Maud May Babcock

Women in the Arts » Entertainment/Theatre

Utah’s first lady of theater and physical education, Babcock founded the Department of Speech and the Department of Physical Education at the University of Utah, and she was also the first woman given full professorship at that university. During the course of her lifetime, Babcock produced and directed over 300 plays, including Eleusinia, the first play produced by a university in the United States, and she was the driving force behind the Social Hall, the first university-subsidized professional theater in the United States. In addition to her work with drama and speech, Babcock served as president of the board for the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind as well as Chaplain of the Utah Senate, the first woman in the country to hold such a position.