Memorial Auditorium ("Mem Aud")
With a seating capacity of 1705, students come to Memorial Auditorium (“Mem Aud”) in droves to attend events and performances ranging from New Student Orientation to speaker events featuring world leaders and celebrities to “Gaieties” – a traditional comedy-musical performed during the annual Big Game Week. The Division of Drama, various makerspaces, and the campus radio station KZSU 90.1 are also headquartered in Mem Aud.
Arts District Facilities
🏛️ Arts District Facilities
Due in large part to the Arts Initiative, the majority of academic facilities and performance venues for the arts (both performing and visual) are located in or adjacent to the Arts District. Exceptions are the Braun Music Center and the Roble Arts Gym. The proximity of Stanford’s arts facilities to each other allows for productive interactions, and their location at the front of campus highlights the importance the university has placed on the arts.
Roble Arts Gym (located outside the Arts District)
The Roble Arts Gym is a drop-in creative space for art-making open to all Stanford students. Students have access to spaces for informal performance and rehearsal, project materials and storage for artworks, and a community of art-makers. The "messy arts" space is particularly popular!
The Roble Arts Gym was originally built in 1931 as the women’s gymnasium. The renovation of the old Roble gymnasium was completed in 2016 and created new theatrical performance spaces and updated several dance studios, rehearsal spaces, and classrooms. Roble houses the Harry J. Elam, Jr. Theater, a large black box theater; the Roble Dance Studio, a beautiful dance performance space in keeping with its original Spanish architecture; several acting, dance, and music rehearsal spaces; a VR room; and the main departmental office for Theater & Performance Studies (TAPS).
Memorial Hall & Memorial Auditorium (“Mem Aud”)
Memorial Auditorium (usually referred to just as “Mem Aud”), is the largest indoor performance space at Stanford (1705 seats) and part of the larger Memorial Hall facility, which also includes Prosser Theater (192 seats) and the intimate Prosser Studio (seating 30 to 55). KZSU, Stanford’s radio station broadcasting across the Bay Area on 90.1 FM, is located in the basement level.
Mem Aud is primarily used to present TAPS’s largest musicals and dance shows, including the traditional Big Game “Gaieties” production each year. In addition to the main large proscenium stage and auditorium, Memorial Hall houses the TAPS department’s costume shop, scene shops, and light lab, as well as faculty offices, production staff offices, and other classrooms.
Mem Aud also hosts University special events, including New Student Orientation, presidential addresses and roundtables, and a wide range of guest speakers. Past notable speakers and addresses have included Martin Luther King, Jr’s “The Other America” speech in 1967, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the Dalai Lama, and Barack Obama.
Memorial Hall was dedicated in 1937 to commemorate students and faculty who died in World War I. Since that time, the names of those who have died in subsequent wars have been added to the chiseled list in the main lobby.
Braun Music Center
The Braun Music Center is the main academic building for the Department of Music, and is located near White Plaza, across from the Stanford Post Office. Braun was specially designed with both acoustics and soundproofing in mind — it is a building within a building. The Music Library, in addition to printed matter, contains the amazing Archive of Recorded Sound, a collection of more than 150,000 records and CDs of classical and popular music, literature, drama, interviews, public addresses and radio broadcasts from the late nineteenth century to the present.
Located on the first floor of Braun is Campbell Recital Hall, which seats 215 and is a popular spot for small ensemble and student recital performances. The adjacent Dinkelspiel Auditorium, a large 710-seat performance and lecture hall, was built earlier in 1957, but serves the Department of Music and the rest of the University for large performances, lectures, symposia, and rehearsals.
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