MMC’s students take advantage of the opportunity to acquire hands-on archival experience. This letter from La Mama Experimental Theatre Company foundress Ellen Stewart to dance-and-drama critic William B. Harris, whose papers MMC has, raises a wonderful question for students: what did Mr. Harris do to deserve such high praise? Fortunately for the students, the answers are in the same collection, in the file of reviews Mr. Harris wrote.
An archive’s first responsibility is to save documents. MMC’s archives has the college’s papers from before the age of electronic saving, plus four collections the archives received because they supported MMC’s work in the performing arts. This particular document is iconic: the poster used during the original run of the legendary musical A Chorus Line, printed after the play had won a Tony.
When biographer Yael Tamar Lewin was working on Night’s Dancer, the story of Janet Collins, the first African-American prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera, she came to MMC, where Collins taught, to verify employment information. She was delighted to find Collins had been good copy for the student newspaper at the time—which meant more documentation for her book.
In the days before Super Bowl ads or social-media marketing, new products first appeared at events for buyers from the stores where the item would be sold. Milliken Mills, which wove fabric for clothing, hired Ethel Martin, whose papers are at MMC, to produce its buyers’ show. Former chorus dancers, Martin and her husband George worked Milliken’s sales pitch into a comedy and then used their connections to book a star, Bert Lahr (aka the Cowardly Lion in) to play the lead. The Martins’ papers open up MMC’s students to a world of theatre they had not known existed—and no longer does.
MMC’s professor Richard Niles wrote his dissertation on Charles Busch, an actor distinguished by his ability to play female roles and a playwright distinguished for his plays based on film genres. Professor Niles deposited his research—scripts, clippings, photographs, and hours of interviews with Busch and his associates—at MMC’s archives, ready for when time gives perspective on Busch’s career.
This Columbia University doctor’s robe belonged to the late Sister Dymphna Leonard, RSHM, whose work in Children’s Theatre laid the groundwork for MMC’s present performing-arts program. The archives also has programs and photographs from Sister Dymphna’s theatre projects, and other files documenting her work preparing MMC students to teach special needs children, and also her work at the Malcolm-King Harlem College Extension, reaching out to minority adult students who wished to return to formal education for a college degree.