Abington Friends School is a school imbued with history, dating back further than our nation, but its history is not often talked about. The Muller auditorium was built in 1989, but the theater program is much older than that. The Archive Room contains almost a hundred years of striking theater history, but much of it had not been searched through and permanently documented until recently.
Since fall 2023, Ash Cohen ‘26 has been sorting through, scanning, and organizing thousands of pictures and posters, digitizing an entire collection of AFS theater history. He has dedicated at least 150 hours to this project, mostly outside of school, and the result is remarkable.
The fascinating last century of AFS’s theater’s work is now available to view on the Muller Auditorium’s website, a history told through photographs, set and costume designs, playbills, and posters.
These documents not only give insight into the environment of the school at the time, but also the state of culture, technology, and art of the last hundred years.
I interviewed Cohen about their process and the significance of this project. The interview below has been edited for clarity.
How would you describe the theater production archive and your process?
Around Thanksgiving, sophomore year [2023], Seth [Schmitt-Hall, Technical Theatre Director] came up to me and was, like, “Hey, I have this project that needs to get done, would you be interested in looking at it?” And I was like, “Sure, why not?” It was basically just to help him reorganize the website that he had made for the [theater] archive.
Organizing it, I realized, like, wow, all of this stuff is really, really recent. Like, within the past 10-15 years. And I was like, there’s got to be more, obviously, because our school was built in 1697. While they may have not been documenting stuff since 1697, there definitely had to have been documents from before 2010.
So, I talked to Toni [Vahlsing, Director of Libraries] about it, and she had a spreadsheet of [information] that she had found, and so I asked if I could go into the archive room and look. And she said, sure, and from there, I started going through all of the old posters, programs, and photos that AFS has, and I found stuff dating back to 1929.
After that, I started scanning pictures and documents and uploading them to the website. I’ve already published it, but this is the first announcement about it.
Is this all published on its own website? Where can readers find it?
It’s on the Muller’s website, the one that they use for renting the space. It’s cool to me that if people are interested in renting out our theater, they have easy access to look at other productions we’ve done. So they can not only see the space through the diagrams that Seth has made, but also see the space through what we’ve done in it in the past, which can give them insight into what the [Muller’s] limitations are and are not.
You said you’ve found documentation dating back to 1929. Are there a lot of gaps in time without any records, or is it pretty continuous?
There’s definitely stuff missing. I don’t have records for a lot of the years. There are some years where I only have one of the two shows that we did.
And it’s difficult because a lot of the yearbooks that I went to look at had to be printed so much further in advance, so they only have the fall show. Many hadn’t even picked out what they were doing in the spring yet and just didn’t mention the spring show.
So there’s a lot of gaps because of that. But I’d say there’s less gaps within the last 40 years.
Once you get further back than that, then it’s like, maybe I have a show for a year or two, and then it’s like three years [without documentation]. And then I have a couple more, and then it’s like five years. I definitely wish there were less gaps.
What’s one of the most interesting things you’ve come across working on this?
I found old costume design papers from the art classes that used to help out [with costume design]. Like diagrams and stuff of what they were planning to dress the characters in.
There were no pictures from the show, so that was my only insight into it, and I thought that was really interesting, especially as someone who really likes costume design and wants to pursue it.
What’s your favorite aspect of the project as a whole?
I really like history, but sometimes it feels like we’re learning a lot of the same general things. This was interesting to me because I’ve grown up at this school for my whole life, and there are so many things that I just didn’t know happened.
Obviously, I can’t know everything, because I have not been here the whole time it’s existed. I just like looking back at a lot of the stuff from before I was here.
Do you have any hopes or plans for the future of this project?
Yeah, I would love to be able to continue working on it once I graduate from AFS or maybe pass it on to someone else. I think it’s so fun and hope that if I can’t continue doing it, someone else can find enjoyment in it too. Also it’s inspired me to try and find archival work and opportunities at other places in the future!
If you have access to any information or sources you would like to contribute to the archive, please email Ash Cohen at [email protected]. To view the theater archive, visit https://muller84.wixsite.com/reserveafstheatre/copy-of-production-archive.
