Archive of Celebrated Stage Director Peter Sellars Comes to the Getty Research Institute

June 2, 2021

Acclaimed stage director and UCLA Distinguished Professor of World Arts and Cultures/Dance Peter Sellars has donated his vast personal archive to the Getty Research Institute. The archive covers all phases of his career and includes everything from drafts and scores to puppets and posters of his plays.

Peter Sellars at the Getty Center, 2016

"For over 40 years, Peter Sellars has pushed boundaries within the theater and performing arts communities—from unconventional reimaginations of classic plays to politically charged operas, to festivals that celebrate art around the world.

The acclaimed stage director, UCLA Distinguished Professor and MacArthur Fellow has donated his vast personal archive to the Getty Research Institute. Along with a related donation—the Los Angeles Festival records—his papers will greatly enhance the Research Institute’s holdings related to developments in the history of perform­ing arts.

Sellars’s daring, controversial produc­tions date back to his undergraduate days at Harvard University, where in the 1970s he directed a puppet version of Wagner’s Ring cycle and set Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in a swimming pool. In the late 1980s he set Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s The Marriage of Figaro in an apartment in New York’s Trump Tower, and start­ing with Nixon in China in 1987, went on to collaborate on the creation of many works with composer John Adams, often contributing the librettos. He has directed festivals around the globe, and has been awarded numerous recogni­tions, including the Erasmus Prize (1998) and the Harvard Arts Medal (2001).

Sellars’s archive covers all phases of his career and includes posters and banners, correspondence, research, photographic material, notes, drafts of plays and musi­cal scores, architectural plans, and puppets and related props."— Pietro Rigolo, Jun, 2, 2021

This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Getty Iris Blog website.
Read more about Peter Sellars.

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