Theater and the Arts

“...[creative work] means the laying hold of the very Essence of all life. It is Life and Religion - Art, if taken as one’s means of discovering and expressing Truth.” - May Friend Bennett

Miss Bennett’s School was unique in May Friend Bennett’s emphasis on the arts in education and her belief that “work in art offers opportunity both for discipline and inspiration, and opens the supreme way to understanding, to vision and to joy…” 

At a time when increasing importance was being placed on college preparation and liberal arts courses, Bennett School “was a pioneer in giving equal stress to other arts – music, dance, drama, paintings, and sculpture.”

“Music is a very strong feature of the school. Miss [Elinor] Comstock, a pupil of Leschetizky, is at the head of the Music Department…A series of recitals by the best artists in piano, violin, and voice, including quartets, trios, and solos, has been arranged for the coming year…The seniors spend two weeks of the school year in studying the best of the art galleries of New York and Washington, in hearing good music. The trip is personally conducted by the teachers having charge of the art history and music classes.” - Millbrook Mirror and Round Table, October 4, 1907

In 1919, English actor and playwright Charles Rann Kennedy and his wife Edith Wynne Matthison, close friends of May Bennett’s since 1911, joined the school’s faculty as heads of the drama department. Their first production of the Greek play Antigone in 1920 led to a tradition of Greek tragedies produced in the School’s annual Drama Festival, and the building of the outdoor Greek Theater which opened in 1922. 

“With coordinated work in music and dance as well as drama, the students each year enacted one of the works of the great Greek dramatists – Aeschuylus, Euripides, Sophocles – in productions that each spring brought audiences from all over the world to Millbrook. By request on performance days, the locomotive engineers refrained from blowing the whistle as the train passed the theater on its way to Millbrook.” Millbrook Round Table, May 12, 1966

A clothing and textiles course evolved into the Fashion and Interior Design major, led by a team of skilled designers who focused on both the creative and merchandising aspects of the trade. Students in the design program had their work featured in an annual fashion show and in a campus shop.

The School maintained a roster of distinguished faculty in arts and design including Carmen Rooker in dance, Horace Middleton in music, Ralph Della-Volpe in painting, and Lean de Marco, Lu Duble, and Tal Streeter in sculpture and became well known for its art programs and many of the campus performances and art exhibits were open to the public. A number of graduates went on to professional careers in the arts. 

View additional theater and the arts related records and images here.

References:

“Dedication: For College a New Step”, Millbrook Round Table, May 12, 1966.

“The Bennett School”, Millbrook Mirror and Round Table, October 4, 1907.

Wilcox, Marie Farnsworth, (1930). May Friend Bennett: A Memoir. Kessinger Publishing. https://discover.midhudsonlibraries.org/search/card?id=a8217319-09db-523d-9ad4-3a1566149665&entityType=FormatGroup.