Tiny stages, grand creativity
The Harvard Theatre Collection is among the oldest and largest of its kind in the world. Within the climate-controlled subterranean reaches of Houghton Library are shelves, drawers, and boxes full of theater, dance, movie, and music items. By one estimate, the 113-year-old collection’s 22,000 linear feet of holdings, if stacked vertically, would be 3 miles high. There are 4 million playbills and programs, along with countless: libretti, sheet music, tickets, posters, rare books, scores, photographs (about 1.2 million), oil portraits, figurines, and sculptures (about 600). There are even eight boxes of Javanese metal puppets. The collection’s “realia,” or personal effects, include a piece of 100-year-old wedding cake and a tin of decades-old butter cookies. “They look way too good,” said acting curator Susan Pyzynski. Among the riches, perched on file cabinets, are a few dozen model stage sets, mockups made of paper, metal, plastic, and wood that in many cases are from long-ago...