TLA PROMPTBOOK
TLA PROMPTBOOK is an infrequent, brief, and informative email alert for the members of Theatre Library Association; detailed information and announcements will be published in BROADSIDE as usual. We promise not to deluge your mailboxes with more e-clutter than necessary. The TLA-L listserv continues as a forum for unmoderated discussion of issues related to performing arts collections, open by subscription to TLA members and non-members alike.
If you are a TLA member in good standing and are not receiving the TLA PROMPTBOOK alerts, or would like to change the email address to which they are sent, please contact info@tla-online.org.
Recent TLA PROMPTBOOK Alerts
#50 - Dress Me Up With Your Research at ALA in DC
June 21, 2010
In its capacity as an affiliate organization of the American Library Association, TLA is presenting a program this weekend at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC:
Dress Me Up With Your Research
Saturday, June 26, 1:30-3:30pm
Washington Convention Center, Room 148
Set and costume designers from Washington DC-area theaters share their experiences in the research process of mounting period or time-shifted productions, including re-creating specific locales and/or time periods onstage. The panel will discuss the process of research and the resources involved in realizing past and/or imaginary worlds and the transition from sketch to stage.
The following designers will be participating in the panel: Tony Cisek, Much Ado About Nothing, Folger Theatre; Kathleen Geldard, Showboat, Signature Theatre; Deb Sivigny, The Grace of Mary Traverse, Georgetown University Theater
The panel will be moderated by TLA members Nancy Friedland, Librarian for Butler Media, Film Studies and Performing Arts at Columbia University; and Brook Stowe, Coordinator of Instruction in the Library at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University.
Visit the conference website for more information.
ALSO -- if you will be attending the conference and can do a brief writeup-recap of the TLA program for a forthcoming issue of Broadside, please contact Brook Stowe.
#49 - BROADSIDE 37/3 Summer 2010
June 20, 2010
The Summer 2010 issue of BROADSIDE, Newsletter of the Theatre Library Association is now available on the TLA Website.
Inside this issue:
* President's Report
* Roundabout Theatre Company Archives
* Broadside News Network
* Book Awards
* Reviews of books by Laurence Senelick, David Mamet and more
Follow these instructions to download it:
1. Go to: http://www.tla-online.org/members/loginrequired/broadsideonline.html
2. In the dialog box that appears... Attention TLA Members: To obtain login information, contact info@tla-online.org
3. Click on the cover image of the issue.
If you don't have Adobe Reader installed on your computer, you will need to download it first--click on the link labelled "Get Adobe Reader" to do so.
Send a message to info@tla-online.org if you encounter any problems.
#48 - 2010 Book Award Winners & Finalists
June 18, 2010
Each year, Theatre Library Association honors two exceptional scholarly publications, one with the George Freedley Memorial Award and one with the Richard Wall Memorial Award (formerly the Theatre Library Association Award).
The George Freedley Memorial Award was established in 1968 in honor of the first Curator of the New York Public Library’s Theatre Collection and first President of the Theatre Library Association. The Award is presented annually to one English-language book of exceptional scholarship published or distributed in the United States during the previous calendar year that examines some aspect of live theatre or performance.
The Richard Wall Memorial Award, established in 1973, honors one English-language book of exceptional scholarship in the field of recorded performance published or distributed in the United States during the previous calendar year. Formerly known as the Theatre Library Association Award, the prize was renamed in 2010 to honor the memory of the late Richard Wall, longtime TLA member and Book Awards Chair.
In addition to the Award winners, the 2010 Freedley and Wall juries designated one additional title in each category as a Special Jury Prize winner. A cash award accompanies both the Winning and Special Jury Prize selections in both categories.
For the 2010 Freedley and Wall Awards, more than 150 academic and commercial publishers were invited to participate, with nearly 350 titles nominated by TLA members and publishers.
Following is the listing of the 2010 Freedley and Wall Award and Special Jury Prize winners and finalists.
