LEGACY ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

The Museum’s Legacy Oral History Program is recognized nationally and internationally as a model for performing arts documentation using oral history methods. Legacy’s  collection holds more than seventy oral histories of significant members of the Bay Area dance, music, and theater performing arts communities. The collection is a true time capsule revealing nearly a century’s worth of vital facts, personal perspectives, and valuable recollections regarding a particularly vibrant Bay Area performing arts scene, long known for experimentation (see history).

Legacy’s oral histories—in leather-bound volumes as well as state-of-the-art digital media such as DVD and web-based presentations—speak with passion and insight, reflecting artists’ authentic voices. Collectively and individually Legacy narrators have made, and continue to make the Bay Area an important performing arts hub.

For a list of program personnel, CLICK HERE.

ANNUAL WORKSHOP

Each summer Legacy offers a three-day oral history workshop that provides comprehensive training in all aspects of oral history production. Drawing on examples from the performing arts, the workshop is appropriate for people in all areas of work and study wishing to learn and apply oral history theories, methods and practices. Former attendees have included university faculty, students and administrators; individual artists; family historians; local museum and historical society staff and members; archivists; representatives from major arts institutions, corporate business and government; community members; and volunteers.

For more information, CLICK HERE

THE COLLECTION

Legacy oral histories are full-life histories with an emphasis on the narrator's personal experience as it relates to the performing arts. Selected Legacy narrators are knowledge-holders and culture-bearers who represent important creative and performance practices in dance, music or theater. Many narrators are elderly or in some way at risk.

For the complete collection list CLICK HERE.

Along with the life stories of interpretative or creative artists, the collection also proudly includes the narratives of educators, critics, writers, administrators and technicians whose dedication and skills made invaluable contributions to the Bay Area performing arts community.

Most of Legacy’s oral histories have been published in hardbound archival-quality books that contain edited text, photographs and numerous tools to facilitate research: introductions by esteemed peers, narrator and interviewer biographies, interview history, historical timeline, appendices, detailed table of contents and a name/place index.

SAMPLE PROJECTS

 “Dance Icons of the West” preserves memories of critical junctures of change in Bay area dance practices. Legacy conducted in-depth video interviews with dance artist/educators Anna Halprin (experimental), Michael Smuin (classical ballet), Chitresh Das (South Asian kathak) and Tandy Beal (modern dance) and placed them in the collection for both scholars and dance enthusiasts to view at their leisure.

The Bay Area’s large regional theatres have attracted national attention ever since American Conservatory Theater set up stakes in San Francisco in the 1960s, and theaters around the Bay continue to innovate. Legacy’s oral history interviews with Barbara Oliver, Jean Shelton, Dean Goodman and William Paterson spotlight significant changes. “The Three Joans” project targets radical theater groups, the “New Vaudeville” and independent artists through interviews with physical theater comediennes Joan Holden, Joan Mankin and Joan Shirle.

World-class San Francisco Symphony and Opera developments are well-described by violist and orchestra manager Tom Heimberg, who recalls Kurt Herbert Adler, Lotfi Mansouri and other larger-than-life Opera House personalities in fascinating detail. Jazz traditions of the Fillmore District are preserved in the anecdotes of drummer Eddie Alley; his oral history illustrates the life story of a brave musician who “stepped over the line” and broke the color barrier that once prohibited blacks from playing “east of Van Ness.”

CONSULTING

Legacy also offers private consulting for new academic, community, family, and individual oral history projects.

Email:   legacy500@gmail.com for more information.