In looking back on my Baruch years from an increasingly far remove, I realize that the relative strength of my memories of the period, and of the people I knew then, directly reflects the venue in which they were created. At colleges with traditional campuses, that space would probably have been a favored dorm room or fraternity house (my frat house was a reclaimed manufacturing loft on 21st Street). Students mostly socialized in the busy and not exactly comfortable ninth floor of 17 Lexington Avenue, where creating lasting friendships and memories was a challenge. I was a four-year member of the Ticker and Lexicon staffs, which had their offices on the ninth floor, but I have little memory of the time I spent there. My time at my off-campus “frat house” was a bit more memorable, but I rarely had reason to make the trip there during the school day and largely lost touch with my fraternity brothers after graduation.
Many of my memories come from my chosen oasis, the Pauline Edwards Theatre (PET), latterly Mason Hall, which occupies much of the entire street floor of the 17 Lex building. In those days (1951–55), the facility was rarely used and stood dark most days and evenings of the year.
It is an enormous barn of a place, with a wide stage and high proscenium, particularly intimidating when empty. Its doors were never locked, and one could wander the aisles and backstage areas largely unhindered. Had you done so then, you would have discovered a large room beneath the stage that ran its entire length and width: the subterranean lair of Baruch’s theatrical society, Theatron. Although cluttered with the props and sets of bygone shows, the room was still large enough to accommodate the odd assortment of bridge tables and lounge chairs of members seeking asylum from the demands of academe above. At show time, however, it was transformed into a sort of flashmob dressing room, with sheets hung over strung ropes providing minimal privacy. It was then that PET worked its magic on our lives.
Theatron was very ambitious at that time, staging two major productions each academic year: a straight play in the fall and a musical in the spring. Inasmuch as we were in New York City and not the hinterlands, production values expected by our audience, if not quite Broadway level, were nevertheless demanding. The straight plays were difficult enough, but the multi-set musicals (we did Kiss Me, Kate and Finian’s Rainbow) would seem to be shows far beyond our capacity. But Theatron was blessed with enormous performing talent, both regular members and walk-ins who appeared when a show was announced, people who could really sing and dance. While we faced all of the well-chronicled terrors of putting on a show, perhaps the greatest challenge was conquering the limitations of the Pauline Edwards Theatre.
The fundamental problem was that PET was not a theater at all but a concert hall. Its stage, wide enough to accommodate a symphony orchestra, was so shallow that the positioning and movement of large stage sets during a performance was virtually impossible. Because musicians on stage usually don’t need to be hidden, there was no significant fly space above the stage: sets could not be raised out of sight when not needed. Similarly, there was little room in the wings for players, scenery, and props awaiting their cues. And, of course, there was no orchestra pit, because the music source would be on stage. That, at least, was of little consequence, since we could not have afforded an orchestra, in any event. Finally, installed stage lighting was rudimentary and antiquated, operated mechanically by a system of rods and levers. And, there was no sound system. Ironically, however, because PET was built as a concert hall, the acoustics were magnificent.
Planning for musical productions began right after the Christmas break, notwithstanding the annoying disruption imposed by final exams. Endless meetings under the stage lacked only the presence of Mickey and Judy, but we figured out how to meet the challenge and to do it with little money, since ticket sales had not yet begun.
To overcome the limitations of the stage, we built a single, main set to accommodate production numbers and supported the other scenes with “insets”: small pieces of scenery and necessary furnishings inserted into an opening in an interior curtain narrow enough to conceal the fact that we were using the rest of the shallow stage to temporarily store people and scenery. Since most scenes in a musical end in a song, we had the performers finish their numbers on the apron in front of the main curtain. When the applause began, we rapidly closed the curtain behind them to conceal the stagehands carrying out and setting up the next inset, which they supported from behind throughout the scene. By the time applause died away, the main curtain could reopen and the show go on.
To solve our lighting deficiency, we took advantage of being in New York City to rent supplementary lights from a theatrical lighting agency that installed them on pans hanging over the edge of the PET balcony, as though it was a Broadway theater. The burst of light they gave truly transformed the dim, old hall when our “orchestra” consisting of two pianos (for one show, supplemented by a walk-in drummer) struck up the overture. It is extraordinary how quickly the audience, while recalling that it had been promised music, became entrancingly diverted by the sight and sound of a stage full of costumed young people singing their hearts out.
Our ticket prices were modest, $2 for orchestra seats and $1.65 for those in the balcony. But PET’s seating capacity was enormous, and we needed to recoup the money sunk into sets, lighting, and costumes. So, at the start of ticket sales (largely conducted from a table in the ninth floor corridor), Theatron held a big noontime rally in PET. To stimulate attendance, we would invite a theatrical celebrity to come collect a made-up award, a certificate of appreciation, as I recall. They always came, and we always had a full house. The highlight was the rally to which Emmett Kelly, Jr., then appearing at the Madison Square Garden in Ringling Brothers Circus, came in full costume. The famously mute clown actually spoke to us! The show sold out.
The downside of Theatron shows was that they were performed on only two evenings: Friday and Saturday. Dress rehearsal took place the night before opening, and in the grand tradition of the theater, nothing was exactly right or finished. Although it was officially verboten, we invariably spent the entire night in PET, cutting Friday classes to rest up for the big opening that evening. On Saturday, everyone would show up midafternoon, still exhausted, basically to sit around until curtain time and savor the applause of the evening before. After the final curtain call on Saturday evening, cast (some still in stage makeup) and crew left everything and, by tradition, repaired to Chinatown to celebrate at the memorably named Hang Far Low.
—Frederick Harrison (’55) recently published his fifth novel, The Drone Paradigm.
Photo top is from the “If This Isn’t Love” number in Finian’s Rainbow, the December 1954 Theatron production.