About The John Cranford Adams Playhouse

The John Cranford Adams Playhouse was designed by Aymar Embury, and was completed in 1958.  It was officially named after Hofstra’s Second President, John Cranford Adams, in 1974.

Dr. Adams served as President from 1944 to 1964 and was a renowned Shakespeare scholar who began the Drama Department’s annual Shakespeare Festival in 1958.  Having published his doctoral dissertation on “The Structure of the Globe Playhouse Stage” in 1942, and having built a large scale model of the his conception of the Globe Theater, a 4/5th scale model of the Globe Stage, designed from Dr. Adams’ model and dissertation by Dr. Donald Swinney, was installed in Calkins Gymnasium to house this first festival.

The Playhouse stage was itself designed specifically to accommodate this set piece, which has been used in many of the subsequent Shakespeare Festivals.

The Playhouse has hosted such notables as Francis Ford Coppola (who, as a student at Hofstra had directed his first major production, “The Delicate Touch”, on the Playhouse Stage), Phil Rosenthal, Susan Sullivan, Jon Stewart, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachav, and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, among many others.

The Adams Playhouse serves as one of the showplaces of the University, hosting symposia, dramatic productions, dance recitals, academic conferences an official University ceremonies.