Pleasure Gardens. Performing Arts Resources, vol. 21. Edited by Stephen M. Vallillo and Maryann Chach. New York: Theatre Library Association, 1998; pp. 105. $30 cloth; Their Championship Seasons: Acquiring, Processing, and Using Performing Arts Archives. Performing Arts Resources, vol. 22. Edited by Kevin Winkler. New York: Theatre Library Association, 2001; pp. 142. $30 cloth.

Extract

The annual publication of the Theatre Library Association is designed “to gather and disseminate scholarly articles dealing with the location of resource materials” relating to all media as well as popular entertainments, the evaluation of those resources, and to include as well “monographs of previously unpublished original material.” The volumes are slim ones, so we should not expect coverage of the many theatre collections available to scholars and practitioners, but rather a highly selective series of essays reflecting the priorities of the Association or of the individual volume editors. This certainly appears to be the case here: the 1998 volume concerns itself with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American pleasure gardens, whereas, after a publication hiatus of three years, the 2001 volume is focused around the acquisition, scope, and use of four major archives—those of the Joseph Papp/New York Shakespeare Festival and of Lucille Lortel in the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts, the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University, and the holdings of the Weill—Lenya Research Center in New York. As a consequence, the tones of the two volumes are very different, as is their utility. The first volume appears to be directed toward a disinterested readership; the second addresses those who might actually use the particular collections.