Theatre on film and tape archive

International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts

Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle

Theatre on film and tape archive

Betty Corwin
Director Theatre on Film and Tape Archive, The New York Public Library, New York, USA

Documents et Témoignages des Arts du Spectacle: Pourquoi et Comment? / Collecting and Recording the Performing Arts: Why and How?

Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle / International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts

20ème Congrès International / 20th International Congress

Antwerp 4-7 September 1994. Acta. Antwerp : 1995, pp. 69-73

Spontaneous informal introduction regarding TOFT

TOFT - part of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and now almost 24 years old - has burgeoned into a remarkable archive with nearly 2.800 titles: 1.619 films and videotapes of live theatre performances, ranging from the greatest hits to the biggest flops, 132 dialogues, interviews and panel discussions with distinguished theatre personalities and 1.008 theatre-related television grograms - TV and film adaptations of dramas and musicals, documentaries, educational programs, interviews and awards programs. This past year 513 videotapes were added to the collection including 392 live performances, of which, 77 of those were taped by TOFT.

The Archive is an invitation to the future world to view drama that reflects the concerns of our era and to see for itself why A Chorus Line ran for 15 years, why O'Neill, Beckett and Brecht stand the test of time, how Athol Fugard and Wendy Wasserstein and Stephen Sondheim and Robert Wilson and Richard Foreman and Eric Bobosian and so many others created ne ideas and innovative styles and forms.

It was November 1969 that I came to see the chief of research of the Library, with the idea of preserving live theatre performances. With the advent of videotape it was an idea whose time had come - and the Library seemed the appropriate place for such an archive.

The Billy Rose Theatre Collection is the most utilized collection of theatre memorabilia in the world. It includes programs, playbills, photographs, clippings, letters, legal papers, manuscripts, promptbooks, costume and stage designs, etc.

But none of these captures the dynamic quality of a performance of the pace, rhythm, nuance, style, energy level or other elusive qualities of a production.

So TOFT was created to breathe life into the collection by preserving on videotape the ultimate record of a production in full performances. While other archives are now popping up - in Chicago, San Francisco, in London, and around the world - TOFT is the only one in the United States sanctioned by all the theatre guilds and unions to systematically videotape plays and musicals during performance. It reflects artistic expression, theatre trends, and the political, social and moral views of our times and has become a nurturing center of theatre artists: writers, actors, directors, choreographers and designers, among others. It covers a diverse range of theatre - new dramas, musicals, Shakespeare and other classics and revivals, experimental and avant-garde productions, puppetry, magic, mime, circus, performance art, children's theatre - work done across the United States and acquired, when possible, from prestigious companies around the world.

When I came to the Library I was given a desk and a telephone in the theatre collection for a period of three months, during which time I hoped to clear the way to start videotaping productions. Since the Library was cutting back on funds, however, it was made clear that no money would be available and if the project took off it would have to be self-supporting.

Other people who had made a stab at establishing such an archive had faces two large stumbling blocks:

1. Resistance from theatrical guilds and unions - which feared priracy and commercial use without payment to their members, and

2. Astronomical costs of filming. With the advent of videotape, the cost problem was diminished.

But the union resistance was a more formidable problem. It actually took 2&fract12; years of negotiating with ten or so unions representing dramatists, composers, lyricists, directors and choreographers, actors, scenic, costume and lighting designers, press agents and managers, stagehands, musicians, film and television directors - to get the project off the ground.

But we finally did it and scraped up $200, hired the cheapest cameraman in town - he was completely stoned and sat there in a haze of smoke, but he had a camara - and we taped our fist production, a Japanese roch musical, Golden Bat, in a tiny Off-Broadway theatre. Today our shelves are filled with nearly 2.800 videotapes including theatrical gems of the 70's and 80's and the start of the 90's and a few from before that time.

Once we've decided to tape a show:

1. We secure verbal and written permissions from all those involved (including owners of motion picture rights, deceased writer's estates, music publishers, etc.)

2. We set a taping date and coordinate details with the producers and theatre crew, and the video crew.

On the day of the taping a large video van pulls up outside the theatre. Two, three, and on rare occasions four cameras plus microphones are set up, generally in the archestra, and are connected to the videocassette recorders and sound equipment in the van. Ous director, who works with the script and has seen the show several times, sits in the truck, watches the camera monitors and directs the show through intercom to the camera and sound crew, editing live on the spot. There is no post-editing. When the performance is over - except for the addition of credits - the tape is complete - and is taken at once to the Library and subsequently catalogued. A duplicate is made for viewing and the master is deposited in an underground temperature and humidity-controlled film vault.

