Robert Landy Papers
Call Number
Date
Creator
Extent
Language of Materials
Abstract
Robert Landy (b. 1944) is professor emeritus at New York University's Drama Therapy Program, playwright, and theatre director. He founded the Drama Therapy Program at New York University (NYU) in 1984. In addition to his tenure at NYU, Landy has over 35 years of clinical experience in drama therapy, working with children and adults. The Robert Landy Papers document Landy's intellectual, professional, and artistic activities in theatre, his scholarly writing on drama therapy, and his work as a professor of drama therapy. The collection dates from 1967 to 2016 and includes paper, born-digital, and audiovisual material. The material in the collection includes draft and published versions of scripts, articles, and books written by Landy and others; analog and digital audio and video recordings of plays and theatrical events directed by Landy; notes and other material related to classes taught by Landy at NYU; and notes, correspondence, and publicity material related to international trainings led by Landy. A large part of the collection documents Landy's work on NYU's Sunrise Semester (1979-1981) and his book God Lives in Glass (2001), which he later adapted for the stage.
Biographical Note
Robert Landy (b. 1944) is professor emeritus at New York University's Drama Therapy Program, playwright, and theatre director. He began teaching at New York University (NYU) in 1979 and founded the university's Drama Therapy Program in 1984. In addition to his tenure at NYU, Landy has over 35 of clinical experience in drama therapy, working with children and adults. In the 1979-1980 academic year, he taught the class "Drama in Education" through NYU's televised distance learning program, Sunrise Semester. Since the 1980s, Landy has led trainings for drama therapy professionals and given lectures on drama therapy throughout the United States and other countries. In addition to his work in drama therapy, Landy is also a theatre director and playwright. Since the late 1960s, he has written and directed his own original works, as well as plays he adapted from the works of Horatio Alger and William Shakespeare. Landy has also written books and scholarly articles on drama, drama therapy, and related topics.
Arrangement
This collection is arranged in alphabetical order by type of material and in alphabetical order by title within that arrangement. Episodes of Sunrise Semester are arranged in chronological order according to the schedule listed in the course outline.
Material that consists of a large amount of paper material or any audiovisual material is listed under its full title. The inventory lists box and folder numbers for an alphabetical range of titles for other material.
Scope and Contents
The Robert Landy Papers document Landy's work in theatre and education between 1967 and 2016. The collection includes paper, born-digital, and audiovisual material documenting his professional and artistic activities in theatre, his work as a professor of drama therapy, and his scholarly writing on drama therapy. Material in the collection includes draft and published scripts, articles, and books written by Landy and others; audio recordings of plays and theatrical events directed by Landy; material related to classes taught by Landy at NYU; and material related to trainings in drama therapy led by Landy in the United States (US), Europe, and Asia. The bulk of the collection documents, "Drama in Education", Landy's class taught through NYU's television program Sunrise Semester (1979-1981); his files on classes taught through NYU's Drama Therapy program in the 2000s; and his book God Lives in Glass (2001), which he later adapted for the stage. The God Lives in Glass paper material includes original artwork by children, forms used during interviews with the children, drafts of the book and play. There are also audio recordings of the play God Lives in Glass and scanned copies of notes and forms used by Landy in the course of his research for the book. Landy's work as a playwright and theatre director is documented though published and draft scripts, notes, photographs, audio recordings of performances, and publicity materials for plays. The scripts include original compositions by Landy and plays adapted by Landy from works by Horatio Alger and William Shakespeare. Included in this material is original correspondence on which Letters from Sing Sing was based, including correspondence between Landy and the man on whom the character of Michael is based.
Material documenting Landy's career as an educator, dates from the late 1970s through the mid 2010s, and includes class outlines, syllabi, notes for lectures, copies of readings for class discussions, and correspondence and awards celebrating Landy's achievements as a professor. This also includes video and audio recordings of "Drama in Education", a class taught by Landy during the academic year of 1979-1980 for NYU's television program Sunrise Semester, as well as paper course outlines, notes, and study guides for the classes. Also included is material documenting Landy's work as a lecturer on drama therapy at National Association for Drama Therapy conferences, and as a trainer leading seminars and workshops on drama therapy. This material dates from the mid 1990s through the mid 2010s, and includes correspondence regarding planning of events, printed publicity materials, video recordings of trainings, and documentation on methods taught at the trainings.
