Flashback
50 years ago
Final curtain call for the Blue Masquers
When the student drama group the Blue Masquers went out of existence in 1961, it marked the demise of UB’s oldest student organization. The group traced it origin to 1925 with the founding of the Dramatic Society.
Problems for the Blue Masquers began in 1959 when the Student Senate voted to withhold funding. Then, the management of Norton Union got involved.
The original Norton Union on the South Campus was both a place and an organization with a governing board and committees. It was the House Committee of Norton Union that called leaders of the Blue Masquers to task for what the committee considered inappropriate use of the some of the rooms in the union that had been assigned to the club. Interestingly, it was the Blue Masquers’ effective organizational structure, with its management by constitution and directing boards, that served as the model for the equally effective organization established for Norton Union.
To the consternation of the Blue Masquers and its supporters, the House Committee used this occasion to delve into all aspects of the dramatic group’s activities, including the perceived quality of recent productions. “Is there a need for the Blue Masquers?” asked a committee member, citing a duplication of effort between the Masquers and UB’s drama and speech department which, under the leadership of Stanley Travis, also was presenting student dramatic productions.
The Dramatic Society, formed in 1925, was renamed the Blue Masquers two years later. With its objectives being “to promote the study of drama, to produce excellent plays, to develop the arts of costume, scenic design and stage lighting,” the club wanted to include each of its members in some aspect of staging a play.
In 1927, the group introduced the concept of a dramatic workshop when it established the White Masquers organization for apprentice actors. Before the original Norton Union opened in 1933, the Blue Masquers staged its productions in various Buffalo locations.
Except for a period of inactivity during World War II, the Blue Masquers produced at least one major production each year. By the late 1940s, the group’s membership had climbed to almost 100. In addition to staging Greek drama, the Blue Masquers also produced works by European dramatists and leading American playwrights of the time, such as Lillian Hellman and Thornton Wilder.
The Blue Masquers used a variety of means to promote its productions. For a 1939 production of the recent Broadway hit “Fly Away Home,” it issued a single-page newspaper—available in the University Archives—entitled “Lady Bug” and with a banner headline: “Lady Bug, Lady Bug—Fly Away Home.” A bit of theatrical trivia is the fact that 15-year-old Montgomery Clift began his acting career with a role in the original Broadway production.
For more about the early activities of the Blue Masquers, see the University Archives’ digital version of the UB student newspaper the “Bee.”
—John Edens, University Archives
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