Theater programs

Collection documents the work of Claudia Allen, a Chicago playwright. Includes scrips and production information.

The Chicago Theater Collection-Historical Programs contains programs, playbills and newspaper clippings from more than 5,000 productions at Chicago’s historical theaters. More than 2,000 playbills and programs of local dramas, comedies, melodramas, operas, vaudeville performances and other events between the 1840s to the 1920s are available online in the Chicago Theater Collection-Historical Programs Digital Collection.

The Thomas F. Schulfer Program Collection was donated to Special Collections in 1988 by his son, Roche Schulfer, Executive Director at the Goodman Theatre. The collection documents primarily Chicago-area productions from the 1940s, 50s and 60s and includes a series of souvenir programs.

The Theater Portrait and Clipping Files collection consists of portraits and clippings relating to actors, actresses, dancers, singers and vaudeville performers who performed on Chicago stages as well as in New York, London and smaller venues across the United States and Europe. Included are portraits, in the form of either professional photographs or clippings from programs, as well as obituaries and other clippings.

The scrapbook consists of clipped playbills predominantly from theaters in Chicago, but also from Boston and New York. Chicago venues Hooley’s McVicker’s and the Academy of Music appear most often, with several programs from the New Chicago and the Adelphi theaters.