Scope and arrangement
The collection dates from 1950 to 1992 and holds theater programs, photographs, scrapbooks, theses, and writings relating to the Falmouth Playhouse on Cape Cod, Massachusetts and to Langley's career as an author and educator.
Two files assembled by Langley are present and contain documents relating to the Falmouth Playhouse. The files date from 1954 to 1978 and hold information for prospective employees, address lists, press releases, pamphlets, records of past seasons, and some of Langley's written accounts of activities.
Falmouth Playhouse programs in this collection are bound together by season and date from 1950 to 1978.
Photographs are present individually as well as in the scrapbooks. They depict actors, staff, and audience members associated with the Playhouse at parties and backstage, the interior and exterior of the theater, and actors signing autographs. Photographs used for the plates in Langley's book, Producers on Producing, are also present.
There are two scrapbooks present in this collection, one relates primarily to Langley's work at the Falmouth Playhouse, and the other concerns the publication of his books. The Falmouth Playhouse scrapbook documents the Playhouse's activities from the 1960s to the 1970s through photographs, newspaper clippings, letters to Langley, and programs. Letters in the scrapbook reveal the success of the playhouse and the support Langley received from actors and academic figures. Among the correspondents are Alan Alda, Alexander Cohen, Joan Fontaine, and Falmouth Playhouse founder Richard Aldrich. Two of Langley's books, Theatre Management and Production in America and Producers on Producing, are represented through another scrapbook. Publication planning, the positive reception of the books, and their integration into drama scholarship are documented through letters from publishers and scholars, academic book lists, press releases, and newspaper and journal articles. Additionally, a limited amount of articles and press releases relating to other highlights of Langley's career, such as his directorship of the Brooklyn College Center for Performing Arts, are present throughout both scrapbooks.
Langley's Master of Arts thesis, A Study of Four Leftist Theaters in London (1961), and his Ph.D. thesis, Three Puritanical Stage Figures in the American Drama (1966), are bound typescripts and are accompanied by his notes. His unpublished work, Crisis in the Ladies Room: The Story of a Summer Theater, is also present. The piece draws upon his memories as manager of the Falmouth Playhouse.
Arrangement
The collection is arranged alphabetically by document type: Falmouth Playhouse Files, Photographs, Programs, Scrapbooks, and Theses and Writings.