One of my favorite things to emerge from the Faculty Club papers is this little draft of an invitation:
This performance by the Faculty Gilbert & Sullivan group began a tradition that lasted until 1966. The idea of this is almost staggering today, when pressures to publish frequently, bring in grant funding, and serve on committees leave faculty members ragged, stretched thin, and far too tired to get together and cook up a musical production–just for the fun of it.
Here’s the program:
And it was even covered by the Houston Chronicle:
If you’ve been reading this blog for very long you’ll certainly recognize many of the names, stalwarts of the faculty like Ted Lewis, Carl Wischmeyer, and Joseph Davies. (One year they even got President Houston to take a role.) Believe it or not this performance was recorded and we have a copy of the LP in the Woodson. I’ve never listened to it (we don’t have a phonograph) but I’m going to see about getting it digitized. I suddenly long to hear their voices.
Bonus: This was what I found on the back side of the invitation.
