Department History
 The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 1903, on the stage of the Assembly Hall (now Building 120 in the Quad)
(PHOTO COURTESY OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS/M51 ANDERSON COLLECTION)
In 1903, before there was a Drama department and the University was young, the English club decided to put up as its first production the Shakespearean-era farce The Knight of the Burning Pestle, by Francis Beaumont. Lee Emerson Bassett, then a young lecturer in the English department, had been impressed by the recent work of William Poel in England. Whereas most 19th century Shakespeare productions were lavish events with elaborate props and huge trompe l'oeil set paintings, Poel's company began to stage Shakespeare the way Shakespeare had, with minimal sets and costumes on a bare stage. The March 1903 Stanford production of The Knight of the Burning Pestle was the first production in the United States ever to be staged on a replica of an Elizabethan theater. This production planted the seed for the eventual forming of a separate theater department, and marks the beginning of a long tradition of combining academic study with theatrical practice.
Stanford's Drama Department has been a leader in theater studies and performance since it separated from English in the 1930s. Initially, the department of Speech and Drama provided an administrative home for a variety of programs: the study of theater and drama, theater production, rhetoric and public address, radio and television, and the Stanford Speech and Hearing Clinic. In the years immediately following the Second World War, the department in its myriad capacities achieved national stature through its scholarly Ph.D. program, headed by the chair, Hubert Heffner (no relation). The early 1960s saw a major restructuring: the division of radio and television became the core of the new Communcations department, the Speech and Hearing Clinic moved to the Medical School, and both the undergraduate program in public speaking and the graduate program in rhetoric and public address were closed. Speech and Drama, at that point, fulfilled its plan to become a department that focused exclusively on theater studies and performance. Under the direction of Professor Robert Loper, the Department enlarged to establish an M.F.A. program in acting, directing, design, and production. At the same time, the University founded the Stanford Repertory Theatre, a professional company. In 1974, the Department elected to change its focus, close the M.F.A. program, and concentrate upon the combination of inter-related undergraduate and Ph.D. curricula, an integration which still functions today. At this point, the Department revised its Ph.D. program, which had worked exclusively within a scholarly framework, to include the integration of theory, criticism and performance. The program began with the assumption that scholarship would be strengthened by people who were directly involved in performance, and that performance would be enhanced by practitioners whose analytic skills had been honed in scholarship. Professor Charles R. Lyons implemented this program as Department Chair in 1974, and oversaw its development, functioning as Chair of the Department or of the Graduate Studies Committee continuously until his death in 1999. During his tenure, he left an indelible mark on the department. |
