List of Grove Plays

The Grove Play is an annual theatrical production written, produced and performed by and for Bohemian Club members, and staged outdoors in California at the Bohemian Grove each summer.

In 1878, the Bohemian Club of San Francisco first took to the woods for a summer celebration that they called midsummer High Jinks. Poems were recited, songs were sung, and dramatic readings were given. In 1881, the ceremony of the Cremation of Care was first conducted after the various individual performances. Eventually, the readings and songs were woven into a theme or framework, such as in the solemn Orientalism-themed Buddha Jinks of 1892 and the Christianity-triumphs-over-paganism-themed Druid Jinks the next year. In 1897, the Faust Jinks were constructed within the musical form of Charles Gounod's opera Faust. Finally, in 1902, both the music and the libretto were composed by club members, setting the "Bohemian grove-play as a distinct genre of stage art."

Each year a Sire and a musical Sire are selected by the club's Jinks Committee, part of the club's Board of Directors. The Sire is responsible for producing the script and libretto of the Grove Play, and the musical Sire composes the music. The Sire may select others to write the dialog and song lyrics, but remains responsible for the overall theme and final form of the spectacle.

In the earliest productions of the Grove Play, several restrictions were imposed upon the Sire including that the stage setting be the natural forest backdrop and that the "malign character Care" be introduced in the plot, to wreak havoc with the characters and then be faced down and vanquished by the hero. In these early productions, the Cremation of Care immediately followed, and lasted until midnight. The end of the ceremony was signaled by a lively Jinks Band rendition of There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight, and the club members sat down to a late dinner and revelry into the wee hours.

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