Overview
Contains materials relating to Priscilla Dewey Houghton's career as a playwright and activism for theatre and arts education.
Dates
- Creation: 1956-2002
Language of Materials
English
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material. Collection is open for research.
A portion of this collection is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.
Extent
2.04 linear feet (8 boxes and 1 oversize folder)Contains materials relating to Priscilla Dewey Houghton’s career as a playwright and as an advocate of theatre and arts education. Includes scripts, scores, posters, ephemera, and a scrapbook related to Two if By Sea, as well as further scripts and the master’s thesis written by Houghton. Some of these scripts were published by Freelance Press, and additional materials include Freelance Players publicity and promotional materials. The collection contains a photograph album from the Millis Children’s Theatre, for which Houghton wrote musicals, as well as papers relating to her time at the Charles River School Creative Arts Program and Urban Improv.
Biographical / Historical
Priscilla Blackett Dewey Houghton (1924-2012) grew up in Brookline and Wellesley, Massachusetts. She married Talbot Dewey in 1946, and they lived in Millis, Massachusetts, where Houghton began writing musicals for the Millis Children’s Theatre. She went on to write Two If By Sea, a musical which premiered in the Boston area and moved to Off-Broadway, as well as several other musicals. She attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and received her MFA in theater arts from Goddard College in Cambridge. Houghton’s career shifted to arts and theatre education, as she then ran the Creative Arts Program at the Charles River School in Dover, and she was involved with the foundation of Urban Improv, an interactive theatre program based in Jamaica Plain. She received an honorary doctorate from Pine Manor College for her work in the arts field.
Arrangement
This collection has been minimally processed. The materials are arranged loosely in alphabetical order by organization name or production title.
Physical Location
Harvard Depository
Immediate Source of Acquisition
2003MT-202. Gift of Priscilla Dewey Houghton in 2003.
Processing Information
Processed by Betts Coup, 2019.
- Title
- Houghton, Priscilla Dewey, 1924-2012. Priscilla Dewey Houghton papers, 1956-2002 (MS Thr 1909): Guide.
- Status
- completed
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard University.
- Date
- 2019 February 26
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou03102
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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