Early playbills of the University Dramatic Club list no Greek or Roman plays, though an 1888 spoof by the U of M Minstrels called “Amaryllis or the Tale of Two Donkeys” with characters such as Chlorophyll, Wordycus, Sillycus, Windycus, The Roman Emperor, Exercitus(one F.L. Smith who impersonated the entire Roman army) and Asinus (the donkey) suggests that some fun was had out of the classical education of the day.  Fairly early on, moreover, the department of Classics seems to have gained a reputation for performing Plautus. [1]    

           In the first decades of the 20th century, productions of ancient plays were mounted by university groups.  The Senior Girls' play of 1917 was the "Iphigenia among the Taurians" performed in Greek with specially commissioned music for the choral odes.   Two professors from the Classics department, Herbert C. Kenyon and Campbell Bonner, collaborated in the music; the score, a detailed analysis of choral dances, and some general reflections on the production are in Albert Stanley’s Greek Themes in Modern Musical Settings of 1924.  Stylized costumes and sets evoked an ancient production, but, as Stanley notes, “the purpose was always kept in mind […] to re-create the Greek spirit rather than to copy meticulously features which would have been not only difficult with available stage equipment but probably bizarre in their effect had they been carried out.” [2] Thus the director dispensed with masks and chose Hill Auditorium as the acting area.  As happens surprisingly often, however, in choosing dramatic appropriateness over accepted views on ancient performance, the director made at least one staging decision that accords with what is now widely thought to have been ancient practice.  Stanley writes apologetically that “the altar, instead of being located in the centre of a lower level as would have been historically correct, was placed at the left of the stage, in order to give the space necessary for chorus evolution.” [3]   Recent studies, however, leave serious doubt as to whether there was a permanent altar in the center of the orchestra, or indeed anywhere else on the acting area. [4]   The most that can be safely concluded is that there was an altar of some sort, likely portable, placed at convenient locations in the orchestra.  All of which suggests that the 1917 production of Iphigenia among the Taurians was, at least in this respect, more historically accurate than they thought.

           According to Domis Plugge’s 1938 listing of Greek plays at American colleges, the “Iphigenia among the Taurians” was a favorite, performed at least 17 times in various colleges between 1897 and 1917.  Only the “Antigone” seems to have been staged more often in the same twenty-year period (Plugge lists 20 times at different colleges). [5]    Although the choice of play corresponds to the general tastes of the day, the decision to perform it in Greek was fairly original.  According to Plugge, only two other universities presented a play in Greek in the ten year period between 1915 and 1925, Randolph-Macon Women’s College, and Smith College.

In 1930 Robert Henderson founded the Drama Season, a series of five plays produced each spring with a cast of professional actors.  Two years later, he earned his Masters degree from the University of Michigan.   “I think you have a FOUL university,” he wrote to Professor Bredfold in September 1932, “for being so precise on a poor laboring actor; but I do want the degree.  And I am sure I can give you a worthy paper for this extra hour…”  Frequent letters to his mentor, Prof. Campbell, suggest the passionate energy that brought the Drama Season into existence. “My dear Professor Campbell,” he wrote in 1931, “Really you have no idea what a thrilling season it is to be.  Miss Yurka says she is more interested in doing the ‘Electra’ than anything she has done for years; and Martha Graham is going to be superb in it.  We are having Louis Horst (the famous dance accompanist) as musical director of the production.  He will accompany all the performances of the ‘Electra’ and also COMPOSE the music.  Miss Graham’s program of solo dances is thrilling and will include the “Primitive Mysteries” which have been such a sensation this winter in New York.

The “Electra” of 1931 was a tremendous success, as the “Antigone” starring Margaret Anglin had been in the first Drama Season the year before.  John Anderson of the New York Post wrote of the “Electra,” “Blanche Yurka plunges this correspondent into adjectival poverty by the richness and surety of her performances.”  Henderson gloated to Campbell in 1932, “Now as to what the festival could be this year: what COULDN’T it be, I suppose, for after the “Electra” I can get practically anyone we want.”  Despite the success of these two classics, the Drama Season does not seem to have mounted another ancient play, though the festival itself continued to thrive apart from a brief lapse during the war years.

University productions filled the gap in the early 1930s with “Trojan Women” in 1932 and 1934 and “Hippolytus” in 1933.  There followed 16 years without any production of ancient plays large enough to leave a record until a third production of “Trojan Women,” outdoors on the steps of the Clements library in 1949.  The plays in the intervening years seem, in general, to be lighthearted modern comedies.  Even Giraudoux’s “No War in Troy,” which was the closest thing to a classical play in these years, seems to have been too heavy for the Michigan audiences of 1939.  “From ‘No War In Troy’ we learn, as its cardinal message, that the Trojans were the most talkative race ever to inhabit the earth.  Nobody has ever seen a talky play until he has beheld ‘No War in Troy.’  Mostly it’s a meeting of the Trojan Debating Society, with Ulysses as guest and defending champion, which lasts all evening.” (Russel McLauchlin, Detroit News, Tues. May 15, 1939)

The 1950s Department of Speech, i.e. Theater Department, performances of Aristophanes culminated in an extraordinary rendition of “Frogs” in the Varsity swimming pool in 1960.  This massive production employed seven huge choruses, including the “Lily Pads” performed by the Varsity swimming team.  Synchronized swimmers, dancers, singers, and actors all collaborated in a varied and mammoth spectacle which heralded a proliferation of Greek and Roman plays in the 1960s.

The only production of an Aeschylean play for which I have found a reference was the 1962 “Prometheus Bound” by the Student Laboratory Theater, whose programs warn that, “we are endeavouring to free ourselves from the necessity of producing only those plays which pay their way because of momentary popular appeal” -- a far cry from the jubilant tone with which Henderson announced his popular  productions of “Antigone” and “Electra” in the 1930s.  Nevertheless, to this mandate we no doubt owe the Student Laboratory’s string of rarely performed pieces in 1963, Plautus’ “The Pot of Gold,” Hrosuitha of Gandersheim’s “Callimachus” (10th century), and Menander’s “The Girl from Samos.”

In the 70s, classical plays were mounted predominantly by smaller divisions of the University: the Student Laboratory Theater, and the Residential College.  Perhaps because of the educational aims of these groups, the plays chosen were more rarely performed Euripides, though a Terence comedy (the only one in the history of the University as far as I have been able to determine) was requested by students who persuaded Martin Walsh, new to the University that year, to direct it.  He chose a 17th century translation in order to encourage careful diction, but added slapstick and a Plautine salami to enliven the performance.

To him and another director from the Residential College, Kate Mendeloff, we owe many of the classical productions of the 1990s.   The titles of the latter two productions, “Philoctetes in Vietnam,” and “Survivors:  the Trojan Women in Bosnia,” formally recognize our modern preoccupation with war and peace in the plays, an aspect of the ancient tragedies which has fascinated directors at least since the late 30s. After many excerpted performances and much workshopping, Professors Walsh and Mendeloff gave up the idea of mounting a full production of “Philoctetes” because they could not resolve the anti-war message they wanted to convey with Sophocles’ own ending.

A university Drama Department production of Antigone of 1998 infused the play with new concerns by dividing the characters along color lines.  This treatment of the play complemented a visiting production of Athol Fugard’s “The Island” of 2001 which addressed similar problems of racial injustice and freedom using the “Antigone” as its touchstone.