RF Annual Report - 1935 - The Rockefeller Foundation

272 THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION
own department. To enlarge the experience of its
students still further, the department serves outside
organizations in-the city of Cleveland and in
schools of the surrounding area. Students have
opportunity to gain practical experience by participating
in plays staged at the campus theater
and by aiding some forty school, church, and settlement
groups in preparing for the play festival
arranged annually by the department. Work in
courses is demonstrated in student productions,
to the number of six full-length plays performed
publicly each year and from thirty to forty oneact
workshop presentations. The students also
take their plays to thirty-five high schools.
The Cleveland Play House, one of the most
successful community organizations in the country,
is now
in its twentieth season. Its building
houses two theaters, which are operated noncommercially
by a full-time staff of actors, technicians,
and directors. Attendance during the
past year was
considerably over a hundred
thousand. Local support of the Play House is
sufficient to make it also an important center for
training of community directors, and
it is believed
that the completion of the plan now aided
by the Foundation will stabilize these educational
functions.
In addition to producing fifteen plays during
a season, the Play House conducts an apprentice
© 2003 The Rockefeller Foundation