In 1968 Trinity School, a private school in Manhattan, broke
ground on its new Hawley Wing.
According to Trinity archives The New
Hawley Wing brochure
detailed sixteen modern classrooms, four science labratories (sic), seven music
practice cubicles, and new research library, and a language labratory (sic). The
brochure left out one interesting detail.
In the basement of the Hawley Wing was an approximately 75-foot long,
20-foot wide room. On one side and
one end the walls were formed by the cement foundation. Cinderblock completed the remainder of
the room. The room was designed as
a rifle range. All through the end
of the 20th century and well into the 21st a fuse box
outside the long room provided evidence of the range. Two circuit breakers remained clearly marked over the years
with their original intent, “Rifle Range”. When last I checked in 2008 this evidence of the range
remained intact.
I have no idea whether any shots were ever fired there. Apocryphal or not, I recall hearing
that the social upheaval of the late sixties and early seventies helped set
about the dissolution of the school’s rifle team, leaving the “range” available
for other purposes. When I arrived
at the school in 1981 that meant an office or two and either a costume closet
or a percussion rehearsal room.
The space has been repurposed numerous times, enough so that memory
fails.
Sometime in the seventies an enterprising student engaged in
a semester-long senior project undertook to convert part of the space into a
black box theater, what became known as The Basement Theater. It had a playing space of 20 feet by 22
feet, approximating Shakespeare’s Globe.
For decades it housed productions directed by faculty and students, as
well as classes in theater, public speaking, and various other activities. Most years it witnessed at least three
or four productions at minimum. Joan
of Arc, Lizzie Borden, and Princess Diana have all done a turn in the
Basement. We waited for
Godot.
The creation of the Basement Theater was part and parcel of a
roughly forty-year period of theater flourishing at Trinity. There were musicals, an annual musical
Cabaret, several faculty directed main stage and Basement productions each
year, an annual student directed Shakespeare production, student directed
one-act plays, student directed independent studies, and theater courses as
electives in the curriculum. It
was possible for students to take a different theater class every year from
seventh grade through graduation.
Trinity had a well-earned reputation for its excellent and diverse
theater program.
There is a legacy from this program still alive. Alumni working in all aspects of
theater and film: actors, writers,
directors, composers, producers, stage managers, teachers, managing arts
organizations, board members, donor/supporters, (and apologies for any other
capacities I’ve overlooked).
There are times when the program received enthusiastic
administrative support. Even at its height, those of us who taught and directed
had to defend the value of the arts to administrators, faculty colleagues, and
the community at large. There was
always a lurking concern that too much theater might make it harder to enter
the Holy Trinity of Yale, Harvard and Princeton. There were, alas, times when administrators were
indifferent, inept, or intrusive.
Decisions to make cuts in the program caused the loss of courses in the
curriculum, affected the number of productions taking place each year, and
ultimately student participation.
More recently it was determined that the space that was
probably home to over a hundred productions over the years was no longer needed
as a theater space. The small,
intimate space where so many classes in creativity, where so many student
actors learned what it was like to work close to an audience, where alumni
would return for nostalgic visits at reunions, is now filled with exercise
equipment, presided over by the physical education department. It reflects a change in what Trinity
and our society as a whole values.
Now, as a society, we are faced with a proposal from our
president that schools will be safer places if teachers are armed. One hopes that saner minds will
rule the day at Trinity. One
fantasizes that as we slide backwards, arming ourselves against our fears, that
the onetime Basement Theater will be repurposed again, back to its
origins. Take out the barbells and
the treadmills. What better use for the place than as a range where faculty can
hone their marksmanship skills in house.
Range to artistic sanctuary to range. Let’s hope the pendulum never swings in that wide an
arc.