By Aliza Flug, Senior Layout Editor and Social Media Manager
The year is 1956, and Stern College for Women’s first play has just debuted. But what the eleven or so students did not realize when they got on stage to perform Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury was that they were building a legacy. An excerpt from the Stern College 1956 freshman yearbook, In Retrospect, captures the moment, “History has just been made at Stern College — the first Dramatics Club presentation — and as our jet-propelled curtain closes the stage from view, I give a weary yawn — what a workout, but what fun.” 70 years later, the times are radically different. But there is so much more that has stayed the same.
Over the past two and a half years, I have spent countless hours in the Schottenstein Theater, the home of both the Stern College Dramatics Society (SCDS) and the Yeshiva College Dramatics Society (YCDS) productions. During my time exploring the theater, I couldn’t help but notice so much historical depth waiting to be uncovered.
In the early days of SCDS, many of the plays were put on as part of Stern’s annual Purim chagigah. They were performed in the Koch Auditorium and continued to take place there even when SCDS stopped putting on Purim plays. All available information indicates that their plays continued to be performed in Koch for years to come.
Founded in 1936, YCDS performed in the Wilf campus’s Lamport Auditorium in its early days and other locations on the Wilf campus until the Schottenstein Theater opened in 1989. In 1973, YCDS formed a chapter of Alpha Psi Omega, the National Theatre Honor Society; SCDS followed suit in 1981. These chapters are currently inactive, as they likely were never renewed.
Years later, in 1997, Yeshiva University purchased a theater building on 34th Street, known as the Schottenstein Cultural Center. While it was nice for SCDS to not have to perform in Koch, the 34th Street theater had its own challenges. A letter to the editor published in the YU Observer in 2001 addressed the struggles SCDS faced that YCDS did not have to deal with. Among the challenges listed, the biggest was that the theater wasn’t actually set up as a theater. Every year SCDS had to rent a stage, lights and curtains for their show. When looking for props for this year’s play, I came across architectural plans from 2007 for remodeling the 34th Street theater, but the construction never occurred. Plays continued to be held in that theater until 2012, when YU sold the building. As such, SCDS went back to using Koch Auditorium as well as the auditorium of a local high school until they moved to the Schottenstein Theater on the Wilf campus in 2017.
Even though it may have been and continues to be inconvenient for Stern students to travel to Washington Heights every time they needed to rehearse or build the set, students found it even more difficult to put on plays in the spaces allocated to them downtown. They noted that Koch was not suitable because it wasn’t set up as a theater and didn’t have a stage, and while the high school had a stage, it lacked a lighting system. Additionally, the high school was strict about rehearsal times and wouldn’t allow for prop storage overnight. When SCDS put on The Sound of Music in 2014, they performed in this high school auditorium. Even though the set pieces that were made were elaborate, Sarale Pool (SCW ‘16), the set designer, noted that she had to make sure they were simple enough to reassemble, as they had to be brought in and out of the theater.
Since 2017, SCDS has been performing their fall plays in the Schottenstein Theater, with YCDS performing there in the spring.
For years, we have been using props and set pieces we have found around the theater building without stopping to think about their history and how they were hand sculpted, painted or sewn by students like us years ago. Every time I went digging for costumes, props or set pieces, I would come across an old playbill, photograph or a ticket (prices surprisingly remained at a steady $5 from the 80s until 2025). But it was looking at set pieces or costumes that were left over from a previous play that impacted me the most. I thought about how someone years before me had created these pieces of art that are just sitting in storage now, completely unnoticed.
Our play this year, Journey Through Ruth, featured set pieces that are from a 2002 YCDS play, Death Takes a Holiday. Their play was set inside an Egyptian temple, and ours was set in the West Bank of Israel. I reached out to Josh Gurock (YC ‘03), who was in Death Takes a Holiday, and despite him not remembering where the set pieces came from, he was honored to see them being used by the next generation of SCDS. He also mentioned a sarcophagus that he had worked on assembling, which makes 2024’s SCDS play, The Man Who Came to Dinner, not the first YU play to have a handmade sarcophagus.
Our plays could not be more different, but these same, beautiful foam set pieces frame both set designs well. What many who have and are currently contributing to YCDS or SCDS don’t realize is that any set piece, costume or prop that is made or purchased will very possibly make an appearance in a future show. After spending countless hours, painting sets, carving foam rocks, altering costumes and building a cardboard sarcophagus during my time in SCDS, I can only hope that the props, costumes and set pieces we leave behind will be appreciated by a student like me in years to come.
I know that my time at SCDS has impacted my life in more ways than I can count. In addition to the lifelong friends I have made, the woodworking skills I acquired and the experiences I will cherish forever, I also learned things that I will take with me into any career I may have. SCDS has opened my eyes to career possibilities I never would have considered beforehand, and it is my time at SCDS that gives me the self-confidence to consider pursuing a career in the theater world.
Gurock shared the many ways YCDS had prepared him for a career in healthcare administration. “I use the skills that I learned in YCDS all of the time; whether it’s speaking at a conference, speaking in front of my employees or presenting in front of a board of Directors,” he told the YU Observer.
I recently came across a 1968 YU Observer article about the play that was performed that year, The Man Who Came to Dinner. Reading the article made me realize that even though our plays were put on more than 55 years apart, there is so much about SCDS that is exactly the same. The article discussed that despite so many challenges faced in putting on the play, it all came together in the end. And that is exactly how we roll at SCDS, 55 years later.
We face countless obstacles every day leading up to the play, whether it be costumes not arriving in time, a complicated set design or midterms getting in the way of rehearsal. But no matter what, we pull it together at the end of the day, and that’s one thing that hasn’t changed. We conquer whatever obstacles we face and do it with a passion. Because at the end of the day, the show must go on.
Photo Credit: Stern College Dramatics Society