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DEPARTMENT FACT SHEET

	On May 20, 1870, UC Berkeley presented its first theatrical production: Marco Spada, a romantic Italian drama performed by the University Dramatic Association.
	During the early years of the University, performance was generally undertaken by student groups: The Durant Rhetorical Society, The Neolaean Literary Society (1871), The University Dramatic Society (1877) and the Berkeley Dramatic Club (1878).
	William Randolph Hearst’s Greek Theater, built in 1903, became one of the leading stages dedicated to the new art-theatre movement in the U.S. and attracted numerous distinguished professional performers to Cal including Sarah Bernhardt, Maude Adams, Nance O’Neill, Robert B. Mantell, Margaret Anglin, Irving Pichel, and the Ben Greet Players. The theater opened with a student production of Aristophones’ The Birds on September 24, 1903.
	Student sponsorship of plays began in 1922 with a production in Hearst Gymnasium of Harley Granville Barker’s Prunella, directed by Morris Ankrum.
	Some of the young performers who participated in Cal productions prior to the formation of a department later became luminaries of professional theater, radio and film: Irving Pichel, Everett Glass, Gilmore Brown (head of the Pasadena Playhouse), radio star Michel Raffetto, screen star Gloria Stuart, Barton Yarborough, playwright and screen writer Sidney Howard, among others.
	In later years, the campus theater provided a training ground for such distinguished actors as Gregory Peck, Barry Nelson, Jane and Gordon Connell, Geoffrey Horne and others.
	In 1931, campus theatrical activity was concentrated in the Little Theater under the direction of Edwin Duerr with additional productions sponsored by the Mask and Dagger, Thalian, and Hammer and Dimmer Societies.
	In 1941, the academic study and performance of theater was given a curricular home in the new Department of Dramatic Art under the chairmanship of Professor Benjamin H. Lehman.
	Distinguished faculty in the early years of the Department included Margaret P. McClean, eminent speech teacher; and directors John Barton; Alwin Kronacher; Henry Schnitzler, who staged the world premiere of Bertolt Brecht’s Private Life of the Master Race at UC Berkeley; and Alexander Koiransky, who provided a direct link with the Moscow Art Theatre and the teaching of his friend, Konstantin Stanislavski.
	In 1960, the Department of Dramatic Art began offering the Master of Arts, and within a year Cal became the first campus in the University of California to offer the Ph.D. in Drama and Theater Studies.
	In 1968, Henry May, an executive art director at CBS Television, assumed chairmanship of the Department and David Wood, rehearsal director and dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, founded the dance program with his wife Marni Thomas Wood, also a Graham dancer and a teacher at the Martha Graham School.
	Robert Goldsby, an actor, director, and head of the A.C.T. training program was recruited to the faculty and served as Chair of the Department from 1973-1977. Other notable faculty at the time included award-winning playwright William Oliver, Shakespeare scholar Marvin Rosenberg, and Dunbar Odgen, a crucial figure in the study of medieval theater. Doctoral studies in theater and drama were led by Travis Bogard, the major scholar of Eugene O’Neill.
	In the 1990's, the Department was reorganized as an academic department accompanied by a production unit (The Center for Theater Arts) under the leadership of Don McQuade (English) and Margaret Wilkerson (African American Studies).
	The Ph.D. program of the Department was re-conceptualized in the late 1990’s to make the professionalization of doctoral students and their preparation for academic careers both more successful and more consistent with UC Berkeley’s position as a premier research institution.
	In 2001, under Chair W.B. Worthen, the Department was re-named the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies to reflect the Department’s multiplex investment in different forms of performance and in the academic study of performance.
	In 2006, upon the departure of W.B. Worthen, TDPS faculty member Shannon Jackson was named Chair of the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies.