Overview
Papers of the British stage designer Sally Jacobs.
Dates
- Creation: 1957-2016
Language of Materials
Collection materials are in English.
Conditions Governing Access
The majority of this collection is open for research.
Correspondence in item 74 closed until after the death of the donor.
Conditions Governing Use
Correspondence with Peter Brook may not be published until after the death of both correspondents.
Extent
7 linear feet (16 boxes)0.21 Gigabytes
The collection covers Sally Jacobs career in stage design from her early work as a student at the Central School of Art and Design in London in the 1950s to her latest projects in the first decade of the 21 century. Papers include correspondence and contracts, original drawings, sketches and photocopies of drawings of props, scenery and costume designs, stage plans, scripts, photographs, and slides, and negatives, clippings of reviews, programs, fliers, and posters. It also includes copies of Sally Jacobs resumes, transcripts of interviews, and oral history projects, compact discs, and audio and videotapes.
Biographical / Historical
Sally Jacobs (1932- ) is one of the Britain's most influential stage designers who worked in theater, opera, and film. She worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and designed many Peter Brook productions, including Theatre of Cruelty, The Screens, The Marat/Sade, US, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Antony and Cleopatra and The Conference of the Birds. She also designed operas, including Die Fledermaus (Paris), Turandot, Fidelio (Royal Opera House), Die Soldaten and Eugene Onegin (English National Opera). As director and designer her work includes Oedipus at Colonus (Los Angeles), Peter Weigold's Last Tango on the North Circular (Royal Opera House Garden Venture), The War in Heaven by Joe Chaikin and Sam Shepard and she also co-directed The Dancing Room filmed by the BBC. She taught stage design at many of the leading drama departments in the United States and London, England, including the Slade School of Fine Art.
From 1967 to 1982 she lived in the United States and worked as a designer and director with a number of American companies in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and New York.
Arrangement
Arranged chronologically into 51 series by the donor. Additional series contains addendum.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Special equipment or surrogate required for born-digital materials; consult Houghton staff.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
2011MT-55. Purchased with the Frank E. Chase Bequest, John M. Kasdan Fund, Billy Rose Theatre Fund, and Timothy S. Mayer Fund; received: 2012 June 21.
2013MT-40. Gift of Sally Jacobs; received: 2014 May 15.
Separated Materials
Born-digital material has been separated: Thr878BD
Processing Information
Processed by: Irina Klyagin.
Addendum description added in 2018 by Adrien Hilton.
- Title
- Jacobs, Sally, 1932-. Sally Jacobs papers, 1957-2016: Guide.
- Status
- under_revision
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou02403
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
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