“Act well your part; there all the honor lies.”
—The Thespian motto, drawn from
Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, 1734 In the spring of 1929, Herbert Hoover was beginning his term as the thirty-first president of the United States. Construction was getting underway on the Empire State Building. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms was new in bookstores. Scientists at Bell Laboratories were experimenting with an invention that could transmit color pictures through the air. The stock market was percolating along nicely. Adolph Hitler was beginning to consolidate his power in Germany, at the same time sixty-five nations were implementing a treaty intended to outlaw war forever. Eugene O’Neill’s new play Strange Interlude, banned in Boston, was produced instead in Quincy.  | | An early Thespian Society induction ceremony. |
And in Fairmont, West Virginia, some teachers were talking about founding a national honorary society for theatre students. Today, the fruit of their efforts is known as the International Thespian Society, a division of the Educational Theatre Association. Over the years it has introduced more than two million students to the stage and become an important voice on behalf of theatre in the schools. Its mission: “to promote and strengthen theatre arts programs in education.” The idea that became the Educational Theatre Association was first expressed in a letter from Dr. Earl Blank, a teacher at Natrona County High School in Casper, Wyoming, to Dr. Paul Opp, a professor at Fairmont State College in the hills of central West Virginia. Blank proposed the founding of an organization for high school theatre students modeled on Alpha Psi Omega, the national honor society for college theatre students. In 1978, the three surviving founders—Blank, Opp, and Harry Leeper, who in 1929 had been a teacher at East Fairmont High School—recalled an idyllic creation scene. Leeper described how his meetings with Opp and Ernest Bavely, the professor’s secretary, “sometimes became outdoor jaunts. I would pick up the other two and we would drive for a while....The drive sometimes ended with a session on my front porch, where we eventually wrote a constitution and initiation ritual.” By the end of the 1928-29 school year, seventy-one troupes had been chartered. Blank’s drama program at Natrona County High School, which survives to this day, was designated Thespian Troupe 1. The first issue of The High School Thespian, the precursor to Dramatics magazine, was published in October, 1929 (the month the stock market crashed, although as far as we know there is no connection). It included information about the organization and letters from troupes around the country telling about their recent productions. Leeper, the editor, was far from pleased with it: “I spent my vacation that summer (of 1929) organizing the scanty material we had,” he said later.  | | The first issue of The High School Thespian. |
The first national convention was “held by mail” in 1930. By 1935 the organization had 320 affiliated schools. In the same year the national office moved from its birthplace in Fairmont to Cincinnati, where it remains today. In 1939, the organization celebrated its tenth anniversary with a National Broadcasting Company coast-to-coast broadcast, and eight issues of The High School Thespian were published that year. The first annual production survey had been held a year earlier; something called Growing Pains was the most-produced play among member schools at the end of the Thespian Society’s first decade. The first National Dramatic Arts Conference—which would one day become the Thespian Festival—was held at Indiana University in 1941 with productions of one-act plays and workshops for students and teachers. An ad for the conference promised that “a $2.00 registration fee will entitle you to admission to all activities,” while the full week, with room and board, cost about $11.00. During World War II the National Thespian Society played an active role in the home front. “Greater than the battles now being fought in Europe and Asia,” Ernest Bavely wrote in a letter to Thespian troupe sponsors in September 1941, “is that battle of ideas being waged now by the Democratic Way of Life on the one side and the so-called ‘New Orders’ on the other. In that battle we teachers are front-line soldiers. Ultimate victory or defeat....will be determined by the effectiveness of our work in the school room.” To theatre teachers, Bavely wrote, “is given the opportunity to show the meaning of the Democratic Life by that most effective of teaching methods—dramatization....We have it in our power to teach our students and to rebuild and strengthen profound and lasting confidence in Democracy among the people of our communities.” The magazine featured articles about projects that local troupes could undertake to help the war effort. One was The High School Theatre for Victory Program, which was established by the organization to serve as a central collection agency for the Servicemen’s Library Fund. The goal was to raise money to buy playscripts for libraries at U.S. Army posts around the world. In a letter to Thespian troupes, a plea was made for donations: “Doughnuts and coffee are provided to these soldiers by many sources, but the special privilege of providing them with dramatic literature is ours.”  | | A nationwide radio broadcast originated from the 1941 National Dramatic Arts Conference. |