Winner: 2010 George Freedley Memorial Award
The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian (Canongate)
by Andrew McConnell Stott
As iconic a presence to late-18th and early 19th-century audiences as Charles Chaplin was to those of the early 20th, Joseph Grimaldi was the most celebrated of English clowns. Freedley juror Don B. Wilmeth took special note of author Stott’s degree of “detail devoted to the Georgian theatre as an institution in London,” insight which provided a “wonderful context for Grimaldi’s considerable contributions over such a short lifetime.” In addition to Stott’s scholarship, juror Rob Melton appreciated the physical characteristics of the book itself, noting particularly the “high quality of the paper, font (and) layout.” Melton predicted that Stott’s volume will be “one of those fairly rare books that will find readers in both academic and public libraries.”
* * *
Special Jury Prize Winner
The American Play: 1787-2000 (Yale University Press)
by Marc Robinson
Freedley juror Don B. Wilmeth hailed Robinson’s sweeping study as “far more than an overview of American play texts of the past 200-plus years,” citing the work as “the most original and revolutionary assessment of American plays and their context in our generation.”
* * *
Winner: 2010 Richard Wall Memorial Award
Film, A Sound Art (Columbia University Press)
by Michel Chion
Translated by Claudia Gorbman
Spanning the full history of sound’s relationship to cinema, encompassing even the “deaf films” of the silent era, French scholar Chion’s masterful study became available in English in 2009 through Claudia Gorbman’s translation. Wall juror John Calhoun noted that Chion “provides the reader with a fresh way of seeing (and hearing) movies, and does so with cinephilic passion.” Fellow juror Charlotte Cubbage pointed out that Chion’s “multi-level analyses include all aspects of sound within movies and incorporate film theory, the effects of technology, auteur techniques and styles and audience response.” Juror Calhoun added that the preservation of Chion’s “eloquent prose style” in English is “a tribute to translator Claudia Gorbman.”
* * *
Special Jury Prize Winner
The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture (University of California Press)
by Rob King
Wall juror Charlotte Cubbage called King’s work “an in-depth and convincing analysis of the ways the Keystone Film Company reflected major social changes of its era,” noting in particular the author’s “scholarly responses to popular entertainment of the time period.”
* * *
2010 Award Finalists
The Wall and Freedley jurors found the following titles to be of particular stand-out note in their respective categories. They are listed here alphabetically by author.
2010 Richard Wall Memorial Award Finalists
* Bernstein, Matthew H. Screening a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television (University of Georgia Press)
* Hilderbrand, Lucas. Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright (Duke University Press)
* Keating, Patrick. Hollywood Lighting from the Silent Era to Film Noir (Columbia University Press)
* Mayer, David. Stagestruck Filmmaker: D.W. Griffith and the American Theatre (University of Iowa Press)
* McGee, Kristin A. Some Liked it Hot: Jazz Women in Film and Television, 1928-1959 (Wesleyan University Press)
* Nystrom, Derek. Hard Hats, Rednecks, and Macho Men: Class in 1970s American Cinema (Oxford University Press)
* Tropiano, Stephen. Obscene, Indecent, Immoral, and Offensive: 100+ Years of Censored, Banned and Controversial Films (Limelight Editions)
* Vieira, Mark A. Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince (University of California Press)
* * *
2010 George Freedley Memorial Award Finalists
* Bigsby, Christopher. Arthur Miller (Harvard University Press)
* Butler, Martin. The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge University Press)
* Koegel, John. Music in German Immigrant Theater: New York City 1840-1940 (University of Rochester Press)
* Nathans, Heather S. Slavery and Sentiment on the American Stage, 1787-1861: Lifting the Veil of Black (Cambridge University Press)
* Rogerson, Margaret. The York Mysteries, 1951-2006 (University of Toronto Press)
* Savran, David. Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class (University of Michigan Press)
* Schweitzer, Marlis. When Broadway Was the Runway: Theater, Fashion, and American Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press)
* Stern, Tiffany. Documents of Performance in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press)
* * *
2010 Freedley Award Jury: Robert Melton, University of California, San Diego; Susan Peters, University of Texas; Don B. Wilmeth, Brown University
2010 Wall Award Jury: John Calhoun, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Charlotte Cubbage, Northwestern University; Catherine Ritchie, Dallas Public Library
#47 - TLA Is Now on Facebook... Are You?
