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Varsity Show
The Varsity Show is one of the oldest traditions at Columbia University. 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. A. L. Diamond, Herman Wouk, Greta Gerwig, and Kate McKinnon.
Having previously been staged at venues including Carnegie Hall, the Waldorf-Astoria, and the Hotel Astor, the Varsity Show has been permanently based on campus since 1944. Notable past shows include Fly With Me (1920), The Streets of New York (1948), The Sky's the Limit (1954), and Angels at Columbia (1994). In particular, Streets of New York, after having been revived three times, opened off-Broadway in 1963 and was awarded a 1964 Drama Desk Award. The Mischief Maker (1903), written by Edgar Allan Woolf and Cassius Freeborn, premiered at Madison Square Garden in 1906 as Mam'zelle Champagne.
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. The proceeds of the club's first performance were donated to the university rowing team. 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 issue of funding for athletics had deteriorated to the point where the Columbia Lions football and men's rowing teams had ceased operations in 1892.
In response, the undergraduate student body formed the Columbia College Music Society in 1893, which was to perform burlesques entirely written and performed by students. 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. The show was first dubbed the "Varsity Show" in 1900 with the performance of The Governor's Vrouw, written by Henry Sydnor Harrison, Melville Henry Cane, and John Erskine.
The lyrics and book of the 1903 Varsity Show, The Mischief Maker, were written by Edgar Allan Woolf, and set to music by Cassius Freeborn. It moved to Broadway three years later, with its all-male student cast replaced with traditional casting, under the name Mam'zelle Champagne. 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.
The music for the 1920 Varsity Show, Fly With Me, was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Since the book for the play was considered inadequate by the judges, the tunes were adapted to another entry, written by Philip Leavitt and Milton Kroopf. 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". This incident marked the first instance of collaboration between Rodgers and Hammerstein, a partnership that would go on to initiate the "golden age" of musical theater in the 20th century. The writing of Fly With Me was one of the only collaborations between all three men. The next year, Rodgers and Hart co-wrote the Varsity Show again.
Rodgers was the first freshman to write any portion of the Varsity Show, and would later cite his participation in the show as his sole reason for choosing to attend Columbia, writing:
... the Varsity Show at Columbia offered a boy like me something no other school in the country could supply: an almost professional production. 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.
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Varsity Show
The Varsity Show is one of the oldest traditions at Columbia University. 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. A. L. Diamond, Herman Wouk, Greta Gerwig, and Kate McKinnon.
Having previously been staged at venues including Carnegie Hall, the Waldorf-Astoria, and the Hotel Astor, the Varsity Show has been permanently based on campus since 1944. Notable past shows include Fly With Me (1920), The Streets of New York (1948), The Sky's the Limit (1954), and Angels at Columbia (1994). In particular, Streets of New York, after having been revived three times, opened off-Broadway in 1963 and was awarded a 1964 Drama Desk Award. The Mischief Maker (1903), written by Edgar Allan Woolf and Cassius Freeborn, premiered at Madison Square Garden in 1906 as Mam'zelle Champagne.
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. The proceeds of the club's first performance were donated to the university rowing team. 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 issue of funding for athletics had deteriorated to the point where the Columbia Lions football and men's rowing teams had ceased operations in 1892.
In response, the undergraduate student body formed the Columbia College Music Society in 1893, which was to perform burlesques entirely written and performed by students. 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. The show was first dubbed the "Varsity Show" in 1900 with the performance of The Governor's Vrouw, written by Henry Sydnor Harrison, Melville Henry Cane, and John Erskine.
The lyrics and book of the 1903 Varsity Show, The Mischief Maker, were written by Edgar Allan Woolf, and set to music by Cassius Freeborn. It moved to Broadway three years later, with its all-male student cast replaced with traditional casting, under the name Mam'zelle Champagne. 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.
The music for the 1920 Varsity Show, Fly With Me, was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Since the book for the play was considered inadequate by the judges, the tunes were adapted to another entry, written by Philip Leavitt and Milton Kroopf. 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". This incident marked the first instance of collaboration between Rodgers and Hammerstein, a partnership that would go on to initiate the "golden age" of musical theater in the 20th century. The writing of Fly With Me was one of the only collaborations between all three men. The next year, Rodgers and Hart co-wrote the Varsity Show again.
Rodgers was the first freshman to write any portion of the Varsity Show, and would later cite his participation in the show as his sole reason for choosing to attend Columbia, writing:
... the Varsity Show at Columbia offered a boy like me something no other school in the country could supply: an almost professional production. 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.