What Can You Learn From a Theatre Program?
What can you learn from a theatre program? Of course we can learn the name of the production and the people who are in it. But that’s just the beginning of what you can learn from these colorful and enchanting bits of ephemeral art. Local history, theatre layout, design, following the careers of certain persons, and changes in fashion and advertising through the decades are just some of the research possibilities arising from these collections, which are highlighted in a new exhibition in Special Collections & University Archives.
The exhibit will be on display through September, offering visitors a glimpse of this unique form of cultural ephemera. Did you know that you could eat oysters and ice cream in the same establishment after the show? That one could obtain telephone service for $1 a month? That Oscar Wilde appeared at the Iowa City Opera House? And from announcements printed in the eighteen-nineties by the newspaper printers to the colorful artworks of the teens; from the swirling forms of Art Nouveau in the nineteen-twenties to the streamlined angularity of Art Deco in the early nineteen thirties, these programs record changes in art, architecture, and design.
