In 1951 the drama section of the English Department, the Junior League of Knoxville, and other community volunteers initiated a new university and community activity, the Carousel Theatre. That first summer, four plays were offered in a tent theatre-in-the-round, with actors using a nearby carriage house for a dressing room. The Sigma Nu fraternity, whose house was nearby, provided the use of its restrooms. The first play produced was the Moss Hart comedy Light Up the Sky.
The first season was so successful that President Brehm was asked to grant a university loan of $35,000 to the university and community Carousel Theatre Program so that a permanent building might be constructed. The university made the loan. TVA architect Frederick Roth designed what was described as the country’s first convertible theatre—open air in the summer but closed in for winter use. Removable wall panels of high insulation material were in place for fall productions in 1952.
The octagonal structure with seating for 380, the dressing rooms, and the storage facility were constructed at a cost of $32,730. The loan was repaid in three years rather than the ten agreed upon.
Prior to the opening of the Carousel, UT plays had been held for runs of two or three nights at the Bijou Theatre or sometimes at Tyson Junior High School. One-act plays were given on the third floor of Tyson House (the Penthouse Theatre). Over the next two decades, the Carousel Theatre program expanded to include 13 productions annually. The department produced over two hundred shows, and total attendance was in excess of seventy thousand. Children’s Carousel, a series of plays for school children, began in 1953.
On October 11, 1991, the theatre was named for Ula Love Doughty, who pursued a theatrical career (and claimed to have been Miss Ziegfield Follies of 1936) in recognition of her substantial financial support of the theatre program.