April
12, 2002
Don't
Miss the 2002 Faculty Show
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Photo: Andrea Burns
The
organizers of this year's faculty show prefer to remain
anonymous. Show coordinators Dawn Larder, senior administrative
assistant for economics and Latin American studies, and
economics professor Michael Robinson did agree to show their
faces.
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It will be about as
far "off Broadway" as you can get, but don't miss MHC's
2002 Faculty Show, set for April 17 and 18, at 7 pm in Chapin
Auditorium. Show coordinators Dawn Larder, senior administrative
assistant for economics and Latin American studies, and Michael
Robinson, professor of economics, are holding to tradition by
keeping show details secret, but they promise plenty of laughs.
Developed by eight anonymous writers, the show will involve up
to fifty faculty and staff, including Acting President Beverly
Daniel Tatum, Dean of Faculty Donal O'Shea, and other members
of the College's senior staff. Faculty and staff are invited to
attend the dress rehearsal April 17. Students are invited to the
April 18 performance.
This year's presentation
of skits, music, and dance by members of the faculty and administration
continues a quadrennial tradition that began with Seven Princesses
in 1903, according to the College archives and special collections.
One article suggests that the show originated to raise funds to
build Mary Woolley Hall. The event was repeated every four years
thereafter, with proceeds from ticket sales benefiting a range
of campus projects, such as furnishings and equipment for the
new health center in 1960 and scholarships in 1972. Faculty who
hammed it up for the 1956 show, titled Ham's Tales from Shakespeare,
for example, raised more than $1,500. Their skits parodied both
Shakespeare's plays and Roswell G. Ham, MHC president and Shakespeare
scholar, and lampooned integrated (interdisciplinary) courses,
the then-current trend in education.
The 1984 X Libris
or, Out of Print! had fun with books, "great and otherwise,"
from Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter to Jane Fonda's Workout Book.
Its skits included "Scarlet Letters or, The Wages of Syntax:
A Grim Allegory," "The Thyming of the Stew: A Spicy
Rehash of Shakespeare," and "Jane's Fighting Hips (of
which Jane are we Fonda?)."
Records show that
in 1988, faculty agreed to stop the show, which had become difficult
to arrange and rehearse due to time constraints of dual-career
families and increasing numbers of faculty and staff living far
from campus. Disappointment voiced by the senior class prompted
a 1988 science faculty talent show, followed by a 1989 Faculty
Know Show. In 1993, the campus enjoyed Faculty Show for Seniors,
which was repeated, with some new material, in 1994. These improvisations
reestablished the faculty show tradition, although recent productions
have been much less extravagant than early ones, which included
elaborate costumes, makeup, sets, props, printed tickets, and
original compositions of choral and instrumental music.
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