October 2, 2015 – January 16, 2016

CELEBRATING 150 YEARS OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND IN PERFORMANCEOctober 2, 2015 – January 16, 2016DONALD AND MARY OENSLAGER GALLERY The Shelby Cullom Davis MuseumTHE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center

A nursery magician tookAll little children by the hand;Ours is the task with Elfin danceAnd song, to give to Childhood’s gazeAnd led them laughing through the book,That Wonderland; and should it chanceWhere Alice walks in Wonderland,To win a smile, be his the praise.— HENRY SAVILE CLARKElice’s Adventures in Wonderland beganas a performance—a one-manimprovisational story-telling showgiven by the Oxford mathematics lecturerCharles Dodgson to three little girls namedAlice, Lorina, and Edith Liddell. Dodgsontold them the story on July 4, 1862, whilerowing leisurely up the river Thames nearOxford. Three years later (and 150 years ago)he published a much-expanded version ofthe tale under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll,calling the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.A sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and WhatAlice Found There, followed six years later.Charles Dodgson was more than justan inventor of tales—he was a lifelongentertainer, especially of children. As a child,he put on puppet plays and magic shows forhis siblings. As a young man, he narratedmagic lantern exhibitions for schoolchildren.Among his adult friends, he read playsaloud and assisted in amateur theatricals.His storytelling captured the imagination ofchildren, whether singly, in twos and threes,or in groups as large as a hundred. He inventeda wide variety of games and puzzles for theamusement of old and young. His roomswere filled with gadgets used primarily forentertainment—from mechanical musicdevices to his 1888 Hammond typewriter,on which his child friends would “print”poetry. He played chess on the railways withhis traveling chess set and gave a table-topcroquet set to the Liddell children.Soon after the publication of Alice, Dodgson,a passionate theatregoer, entered into a seriesof discussions with playwrights, theatricalmanagers, and potential collaborators(including Arthur Seymour Sullivan), hopingto bring Alice to the professional stage. Theseefforts did not meet with success until 1886,when the dramatist and newspaper editorHenry Savile Clarke asked for Dodgson’spermission to adapt the Alice stories. SavileClarke’s Alice in Wonderland: A Dream Play forChildren was the hit of the Christmas season

and toured well into the next year.The play, which featured both childand adult actors and songs by WalterSlaughter, was revived in 1888, when itstarred Isa Bowman, who would remainclose friends with Dodgson.Alice arrived in New York at leastas early as 1898, when Emily PrimeDelafield’s stage adaptation waspresented in a benefit performanceat the Waldorf. As a character, Aliceappeared on Broadway in 1905’s VictorHerbert musical Wonderland and inJerome Kern’s song “Alice in Wonderland”in 1914’s The Girl from Utah, but notuntil 1915 did a production of Alice inWonderland open on the Great WhiteWay. The script was adapted by AliceGerstenberg and the show starredVivian Tobin, whom the New York Timescalled the “perfect embodiment ofCarroll’s and Tenniel’s Alice.”In the first week of September 1933,just months after its opening, Radio CityMusic Hall played host to the LionelBarrymore film One Man’s Journey. Partof the surrounding program was a livenumber titled “An Impression from Alicein Wonderland,” which featured, amongother performers, the Roxyettes (whowould become known as the Rockettesthe following year). As was usual forRadio City, the film and complementaryentertainments ran for only a week untilthe next movie came to town.Meanwhile, Eva Le Gallienne hadoverseen a production of Alice at herCivic Repertory Theatre. The production,which meticulously reproduced bothCarroll’s dialogue and Tenniel’sillustrations, transferred to Broadwaywith Josephine Hutchinson as Alice.It was revived in 1947 as part ofLe Gallienne’s American Repertory

“What is the use ofa BOOK withoutpictures orconversation s ?”Theatre when it ran on Broadway withBambi Linn as Alice and was revivedagain on Broadway in 1982 with KateBurton in the title role. Le Gallienne’sAlice is a perhaps unique example ofthe same production appearing onBroadway three times over a spanof fifty years.The 1970s brought a more experimentalapproach to Alice in off-Broadway andoff-off-Broadway theatres, first with Alicein Wonderland under the direction of AndreGregory—the result of a two-year processof experimentation and improvisationwhich culminated in what American TheatreMagazine called “one of the seminalworks of the era.” In 1978, Joseph Papppreviewed the music from ElizabethSwados’s Alice in Concert at the PublicTheatre before presenting a fully stagedproduction, with Meryl Streep in thetitle role, in 1981.

