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GUIDE TO YELLOW SPR INGS | 2021– 2022 15 support of the Union cause. In the 1930s, the Opera House became the home of the YS Summer Players and the Antioch Players. By 1945, the town and gown had joined forces as the YS Area Theatre. These were the foundational years of the proverbial golden age of theater in the village, with Antioch professors Mer - edith Dallas, Arthur Lithgow — father of actor John Lithgow — and Paul Treichler at the helm. The Opera House had begun to show its age by that point, and was also plagued by a curious infestation. Writing for the New Yorker in 1954, Paul Rohmann recalled: “An energetic bat was circling the theatre. … Round and round he went, louder and louder spoke the actors, while the audience sat pivoting their heads like spectators at an air race.” By 1949, the YS Area Theatre was producing both a winter and summer season, running plays almost continu - ously — but this would be the last year that the company would be based at the Opera House. According to News archives, the last show for the company at the Opera House was “The Wise Have Not Spoken,” by Paul Vincent Car- roll, directed by famed British actor and director Basil Lang- ton; at the time, Langton was married to Louise Soelberg, who would go on to establish the Riding Centre. The auditorium’s balcony was condemned that year, and though municipal offices still operated downstairs, no further productions were mounted upstairs. Antioch College considered leasing the theater from the Village in order to justify putting money into repairing the rapidly dete- riorating building, but declined to do so. After years of trying to decide how to save the historic structure, the Village ultimately decided against it — and the building was demol- ished in 1960. Antioch Area Theater and Shakespeare Under the Stars The loss of the Opera House was not the loss of theater in Yellow Springs, however — in fact, its most historic era had just begun. In the summer of 1952, Dallas and Lithgow produced the first Shakespeare Under the Stars festival, to incredible suc - cess. As written in the July 10, 1952, issue of the News: “[the festival] is drawing nationwide attention to Yellow Springs and may make this village a tourist mecca of no small propor- tions by August.” The newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II, who had ascended to the throne of England earlier that year, sent a letter of com - mendation to the festival. The Antioch Area Theatre, as it was now known, would produce all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays with both local and nationally known professional actors, holding the final summer festi - val in 1958. In 1955, the Antioch Area Theatre made its temporary home in a campus building that had previously housed the foundry that became Morris Bean — now known as the Foundry Theater. After the Shakespeare series ended, Dallas continued to produce at least five plays a year at Antioch with profes - sional actors. To keep up with the growth and popularity of the program, the college built the Antioch Amphithe - ater in 1961. As Tony Dallas recounted in an interview, the theater’s nearly 600 seats were installed by village kids — including himself. “The seats were fiberglass, this new material — they were factory rejects, so they were sort of multicolored, [placed] randomly,” he said. “Yellow Springs was the hub of artistic activity in southern Ohio — especially in theater.” By the 1970s, however, Meredith Dallas had retired, and the college struggled more and more to support the theater program financially. The program closed in 1984, but reopened in 1991 after student protests, and contin - ued in 1994 under the direc- tion of Antioch alumna Louise Smith until the college’s 2008 The audience erupts in laughter during a 1963 performance of “Charley’s Aunt” at Antioch Amphitheater. | PHOTO BY AXEL BAHNSEN, COURTESY OF TONY DALLAS Continued on page 16 Jewelry • Clothing • Home Accents Gifts for All Occasions 230 Xenia | 937-767-1628 A Collection of UniqUe TreAsUres From Abroad