Drama at Lakeside (A Revue)

by Leslie Schuyler

L

ast spring, I had the pleasure of recording an oral history interview with Al Snapp, who was hired at Lakeside in 1979 to manage the new St. Nicholas Hall theater, direct plays, and contribute design and sets to all productions, as well as teach history. Snapp directed the arts department from 1984 until 2015. He taught theater courses, migrated yearbook creation to digital tools, and developed the school’s first digital media class. Early this fall he visited me in the archives, sporting his familiar fedora, eager to discuss something he had been thinking about since his retirement in June 2021: creating a “drama archive where alums can see each year the plays and musicals performed at Lakeside and access the programs for those shows.”

I set to work.

The list of past directors in the Middle and Upper schools is long, as are the lists of participants in each production. Luckily, the archives has a decent collection of drama programs dating back to the late 1970s, thanks, in large part, to generous alums and former faculty. If there are holes in the collection, it’s often possible to find short write-ups and even lists of performers in back issues of the Tatler.

Snapp’s visit got me working on digitizing programs, inventorying the collection of performance recordings, and migrating some of those (on VHS tapes) to an accessible format for viewing. It’s a work in progress, but one that’s right in line with the archives’ mission. I’m sure there are more pieces of the dramatic puzzle out there. If you have a Lakeside drama program from years past, or a home video of a Lakeside drama performance, please consider sending it our way. 

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