configuration was no longer sufficient to run the club. Therefore, a corporate charter was obtained from the state in order to reorganized the club's structure with club founder Ashbrook elected as its first president. Among the Cap and Gown club's alumni were Hollywood stars Dutch Hendrian, Regis Toomey and Gene Kelly, along with Kelly's brother Fred, who became an influential choreographer and television producer and director. Following his graduation in 1933, Gene Kelly remained active with the Cap and Gown Club, serving as its director from 1934 to 1938. The club's 1938 production, Pickets, Please!, featured the debut of the university's other major spirit song, the "Pitt Victory Song". The club thrived for 34 consecutive years before it became dormant in 1942 due to the entrance of the United States into World War II. Following the war, the club was revived in 1946 and staged a production in December of that year, followed by its 36th and final production in 1947, although it lingered on as a club until 1978.Pitt Players to Pitt Stages
In 1916, simultaneous with the growing popularity of the Cap and Gown Club, another extracurricular student club, the Pitt Players, was organized as a co-ed theatrical group that focused on more serious, non-musical dramatic presentations. The Pitt Players was organized by George M. Baird, who along with also being known for writing the lyrics to the University of Pittsburgh Alma Mater, was active in many of the aspects of the group's productions. Although most of the university's programs in theatre were transferred to Carnegie Tech during the administration of Chancellor John Bowman in order to avoid duplication of that school's efforts, the Pitt Players, supported by the Theatron honorary dramatic fraternity, evolved to put on multiple theatrical productions each year. Its 1947 production of Joan of Lorraine, the first off-Broadway presentation of the play, received national publicity on Fred Waring's radio program. Later that year, both the Cap and Gown Club and the Pitt Players came under the direction of Harvey J. Pope, who arrived at Pitt from Northwestern University Workshop Theater to serve as a permanent dramatic coach at Pitt and as a faculty member of the speech and drama departments. Following their 1947 show, the Cap and Gown Club became inactive and the Pitt Players sought to widen the scope of their productions, which came to include musicals.In 1961, the university's Speech Department presented its first public production stemming from its dramatic theatre class, "Theatre 11". The play, Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape, was held in early October in the Cathedral of Learning room 1126. It was thus during the early 1960s, with the university now providing theatre training and production through its Department of Speech, that the Pitt Players, having common theatrical coaches and staff with university's academic theatre program, disappeared as a separate entity as it melded into the Department of Speech and Theater Arts' University Theatre, although casts of the University Theatre's productions were still often popularly referred to as the "Pitt Players". The University Theatre, which became known as Pitt Theatre, became professionally oriented in 1981, and the Division of Theatre Arts of the Department of Speech and Theater Arts was spun off into a new department of the university, the Department of Theatre Arts, on October 21, 1982. The department's theatre group was then renamed to the University of Pittsburgh Repertory Theatre in 1999 and then to its current moniker, University of Pittsburgh Stages, prior to the Fall semester of 2013, and now primarily uses the name "Pitt Stages".