Two-time Tony winner Patti LuPone, who returns to Broadway later this season in her Olivier-winning role in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's Company, has donated a portion of her personal archive to Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
The ongoing collection, which spans LuPone’s five-decade career, consists of opening and closing night notes, press clippings, Playbills, and assorted personal memorabilia and correspondence, dating from 1968 to the present. Also included are scripts and musical arrangements with the two-time Olivier Award winner’s notations from her various stage, film, and TV appearances, including Evita, Les Misérables, War Paint, The Old Neighborhood, State and Main, and her Emmy-nominated performance on the Frasier episode “Beware of Greeks.”
LuPone’s friend Philip Caggiano facilitated the donation, in collaboration with the Rare Book & Manuscript Library’s Performing Arts Curator Jennifer B. Lee.
“The addition of Miss LuPone's archive to Columbia's extensive special collections in the performing arts provides a unique and historically significant record of one of the most accomplished and celebrated performers of our time,” said Christopher Cronin, Associate University Librarian for Collections at Columbia. “This donation will ensure the collection’s preservation for future generations of scholars, researchers, and students of the performing arts.”
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library houses one of the oldest theatre collections in the United States, initiated in 1911 by the nation’s first Professor of Dramatic Literature, James Brander Matthews. Other notable collections include those of Arthur Mitchell, Joseph Urban, Robert Wilson, Gertrude Lawrence, Tennessee Williams, Samuel and Bella Spewack, William Goldman, Dolores Prida, and Amiri Baraka.
“The archive of Patti LuPone, who is still very much a part of the working, living theatre, adds significantly to the legacy of Brander Matthews,” added Lee.
LuPone won Tony Awards as Best Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Rose in the most recent Broadway production of Gypsy and for her turn as Eva Peron in the original Evita. In London, she originated the role of Fantine in Les Misérables, first with the Royal Shakespeare Company, followed by a run on the West End. LuPone won an Olivier Award for her performance, as well as for her performance the same season in the Acting Company’s production of The Cradle Will Rock. Her second Olivier was for her recent work as Joanne in the London revival of Company. Her extensive television and film credits include recent appearances on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Penny Dreadful, Girls, American Horror Story: Coven, and opposite Robert DeNiro and Danny DeVito in The Comedian. A founding member of the Drama Division of The Juilliard School and John Houseman’s The Acting Company, she is the author of Patti LuPone: A Memoir.
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Patti LuPone in Sunset Boulevard (West End, 1993)
