Tamiment Playhouse Alumni Oral History Collection: NYU Special Collections Finding Aids (original) (raw)

Horn, Andrew

LoMonaco, Martha Schmoyer (Role: Donor)

5 Linear Feet

in 1 record carton, 1 manuscript box, 2 cassette boxes, 2 CD boxes, and 33 items in a shared cassette box.

28 Quarter_Inch_Audio_Reel

The Tamiment Playhouse, located at the Socialist Party's retreat, Camp Tamiment, in Pennsylvania's Pocono mountains, became an important workshop and a major creative outlet for theater, dance, film, and television in the mid-twentieth century. Actors such as Danny Kaye, Bea Arthur, Imogene Coca, and Carol Burnett; directors Max Liebman, Herb Ross, and Joe Layton; choreographer Jerome Robbins; and writers Woody Allen and Neil Simon are a small sampling of the major entertainment figures nurtured at Camp Tamiment. Much of the original material performed at Tamiment found its way to the professional stage, Broadway, and television. All interviewees were involved in the Tamiment Playhouse, mainly in the 1950s. This collection consists of interviews containing recollections of the Tamiment summer theater, as well as discussions about the importance of the Playhouse for Broadway. The interviews in this collection were conducted between 1980 and 1988 by Andrew Horn of the Tamiment Playhouse Archives and by NYU Performance Studies graduate student Martha S. LoMonaco for her dissertation and subsequent book on the Tamiment Playhouse, entitled Every Week a Broadway Revue. These interviews are in the form of audio recordings and their transcripts. The collection also contains live recordings of shows at the Tamiment Playhouse dating from 1955-1960.

The Tamiment Playhouse was located at Camp Tamiment in Pennsylvania's Pocono Moutains. The camp was a summer resort opened in 1921 by the People's Educational Camp Society and affiliated with the Socialist Party's Rand School of Social Science. Started as a means to entertain campers, the playhouse became an important workshop and a major creative outlet for theater, dance, film, and television in the mid-twentieth century. Actors such as Danny Kaye, Bea Arthur, Imogene Coca, and Carol Burnett; directors Max Liebman, Herb Ross, and Joe Layton; choreographer Jerome Robbins; and writers Woody Allen and Neil Simon are a small sampling of the major entertainment figures nurtured at Camp Tamiment. Much of the original material performed at Tamiment found its way to the professional stage and finally Broadway.

Organized into two series. The contents of Series I. are arranged by the last name of the interviewee, and Series II. are arranged chronologically.

Series I. Oral Histories

Series II. Audio Recordings of Performances

This collection is comprised of sixty-three interviews in the form of audio recordings and transcripts that were conducted between 1981 and 1988 by Andrew Horn of the Tamiment Playhouse Archives and NYU Performance Studies graduate student Martha S. LoMonaco for her dissertation and subsequent book on the Tamiment Playhouse, Every Week a Broadway Revue. The majority of the interviews consist of recollections of the Tamiment summer theater, as well as discussions on the importance of the Playhouse for Broadway. Of note are interviews with Woody Allen, Carol Burnett, Imogene Coca, and Neil Simon. The collection also contains live recordings of shows originally recorded live on reel to reel audiotape at the Tamiment Playhouse dating from 1955-1960.

Organizations

Topics

Materials are open without restrictions.

This collection is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use materials in the collection in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Identification of item, date; Tamiment Playhouse Alumni Oral History Collection; OH.031; box number; folder number or item identifier; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.

Donated by by Martha S. LoMonaco in 1992. The accession number associated with this gift is 1986.006.

Access to audiovisual materials in this collection is available through digitized access copies. Researchers may view an item's original container, but the media themselves are not available for playback because of preservation concerns. Materials that have already been digitized are noted in the collection's finding aid and can be requested in our reading room. . Materials not yet digitized will need to have access copies made before they can be used. To request an access copy, or if you are unsure if an item has been digitized, please contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. A staff member will respond to you with further information.

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2024-10-15 18:22:25 UTC.

Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Language: Finding aid written in English

Collection was processed, and a finding aid was written sometime after 1992. This finding aid was encoded for online publication and edited for compliance with archival descriptive standards in 2012. Digitization of Series I began in 2011 and was completed in 2015. In 2024, individual listings in for original recording, transcript, and access copy were added to each interview subject in the Series I inventory.

December 2021: Updated by Rachel Mahre to reflect the digitization of audio materials

October 2024: Edited by Stacey Flatt to add individual listings for original recording, access copy, and transcript for each interview subject in the inventory.

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives