JANE ALEXANDER and EDWIN SHERIN: A Commitment to Performance

This exhibition traces the dual careers of Tony and Emmy award winning actress and arts administrator Jane Alexander and award winning producer, director and husband, Edwin Sherin.  Opening with a pair of early "actor head shots" of these distinguished figures in the American performing arts, the exhibition first visits Mr. Sherin's early successes as an actor, first at Brown University, then in New York City with the Phoenix Theatre Company, both are documented here in early photographs.  The exhibition follows Mr. Sherin, as a director, to Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., where he meets actress Jane Alexander.  In her first season with the company in 1965, she is cast in the title role of Saint Joan, directed by Edwin Sherin.  That is followed two years later with the epic play, The Great White Hope, documented here with photographs from both the theatre and film versions.  The exhibition continues with correspondence to Edwin Sherin from luminaries in the world of the theatre with whom he has worked.  They include Irene Worth (Sweet Bird of Youth); Claire Bloom (A Streetcar Named Desire; Red Devil Battery Sign); Tennessee Williams and Richard Rodgers.  There is also material related to Ms. Alexander's work in the television Holocaust drama Playing For Time (1981) as well as her own television projects Calamity Jane and A Marriage: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz; which find her serving as producer as well as star.  The exhibition concludes with material related to Mr. Sherin's long association as producer and episodic director for the popular Law and Order television series and photographs dealing with Ms. Alexander's appointment as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts under the Clinton administration.


    The exhibition will be open to the public on October 25, 2007 for an extended run.


Boston University
Mugar Memorial Library
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