Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.). Waa-Mu Show

Northwestern's Waa-Mu Show, the musical revue that helped to launch the careers of dozens of Broadway and Hollywood performers, has been a campus tradition since 1929. The goal of the annual show is to celebrate all the aspects of musical theater and highlight the talents of undergraduate student performers.

In 1929, as a senior, Northwestern student Joseph W. Miller and his classmate Darrell Ware wrote the script and staged the college musical comedy that became “The Waa-Mu Show,” the first coeducational college musical show. Waa-Mu was a combined production of the Women's Athletic Association (WAA) and the Men's Union (MU.) The WAA” had been staging popular all-female musical comedies since 1912; the “MU” had presented less successful all-male comic operas for a number of years. Both men's and women's shows had been losing money and Miller and Ware raised $1,200 by borrowing $5 a piece from interested students to finance the first show.

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