Performing Arts

Collection area

Women playing musical instruments on stage — The ingenues starring in the motion picture The Band Beautiful from the American Vaudeville Museum collection.

About this collection area

Special Collections has several significant performing arts-related collections comprised of personal papers, play scripts, sound recordings, programs, photographs, scrapbooks, and books.

Topics range from rare books in early American theater to vaudeville-related archives to more contemporary material, such as the archives of Up With People and Tucson Meet Yourself. We actively strive to acquire collections that reflect the unique diversity of the Southwest and U.S. Mexico borderlands.

Featured collections

Black and white photograph of an all-female band, The Ingenues, from the 1928 motion picture The Band Beautiful

American Vaudeville Museum collection

MS 421

Materials documenting vaudeville and other entertainment in the United States, particularly in the 1910s through 1940s.

Up with People Cast 87A at the Moscow Kremlin on the first UWP tour of Russia, June 1988

Up with People archives

MS 491

Archive of the Up with People organization, including photographs, audiovisual materials, musical arrangements, programs, and publications.

Peter Wexler papers

MS 338

Papers and artwork of artist, producer, director, scenery designer, lighting designer, and costumer designer, Peter Wexler.

Special Collections

Performing Arts

About this collection area

Featured collections

American Vaudeville Museum collection

Up with People archives

Peter Wexler papers

All collections in this area

Papers of John Masefield

Billee Maye Vaudeville collection

Anton Mazzanovich papers

Edith Moore collection

Henry A. Morrow autograph book

Movie poster and associated materials collection

One-act Plays and Publicity Material

Opera Guild of Southern Arizona records

Harry Partch collection

Records of the Tucson Meet Yourself Festival