May 17, 2010
TLA now has a page on Facebook.
Members are encouraged to use this page as a forum on performing arts librarianship, research, and education informed by Facebook's social networking capabilities. It is intended to be a more elastic forum than the TLA-L listserv or the PROMPTBOOK email alerts.
Feel free to post informal comments and queries related to your work and your interests, including but not limited to: interesting books, articles and websites, including those created by you; materials you are searching for or which your institution has recently acquired; employment and internship opportunities, offered or sought; news; conferences; workshops; exhibitions; awards; theatrical productions you are involved in, have seen or want to see; other activities involving you, your colleagues and your friends.
Become a "fan" of TLA by clicking on the "Like" button on the page (you will have to create a free Facebook account first to do this, if you don't already have one). Facebook pages are only as good as the communities they create--get involved today!
#46 - Call for Submissions for an Upcoming Volume of Performing Arts Resources
April 19, 2010
To: Archivists and historians of theatre, drama, performance studies, music, dance, and cinema
Re: Call for Submissions for a Volume of Performing Arts Resources dedicated to Brooks McNamara to be titled "A Tyranny of Documents: The Performance Historian as Film Noir Detective"
For a forthcoming volume of Performing Arts Resources, we are looking for submissions focusing on your experience with a 'tyrannical' document from the archive--a document that would not allow you to draw an otherwise apparent conclusion, that flew in the face of the evidence, or that carried embedded in it some aspect of the event that was incomprehensible, no matter how much additional research was brought to bear on it.
Proposals should examine one document--and one only--that has been particularly troublesome to the researcher. The emphasis should be on the work of the historian or archivist as detective in the archive, and on the difficult balance sought between respect for documentary evidence, the need to generate significance from it, and the natural-but-dangerous tendency to smooth out the rough edges of evidence. Joint submissions by librarians/archivists and researchers discussing their relationship will also be considered.
If the historian is a detective, the model is sometimes less Hercule Poirot than a film noir gumshoe, who can’t quite realize the implications of the mystery, but who can’t stop following the clues.
This volume of Performing Arts Resources will be dedicated to Brooks McNamara, in memoriam--former President of Theatre Library Association, Founding Director of the Shubert Archive, Professor of Performance Studies at NYU, a pioneer in the serious study of popular performance in North America, and a much admired teacher and mentor. Brooks was a gumshoe of the first order.
Those interested in contributing to this volume should send a 200 word proposal to: Stephen Johnson, Director, Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, University of Toronto, by email attachment.
Deadline: 15 June 2010 for proposals; if accepted, 30 Sept 2010 for final copy.
Length of final submissions will be 3,000 words (10 pages), allowing for a greater number of briefer entries into this volume. We hope to publish images of documents wherever possible, and will assist in rights and permissions research.
Performing Arts Resources is published by Theatre Library Association.
#45 - Nominations Sought for Distinguished Service Award
April 6, 2010
Theatre Library Association continues its tradition of acknowledging outstanding members of our profession whose vision, energy, and knowledge have extended the boundaries of performing arts librarianship. The award will be presented at the TLA Business Meeting in October 2010.
Please take a moment to nominate someone who embodies the highest values of our profession in enhancing the performing arts. Your nominee may be someone you work with every day, a mentor, or someone far away. And don’t hesitate to consider yourself a nominee: self-nominations are encouraged. Your nominee will be outstanding in vision, creative energy, resourcefulness, and hard, hard work. Our nominees are usually performing arts librarians, curators, archivists, or scholars whose contributions have made a difference to all of us.
Please submit nominees’ names by April 30, 2010, accompanied by a short bio and related documentation, so their achievements may be duly recognized. Nominations may be forwarded to Phyllis Dircks.
