The Creation Legend

In February of 1973, a group of students, staffers, spouses, community members, and three professors, brought together by founding student Jack Marshall, 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.

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