Varsity Show
Founded in 1893 as a fundraiser for the university's fledgling athletic teams, the Varsity Show now draws together the entire Columbia undergraduate community for a series of performances every April.
Dedicated to producing a unique full-length musical that skewers and satirizes many dubious aspects of life at Columbia, the Varsity Show is written and performed exclusively by university undergraduates.
Various renowned playwrights, composers, authors, directors, and actors have contributed to the Varsity Show, either as writers or performers, while students at Columbia, including Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Lorenz Hart, Herman J. Mankiewicz, I.
The Columbia College Dramatic Club (the "Strollers"), the predecessor to the Varsity Show, was established in 1886 as a way to raise funds for the university's athletic teams.
[1] Though originally founded as an undergraduate organization, the Strollers soon began admitting members who had already graduated into the cast, in addition to professional actors; it stopped contributing to university athletics around 1890, instead keeping the money it raised for itself, having grown into a semi-professional theater company with only a tenuous relationship with the college.
The first show, Joan of Arc, or The Monarch, The Maid, The Minister, and The Magician, written by Guy Wetmore Carryl and Kenneth MacKenzie Murchison, debuted on April 2, 1894.
It was during its premiere at Madison Square Garden that architect Stanford White, whose firm had designed Columbia's Morningside Heights campus, was shot by Harry Kendall Thaw.
During the editing process, alumnus and judge Oscar Hammerstein II, who had first appeared in the Varsity show in the 1915 production, On Your Way, added two of his own songs to the musical, "There's Always Room For One More" and "Weaknesses".
There were experienced directors, a beautifully equipped stage with good lighting situated in the heart of the Broadway theatre district, and best of all, professional musicians in the pit.
[4] The 1948 Varsity Show, The Streets of New York, co-written by Alan Koehler and Joseph Meredith and with music by Richard Chodosh and Phil Springer, was so popular upon its premiere that it was revived three times (1952, 1958, 1961).
[9] The lack of an adequate performance space on campus continued through the first half of the 20th century, during which the Varsity Show was staged at various venues around the cities, including Carnegie Hall, the Waldorf-Astoria, and the Hotel Astor.
The 1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald short story "Head and Shoulders" depicts a performance of the 1917 Varsity Show, Home, James, written by Hammerstein and Herman Axelrod,[41] in which the character Marcia Meadows is an actress.
[44] In the 1955 Herman Wouk novel Marjorie Morningstar, the character Wally Wronken, an aspiring playwright, writes a Varsity Show, which is accepted by the judges and premieres at the Waldorf.