After the war, the organization turned its efforts back to improving dramatic arts in high schools. The name of The High School Thespian was changed to the one the magazine now bears, Dramatics. The second National Dramatic Arts Conference was held in 1947, and two years later the twentieth anniversary of the National Thespian Society was celebrated at the third national event. The most popular play among member schools that year was Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. The organization continued its steady growth through the 1950s and ’60s. The most-produced play in the Society’s thirtieth year was John Patrick’s The Curious Savage. In 1969 it was Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which is still a perennial resident of the top ten. In 1979, when the organization turned fifty, it was Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take it With You, also a regular in the top ten and only seven years younger than the Thespian Society. In 1968, the name was changed to the International Thespian Society to reflect its geographical reach. In 1976, membership reached the one million mark with the induction of David Finkel, described in the magazine as a “shy, gentlemanly” stage technician from Shelbyville, Indiana. Longtime executive director Ronald Longstreth led the Thespian Society into new territory in 1986 with the establishment of the Theatre Education Association to serve the professional needs of theatre teachers. In 1989 the International Thespian Society and the Theatre Education Association were given a new organizational structure under the name Educational Theatre Association. Later the TEA name was dropped; EdTA is now the name of the professional association for theatre educators and the parent organization that operates the Thespian Society (and, since 1990, Junior Thespians, for middle school students and teachers). Under the leadership of Michael Peitz, who succeeded Longstreth as executive director in 1999, the Educational Theatre Association looks to expanding its commitment to helping educators and others employ theatre as an instrument of lifelong learning. It now has two periodicals—Dramatics and Teaching Theatre, a quarterly journal for educators—and operates not only the thriving Thespian Festival but an annual convention and a separate annual event for middle school teachers, a series of professional development workshops, and regional events for Junior Thespians.  | | Graveson House, the home office of the Educational Theatre Association and the International Thespian Society. |
Over the years, many actors who first worked on stage as Thespians have made their marks in professional theatre, film, and television. Broadway star Marcus Lovett was, over fifteen years ago, a member of the ITS national cast production of Grease at the Thespian Festival. Two-time-Emmy-nominated actor and Broadway star Wayne Brady is a member of Thespian Troupe 4276, Dr. Phillips High School, in Orlando, Florida. Sally Struthers, who played Archie Bunker’s daughter Gloria on the television classic All in the Family, was a Thespian. Faye Dunaway is on the membership roll of Thespian Troupe 1429 at Leon High School in Tallahassee, Florida. Lamar Senior High School in Houston, Texas, has had at least four famous Thespians: Charlie’s Angel Jaclyn Smith, pop singer Tommy Sands, director-choreographer-dancer-actor Tommy Tune, and motion picture star Paula Prentiss. Thespian alum Jai Rodriguez, from New York’s Smithtown High School Troupe 2035, starred in Rent on Broadway and Zanna Don’t! off-Broadway; he’s also one of the Fab 5 on the television series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The Van Dyke brothers, Dick and Jerry, were Thespians in Danville, Illinois. Thespian Julia Louis-Dreyfus has helped the organization recruit new members, and Thespian John Goodman served as honorary chairman for national Theatre in Our Schools month a few years ago. Dion Graham, who has guest starred on the critically acclaimed show NYPD Blue and done narration for numerous documentaries, was inducted into Troupe 456, Walnut Hills High School, Cincinnati, Ohio. A Martinez, who starred on LA Law, Profiler, and several soaps is a member of Troupe 3192, Verdugo Hills High School, Tujunga, California. Honolulu’s Kamehameha High School Troupe 758 boasts model Kelly Hu on its membership roster; she has made appearances on Melrose Place and Growing Pains and starred in the films Scorpion King and X2. (PDF of famous Thespians) And those are just a few of the Thespians who have gone on to careers in theatre. Our two million members also include doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists—leaders in every field of human activity. From the Thespian Society they learned to love theatre. And they learned that, whether you’re on stage or off, the important thing is to “act well your part; there all the honor lies.” This history was adapted from an article by Glenn Becker that appeared in Dramatics magazine in May 1994. Back to top of page |