Emmett E. Robinson papers

Papers consist of biographical information, correspondence, projects and writings, plays, class materials, musical scores, assorted slides, scrapbooks, photographs, and audiovisual materials relating to Emmett Robinson, actor, designer, managing director of the Footlight Players Theatre, and professor of drama and fine arts at the College of Charleston. Papers include assorted biographical materials including a Robinson family chronology, family photographs, obituaries and memorials, and assorted clippings. There are also letters to Robinson from author Dubose Heyward, actress and artist Alicia Rhett, and correspondence re personal and family news between Robinson and costume designer Anna Hill Johnstone Robinson. Also included are his writings on community theatre, play and television scripts, assorted materials relating to the "Alloys for Steel" documentary for the Pittsburgh Metallurgical Company, sketches and exhibit designs, and financial records relating to the Footlight Players Theatre including operating expenses and ticket stub reports. There are also various materials relating to Footlight Players Theatre, Dock Street Theatre, Mohawk Drama Festival, and the Dramatic Society of the College of Charleston stage productions including scripts annotated with stage notes and directions, set design and production sketches, production and rehearsal schedules, production stills, assorted printed ephemera including Footnotes newsletters, clippings, and flyers, and musical scores. Also included are materials relating to Robinson's teaching career at the College of Charleston including syllabi, exercises, teaching notes and lecture materials on acting, stage and costume design, art appreciation, and theatre history as well as slides on the history of design, costumes, painting, and Charleston architecture. There are also scrapbooks containing playbills, clippings, and production stills of plays staged by the Dramatic Society of the College of Charleston, the Footlight Players, and the Peruchi's Theatre Art Group. Scrapbooks also contain photographs and copies of documents pertaining to the restoration and opening of Dock Street Theatre, photostats of engravings depicting the interiors and exteriors of several English theaters, and typewritten excerpts from various books about the American theater and English and American stage actors. Also included are six "Theatre Record" scrapbooks assembled by Helen Gladys Clarkson. Each volume contains an index and includes performance attendance, play, theatre date, seats, program, pictures of actors, and newspaper clippings of New York City plays. There are also assorted black and white photographs of Footlight Players Theatre actors and actresses and assorted oversize materials including pencil sketches of Prometheus and Mercury, Adam and Eve, the College of Charleston mace, the Crucifixion of Christ, St. Francis of Assisi, and Cypress Gardens and Capers Island as well as watercolor portraits of Robinson, a Hiddy Doddy back drop gouache and watercolor sketch, and a black and white photograph of Damicia Robinson, Nancy Stevenson, and Faye Solomon in Much Ado About Nothing. There are also audiovisual materials consisting of 51 color and black and white 16 millimeter films of assorted stage productions and family films.