MP+D receives Nea/art works grant for more life: Preserving San Francisco bay area theater recordings

he Museum of Performance + Design received support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Art Works grant program to support the digitization of some of its most at-risk live theater video recordings, documenting performances and workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1976 to 2001. The Art Works category is the NEA’s largest funding category and supports projects that focus on the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and/or the strengthening of communities through the arts. The project, called More Life: Preserving San Francisco Bay Area Theater Recordings, will allow MP+D to digitize 200 video tapes for long-term preservation as well as facilitate the cataloging of 175 recently acquired recordings for public access. Among the significant works to be preserved are the world premiere of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America at the Eureka Theatre; the 1977 production of Athol Fugard's Sizwe Banzi is Dead, starring a young Danny Glover; and several performances from various San Francisco Bay Area theatre companies such as the American Conservatory Theatre, Magic Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Mime Troupe, and others. Information about these productions will be discoverable by the general public, students, and artists through the catalog entries available on MP+D's public online catalog and WorldCat, the global online database of library holdings. Newly digitized works will be accessible for viewing via on-site workstations in MP+D's Reading Room.

Program cover for the world premiere of Tony Kushner's Angels in America at the Eureka Theatre.

Program cover for Sam Beckett's Waiting for Godot at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.