Do things ever go wrong? You bet they do. We try to tape a matinee so as to have a back-up in the evening, just in case.

When we taped The Royal Family, a stage hand pulled a plug and we lost 30 seconds of sound with Ellis Rabb, as John Barrymore, giving a melodramatic speech. We had to rent a sound-studio for him to dub in the lost dialogue.

Robert Maxwell refused to perform the day we taped Equus because she didn't want to be taped in the nude. Fortunately, her understudy was less modest.

A fuse blew in the middle of Liza Minnalli's one-woman show at the Winter Garden. We had to retape it.

And we had to tape Short Eyes twice because the subway under the Joseph Papp Public Theatre created so much interference.

While we were setting up to tape Bill Irwin in Largely, New York the power went out all through the theatre district, coming on again just moments before the performance was to begin.

Selection

How do we decide what to tape?

Our Theatre Collection staff of 25 which has wide-ranging catholic taste, sees virtually everything in the New York area, local reviews and word of mouth keep us well informed, and we receive reviews and feedback from across the United States. We also have an advisory panel of theatre professionals and critics plus regional scouts in key cities around the country. To us almost every production has someting to recommend it - even the "flops" tell something of the state of the theatre or reflect society at a given time.

There are any number of compelling reasons for preserving a production. To capture:

1. Outstanding writing, acting, directing. Even the length of the run is sometimes important

2. Special Visual Effects

3. Unusual Staging

4. To document Various Types and Styles of Theatre

5. Companies dedicated to and productions expressing Minority and Ethnic concerns

6. Mime, Puppetry, Choreography, and Magic which lend themselves poorly to other means of documentation

7. Productions from Other Countries and Cultures

8. The Work of Major Figures even when unsuccesful

9. And, finally, we try to preserve a spectrum of theatre: Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional, new work, classics, straight plays, musicals, experimental giving us a good representation of the season when it's over.

Funding

Since 1974 we have had support from government grants as well as from private foundations and corporations, including ons from the Ford Foundation that made it possible to expand our national representation by taping 78 regional thetre productions during the past nine years.

But money, today, is a major problem and a continuous pressing challenge. In an era marked by dwindling support for the arts, TOFT, like so many other arts institutions, struggles to find funds. Of our six-person staff only one salary is paid by the Library.

Combined federal and state government grants only partially cover the rest. All operating expenses and all taping costs are raised from outside sources.

We are, in a way, victims of our own succes, for as the project has grown, so has our staff and our budget. Ous friend with the cheap equipment has gone by the wayside and our top quality highly professional tapings are costly. We're in a constant hassle and the bottom line is that over 50% of our time is spent trying to raise funds. We struggle along, however, and somehow manage to continue our phenomenal growth.

Because of the tightness of funds we've devised other effective, less costly ways of taping:

1. We sometimes convince a producer to pay for or partially pay for a taping.

2. Off-Broadway - in small theatres we can frequently tape with just one camera - for about $1.000 to $1.500 on &fract34;" tape.

3. And finally, there are what we call "auspice tapings" whereby a small theatre company wants to pay for and tape its own work but does not have union permission to do so. TOFT secures all the written clearances - makes the necessary arrangements - sends a representative from the Library to cover the taping, to make sure no copies are made, and to immediately bring the tape to the Library.

Last Year

Last year we taped a diverse range of productions - 77 altogether on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in regional theatres from the east to the west coast, arranged for 18 productions recorded under our auspices, and acquired 267 other extant performance tapes.

Through the years we've captured the magnetism of performers like Liza Minnelli or Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof, who clowned up his performance so much that director Jerome Robbins almost made us destroy the tape. (Ironically, Jerome Robbins used the tape to reconstruct the dance for Jerome Robbins' Broadway). In 1976 performances by a luminous unknown young actress prompted us to tape a pair of one-act plays in which she played such different roles that we kept looking at our programs, not believing she was one and the same actress. We followed her stage career until, by the end of the decade, Meryl Streep had become a Broadway and Hollywood star.

A valuable use of the Archive is to compare various productions and role interpretations. It is used not only as an artistic but as a social, historical record of the vital concerns of the past twe decades. Playwrights have written about: Vietnam, Fear of Nuclear War, Prison Conditions, Racial Discrimination, Drug Addiction, Aging, Death and Dying, Feminism, Gay Liberation, Alienation of the Young, The problem of AIDS

In the informal dialogues we tape at the Library, notable theatre personalities reminisce about their careers and give us a view of their personalities, mannerisms, personal styles and some insight into their approach to their work. It's interesting the way rare and extraordinary things emerge in these dialogues such as the mutual admiration between Liza Minnelli and songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb; the remarkable energy of Stella Adler, who reigned into her 90's as a master teacher of acting; Betty Comden and Adolph Green divulging haw as a couple of kids improvising in a small Greenwich Village nightclub they were shocked to suddenly hit the big time - found themselves starry-eyed in Hollywood at parties with their idols Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx.

