From Literary Society to Dramatics Department 

The dramatic arts started at St. John’s College High School as semi-annual entertainment produced by the school’s La Sallian Literary Society during the Christmas and spring seasons. The earliest performance, an all-male, one-act comedy, Chums, was presented on December 21, 1894, in College Hall at the 1225 Vermont Avenue campus. The first documented evening dedicated entirely to a dramatic production was in April 1918 at Carroll Hall—St. Patrick’s Catholic Church. The Toastmaster was a three-act, all-male production. 

The St. Joseph’s Hall addition was completed at 1225 Vermont Avenue in 1924. Architects Milburn, Heister & Company of Washington, DC, included a “gymnatorium” with a proscenium stage. The first documented production, an all-male, one-act stage play, Sham, dates to December 1936. At this time, the department was St. John’s Dramatic Society. The following school year, women were included in the productions for the first time. St. John’s first professional director, Arthur Harvey, directed the Dramatic Society from 1938 though 1941. Harvey went on to become a Catholic priest of the Congregation of the Holy Cross (CSC) and the “father of Notre Dame Theatre” at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana. He passed away in 2008. 

In the fall of 1940, Vice Principal Br. D. Augustine, FSC, moderated the Dramatic Society and in fall 1942, also began directing the productions. From 1946 through 1953, St. John’s produced the Spring Follies with female talent from area Catholic high schools—in February 1949, the school produced the American classic Arsenic and Old Lace in conjunction with the ladies of Immaculate Conception School for Girls. In 1951, Br. Bernadine, FSC, wrote, produced, and directed skits such as “South Potomac” and “A Night at the Movies.” The 1959 Senior French Play, Around the World in Eighty Days, served as a fundraiser to benefit the new St. John’s Military Road campus. 

After a pause in productions due to construction, the Dramatics Department, created in 1961, produced a musical and non-musical production each school year. Director Ellis Baker of Catholic University and the local theatre circuit produced several co-ed productions through 1965. His final production, South Pacific, opened on Thanksgiving Day 1965. 

From Dramatics Department to The Mask & Wig

After West Side Story was selected as the spring musical in January 1965, Gene Morrill was hired to direct the production. The following fall, Br. Michael Garry, FSC, a biology instructor, established a new drama club, The Mask & Wig, and served as the group’s moderator. Br. Michael also designed the sets and supervised their construction by the stage crew. When he left, another Brother took charge of the set construction responsibilities, but Morrill became The Mask & Wig’s moderator. Each year, The Mask & Wig membership would elect a president, vice president, and treasurer/box office manager. These officers administered the club and all aspects of the productions. 

During Morrill’s tenure, The Mask & Wig mounted 20 productions—all musicals. For many years, it was the second largest extracurricular program at St. John’s—second only to the football program. Throughout that decade, Lee Mason directed the orchestra. In 1975, Morrill moved on from St. John’s, and English teachers, John Youngblood, and Richard Daughnee, directed and moderated The Mask & Wig. Their final production was Guys & Dolls in spring 1977. 

The Dent-Emerson Years and St. John’s Theatre

In the fall of 1977, Howard Dent, a graduate of Catholic University’s Drama Department, took over for Youngblood and Daughnee as director/moderator of The Mask & Wig. Dent, an eighth-grade teacher from Holy Trinity School in Georgetown and a graduate of Gonzaga College High School, immediately set out to revamp the program. 

First, he changed the name from The Mask & Wig to St. John’s Drama Society and eventually, to St. John’s Drama. Dent stayed with the two-show format but introduced dramatic plays such as the Appalachian folk tale, Dark of the Moon(1977), The Good Woman of Setzuan (1979) by Bertold Brecht, and the original play, The Best of All Possible… (1982) based on Voltaire’s Candide. Dent also continued the decades-long tradition of strong musical theatre with standout productions such as Cole Porter’s Anything Goes (1979), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1982), and Man of La Mancha (1985). 

In the summer of 1990, Dent was promoted to assistant principal for academic affairs and felt he could no longer give St. John’s Drama the attention it required. He contacted his former production stage manager, Timothy Emerson ’84, a staff member at Catholic University’s Mullen Library, to take over the program. By vote of the membership, St. John’s Drama was renamed St. John’s Theatre. A student board, the St. John’s Theatre Organization, was created to advise on matters of procedure, and a student constitution was written to run the organization. 

Under Emerson’s directorship, theatre often performed additional productions during the school year. Most notable were Waiting for Godot, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), Of Mice and Men, and A Separate Peace. Hallmarks of Emerson’s directorship include a program to teach Holocaust studies in conjunction with productions that dealt specifically with the subject—The Diary of Anne Frank, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, and Number the Stars. Beginning in 1997, the theatre group made an annual trip to New York City. Emerson also mounted a production of Godspell at least once every seven years. 

In the winter of 2017, St. John’s opened its new theatre complex, complete with the Gene Morrill Black Box Theater, the Emerson Director’s Office, dressing rooms, rest rooms, rehearsal and dance space, and a dedicated green room. In the spring of 2019, after 29 years as the managing director of St. John’s Theatre, Emerson retired. To this day, St. John’s Theatre continues to flourish as SJC’s performers, musicians, technicians, and staff develop and showcase their talents.