Amherst College Dramatic Activities Collection

Professor Ralph C. (Tuffy) McGoun (AC 1927) created the Dramatic Activities Collection between 1978 and 1984. McGoun was a professor of Dramatics and the lighting and technical director for College productions. He saved much of the 20th century in Kirby Theater. After McGoun retired, he volunteered in the College Archives. McGoun facilitated the transfer of the material preserved in Kirby. McGoun identified 19th century material from what had been located in the former Hitchcock Memorial Room (the precursor to Archives and Special Collections) and brought it into the Dramatic Activities Collection. While arranging and describing the collection, McGoun searched contemporary accounts of productions in College and local and national publications and added those accounts to the collection. He searched scrapbooks, bound volumes and photograph albums kept by students and identified and added any items that chronicled the dramatic arts at the College. He also arranged for ongoing transfer of material documenting College productions from the Department of Theater and Dance.

Professor McGoun collected, arranged, and described the collection between 1978 and 1984. Since different items were received at various times from different sources and were pulled together to form a collection, there was no original order to maintain. Additional items are added regularly. The original guide to the collection was in the form of a card catalogue providing alphabetical access by title of production to a chronological arrangement of material. The original card catalogue also included access to material by format and by general subjects relating to dramatic activities at the College. In 2002, the original card file was transferred into machine readable format. The collection was organized into 14 series reflecting the different formats and subjects represented in the collection. Access to the primary series, Dramatic Productions (now Production Ephemera), was expanded to three access points - author of the play, title of the production and date of the performances.

In 2019, ahead of the College's bicentennial, the Archives reporcessed the collection - removing duplicates, photocopies, and secondary source material. The collection now contains only archival primary source material.