Fall 2002

Looking Back


The Early Performing Arts At Rose

As everyone knows, Rose-Hulman has, since opening day in March of 1883, drawn a very intelligent and serious body of students. What may not be as well known to the outsider is that many of those intelligent students – all male prior to 1995 – were also talented in music and willing to entertain on the stage.

The first sign of such talent came in November 1889 with the founding of the Orchestra Club, the inspiration of Svend Emmanuel Johannesen, class of 1893. In a student body of less than one hundred, Johannesen found twenty-one students who knew how to play a variety of instruments. The first concert was presented on May 23, 1890, and each spring thereafter was given for Rose and the Terre Haute community.

In the early 1890s a group of students would gather at the home of Language Professor James Wickersham on Sunday afternoons to sing German college songs. The professor stimulated an interest in chorus and quartet singing. Although records are conflicting, there is mention of a joint "Glee Club" and Orchestra concert on May 6, 1892. But a truly organized glee club had to wait until 1896.

Joining the ranks of performers in the winter of 1895 was the Mandolin and Guitar Club. The Modulus pictures of the group look pretty odd to modern eyes, but the boys no doubt had a great deal of fun. The club gave its first public concert March 21, 1896.

But then there was The Stage. So it is not too surprising that the Glee Club boys decided to capitalize on talent and community reputation to stage what were called burlesques – with the boys playing all parts, male and female. The date is December 16, 1904 when the first Rose stage performance occurred in a burlesque called Red Riding Hood. That spring, ambition soared with a production of the very popular operetta H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan.

World War I and The Great Depression took their toll on the school and her students. But one bright spot was born of our early establishment of an ROTC unit, one of the very first in the nation. The unit had to march, of course, so a band was established, complete with unique uniforms and a collection of instruments.

The Technic (a former technical and news journal about Rose) makes mention of the band playing at football games and community parades. Later articles mention Terre Haute radio station WBOW broadcasting Glee Club performances during the Depression.

The missing piece of the performing history came in 1964 with the establishment of the Drama Club. There followed a series of fall and spring productions alternating between the comic and the dramatic. Such plays as "An Enemy of the People," "Inherit the Wind," "Of Mice and Men," and "Tea House of the August Moon" were performed to great audience approval.

The capstone of student musical talent is, no doubt, the annual Engineers in Concert performance. The 19th century founders of the Glee Club and Orchestra would be proud that the commitment to music and performance remains strong at Dear Old Rose.