Theatre on Film and Tape Archive

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Theatre on Film and Tape Archive
Theatre on Film and Tape.jpg
The Theatre on Film and Tape room, dedicated to donor Lucille Lortel
Established1970
LocationNew York City
Other information
Parent organizationNew York Public Library for the Performing Arts
AffiliationBilly Rose Theatre Division
Website www.nypl.org/about/divisions/theatre-film-and-tape-archive

The Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT), a collection within the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, produces video recordings of New York and regional theater productions, and provides research access at its Lucille Lortel screening room. The core of the collection consists of live recordings of Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, with some additional productions from professional regional theaters. The Archive also records interviews and dialogues with notable theater professionals.

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts library

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, is located in Manhattan, New York City, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side, between the Metropolitan Opera House and the Vivian Beaumont Theater. It houses one of the world's largest collections of materials relating to the performing arts. It is one of the four research centers of the New York Public Library's Research library system, and it is also one of the branch libraries.

Lucille Lortel American stage actress

Lucille Lortel was an American actress, artistic director, and theatrical producer. In the course of her career Lortel produced or co-produced nearly 500 plays, five of which were nominated for Tony Awards: As Is by William M. Hoffman, Angels Fall by Lanford Wilson, Blood Knot by Athol Fugard, Mbongeni Ngema's Sarafina!, and A Walk in the Woods by Lee Blessing. She also produced Marc Blitzstein's adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, a production which ran for seven years and according to The New York Times "caused such a sensation that it...put Off-Broadway on the map."

Contents

The Archive was established in 1970 by Betty L. Corwin, who served as its Director until her retirement in 2000. Ms. Corwin and the Archive were subsequently awarded a Special Tony Award for "Excellence in the Theatre" at the 55th Annual Tony Awards. [1] In 2001, Patrick Hoffman became TOFT Director.

The collection maintains contracts with all theatrical unions and guilds, thus enabling clearances for the non-commercial videotaping of live theater. The collection is housed on the third floor of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The recordings may be viewed by anyone with a professional or research interest, but may not be reproduced. Users consist of theater professionals, students, scholars, journalists, critics, and other researchers. The majority of the collection is cataloged online and searchable by visiting the NYPL website, www.nypl.org.

The collection is considered one of the most comprehensive collections of videotaped theater productions in the world. [2] Archives modeled on TOFT include the Museum of Performance & Design in San Francisco, the Washington Area Performing Arts Video Archive established in Washington, D.C., and the National Video Archive of Performance in London.

The Museum of Performance + Design, formerly the San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum, is located in the Bayview District of San Francisco, California at 2200 Jerrold Avenue, Ste. T. The Museum collects and makes accessible materials about the performing arts, with a special emphasis on documenting and preserving the San Francisco Bay Area’s rich and diverse performing arts heritage from the Gold Rush to the present. The museum produces public and educational programs, provides library services to researchers, and conservation and archival services to performing arts institutions. The Museum's collection includes personal papers of prominent artists, original costumes and design renderings, audio-visual recordings of live performances, original artwork, other artifacts, and ephemera. The Museum also serves as the official archives for many local performing arts organizations including the San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco Opera, Stern Grove Festival, and the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival.

The National Video Archive of Performance is a film and video archive in London, England which holds recordings of stage performances.

Collection

The collection includes many Tony Award-winning productions. Each production is normally recorded only once, although exceptions are sometimes made for significant cast changes. An attempt is made to collect artistically significant theater. The first play recorded by TOFT was Golden Bat , a 1970 Off-Broadway Japanese rock musical.

Among the highlights of the collection [2] [3] are:

<i>South Pacific</i> (musical) 1949 Broadway musical

South Pacific is a musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The work premiered in 1949 on Broadway and was an immediate hit, running for 1,925 performances. The plot is based on James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific and combines elements of several of those stories. Rodgers and Hammerstein believed they could write a musical based on Michener's work that would be financially successful and, at the same time, send a strong progressive message on racism.

Mary Martin American actress

Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress, singer, and Broadway star. A muse of Rodgers and Hammerstein's, she originated many leading roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific (1949) and Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1959). She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. She was the mother of actor Larry Hagman.

<i>Equus</i> (play) 1973 play by Peter Shaffer

Equus is a drama play by Peter Shaffer written in 1973, telling the story of a psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man who has a pathological religious fascination with horses.

Production and preservation

Productions are recorded during a regular performance with an audience, are edited live, and are intended to represent as closely as possible a typical performance as seen in the theater. In addition to live performances, commercial recordings of theater-related films, documentaries, and television programs are also included in the collection. Currently between 50 - 60 live recordings are produced each year, covering most important productions. As of fall of 2016, the collection included 7,901 titles. [4] Original recordings were made on professional video formats spanning the past 40 years. Early analog recordings are transferred to digital formats as funding allows. [1] [5]

Users

The collection is available to those with a professional, educational, or research reason to use the material. Theater professionals account for the largest group of users, including actors, dancers, directors, choreographers, designers, playwrights, producers, and stage managers. Students and faculty come from high schools, colleges, and professional schools in the area and beyond. In 2013, there were 8,079 individual users. Though the majority are from the New York area, they represented 45 US states and 32 foreign countries. [5]

Upon recording Side Show , the musical's co-creators Bill Russell and Henry Krieger said:

What the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts does for our community is take something fleeting and ephemeral and make it immortal. We are so gratified that they are recording this production, and we hope that it gives audiences the chance to enjoy it for years to come. [6]

Funding

TOFT is funded in part by specially established endowments, and grants from foundations and government agencies, particularly the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition, the producers of a show sometimes pay the costs of having their production included in the collection. [7]

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Betty L. Corwin was an American theater archivist. Corwin is known for her creation in 1970 of what would become the Theater on Film and Tape Archive of the New York Library for the Performing Arts. Corwin proposed the idea of the archive to the library, volunteering her services for the first four years. She would go on to direct the archive for 31 years, retiring from the position in 2000.

References

  1. 1 2 Gordon Cox, "Broadway's Library Preserves Past", Variety Aug 2, 2010,
  2. 1 2 "After the Final Curtain, Act II," New York Times (June 9, 2013).
  3. ↑ “Living History: The Theatre on Film and Tape Archive,” Equity News (September 2003).
  4. ↑ 2016 Annual Report
  5. 1 2 2013 Annual Report
  6. ↑ Andrew Gans, "Revival of Side Show Filmed for Lincoln Center Archives," Playbill, 17 Dec 2014.
  7. ↑ Ben Brantley, Making Do in Difficult Times," The New York Times, August 31, 1993.

Coordinates: 40°46′22″N73°59′03″W / 40.77288°N 73.98413°W / 40.77288; -73.98413

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