Available for use in Manuscripts Division reading room.
All rights of ownership, including literary rights to the contents thereof, have been transferred from the donor to the Manuscripts Division
Alive and Trucking Theater Company Records (PA 88), Performing Arts Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis.
Donated 3/28/2008
The collection was processed and the finding aid written by Steven Granger, 2008.
The collection is organized into three series:
The Alive and Trucking Theater Company was one of many counter culture theater groups which grew out of the youth and women’s movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Founders of the Theater Co. were inspired by a performance of
The years of existence of the Alive and Trucking Theater Company are chronicled in several scrapbooks, a published version of three plays from the group’s first year (Stage Left), and two videos of theater performances. Stage Left , a book which was an account of the first year of A&T, includes three plays that were presented, plus a narrative of the search for cast and crew, a place to perform, and money to support the operation.
There are also essays on the meaning of theater as a political tool, community theater, and short biographical sketches of theater members. The group’s adventures as a political theater troupe are tracked in scrapbooks, which contain newspaper articles, photos, ephemera, and correspondence relating to the theater group’s activities. The video recordings are live performances of some of the plays in the troupe’s repertoire.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the University of Minnesota Libraries. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.
The following section contains a detailed list of the materials in the collection.