NY Public Library's Lewis and Dorothy Cullman Curator Doug Reside on the Tonys at Curtain Up

BroadwayWorld continues our exclusive content series, in collaboration with The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which delves into the library's unparalleled archives, and resources. Below, check out a piece by Doug Reside, Lewis and Dorothy Cullman Curator for the Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on: Political Satires in The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts' Theatre on the Tonys at Curtain Up!

Regular readers of BroadwayWorld may be familiar with the Curtain Up exhibition at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts which celebrates the plays and musicals that have been honored by both the Tony and the Olivier Awards over the last forty years. Since the exhibition opened in the fall of 2016, another set of Oliviers have been awarded, and a new round of Tony nominations were just announced (right here at the Library!). Obviously, most of the materials related to the newest shows are still part of the records of an active company, and so haven't made their way to our archives, but Broadway fans who enjoy playing (or the play...) "Six Degrees of Separation" will find in our archive close connections to almost every nominated show. It's easiest, of course, to make connections from historical records to current revivals. For this month, I've selected one object connected to each of the nominated revivals plays and musicals. This is just a tiny sample of the treasures that you can access for free any day in our reading room.

Best Revival of a Musical

Hello, Dolly!

All of us at the Library are huge fans of Bette Midler, so it's tempting to point to our recordings of Ms. Midler's work in our Theatre on Film and Tape (TOFT) archive or else Kenn Duncan's portraits of her in our Digital Collections (or, my favorite, Midler as one of Tevye's daughters in Fiddler on the Roof). However, since I'm focusing here mostly on the Tony-nominated shows rather than individuals (however talented), I've picked instead the Hello Dolly scrapbook compiled by the bookwriter Michael Stewart.

Along with the correspondence, drafts of scripts, contracts, and other similar documents in The Michael Stewart Papers preserved at the Library, there are a set of 23 scrapbooks of clippings, programs, and photographs. Three are dedicated to Hello, Dolly!, and represent a kind of multi-volume production history told through the press as the show moves from Detroit to Broadway to international tours.

Falsettos

As fans of Falsettos know well, the musical began its life as a set of three one acts written over the course of the 1980s as the AIDS epidemic spread across New York City and the nation. Along with a recording of the original production in TOFT, we also preserve the archives of several artists who worked on the piece as it developed, including costume designer Franne Lee, who designed both the third one act (Falsettoland) and the original full-length production Falsettos. Lee's papers include her designs, as well as programs, and notes, such as the one pictured, in which she records minor changes she wants to make to the costumes.

Miss Saigon

The original production of Miss Saigon was one of the last of the commercially successful British mega-musicals known for their spectacular scenic designs (barricades, chandeliers, and helicopters). Less discussed, though no less impressive, were the costume designs in these shows. The Library preserves the costume bibles for the original production--essentially scrapbooks which contain photographs, sketches, and fabric swatches so that the staff of the costume shop knows how to build and repair the costumes throughout the run of the show.

Best Revival of a Play

The Little Foxes

Manhattan Theatre Club's revival of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes received six Tony nominations, including one for Jane Greenwood's costume design. The original production opened in 1939, eight years before the first Tony Awards in 1947, but the original New York Times review praised the production and made special note of Aline Bernstein's costumes. We preserve Bernstein's papers, but they do not include any designs clearly identified as The Little Foxes. However, there are is a full box dedicated to Bernstein's Tony-award winning costumes for the musical version, Regina. One of the designs for the title character, played in the original, non-musical, version by Tallulah Bankhead, has on the back of the paper the name "Bankhead" followed by list of numbers that were probably Bankhead's measurements. Regina was played by Jane Pickens in the musical version, so this design, and perhaps others, were likely originally rendered for The Little Foxes.

Present Laughter

The work of Noël Coward has regularly been celebrated at the Library through public programs and exhibitions both physical and digital. Coward's papers are scattered across the world's archives, but the theatre division of NYPL arguably holds the world's most extensive collection of photographs of New York productions of Cowards work. Most of the original productions were photographed by Florence Vandamm, a pioneering theatrical photographer who began her career in London in 1908 and quickly became the photographer of record for Broadway theatre after moving to New York in 1923. The Theatre Division preserves tens of thousands of Vandamm's negatives (both glass and acetate), many of which have never before been printed. Conserving and digitizing these works of art is an expensive undertaking, but the results reveal currently hidden avenues of research for theatre historians. If any reader of this column is interested in helping to financially support this work, please email me at dougreside@nypl.org.

Six Degrees of Separation

I began this article with a reference to the John Guare play, Six Degrees of Separation, which is currently revived in a limited run at the Barrymore Theatre. The original production opened in the theatre that shares a structure with the Library, Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont. This building has been home to several theatre companies since it opened in 1965, but the most successful and longest lasting has been its current occupant, Lincoln Center Theatre. The Library preserves the records of this company since its founding in 1985 up to 1991. This collection contains production files for all the shows staged during the first six years of the company, including Six Degrees of Separation. These files include budget information, scripts, and design paperwork including the light plot by designer Paul Gallo.

Jitney

Although Jitney was written in 1979, this season's production is its first appearance on Broadway. At the library, the records of publicist Richard Kornberg document the first major New York production in 2000, but, thanks to our very recent acquisition of the photographs of Lia Chang, this season's revival of Jitney is also documented in our archives. Chang photographed backstage and at the opening night press events for Jitney (and also documented the opening night party of this season's Miss Saigon.) Here is cast member Brandon J. Dirden and his wife Crystal A. Dickinson backstage.