Theater and Dance: Resources

The Alfred Junge collection at the Ransom Center consists of over 170 original designs and 5,000 stills and design photographs made for British films from 1920 to 1960. Junge’s best-known film work is on Black Narcissus (1947), Contraband (1940), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), "I Know Where I'm Going!" (1945), and A Matter of Life and Death (1946).

The Circus collection contains clippings, photographs, posters, and programs pertaining to dozens of American and foreign circuses and showmen such as P. T. Barnum, Hagenbeck-Wallace, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, Sells-Floto, and Adam Forepaugh. The bulk of the material dates from the mid-nineteenth century to 1940. A wide variety of circus acts are represented, ranging from contortionists and aerialists to sword swallowers and sideshow performers, as are dime museums and Wild West productions, notably Buffalo Bill Cody.

Collection of photographs from the Depression-era Federal Theatre Project. Includes playbills, set designs, rehearsal candids, and more.

The magic posters and playbills digital collection contains selected visual images from the Ransom Center's Harry Houdini collection and Magicians collection pertaining to magicians and the history of magic from 1750 to 1920. Approximately 3,000 magicians are represented in the full collection. This digital collection includes selected posters, playbills, prints, and other ephemera documenting the careers of Harry Houdini, Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, Harry Kellar, Henry Evanion, and others.

Digital Image Collection. The Performing Arts Glass Plate Negatives Collection, ca. 1890–ca. 1920 (bulk 1900–1910), consists of 95 photographic glass plate negatives. Forty-six images are from twenty theater productions in New York and thirty-four images are from unidentified productions. The photographs show actors in costume, often on a stage set, depicting the action for a particular play.

Digitized letters, available at no charge.

Theater related materials in Morris Library's special collections and archives. Includes Abbey Theatre collection, Darwin Reid Payne papers, Katherine Dunham collection, and Theater Department papers and photos.