Viking_Yearbook_50

Many changes are apparent when surveying the past three years of drama at Vanport. Plays have been presented in a variety of rooms, none of them really a theatre. A gymnasium, a classroom, the music room at Grant high schooL the Sky Room, all have served as playing locations. A wide variety of types of drama have been presented: farce such as "The Milky Way," "Mother Said No," and "Ladies of the Jury;" comedy in "Springtime for Henry" and "The Pursuit of Happiness; " plays with something to say, "The Male Animal," "The Gentle People," and "I Have Been Here Before;" melodrama in "The Two Orphans;" Shakespeare's "Richard III." and planned for spring quarter, Shaw's "Arms and the Man." Vanport has been represented for two years at the Intercollegiate Drama Festival sponsored by Linfield College, in 1949 with "No, Not the Russians !" and in 1950 with " Family Album." This year the drama department was in­ vited to present a play on the UNESCO ,theme of better international under­ standing through the arts as part of the Oregon State Theatre Conference. Miss Dorothy Clifford has represented the school for the last three years at the national conventions of American Educational Theatre Association and the Speech Association of America. About two hundred and fifty students have participated in dramatic ac­ tivities in the three years of the department's existence, both on the campus and in performances for the two local veteran's hospitals . The purpose of drama in the liberal arts curriculum is to acquaint as many people as possible with plays, either as audience or participants, to build better theatre audi­ ences for the future, to help people to a fuller way of living through expe~ riencing differe nt situa tions, a nd perhaps to train a few for ea rning a living in theatre.