1886PHOEBE CARLO1888ISA BOWMAN1900ELLALINE TERRISS1904MAIDIE ANDREWS1906MARIE STUDHOLME1910IVY SAWYER1915VIVIAN TOBINDance was a part of the first stageproduction of Alice in 1886 andremained an important element inmany subsequent versions. The text ofthe book, after all, includes a “LobsterQuadrille.” In 1953, London’s FestivalBallet staged a major ballet of Alice.The Spectator called the ballet, with musicby Joseph Horowitz and choreographyby Michael Charnley, “a most charmingpiece of work; full of the modernmovements with which he seeks torejuvenate classical ballet; excellent in itscharacterisation of the well-loved roles;and faithful in spirit to the fantasticdream world which is the child’s escapefrom reality.” Alice ballets have beenespecially popular in recent years withmajor productions staged by the RoyalBallet, Festival Ballet, WashingtonBallet, Cincinnati Ballet, and NationalBallet of Canada.The mixture of human and non-humancharacters in the Alice stories has ledto many productions (including those

1932JOSEPHINE HUTCHINSON1934CUREGWIN LEWIS1947BAMBI LINNby Eva Le Gallienne) that combine actorsand puppets. The great German-Americanpuppeteer Tony Sarg brought his Alice inWonderland marionettes to Broadway fora short run at the Belmont Theatre fromDecember 24, 1930 to January 4, 1931.Brooks Atkinson called the performance a“merry and unreasonably touching puppetshow.” Forty-five years later, Sarg’s protégéBil Baird presented Alice in Wonderland at hispuppet theatre in the West Village. Bairdused an actress to play Alice and then“shrank” her into a marionette.Composers have been drawn to Alice almostsince its publication. Some of the poems inthe Alice books are parodies of existing songs,so the idea of musical settings inspired byLewis Carroll’s stories is perfectly natural.While this music began with setting Carroll’sown poems to music, Alice music soon ran thegamut from popular songs like 1918’s “AliceI’m in Wonderland (Since the Day That FirstI Met You)” to symphonic works like those byDeems Taylor and David Del Tredici.1956MANDY MILLER1981MERYL STREEP1982KATE BURTON2015JANESSA TOUCHETNo type of performance has remaineduninfluenced by the Alice books—straightplays and musicals, Broadway shows andexperimental theatre, opera and classicalmusic, ballet and puppet theatre, even iceshows and underwater performances. Alicehas found a place on the stages of the worldin a multiplicity of forms. Even 150 yearsafter the publication of Alice’s Adventures inWonderland, Lewis Carroll’s books continue toinspire new playwrights, composers, directors,and choreographers. The bizarre characters,witty dialogue, and infinite mutability ofthe Alice stories have attracted performingartists since the nineteenth century, and Aliceherself is certain to tread the boards in thecenturies to come.— CHARLIE LOVETT, Curator“I’ve had SUCH acurious dream!”

Credits and AcknowledgmentsAlice Live! is a project of The New YorkPublic Library for the Performing Arts,Jacqueline Z. Davis, Barbara G. andLawrence A. Fleischman ExecutiveDirector; Barbara Cohen-Stratyner, JudyR. and Alfred A. Rosenberg Curator ofExhibitions, and the Lewis Carroll Societyof North America. The exhibition wascurated by Charlie Lovett and developedby the Library’s Shelby Cullom DavisMuseum: Barbara Stratyner; designed byCaitlin Whittington; and installed by RenéRonda, Dana Jackson, Polly Lai, ThaneLund, Lesley Thelander, and DennesaUsher. Gallery media developed by MichaelDiekmann, Manager with Nicholas Smeraskiand Scott Greenberg of Play-Back andInter-actives. Conservator: Grace Owen.Gallery preparation by Thomas Sinclair,Building Manager, with Thomas Gordonand Antonio Izaguirre. Public programmingfor the project was developed by CherylRaymond, Manager of Public Programs,Evan Leslie, Artistic Producer, and DavidCallahan, Reserve Film & Video Collection.Special thanks to: Joel Birenbaum,Elizabeth Carena and Third Rail Projects,Kelsey Fritz, Rachel Greer, Angela Kenny,Emily King, Jon Lindseth, StephanieLovett, Peter Mueller, Abby Saunders,Marvin Taylor, and Jobi Zink. We gratefullyacknowledge the major contributions,suggestions, and support from the Librarystaff and the Museum volunteers and interns.We thank the following for assistancein acquiring additional artifacts for theexhibition: Center for PuppetryArts, Fales Library of New YorkUniversity, Jon Lindseth, CharlieLovett, Andy Malcolm, North LondonCollegiate School, The Rosenbach ofPhiladelphia, University of SouthernCalifornia Special Collections, andByron Sewell. Additional artifacts in theexhibition are from the research andcirculating collections of The New YorkPublic Library for the Performing Arts.The New York Public Library for thePerforming Arts gratefully acknowledgesthe support of The Lewis Carroll Society ofNorth America and The Lovett Foundation.The New York Public Library for thePerforming Arts gratefully acknowledges theleadership support of Dorothy and Lewis B.Cullman. Additional support for exhibitionshas been provided by Judy R. and Alfred A.Rosenberg and the Miriam and HaroldSteinberg Foundation.Image Credits:Cover: Detail from poster for Emile Littler’sproduction of Alice in Wonderland andThrough the Looking Glass, 1933.Lovett CollectionPage 2: Detail from cover of VaudevilleTheatre program, London, 1900.Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New YorkPublic Library for the Performing ArtsPages 4-5: Mad Hatter, Griffin, and DuchessDesigns by Monte Montedoro,Radio City Music Hall, 1933.Collection of Albert Packard,Billy Rose Theatre Division