Listed below are distinguished awardees from previous years:
2009: Robert Taylor
2008: Richard Wall
2006: Maryann Chach, Mary C. Henderson, Madeline Fitzgerald Matz
2004: Annette Fern, Don Wilmeth
2002: Betty L. Corwin, Richard M. Buck
2000: Rod Bladell, Don Fowle, Maryann Jensen, Louis Rachow
1996: Dorothy Swerdlove
1994: Paul Myers
Awards Committee: Phyllis Dircks, Chair; Maryann Chach; Don Wilmeth
#44 - BROADSIDE 37/2 Winter/Spring 2010
March 9, 2010
The Winter/Spring 2010 issue of BROADSIDE, Newsletter of the Theatre Library Association is now available on the TLA Website.
Inside this issue:
* President's Report
* Broadside News Network
* Reviews of books by Janet Mansfield Soares, Michael Schwartz, Kenneth Turan and more
Follow these instructions to download it:
1. Go to: http://www.tla-online.org/members/loginrequired/broadsideonline.html
2. In the dialog box that appears... Attention TLA Members: To obtain login information, contact info@tla-online.org
3. Click on the cover image of the issue.
If you don't have Adobe Reader installed on your computer, you will need to download it first--click on the link labelled "Get Adobe Reader" to do so.
Send a message to info@tla-online.org if you encounter any problems.
#43 - Conference Planner Wanted for TLA/ATDS Joint Venture
February 16, 2010
Wanted: Someone to assist in the planning and organization of a series of one-day conferences (mini-conferences) to be jointly sponsored by TLA and the American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS). The 2-4 mini-conferences would be held on college/university campuses on the same Saturday and would be organized on a regional basis, allowing people to commute to the conference site and home on the same day. There would be one session in the morning and a second one in the afternoon. Participants would be free at noon to find lunch on their own and the conference would adjourn at 5:00 or 5:30 pm.
As the TLA Conference Planner, you would work with Beth Osborne, Conference Planner for ATDS, and TLA/ATDS Liaison, John Frick. Principle duties would be the recruitment of TLA members who would serve as local arrangements co-hosts. The local TLA and/or ATDS hosts would provide the meeting site, select and organize the sessions, and advise participants on restaurants near the conference location. The mini-conferences are intentionally designed to be simple to organize for both the TLA Conference Planner and for the local hosts and conference sites will be chosen for their accessibility.
Anyone interested in serving as the TLA representative should e-mail John Frick.
#42 - Theatre Survey Seeking Editor for Re:Sources Column
February 2, 2010
Theatre Survey is currently seeking an Editor for its Re:Sources column, a regular feature that appears in every issue. As part of the journal's commitment to publishing historical documents, Re:Sources features essays, documents, and interviews that promise to become important sources of theatre history to future generations.
Responsibilities include locating appropriate collections, commissioning (in consultation with the Editors of the journal) contributions by librarians and scholars, and occasionally writing columns. Theatre Survey is published twice a year, and the editorship of this column typically lasts 2-3 years.
Candidates should send a cover letter and CV to Leo Cabranes-Grant, Associate Editor of Theatre Survey, no later than February 20, 2010.
#41 - TLA Launches New Website - www.tla-online.org
January 19, 2010
TLA's new website is now online--with a new design, a new logo, improved navigation, and a new address. Go to www.tla-online.org to check it out. Please update all bookmarks and hyperlinks to the TLA website.
We have retained all of the content from the old site, and also added some new features, including a guide to getting involved in TLA, an archive of recent PROMPTBOOK alerts, and, most strikingly, a slideshow of images reflecting the collections and facilities of some of our member institutions, with more new features to come.
The login to access TLA's online publications has also changed. For both BROADSIDE and the Membership Directory... Attention TLA Members: To obtain login information, contact info@tla-online.org
Contact info@tla-online.org with requests for assistance, feedback... or if you would like an image from your institution included in the slideshow.
Last updated: June 21, 2010