Other material in the collection includes correspondence with colleagues, some files include publications by correspondents and notes by Landy; clippings and publications with articles by and about Landy; and issues of Arts in Psychotherapy, a scholarly journal edited by Landy in the 1990s.
Subjects
Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions, with the following exceptions.
Repository permission is required for access to materials created by children and used in the creation of God Lives in Glass and City Lights Youth Theatre: Standing Tall. Please contact the University Archives, university-archives@nyu.edu, (212) 998-2641.
Material pertaining to individual student records may be restricted in accordance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Administrative records and unpublished reports of New York University are closed for a period of 20 years from the date of their creation. Access to files spanning multiple years will be opened to researchers based on the date of the most recent materials. Board of Trustees records are closed for 35 years from the date of creation. Materials related to personnel, grievances, job and fellowship searches and applications, and all files that fall under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) are permanently restricted. Additional restrictions may apply to other materials in this collection. For questions regarding specific restrictions, please contact the University Archives.
Conditions Governing Use
Any rights (including copyright and related rights to publicity and privacy) in unpublished material in the collection held by Robert Landy were transferred to New York University in 2015 by Robert Landy. Permission to publish or reproduce unpublished materials in this collection must be secured from the University Archives. Please contact university-archives@nyu.edu, (212) 998-2641.
Preferred Citation
Identification of item, date; Robert Landy Papers; MC 259; box number; folder number; University Archives, New York University
Location of Materials
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Donated by Robert Landy in 2015, with additional accretions in 2016 and 2017. The accession numbers associated with these gifts are 15.042, 2016.018, 2016.022, 2016.039, 2017.013, and 2019.042.
Audiovisual Access Policies and Procedures
Access to audiovisual materials in this collection is available through digitized access copies. Researchers may view an item's original container, but the media themselves are not available for playback because of preservation concerns. Materials that have already been digitized are noted in the collection's finding aid and can be requested in our reading room.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Advance notice is required for the use of computer records. Original physical digital media is restricted.
An access terminal for born-digital materials in the collection is available by appointment for reading room viewing and listening only. Researchers may view an item's original container and/or carrier, but the physical carriers themselves are not available for use because of preservation concerns.
Appraisal
In December 2020 the following were identified as candidates for deaccessioning and were removed from the collection: off-air recording of PBS' Independent Lens, a video introduction for a Chilean drama school, duplicates of Sunrise Semester recordings from Landy's class (not off-air recordings, the original footage), raw footage of healing ceremony in Korea, and video outtakes of play practice and scenes around a theatre. These were removed from the collection because they were materials to which the University Archives could not provide access to, of little or no research value, not related to the collection, or were duplicative material.
About this Guide
Processing Information
Paper materials related to each other intellectually were brought together physically, with oversized paper materials, audiovisual material, and physical digital media housed together as appropriate. Where necessary, separation sheets were created to sustain the intellectual relationship between materials of different formats that were initially housed together. Paper material was housed in archival folders and boxes. Physical digital media and audiovisual material were housed in archival boxes.
One hard drive and optical media containing data files were forensically imaged and arranged on local storage. Audio CDs were ripped to the WAV file format and arranged on local storage. Directories were created for material arranged together intellectually in the collection.
New York University Libraries follows professional standards and best practices when imaging, ingesting, and processing born-digital material in order to maintain the integrity of the content.
In September 2019, the audiovisual materials were transferred to audiovisual archivist for preparation for digitization.
In November 2020, digitized video recordings were arranged on local storage and directories were created for material arranged together intellectually in the collection.
In January 2021, materials identified for deaccessioning were removed from the collection.