Found 2 collections related to Little theater movement

Gustav Blum (d. 1963) was an American theater director, producer, actor, and teacher. In 1916, he founded the East-West Players, a group that performed one-act plays, including English translations of Yiddish plays. The East-West Players won the Belasco Cup at the first Little Theater Tournament in 1923. Blum also produced and staged Broadway plays and worked as a drama teacher in high schools from 1909 until his retirement in 1958. The Gustav Blum papers (1912-1988, bulk 1915-1953) contain a scrapbook, contracts, scripts, photographs, clippings, correspondence, and other papers documenting Blum's career. The scrapbook dates from 1916 to 1923 and contains clippings and programs of the East-West Players. There are scripts for four plays that Blum produced: The Shame Woman (1923), Gertie (1926), My Son (1924), and Walk Hard (1946). The script for Walk Hard is a heavily annotated prompt copy; the other scripts have minimal or no annotation. There are also three scripts written or co-written by Blum: Against the Current, Eden, and A Sleepless Night. Contracts date from 1927 to 1946. The collection includes a statement of receipts and disbursements for Walk Hard and an estimated budget for Laughter in the Courtyard. Photographs consist of images of Blum, an unidentified production photograph, and signed photographs of Bertha Kalich and David Belasco. The collection also contains biographical information, clippings, and copyright records related to Blum's career, dating from 1912 to 1988. less

The Lenox Hill Players was a theater company that was active in New York City in the 1920s. The company's board of directors included Jerome Seplow, who went on to sit on the board of the Ensemble Theatre in 1934. The Lenox Hill Players records date from 1922 to 1930 and include meeting minutes, correspondence, scripts, financial records, legal records, a scrapbook, ephemera such as tickets, and Seplow's 1929 day planner. Meeting minutes date from 1926 to 1929 and document administrative and financial decisions as well as the company's creative decision-making process. There is correspondence between the Lenox Hill Players and playwright Lynn Riggs regarding his play A Lantern to See By, which was produced by the company in 1928. The collection contains a script for The Subway by Elmer Rice (produced by the Lenox Hill Players in 1929) and two versions of the script for A Lantern to See By. Financial records include a list of subscribers for the company's first, second, and third seasons from 1926 to 1929. Legal records include actors' contracts for The Dark Mirror (1928). The scrapbook contains clippings about the company's productions from 1922 to 1929. Ensemble Theatre records date from 1934 to 1935 and consist of meeting minutes, multiple versions of the script for A Character Intrudes by Charles S. Costello, and a letter from the company to drama critic John Mason Brown. The letter describes the Ensemble Theatre's approach to drama and the influence of the Moscow Art Theatre on their acting technique. less