Women in the theater
Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject HeadingsScope Note: Collections documenting life in theater, including the papers of playwrights and performers, and records of feminist theater groups.
Found in 31 Collections and/or Records:
Overview Agnes De Mille was a dancer and choreographer. The first woman to choreograph on Broadway, Agnes de Mille was an innovator who combined American folk dances with American music and transformed the world of musical comedy forever. Papers include writings, extensive family correspondence, photographs, research notes for two autobiographies, and memorabilia. Correspondence describes her life and activities in great detail and discusses many notable people including Cecil B. de Mille, Rebecca West,...
Dates of Materials: 1897 - 1993
Overview Alpha Society was Smith College's first literary society, formed in 1878, shortly after the opening of the College itself in 1875. The collection contains copies of an evolving constitution, programs of meetings and plays, letters, invitations, administrative records, meeting minutes, publications, and photographs.
Dates of Materials: 1878 - 1968
Overview Journalist; Editor; Playwright. Collection includes books and pamphlets by Richardson, biographical material, and a small amount of correspondence. Scrapbooks contain newspaper and magazine articles collected by Richardson on suffrage, women's rights, courtship, marriage, divorce, etiquette, citizenship, civic affairs, consumerism, politics, child-rearing, changing cultural and social mores, and women's clubs. Two scrapbooks focus on the theater and contain clippings about plays by Richardson.
Dates of Materials: 1905-1949
Overview The collection contains personal and business files of Anne Mackay, an amateur theatre director, playwright, and author, who was prominent in the New York lesbian community in the 20th century. It includes materials regarding MacKay's amateur theater work, as well as her work as an author of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Also well-documented is her active participation in reunion activities at her alma mater Vassar College (Class of 1949).
Dates of Materials: 1910 - 2013
Overview Source material for book, Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights compiled by Kathleen Betsko and Rachel Koenig (1987), featuring thirty women playwrights, including Rosalyn Drexler, Beth Henley, Marsha Norman, Ntozake Shange, Megan Terry, and Kathleen Betsko. Materials include audio tapes, edited and unedited interview transcripts, biographical materials, play scripts, reviews, programs, correspondence, and photographs.
Dates of Materials: 1955-1990
Overview Clara Morris was an actress and journalist. Includes original manuscripts for Life on the Stage: My Personal Experiences and Recollections (1901), and several short stories; memorabilia; photographs; and 2 letters.
Dates of Materials: 1874 - 1901
Overview Clare Millicent Coss, lesbian feminist, playwright and psychotherapist, had her feminist awakening in the late 1960's. Soon thereafter she began writing plays with political, feminist themes. Her papers contain an autobiographical sketch, published scripts for numerous plays, and a review of the play, The Blessing. Also included are materials pertaining to Coss's involvement in the Women's Experimental Theater and a small scrapbook of photographs and printed...
Dates of Materials: 1971-1996
Overview Records consist of programs, photographs, press releases, articles, notes and prompt books relating to student productions at Smith between the years 1878 and 1949. These include all House Dramatics, Division of Dramatics, Alpha-Phi Kappa Psi, Theater Workshop, Dramatic Association and early Theater Department performances.
Dates of Materials: 1878 - 1960
Overview Author; actress; theatrical director and producer. Papers include biographical material, clippings, photographs, correspondence, photographs, and her original manuscript of the second volume of her autobiography Plus Twenty
Dates of Materials: 1951-1962
Collection — Box 1: [Barcode: 310183630386489]
Overview Oral history transcript of Regina Berger Lederer, a soprano soloist with the Vienna Opera who fled Vienna in 1939, after the Nazi invasion. She resumed her singing career in New York City and later worked for a knitting firm. Includes biographical notes, obituary, eulogies, and photocopies of photographs.
Dates of Materials: 1984
Overview Actress; Playwright; Women's Army Corps, World War II. The Helen Bragdon Papers include letters to her family from her basic training in Florida, her stateside service in Texas and Georgia, and overseas tours of duty in Australia, New Guinea, Netherlands East Indies, and the Phillipines. Additional materials include correspondence, clippings, photographs, and programs related to her theater activities.
Dates of Materials: 1937-1993
Overview Actress. The collection includes a small amount of published material, photographs and memorabilia pertaining mostly to Hayes' 1935 role as Queen Victoria in Victoria Regina. There are also clippings about her career later in life.
