Department of Theatre and Dance records
Scope and Contents
This collection includes brochures, press releases, and programs, and photographs from the Ball State University Department of Theatre and Dance primarily documenting departmental theatre productions. The collection also includes material documenting the careers of alumni and faculty, and includes selected student theses and papers. Programs from performances date from the 1930s to the 2000s.
The Subject Files contain the correspondence and history from Children's Theatre, Studio Theatre, Little Shoestring Theatre, and the Opera Workshop. The Opera Workshop subseries also contains the programs and photos of the opera workshop performances.
The Programs and Publications series contains departmental brochures, theatre magazines, promotional materials, and some programs for offstage productions.
The series Production Records and Photographs contains correspondence, photographs, promotional material, audition applications and programs for the major productions of the Theatre Department. The productions are organized chronologically from 1936 to 2009.
Dates
- 1936-2015
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for research.
Conditions Governing Use
Legal title, copyright, and literary rights reside with Archives and Special Collections, Ball State University Libraries, Muncie, IN. All requests to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted to Archives and Special Collections.
Administrative History
The Ball State University Department of Theatre and Dance traces its roots to the founding of Ball State University as the Indiana State Normal School, Eastern Division in 1918, when courses in drama were offered through the Department of English. The Spotlight Club (later Spotlight Theatre), a student organization formed during the 1923-1924 academic year that was sponsored by the Department of English, produced theatre productions at Ball State.
Theatre activities at Ball State grew under the leadership of Edward Strother, who joined the Department of English in 1946, teaching courses in speech and dramatics and directing the Spotlight Theatre. Strother would serve on the faculty until his retirement in 1987, then serving as the head of the Department of Theatre.
The summer of 1957 saw the development of the Little Shoestring Theatre (renamed Summer Theatre in 1972), a collaborative summer theatre program that produced plays featuring both Ball State University students and faculty and Muncie community members. In 1961, the completion of the Ball State University Theatre building addition to the English Building provided much needed space for the growth of Ball State’s theatre program.
During the 1964-1965 academic year, the theatre program, along with the general speech program, journalism program, radio and television program, and speech and hearing therapy program, formed the Department of Speech and Mass Communications in the College of Sciences and Humanities. Through a series of several realignments in subsequent years, the theatre program resided in the Department of Speech and Journalism, the Department of Speech, and the Department of Speech and Theatre, later becoming the Department of Theatre in 1982.
In 1983, Ball State University created the College of Fine Arts with the Department of Theatre joining as one of its founding departments, with the dance program merging into the department in 1985. In 1991, the Department of Theatre was renamed the Department of Theatre and Dance.
Extent
26 Cubic Feet (31 Boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Arrangement
Arranged in the following series:
Series 1: Subject Files, 1956-1985
Series 2: Scrapbooks and Clippings, 1940-2006
Series 3: Box Office records, 1961-2015
Series 4: Programs and Publications, 1960-2009
Series 5: Departmental events records, 1963-2009
Series 6: Production records and photographs, 1936-2012
Series 7: Alumni and faculty files, 1980-2010
Series 8: Student theses and portfolios, 1969-1997
Series 9: Departmental photographs and headshots, 1949-2008
Series 10: Video Recordings, 1989-1999
Series 11: Oversize Little Shoestring, 1957-1999
Series 12: Oversize Materials, 1970-2011
Processing Information
Collection processing completed 2014/12/15 by Paisley Hansen.
- Arts Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Ball State University -- History Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Ball State University -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Ball State University -- Records and correspondence. Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Performances Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Theater Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Title
- Department of Theatre and Dance records
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- Undetermined
- Script of description
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Repository Details
Part of the Ball State University Archives Repository
Alexander M. Bracken Library
2000 W. University Avenue
Muncie Indiana 47306 USA
765-285-5078
libarchives@bsu.edu
