Investigating Theatrical Archives: The Black Swamp Players Collection by Mikayla Trimpey
Examples of playbills, a vital archival tool
Today, it is impossible to know what it was like to have seen the very first production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. We will never be able to recreate the energy flooding the theatre as he gives his “To be, or not to be” monologue. And yet, historians and archivists work together every day to get as close as humanly possible. They do this by carefully analyzing countless archives in order to best understand the period of history of interest. With the help and guidance of archival research, we are now able to theoretically travel to all kinds of places and times. That is what I’m attempting to do here. The purpose of this research is to examine curated archives and reflect on how one engages with performance related archival material.
The collection I chose for this project is The Black Swamp Players collection. This collection was donated by the organization itself in April 1983. The portion of this collection that we were exposed to contained newspaper articles, fliers, advertisements, press release statements, photographs, and programs from 1969-1981. Black Swamp is an organization that I am relatively familiar with as someone who grew up doing theatre in Bowling Green, Ohio. While I was never directly involved with the organization, the group was in many ways involved with my youth theatre experience with another local theatre company, Horizon Youth Theatre. This indirect connection is what originally drew my attention to this collection.
The items I decided to focus on within this collection were three programs from three different shows performed by the Black Swamp Players. The three productions included You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Our Town, and An Evening of Young People’s Theatre. These programs look rather simple at first glance; they are made up of a single sheet of colored paper, folded in half “hamburger style” with print on both sides, taking the form of a small book. The first page usually gave the title of the show, the dates of the performances, a drawn image to represent the show, and some other miscellaneous information. The inside of the playbill referred to the cast and production team involved in the performances, as well as acknowledgements and some sort of itinerary for the show. The back cover was less consistent between the three; one included a director’s note and an advertisement, another gave a brief description of the play itself, and the other gave the season information.
There is a lot of information throughout these programs. The performances they represent are all diverse -- which is why I initially chose these three out of the collection. There is a contemporary style musical, a classic play, and a collection of one acts. This demonstrates the variety that The Black Swamp Players offered. There also seems to be variety with their casts. Our Town included 21 actors as well as a full production team -- a relatively large group -- while You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown only had six total actors, making it comparatively small. As I mentioned earlier, they had the Young People’s Theater program that targeted junior high school students, however we see that An Evening of Young People’s Theater included 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students in a workshop, and the one acts were performed by both junior and senior high students, meaning they did work with diverse age groups.
Another insight we gain from analyzing the programs is who The Black Swamp Players collaborated with at the time. There are acknowledgements to Bowling Green High School and the City Department of Parks and Recreation. Additionally, from an advertisement listed in the program for You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, for Howard Johnson’s, showing that there is likely some affiliation with them. As a Bowling Green resident, I am curious if there is any relation to the bar Howard’s in town. I am also interested in how a bar became connected with a youth community theatre company, however that question is not answered by this archive alone. To me, these connections represent a proud engagement with the community of Bowling Green, which I see evidence of today on the Black Swamp Players website -- they have a fundraiser going on with Kroger -- and in other community theatre organizations like Horizon Youth Theatre -- with which Black Swamp is affiliated with.
Looking at the individuals involved in these productions was also incredibly interesting. Sarah Shurr was someone listed in all three of the playbills. James Forse was listed under set design in the production team of Our Town and as the director of the Young People’s Theater in An Evening of Young People’s Theatre. The name Judy Guion, the set designer for An Evening of Young People’s Theater, stood out to me because I work with Keith Guion, who confirmed that Judy is his sister. That is one of the beautiful things that come from doing archival research on a small town community theatre. These individuals, or the family and friends of these individuals, are likely still around, and if I were to do more research on this topic, I could refer to these human connections in order to receive further insight on a significant part of our community’s history.
With all that being said, these playbills cannot sufficiently stand on their own. While they offer much information, there seems to be more questions that come up than answers. First I want to look at the “Young People’s Theater” program that is mentioned in the Our Town playbill as well as the playbill for An Evening of Young People’s Theater. We can understand from these programs that the Young People’s Theatre program was a year-long program for junior high school students and it was in collaboration with The Black Swamp Players as well as the Bowling Green City Department of Parks and Recreation. This program originated due to there being no drama program within the Bowling Green Jr. High School. It is unclear, just from looking at the playbills alone, what exactly the members of this Young People’s Theater did. We only see essentially the “finished product” of this program, it does not tell us what all these students worked on throughout the season. Was it a collection of workshops that culminated in a final showcase-- my assumption being that An Evening of Young People’s Theater was the showcase? Or was it more like a troupe of students that put on multiple shows throughout the year, and their meetings consisted of rehearsing? Even with looking at the other archives referring to the program, I have to admit I’m still unsure. Some of the newspaper articles refer to their “annual performance” of one act plays, which seems to support my “showcase” theory. However, would then the production of Our Town by the Young People’s Theater have been a version of this showcase? Or is it just another thing this program is doing throughout the year alongside workshops and field trips -- two things that have advertisements with the name Young People’s Theater attached in some way? My question goes unanswered.
I was hoping that by looking at playbills I would gain some insight into the work The Black Swamp Players were doing in their earlier years. However, I feel that in order to develop the understanding I was hoping for, I would have to look at additional materials. I found that I was referring more to the advertisements, and fliers, for the productions in order to fill in gaps that the playbills left out.
Due to the restrictions of the pandemic, all of these playbills were accessed virtually, meaning my engagement with the pieces were limited, however, I do feel that I have a pretty sufficient understanding of the item despite said limitation. Archives have changed significantly over time. No longer are archives trapped in one location, requiring the ability to travel the world in order to access the information hidden within them. The availability of technology has allowed these pieces to be digitized, making the pieces accessible in a way they weren’t before.
That’s not the only way in which technology has influenced the archive process. In Archive Fever, Derrida acknowledges how the advancing of technology has changed memory. We can use these playbills as an example. The inclusion of playbills, or programs, was not always an expected piece of theatre-going. They require commercial access to a copy machine, and from the look of these particular playbills, a typewriter or printing press. However, one can argue that the inclusion of playbills in theatre communities has shaped the archival experience completely. Avid theatre goers collect playbills, documenting their theatre viewing experience. I, as a performer, have a collection of playbills for shows I’ve been in. There is so much information in such a simple document.
While there might still be some unanswered questions, even just initial research into select archival material gives us incredible insight into a community that once felt out of reach. We have a piece of our community, documented, accessible to those who are interested in it. We can learn so much from these materials, we just have to know how to engage with them. Archival research is a never ending process of finding answers to questions you didn’t know you were asking. And, with the archival process ever adapting to our current situations, we can learn just as much from the physical archive as we can from how they were archived. Overall, this experience has made me feel more comfortable working with archival materials, and I feel confident that I could take this knowledge and know where to go next in my research.
Works Cited
Black Swamp Players, WordPress, http://www.blackswampplayers.org/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020
Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago, The University of Chicago
Press, 1995.
“MS 305 - Black Swamp Players.” Finding Aids. BGSU University Libraries, 27 Mar. 2015,
lib.bgsu.edu/finding_sids/items/show/40. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