Dates of Materials: 1897-1967
Collection — Multiple Containers
Overview Helen Krich Chinoy, a long-time professor at Smith College, was a pioneer in theatre education and one of the leading theatre historians in the United States. In an academic career spanning nearly half a century, Chinoy was an inspirational teacher and chair of the Smith College Theatre Department as it moved into a modern new center for the performing arts. Her books, Actors on Acting, co-authored with her sister-in-law, the theatrical agent Toby Cole, and...
Dates of Materials: 1975 - 1981
Overview Actress. Papers include scripts, newspaper clippings, notes, publicity, correspondence, audiotapes, interviews, scrapbooks, and photographs. These materials, enhanced by White's eloquent self-reflections in interviews generated by her work on stage, document the career of a versatile performer. While the collection primarily documents White's professional career and the challenges she faced as an African American actress, her husband Alfredo Viazzi and her prominent parents, Walter and Gladys...
Dates of Materials: 1924-2001 (ongoing)
Overview Collection consists of correspondence (1931-46); clippings; writings; memorabilia; photographs; and printed material documenting the lives of mother Peggy Murray, diseuse, and daughter Joan Murray, poet.
Dates of Materials: 1880-1969; Majority of material found within 1911-1969
Overview Actress; Theatrical producer. The Katharine Cornell Papers include manuscripts and correspondence related to "I Wanted to Be an Actress" and scripts from "Antony and Cleopatra" and "The Barretts of Wimpole Street."
Dates of Materials: 1938-1960
Overview Professor, theater; Actor. Source material and correspondence relating to her book Women in American Theatre; also scripts, ephemera, periodicals, essays, clippings, and correspondence related to women's theatres around the world; and correspondence, printed material, and drafts for the Women in the Performing Arts newsletter.
Dates of Materials: 1975-1987
Overview Opera singer and Director, Metropolitan Opera National Company. Collection primarily documents Stevens's administrative roles in the Metropolitan Opera Company and in the National Endowment for the Arts and includes correspondence, speeches, interviews, scripts, fan mail, photographs, music notebooks, concert scores, memorabilia, and artwork.
Dates of Materials: 1962-1975
Overview Rosemary Keefe (1940-2012) was a feminist scholar and pioneer in the field of women’s studies as well as a social justice activist. She was a former Catholic nun who left her order, married, had a daughter, divorced and ultimately came out as a lesbian. Keefe became nationally known with the 1985 publication of the controversial book Lesbian Nuns: Breaking the Silence, which she wrote with Nancy Manahan. The Rosemary Keefe papers include personal and...
Dates of Materials: 1960 - 2011
Overview The collection documents the work of women in the performing arts, especially American actresses, women playwrights, and dancers. There are biographical files on individuals; articles and dissertations; several contemporary plays by women; and printed material on women filmmakers and feminist theater.
Dates of Materials: 1843 - 1985
Overview Theater company. An innovative women's theatre company, the Theatre of Light and Shadow was dedicated to theatre as both art and communication and to feminism as a lifestyle. Materials include correspondence, publicity, programs, scripts, and photographs.
Dates of Materials: 1978-1984
Collection — Box 1: [Barcode: 310183630046281]
Overview Tribad Productions was an all-women's theatrical company that produced plays written by women, for women and existed from 1991 to 1995. The records include six plays, including gay and lesbian themes, submitted for a playwriting contest sponsored by Tribad Productions in 1992. Includes related correspondence.
Dates of Materials: 1992-1993
Overview The collection contains financial records, memorabilia, photographs, publicity materials, workshop tapes, correspondence, and meeting notes pertaining to plays the Woman's Collage Theater produced.
Dates of Materials: 1970 - 1981
Overview Professional organization. Records include correspondence, printed material, audiotapes from national conferences, plays submitted for prizes, newsletters, administrative and financial records, programs, membership lists, and proposals. NOTE: There is no container list online for this finding aid. You may contact the Sophia Smith Collection if you want one sent to you.
Dates of Materials: 1980-1998
Overview WomenArts is a non-profit arts service organization dedicated to helping women artists get the resources they need to do their creative work. The WomenArts records consist of grant applications, funding proposals, financial information, reports, and publicity materials for the parent organization, as well as for projects and artists that WomenArts funded.
Dates of Materials: 1991-2006
Overview The collection consists of scripts of 125 plays that were submitted for two awards, mailing lists, correspondence, clippings, publicity material and printed material, as well as questionnaires and other documents relating to the proposed International Women's Theatre Festival.
Dates of Materials: 1978-1983