Collecting Theater programs can be a source of endless delight. Skimming through their pages brings back fond memories of joyous evenings with happy comedies, sprightly musicals and great dramas. You will hear again the songs of Al Jolson, the magnificent voice of John Barrymore, or the quaint conceits of W. C. Fields.

Even the advertisements are of more than passing interest, for they reflect the life and fashions of the past.

The best way to preserve your programs is to keep them in the binders made for that purpose and sold by Playbill, Incorporated, 240 Madison Avenue, New York 16, New York.

Both your vicarious theater-going and program collecting will gain added dimensions if you supplement these activities with a little reading. Browse through theatrical yearbooks, read plays, steep yourself in the traditions of the theater. Dip into Robert Willoughby's Theatre in the Twentieth Century, published in 1963 by Grove Press; enjoy drama critic Kenneth Tynan's perceptive and sometimes biting comments in his book Curtains, published by Atheneum Publishers in 1961.

If you really want to make of your programs a worthwhile collection that will hold interest many years from now, you will clip newspaper and magazine reviews as they appear and attach them to the appropriate programs. You will soon build up your own personal history of the theater.




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July 25, 2008