Summer shows

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(Image: Stadium Theatre, no date) Stadium Theater began beneath the east stands in the summer of 1950. Bleachers in the breezeway at Gate 10 held as many as 300 people. During the program's eight-week season, students and interested members of the community collaborated to run six Broadway plays, four nights each. That July 5, Stadium Theater's first audience was treated to "The Male Animal," familiar to them from a 1942 film version, as well as from daily life. OSU alum James Thurber's refers to the popular soda fountain Hennick's, the Neil Avenue gate, and a rivalry with Michigan. Fire hazards, and the high cost of continually replacing seating and transporting lights and sets forced the program out of the Stadium, into Hughes Hall in 1968, and into Mershon Auditorium in 1970. The summer theater program of 1973, relocated to the experimental theater inside Drake Union, was christened "Stadium II" in tribute to its original site.