Tanghalang Ateneo descends from a long line of Ateneo theater companies, the Ateneo Dramatics Society and the Ateneo Experimental Theater, among others-which flourished in the college campus since its pre-war days at Padre Faura. It started out in 1974 as a group of friends who wished to stage plays, and having no theater to speak of on the Loyola Heights campus, scheduled performances at the college cafeteria. The group pressed the administration for a more suitable venue, and by 1978, a large classroom, seating about 80 people, was converted to a theater of sorts. In the old classroom, the group constructed wooden grids, light boxes, transformed a huge piece of canvass into a cyclorama, built an enclosed control booth, and draped windows with dark curtains, this is now called the Fine Arts Theatre. However, since 1989, Tanghalang Ateneo has been staging plays in a 250-seater theater called the Rizal Mini-Theater and recently, in other venues within the Loyola Schools such as the Fine Arts Blackbox Theater and the Doreen Fernandez Blackbox Theater.