Ransom Center Magazine

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Finding Henry Street: the Broadway Revival of Funny Girl and New York City Dramaturgy

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by BARRIE GELLES

My heart was racing because I had just bolted through the New York City theatre district. As far as I was concerned, there was an archival emergency. I recognize the absurdity and humor in claiming that I was having a musical theatre crisis, but the urgency felt real. Having a desperate need to discover the answer to my question felt simultaneously stressful and exciting. Sometimes, archival research is subdued and slow paced while you sit in a quiet room, carefully taking notes and collecting sources. But, some days, you find yourself frantically checking your research notes in the middle of Times Square, looking through two separate archives, and trying to find answers in between meetings with producers at a Broadway theatre. Some days, the connection between the “then” of an archive and the “now” of a theatre production is immediate. Some days, archival research is really quite thrilling.

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ABOUT BARRIE GELLES

Barrie Gelles is a theatre scholar, director, and educator. She writes about the aesthetics of musical theatre and approaches to pedagogy and practice within the academy with a focus on accessibility in classroom and production practice. Barrie recently defended her dissertation at The Graduate Center, CUNY and is an adjunct instructor at Baruch College, Marymount Manhattan College, and NYU Steinhardt. She directs theatre in New York City with a focus on new musicals and re-envisioned revivals of musicals. For more information, visit barriegelles.com

Archive of Poet James Fenton Acquired

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The Harry Ransom Center has acquired the archive of English poet James Fenton, whose body of work reflects on the political upheavals of our time, including the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the suppression of political protest in China’s Tiananmen Square, and Northern Ireland’s fratricidal bloodletting.

His papers include notebooks and loose manuscript and typescript drafts spanning his career as a journalist, critic, and poet. Letters within the Fenton papers document his lifelong friendship with his Oxford tutor, John Fuller, and with leading writers of his generation, including Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Christopher Hitchens, Ian McEwan, Redmond O’Hanlon and Craig Raine, as well as with his partner, Darryl Pinckney.

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Fellowships Awarded to 52 Scholars

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The Ransom Center has awarded 52 fellowships for the upcoming year to postdoctoral, dissertation and independent researchers studying a wide array of topics, from Tennessee Williams’ visual self portraits to 1980s Hollywood Gothic, Deborah Hay and the choreographer as archivist, literary estates and copyright, the Nigerian Civil War and Nigerian contemporary art, and more.

Since 1990, the Ransom Center Fellowship Program has supported more than 1,250 research projects requiring extensive onsite use of the Ransom Center’s collections and resulting in the publication of books, journal articles and doctoral theses. Fellowships are awarded for projects that span the Center’s collections in literature, performing arts, film, photography, and art.
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