Overview
The Cambridge Drama Festival records document the festival's operations during the 1950s-1960s, including materials relating to theatrical productions, business records, and construction of the Metropolitan Boston Arts Center.
Dates
- Creation: 1956-1970, undated
Creator
- Cambridge Drama Festival (Organization)
Language of Materials
Collection is in English.
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material. Collection is open for research.
Extent
29 boxesThis collection documents the Cambridge Drama Festival, which operated in the 1950s and 1960s. It includes correspondence, financial records, press releases and publicity, photographs, ticket sales, technical information, newspaper clippings, and playbills. Highlights include the Summer Festival series of Shakespearean and other classic plays, such as George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan, and performances by world-renowned actors and actresses including Sir John Gielgud, Charles Laughton, and Elsa Lanchester. The collection also contains some working papers of Cambridge Drama Festival’s co-founder, William Morris Hunt, and materials pertaining to the construction of the Metropolitan Boston Arts Center.
Historical note
The Cambridge Drama Festival was founded in 1956 by William Morris Hunt and other former members of the Brattle Theatre Group which operated from 1949-1952. Its first performances were held at the Sanders Theatre until it moved to the Metropolitan Boston Art Center Theater in 1959. The Festival attracted world-renowned actors including Sir John Gielgud, Siobhan McKenna, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester, Michael Redgrave, and Emlyn Williams. The festival also employed Gene Wilder in his first professional position, as a fencing instructor for “Twelfth Night” and “Macbeth” in 1959. The Festival seemed to operate until some time in the 1960s.
Sources
“Cambridge Drama Festival: A New Attempt for Success,” The Harvard Crimson (May 25, 1956). https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1956/5/25/cambridge-drama-festival-a-new-attempt/
Juul, Matt. “Gene Wilder’s First Professional Acting Job Was in Cambridge,” Boston Magazine (August 29, 2016). https://www.bostonmagazine.com/arts-entertainment/2016/08/29/gene-wilder-acting-job-cambridge/
Norton, Eliot. “Cambridge Drama Festival,” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 4 (Autumn 1959). www.jstor.org/stable/2867116
Arrangement
The collection is arranged into four series: I. Great Players Series; II. Summer Festival Series; III. Business records; and IV. Photographs. Series III is arranged into four subseries: A. Chronological subject files; B. William Morris Hunt; C. Financial files; and D. Metropolitan Boston Arts Center.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Unknown source, unknown date.
Processing Information
Processed by Annalisa Moretti, 2020.
This collection was processed to a basic level with minimal rehousing, organization, and preservation.
Creator
- Cambridge Drama Festival (Organization)
Source
- Cambridge Drama Festival (Organization)
Subject
- Lanchester, Elsa, 1902-1986 (Person)
- Laughton, Charles, 1899-1962 (Person)
- Marceau, Marcel (Person)
- Williams, Emlyn, 1905-1987 (Person)
- Gielgud, John, 1904-2000 (Person)
- Title
- Cambridge Drama Festival. Cambridge Drama Festival records, 1956-1970, undated (MS Thr 2064): Guide.
- Status
- completed
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard University.
- Date
- June 2020
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou03340
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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