The Creation Legend

In February of 1973, several students and three professors sat backstage in the Moot Courtroom, waiting to perform Gilbert and Sullivan's courtroom farce, Trial by Jury. The show had been rehearsed sporadically, amid warnings by professors and students that it was a grievous waste of precious study time. No tickets had been sold; admission was free. Nervously, they waited to see if anyone would bother to come to their show. Six hundred people turned out to watch the performance. They sat in the aisles, on the stage, and on each other. By the finale, nobody believed that Trial by Jury had been a waste of time.

Thus was born the Georgetown Gilbert & Sullivan Society, one of the strangest theatrical organizations ever. The society is sustained primarily by law students and lawyers, persons not known for having copious amounts of free time. The Society is truly a law center community group, as friends and family join students, faculty, and alumni in every production. A Broadway musical is presented every fall, a drama/comedy in the winter, and, of course, a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta in the spring.

The Creation Legend... Update!!

• The cast for the first performance of Trial by Jury was at least 28: three professors, one Georgetown Law staffer, two wives, two ringers, and the rest students.
• Tom Johnson, as a third year student, organized the group into an institutional entity in 1977. That was the first board. This is when the group stopped being "that show Jack puts on every year" and started being a student group for real.
• Before the first board was formed, Myron Dale produced the first three shows, raised the money, and fought with the student bar, plus he performed in all three. He alone did all the essential, awful dirty work that a full board does today. There would have been no group without him.
• Loren Platzman is a concert pianist, G&S historian, and computer whiz who flew into D.C. for the first three shows, did marvelous piano arrangements, and gave the productions a musical drive and professional sheen. He also did the music for the 20th anniversary celebration.

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