Scope and Content Note
The papers of Maxine Glorsky focus on her relationship with the Martha Graham Dance Company as its stage manager during the 1970s and early 1980s. It also incorporates substantial material from Jean Rosenthal, Graham’s lighting designer during the 1940s and 1950s, and other records of premieres, tours, and production information through the 1960s.
The largest set of materials in the collection, which comprises the Production Files series, includes cue sheets for both stage management and lighting purposes, theater space blueprints, lighting plots, related technical materials, cast lists, shipping crate contents, business papers for Glorsky’s Technical Assistance Group (TAG) Foundation and Rosenthal’s Theatre Production Service (TPS), budgets, cost estimates, contracts, correspondence, and a modest amount of publicity, news clippings, and programs. Note: Production documents such as large diagrams or blueprints that require special housing are organized but not yet accessible to patrons. This finding aid will be updated when those production documents become available.
Valuable among the materials are the copies of cue sheets and other production information from earlier stagings that are adapted for use in different performance spaces. The notes and amendations on rough drafts through to final typed copies show the process of lighting and calling the performances. Particularly interesting is Jean Rosenthal's process of taking an existing production document and "transposing" it (Rosenthal's term) for a show in a different theater at a later date.
Notable omissions to the years covered in this collection are 1954, the year of the Graham company's successful tour of Europe, and the period from 1970 through 1972 during which Martha Graham was resting and recuperating.
While the Graham repertory is the one most documented in this collection, production records for Graham's contemporaries such as Doris Humphrey and José Limón; Graham dancers Merce Cunningham, Pearl Lang, Erick Hawkins, and others; and independent choreographers such as Nina Fonaroff, are also present because of festival programs managed by Rosenthal that featured works by many artists, including Graham. Performance programs and production records not directly related to the legacy of Martha Graham and her company are included in the Miscellany series, as well as several biographical documents of Maxine Glorsky.