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Chekhov in the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute
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Chekhov for the 21st Century. Carol Apollonio and Angela Brintlinger, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2012, 317–33. Chekhov in the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute Nena Couch The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, the Ohio State University Libraries’ special collection for the performing arts located at the Thompson Library, holds collections which are wide-‐‑ranging in scope and serves as an archive for performers, playwrights, choreographers, designers, and production organizations and advances the study and inspiration of the performing arts. In association with the Department of Theatre, the Institute acquires, preserves, and makes accessible materials documenting the per-‐‑ forming arts for the purposes of scholarship, education, and enjoyment; provides an active teaching component; serves as a source for the creation, development, and reconstruction of new works; and enriches patrons’ expe-‐‑ riences of materials, which reveal our performing arts culture and history. While holdings range from an extensive microfilm collection documenting sixteenth-‐‑ through early twentieth-‐‑century European theater to the papers of playwrights, critics, producers, actors, choreographers, scholars, and others; to the archives of theater organizations; to an extensive theater book collec-‐‑ tion; and to the design art of many major designers—there is no specific Anton Chekhov collection. Nevertheless, when one explores the broad hold-‐‑ ings of the institute, a wealth of documentation on the works of Chekhov emerges, providing a rich basis for research. In this essay, I will discuss sev-‐‑ eral Chekhovian areas of the Institute holdings that I find particularly compelling.1 Daphne Dare Collection Theater design is a major focus for the Lawrence and Lee Institute with orig-‐‑ inal design art of primarily the late nineteenth century through the present from as far away as the Czech Republic and Russia to Broadway and the 1 This essay is an outgrowth of the exhibition on Chekhov mounted by Nena Couch and Chelsea Phillips from the holdings of the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute in cooperation with the Hilandar Research Library, in con-‐‑ junction with the international conference “Chekhov on Stage and Page,” 2–4 Decem-‐‑ ber 2010. 318 NENA COUCH regional theaters of the United States. In the design collections, there are wonderful visual resources for productions of Chekhov plays, in particular by the British designer Daphne Dare. Dare was born in Yeovil, Somerset, Eng-‐‑ land, and attended the Bath Academy of Art and London University, where she studied Scene Painting, Sculpture, and Stage Design. Over the course of her career, Daphne Dare had a part in more than sixty productions at com-‐‑ panies including the Bristol Old Vic, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Chichester Festival, and the Stratford Festival of Canada, serving in such roles as art director, costume designer, production designer, and set designer. Following Dare’s death in 2000, her extensive collection—2,000 original costume and set designs, blue prints, notes, photographs, slides, posters, pro-‐‑ grams, and clippings—was donated to the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute by British actor Valerie Minifie, executor of Dare’s estate. Chekhov is a playwright for whom Dare seemed to have an affinity. Next to Shakespeare, she designed more productions of Chekhov plays than for work by any other playwright, and Shakespeare is hardly a fair comparison since a substantial part of her career was spent at the Stratford Festival in Canada as well as with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The work of the Russian playwright and the style of the turn-‐‑of-‐‑the-‐‑twentieth-‐‑century period clearly appealed to her. While she designed productions of certain non-‐‑ Chekhov plays out of period such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Northcott Theatre, 1968) with early nineteenth-‐‑century clothing for the Athenians or Two Gentlemen of Verona (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1970) with hippie-‐‑ style garb, she never designed a production for a play by Chekhov out of period, always preserving a meticulous fidelity to the clothing of the time. Certainly that decision, to a large extent, belonged to her directors; however, she designed frequently for Robin Phillips, with whom she had a very close working relationship, exercising significant influence on production concepts. Their collaboration has been described as “an interesting and important ex-‐‑ ample of a common approach and a shared esthetic.”2 Dare designed The Cherry Orchard (Northcott Theatre, Exeter in 1969), Three Sisters twice (Greenwich Theatre, London, 1973, and Stratford Festival, 1976), Uncle Vanya3 twice (Stratford Festival, 1978, and Haymarket Theatre, 2 Michael Eagan, “Director/Designer Collaborations,” in Imagined...
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