Wisconsin Union Theater is a performing arts center in Madison, Wisconsin, located in the University of Wisconsin–Madison's Memorial Union. Wisconsin Union Theater performances include world stage, concerts, dance, jazz and other special events. History The theater opened in the fall of 1939 and was designed by architect Michael Hare. Statewide radio broadcast the October 8th inaugural ceremonies, and the next three days saw four performances of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, starring the leading couple of the American theater, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Union Theater audiences have seen and heard some of the most famous public figures, actors, dancers and musicians in performances over the last 70 years. Eleanor Roosevelt, Fritz Kreisler, Ella Fitzgerald, Indian Prime Minister Nehru, Frank Lloyd Wright, Yo-Yo Ma, T. S. Eliot, Jesse Jackson, Arthur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Frost, Itzhak Perlman, John F. Kennedy, Louis Armstrong, Martha Graham, Ted Turner, Kurt Vonnegut and Dave Brubeck have all appeared at the Wisconsin Union Theater. The Wisconsin Union Directorate allows students to participate in the programming and execution of performances at the theater. Every year, students work with the Union Theater staff on artist booking, contracts, box office and front-of-the-house management, backstage and technical crews, production, business operations, and publicity. In 2006, a student referendum was held for the third time on funding the remodeling of Union South and the Memorial Union. The referendum passed. The Arts and Recreation Wing of Memorial Union is undergoing remodeling work in 2012-2014.. Renovations were completed in June 2014, which marked the 75th anniversary for the Wisconsin Union Theater. Renovations included Shannon Hall - the largest space in the Union Theater with 1135 seats, The Play Circle - a technological space with room for 300, and finally the Festival Room - a new performance space for classes and workshops. Controversy and renaming The Play Circle, formerly named after Fredric March, was renamed in 2018 after a report, commissioned by Chancellor Rebecca Blank, outlined March's membership in an interfraternity society with the name Ku Klux Klan that was not associated the white nationalist supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan. The report also details the creation of a second fraternal group that was affiliated with the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1924 as well as Klan activity on campus and in Madison in the 1920s. On the publication of that report and an article in