Santa Clara University students portraying Roman soldiers in the 1938 campus production of The Passion Play, by Clay M. Greene. (Image courtesy of Archives & Special Collections, Santa Clara University)
Theatre at Santa Clara University
Embracing the importance of theatre in Jesuit education, Santa Clara University has a long history of presenting theatrical productions and advancing the study of the theatre arts as a part of its curriculum. In 1855, only four years after the founding of the school, the first theatrical performance took place as part of its Commencement ceremonies. Within two years more than one production was being offered in a year, featuring ambitious programming of plays by Schiller, Shakespeare, and Sheridan. In 1901 Nazareth: The Passion Play, written by SCU alumnus Clay M. Greene as a gift to his alma mater in celebration of its 50th anniversary, was first performed. It was produced several times in succeeding years, with the last performance occurring 50 years later. The university's first students majoring in Theatre Arts graduated in 1967. Today the Department of Theatre and Dance offers a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre Arts, with an emphasis in either theatre or dance, as well as minors in theatre, dance, theatre design and technology, and musical theatre. Its graduates have gone on to enjoy prominent careers in the theatre and other performing arts, both as performers and as practitioners of the technical theatrical arts (lighting, sound, costume, set design, etc.), creating theatrical productions at the highest professional standards.
The final scene from Welcome to Claradise, a devised play performed at Santa Clara University in 2017 (Image courtesy of SCU Department of Theatre & Dance. Photo by Chuck Barry)
Theatrical Collections in the University Library
Santa Clara University's library contains in its Special Collections the following collections of theatrical materials highlighting theatrical productions at the university, and the achievements of its faculty, alumni, and the local theatrical community.
- Richard Cullen White PapersRichard Cullen White was a playwright active in San Francisco towards the end of the nineteenth century. In 1966 his grandson, Robert Lilly, an alumnus of Santa Clara University, donated his papers to the university library. This collection includes manuscripts of White's works, photographs, newspaper clippings, and a number of nineteenth-century printed playscripts, some by other authors. Most notable is the script for White's play Evans and Sontag, which played in the National Theatre in San Francisco in 1893-1894. It dramatizes the events upon which the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was based.
- Clay M. Greene CollectionClay M. Greene (1850 - 1933) was an American playwright, director, and alumnus of Santa Clara College. After some early years as a newspaperman, he moved to New York, where 17 of his plays became Broadway productions. This collection includes play scripts, screenplays, a few musical scores and librettos, newspaper clippings pertaining to theatrical productions, personal and professional correspondence, playbills, and newspaper articles, poems, prose, and other writings by him.
- Ken Holamon CollectionKen Holamon (1947 - 1993), an active member of the South Bay theatre community, was a theatrical designer for San Jose Civic Light Opera, American Musical Theatre of San Jose, San Jose Repertory Theatre, and San Jose Opera. He taught at Santa Clara University from 1984 to 1987. The collection contains his set designs, paint elevations, artistic renderings, costume designs and fabric samples, and miniature models of stage designs.
- Theater Production PhotographsThis collection contains black-and-white photographs of Santa Clara University theatrical productions from 1965-1986. Most of the photographs are mounted.