Loomis Review, 1920

The LOG described the 1920 Loomis Review as “laugh compelling nonsense” and its all-male cast as “mirth provokers [and] capable actors”. The performance, one of the first musical theater productions at Loomis, took place in Founders Hall on Thanksgiving evening after boarders celebrated the holiday with a traditional turkey dinner.
 

The Gondoliers, 1956

Nancy Ahearn ’57, Julius Allen ’56, Dorothy Hearn ’57, and Charles Fidlar ’57 perform in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, The Gondoliers. Science teacher Squirrel Norris ’28, himself an experienced summer stock actor, directed this joint Loomis-Chaffee show. Frank House and Barbara Norris directed the large chorus. Ambitious choreography distinguished the production.
 

Oliver! 1976

The spring musical of 1976 opened with five minutes of stage acting in total silence. This dramatic start to Oliver!, based on Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, was only one of the innovative features in Brian Davidson’s production. The LOG noted that the show “was both celebration and cause for celebration”. The audience gave the cast two standing ovations.
 

Once Upon a Mattress, 1987

Loomis Chaffee brought the first American musical to China in March 1987. Dean Adams, director of the NEO Theater, and the cast and crew of Once Upon a Mattress made history on a 19-day journey to Shandong Province. In every city they performed, the actors brought the house down with this musical comedy adapted by Adams for greater appeal and acceptance with Chinese audiences.
 

The Wiz, 2010

Andrew Sanders ’11, Olivia Hoffman ’10 and Niles Krieger ’10 prepare for adventure in Oz during the 2010 production of The Wiz. Director Brian Kosanovich staged the show with one of the NEO’s largest casts. He also invited actors from Loomis Chaffee’s 2000 production of The Wiz, some of them now professional actors, back to the Island to share NEO memories with their younger counterparts.
 

Norris Ely Orchard

Norris Ely Orchard works with Chaffee students Gail Berquist Hoogasian ’53, Sheila Owen Monks ’52 and Zane Hickcox Kotker ’52. Widely respected as a theater director, Orchard, according to a 1947 LOG article, “takes people you have always known and inserts them in a fluid but firm frame, when they sparkle and set one another off.” The Loomis Theater was renamed the Norris Ely Orchard Theater after his death in 1957.