The History - 1936-1946

Building the Foundation

September of 1936 marked the beginning of the first season of the Department of Dramatic Art in the newly organized College of Fine Arts. Productions of Fresh Fields, The Night of January 16th and The Devil's Disciple made up the first season. Unfortunately, Mrs. Marguerite Morrow was able to Head the Department of Dramatic Art only in its inaugural year. Her health did not improve and she was forced to resign in May of 1937.

So began a decade of firsts. In the fall of 1937, The Department of Drama moved from its small space under the stadium to Herring Hall, which had formerly been the women's gymnasium. The first production in this new space was The Warrior's Husband. The next year, The college of Fine Arts conferred its first Bachelor of Fine Arts in dramatic art to a class of five: Betty Bradfield, Roderick Andrew Clelland, Ebba Hammar, Franklin Pierce Huddle, and Elma Jeanne Metcalf. In April of 1940, the fledgling department hosted the Southwest Theatre Conference as part of the National Theatre Conference.

Along with these milestones came a few bumps in the road. The birth of the department was marked by a degree of instability in the makeup of the faculty. Following Mrs. Morrow's resignation came a quick succession of department heads: by 1942, just six years into its establishment, the department was already under the reins of its fourth department head. Mrs. Morrow's successor, Gordon Davis, resigned as head of the department in 1941, after three years of service in that capacity. He was followed by Thomas Wood Stevens, who founded the first Theatre Department in America in 1914 at Carnegie Tech. Stevens was known as America's leading pageant writer and director, developing and directing forty-five minute versions of Shakespearean plays for a variety of major venues, including the San Diego World's Fair. Stevens served as Head of the Department of Drama at the University of Arizona only until his sudden death in January of 1942.

Upon Stevens' death, Peter R. Marroney, Art and Technical Director for the department since 1939, was appointed Interim Head of the Department of Drama. Marroney was then drafted in the fall of 1942, and served in the Navy through the rest of World War II. In his absence, Lucy Barton, who was hired to teach costume design, became Interim Department Head. When Marroney returned from service in 1946, there was some controversy over who should become permanent Head of the department, but this controversy was extinguished when Barton chose to take a position at the University of Texas at Austin. Barton went on to become one of the key figures in costume design in America, and her textbook on costume history was a standard text for design students for many years.

World War II affected the first decade of the department in many ways. Along with Marroney, members of the department were active in service abroad. Yet as early as 1941, the Department of Drama was doing what it could for our servicemen at home by entertaining the soldiers at Davis-Monthan Air Field. In December of 1941, the department planned a performance of Elmer Rice's Flight of the West as entertainment for the troops stationed at Davis-Monthan in preparation for the play's performance at Herring Hall. On December 7, the theatre technicians arrived to set up the scenery and lights for a rehearsal later that afternoon. Shortly after their arrival, Davis-Monthan was placed on alert: Japan had bombed Pearl harbor. War was declared by Congress and the president. The show did not go on.

The Activities of the Department of Drama were curtailed during the war years.