Series II. Barnswallows records, 1896-1962

The Barnswallows was organized in 1896 as a dramatics society. The group was conceived of my May Pitkin, Class of 1895, in late Spring 1895. Before graduating, May Pitkin passed the idea to Julia Lyman, Class of 1896, who pursued the idea in collaboration with Louise McNair, Class of 1896. They proposed the organization at the March 1896 meeting of Society Presidents, and won broad support. In May a meeting of seniors and juniors led by Louise McNair drafted a constitution, which was presented to the student body and faculty with success. In 1896, the cows that had lived in the Barn died, and the space became open. Up until this point, the gymnasium had been used to present shows. The now-empty barn was briefly titled Recreation Hall, before being dubbed the Barn and inspiring the name of the new dramatics society, the Barnswallows. The name and constitution were approved in June, 1896, and on June 17, Mary Haskell, Class of 1897 was made the first president. Both the establishment of the group and their use of the Barn as a performance space were acts approved by the Trustees of the college. The Trustees provided $1,200 in May 1897 in order to renovate the Barn for performance use, installing a stage and lights.

In 1921, the Barnswallows was reorganized, and formalized, moving from previously providing loosely defined “entertainments,” to a more competitive, exclusively dramatic organization. As of 1928, male actors from other colleges were occasionally featured in performances.

In 1955, Paul Rogers Barstow was hired as Lecturer in Speech and Director of the Theater. The name Barnswallows stayed in use, sometimes abbreviated as “Barn” - however, under Director of the Theater Paul Barstow, organizational changes were made. In the May 20, 1965 edition of Wellesley News, the article “Act One for Theater Groups” described Wellesley’s two theatrical groups as the Barnswallows, and Experimental Theater (a group which began performing in the 1950s). However, an article in the March 9, 1967 edition of Wellesley News, “ET Workshop,” erroneously states: “Curiously, ET [Experimental Theatre] is older than Barn. When Mr. Barstow arrived [in 1955], Wellesley had two theater groups, ET and a group which did musical comedies but which, according to Mr. Barstow, “did not long survive under the purge which accompanied the Barstow regime." In its place Mr. Barstow established Barn.” The unnamed group in this paragraph is presumably the original Barnswallows, suggesting that Paul Barstow kept the name in use but significantly changed the organizational structure; the same article notes the Barnswallows is no longer fully run by students. Paul Barstow remained in his role, evolving into the Director of Theater Studies, until his retirement in 1994, but the use of the name Barnswallows seems to have fallen off years before.

[Information from: Glasscock, Jean, and Katharine Canby Balderston. Wellesley College, 1875-1975: a Century of Women. Wellesley College, 1975. Page 180. See also: 1906 Legenda [yearbook], pages 143-144, 205.]