March 2, 1935

The Vassar Experimental Theatre presented The Question Before the House, a play by Doris Yankauer ’35 and activist and chemical engineer Herbert Mayer from New York City. The play, directed by Hallie Flanagan Davis, centered around students at a women’s college, called Quinley College, who are encouraged to join the picket line at a plumbing supply factory. When one of the students falls in love with a striker, the college’s president withdraws the students’ permission to support the strikers.

Interviewed by The Miscellany News, Miss Yankauer said the play attempted “to get to the root of a certain unreality which I have always felt existed in the attempt of college students to relate themselves to the economic world outside…. It questions the possibility of a college remaining really liberal in a world in which opposing points of view are becoming increasingly sharply defined, as long as the college depends on the capitalistic system for its financial support.”

The play opened in a twin bill at the Madison Playhouse in New York City on November 8, 1935, and Miss Yankauer and Mr. Mayer were married in 1936.