DramaTech Visual Materials Collection (VAUA350)

Administrative History of DramaTech Theatre

Founded in 1947 as the Georgia Tech Dramatic Club, DramaTech Theatre is Atlanta's oldest continuously operating theater company.

Georgia Tech had a dramatic organization as early as 1913, when a student troupe later known as the Marionettes was formed. This group disbanded during World War II and in February 1947, a group of drama enthusiasts on campus met with Glenn James and formed the Georgia Tech Dramatic Club. Their first production, The Drunkard, directed by Jack Pompan, IM '48, was so successful that the English department accredited the fledgling organization, enabling it to obtain financial aid from the university system. Members received academic credit from the English department for their involvement. With this impetus, Zenas Sears, a local Atlanta radio personality, became the first professional director of DramaTech and presented a series of one-act plays in the Tech YMCA auditorium in the spring of 1947.

For the next several years, DramaTech was a vagabond organization, presenting its plays in a variety of venues, including the YMCA and the Fowler Street School Auditorium. In 1952, with the assistance of architecture classes, DramaTech moved into a new home in the Crenshaw Field House, where it adopted a unique theatre-in-the-round. Unfortunately, this home proved to be impermanent and DramaTech was forced to move several additional times during the ensuing years, occupying temporary stages in the Community Playhouse and later in the Georgia Tech Center for the Performing Arts. In 1968, the theater troupe moved to the Church of God, which was located at the intersection of Hemphill Avenue and Ferst. A later proposal during the early 1980s to renovate a nearby school, O'Keefe Middle School, proved unsuccessful.

Prior to coeducation and continuing until 1987, Agnes Scott College students and members of the community played women's roles and those which could not logically be portrayed by Georgia Tech students. Just as the Marionettes had in previous years, DramaTech produced critically acclaimed plays that were popular with the community, particularly during the long leadership of Atlanta actress Mary Nell Ivey Santacroce. Santacroce (1918-1999) directed nearly all of DramaTech's productions from 1949 until 1966. Other directors have included Sylvia Zsuffa (1947-1948), Zenas Sears (1948-1949), Gerard Appy (1952-1953), Charles J. Pecor (1967-1971), Fergus Currie (1971-1973), Dana Ivey (1974-1977), and Becky Dettra (1977-1980). Like his predecessors, artistic director Gregory B. Abbott produced numerous critically acclaimed plays during his long tenure. Abbott directed DramaTech from 1984 until his untimely death at the age of 54 in 2006.

In 1992, DramaTech finally acquired a permanent home with the dedication of the Dean James Dull Theatre at the back of the Robert Ferst Center for the Arts (originally called the Georgia Tech Theatre for the Arts). Dull and his wife Gay, long-time supporters of DramaTech, established the Gay K. Dull Scholarship awarded to seniors who have been involved with the organization.