Â鶹ӰԺ

Tucked inside the Hellems Arts and Sciences Building is the Mary Rippon Outdoor Theatre, named after the first female professor at the University of Colorado and the first woman in the U.S. to teach at a state university. The Mary Rippon Outdoor Theatre was officially completed in 1939, but no plays were staged there until 1944, when Shakespeare teacher and bibliographer James Sandoe was asked to direct a play for the coming summer. Because the Department of the Navy occupied the indoor University Theatre during World War II, Sandoe decided to try out the new Mary Rippon complex with a production of "Romeo and Juliet", thereby starting the tradition that would grow into the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.