Frequently we turn detective - hunting down and acquiring extant tapes and locating lost filmed treasures of the past. We have film clips of the stars of Rodgers and Hart musicals with glimpses of Jimmy Durante, Gene Kelly, Vivienne Segal, Ray Bolger and others. Several years ago we located and literally saved from the garbage heap the 1964 film of Hamlet starring Richard Burton, John Gielgud and Hume Cronyn.

Walking around our screening room you might see a researcher watching Edward R. Murrow interviewing Billy Rose, interviews with Mary Martin, Ethel Merman, Harold Clurman, Clifford Odets, Alan Jay Lerner, Katharine Hepburn, Helen Hayes, Lillian Gish, Maurice Chevalier, Lili Tomlin and many others; or there on a screen might be Joseph Papp directing a rehearsal of Hamlet with Diane Venora; one of 22 years of the Tony Awards; a documentary on the Rockettes and a backstage tour of Radio City Music Hall; tapes on Circus, Magic, Mime, Burlesque, Puppetry, including Bil Baird's Marionettes and Jim Henson's Muppets; a tour of Off-Broadway theatre; a record of the "Save the Theatres" demonstrations protesting the tearing down of some of Broadway's great old theatres; study tapes on acting, making props, scenery and costumes; and George Gershwin's as well as Richard Rodgers' home movies starting in 1926 which include poolside parties with guests such as Lorenz Hart, Fanny Brice, Jean Harlowe, Al Jolson and others.

Screenings

Viewing is restricted to students, theatre professionals and researchers at the Library, mostly by appointment. We arrange both individual and group screenings - sometimes for a large drama or theatre arts class or the entire cast of a show eager to review its own work.

Last year we had almost 5.000 viewers from 43 states and 26 foreign countries: playwrights, actors, dancers, scenic, costume, lighting and sound designers; producers, directors and choreographers; editors, lyricists, composers, conductors, music and drama critics; screenwriters, music publishers, stage managers, and dance captains, and film and television producers wanting to adapt a play to another medium: film director Oliver Stone deciding whether to make films of Evita and Talk Radio; Kevin Kline considering appearing in a New York production of a musical version of Elmar Gantry; Emile Ardelino studying our tape before directing Bette Midler in a television version of Gypsy; Donna McKechnie receating Michael Bennett's original choreography for a concert version of Company; choreographer Patricia Birch planning movement for a London concert version of On the Town; Richard Dreyfus before acting in the film version of Lost in Yonkers; director Frank On preparing the film version of Into the Woods; Susan Shulman and Heidi Landesman working on a television production of their musical The Secret Garden; and, in one dramatic case, three producers viewing the Paper Mill Playhouse production of the musical Sayonara and signing a contract on the spot to produce it in Texas.

What about Preservation?

Preservation is a major concern. Somewhere in Westchester all original master videotapes and films are stored in a commercial, underground temperature and humidity-cotrolled film vault; all viewing is done from duplicates of the master. If deterioration is noticed during periodic quality checks of master tapes, copies are made as quickly as possible. If conservators report significant quality changes in videotapes after a specified time, we'll have to resort to making kinescopes of its tapes. What the future holds, we don't know, but we anticipate that the new disc technology will eventually take over.

Conclusion

A most exciting night was when A Chorus Line became the longest running show in Broadway history, with over 300 actors from every Chorus Line company around the world converging from all over the Shubert Theatre kicking away - chorus after chorus - with an audience screaming for more.

That evening was phenomenal for documenting the ingenuity of its creator, Michael Bennett, and the remarkable collaborative effort that brings a theatrical work to life. But one must also be struck by the tragic fact that Michael - and almost every one of the creators of that musical has died from a plague that's decimating the world of the performing arts.

And yet - we're grateful and heartened that amidst the tragedy there's a joyous note - that their gifts to the world, as well as those of Zero Mostel, Geraldine Page, Gower Champion, Colleen Dewhurst, and so many other great theatre artist - have been preserved for posterity.

In conclusion, I'd like to show you clips of some of the productions and artists in the Archive.

Thank you very much.

20th Congress

URL: http://www.sibmas.org/congresses/sibmas94/antw_20.html

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