Long before colleges and universities offered academic degrees in theatre, they provided drama productions, usually under the aegis of a club or society. The first such group in America was the Hasty Pudding Club, founded as a social club in 1795 by a group of Harvard undergraduates. They profess to be “the third oldest theatrical organization in the world,” outranked only by the Comédie Française and the Oberammergau Passion Players, but the claim is exaggerated since the club did not enter the theatrical arena for many years. The organization began staging mock trials, called “High Court of Equity.” By 1835 these trials were made into theatrical productions by costuming participants, then musical numbers were introduced in 1850. The first more‐or‐less original Hasty Pudding show, written in 1884 by Lemuel Hayward, was a collegiate burlesque of a then‐popular commercial burlesque, Bombastes Furioso. Although the club mounted several shows a year, it was generally its spring production on which it lavished special attention and which often toured. Since the time of World War I a separate committee, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, has overseen the productions. Among performers and writers were such later famous figures as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Franklin Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, Henry Cabot Lodge, Owen Wister, Robert Sherwood, and Alan Jay Lerner. After Harvard became co‐educational, women were allowed to be active behind the scenes, but the casts, including “female” leads and chorus “girls,” remained steadfastly male for many years. The shows continue today but with women also on stage. The second‐oldest such organization is the Mask and Wig Club, founded at the University of Pennsylvania in 1889. It has produced comic musicals ever since, not allowing women on stage for years after Harvard and others went co‐ed. Princeton's Triangle Club was founded in 1888 as the Princeton Dramatic Association. Its first musical was The Honorable Julius Caesar (1890), on which Booth Tarkington collaborated. It adopted its present name in 1893 and since then has specialized in all‐student musicals, many of which have toured. It is the only one of such collegiate groups to have produced a song of widespread, lasting popularity. “East of the Sun (and West of the Moon),” with words and music by Brooks Bowman, came from its 1934 production, Stags at Bay. Among the group's later‐celebrated members were José Ferrer and Joshua Logan. The Harvard Dramatic Club was founded in 1908 to encourage playwriting among undergraduates and alumni, producing only their plays until 1917. Its offerings included the premiere of Percy Mackaye's The Scarecrow in 1909. After World War I it abandoned its original policy, but for many years offered the American premieres of interesting foreign plays. In recent years it has combined with the Radcliffe Dramatic Club and operates much like any other college theatrical organization, albeit it works closely with the American Repertory Theatre at the Loeb Center. Most other college theatrical clubs fell by the wayside as universities offered degrees in theatre and the theatrical activities became part of an academic program.
