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Joanne Forman papers, 1960-2023

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Forman, Joanne
Title
Joanne Forman papers
Dates
1960-2023 (inclusive)
Quantity
12.17 cubic ft. (15 boxes) + 3.76 GB
Collection Number
07264
Summary
Music scores and written works by Joanne Forman, an award-winning composer, playwright, director, puppeteer, newswomen, and political activist. The collection also includes correspondence, publicity, research notes, photographs, and memorabilia related to her work and life.
Repository
American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming
American Heritage Center
University of Wyoming
1000 E. University Ave.
Dept. 3924
Laramie, WY
82071
Telephone: 3077663756
ahcref@uwyo.edu
Access Restrictions

There are no access restrictions on the materials for research purposes, and the collection is open to the public.

Languages
English
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Historical Note

Joanne Forman was an award-winning composer, playwright, director, puppeteer, newswomen, political activist, and founder of her own music label, "User Friendly Music." She composed operas, liturgical and choral works, chamber music, ballets, song cycles, and many musicals and puppet shows for children, and wrote plays and short stories. Forman was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Composer’s Fellowship; the National Federation of Music Clubs Award; New Mexico Humanities Award; Maine Commission on the Arts and Humanities Award; and three “Meet the Composer” grants. She was a member of the New Mexico Composers Guild and a founder of the New Mexico Women Composers Guild in 1985. She was also arts editor of The Taos News; for two years a weekly columnist for the Sangre de Cristo Chronicle; and wrote for many arts magazine in New Mexico and elsewhere.

Forman was born in Chicago in 1934 and grew up in Grenada, Mississippi. She lived and worked in New Orleans, Nashville, parts of California and Maine before settling down in northern New Mexico. Starting piano lessons at age seven, she decided to become a composer at sixteen. Later, she was one of six selected from a field of 200 to work with the Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Dr. Robert Ward at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, with whom she worked briefly. She was largely self-taught.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Forman helped establish a number of theater programs in California. She co-founded the San Francisco Marionette Theater and founded a children’s theater, Comedia Repertory in Menlo Park. In 1961, she founded and directed the Apple House Gallery in Three Rivers, California, a theater that also offered children’s performing arts workshops.

Forman was an active socialist and anti-capitalist. For a short period beginning in the late 1960s, she was married to Marion Myron Syrek, a member of the Spartacist League, a Trotskyist political grouping. Forman was also a member. In 1965, she took a budding interest in puppetry into this political context and soon after began creating Punch and Judy shows in which the characters discussed issues such as draft resistance, migrant labor, welfare and more . In 1966, she formed “The Migrant Theater,” a non-profit, bilingual repertory theater that used puppets to bring social issues into educational venues. Forman scripted plays and performed with The Migrant Theater until the late 1970s. Forman remained a socialist and anti-capitalist throughout her life and her creative works many times reflect her philosophies.

During the early 1970s, she was playwright for the Mime Experiment, Inc. of Albuquerque, New Mexico, a repertory group that combined puppetry, pantomime, and music to present plays in open air settings. Throughout her life, Forman performed hundreds of puppet shows all over the United States and Asia, and conducted many workshops and courses. She was a specialist in the use of puppetry in multicultural and bilingual education.

In 1977 she was hired to work full-time as playwright-in-residence for the Children’s Theatre of Maine. While in Maine, Forman founded the Downeast Chamber Opera (DCO), a local group in Biddeford. After moving to Taos, New Mexico in 1978, she also founded the Southwest Chamber Opera (SWCO). Both DCO and SWCO emphasized operas by women and to provide conducting opportunities for women. Forman’s operas Polly Baker, The Blind Men, and Ikarus were performed under the auspices of DCO and SWCO. The performance of Ikarus was offered as a joint production with composer Kay Gardner's opera Ladies' Voices in 1981.

Combining a love of science fiction with musical composition, Forman forged collaborations with well-known science fiction authors. She worked with Anne McCaffrey on a musical adaptation of portions of McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern saga. Forman’s Dragonsongs music was released on cassette by the Performing Arts Press in the mid-1980s. Forman also created a ballet, The Soul Painter and the Shapeshifter, based on a story of the same name by science fiction author Robert Silverberg. The work was performed in Huntsville, Alabama in 1991.

With a grant from the Jane Austen Society of North America, Forman adapted Jane Austen's Lady Susan into a one-act opera and later adapted The Beautifull Cassandra from Austen's juvenilia to music. Forman wrote a full-length musical, Jonah!, which she produced, cast and publicized herself for a 1988 staging in Taos. She employed her memory of historical events to create Pikadon (1985), a radio program about the 1945 atomic bombing of Japan that was broadcast on 22 stations across the U.S. in August 1985, and The Sweater (2007), a music drama set during the Holocaust. Additionally, Forman wrote hundreds of other pieces from children's musicals to orchestrals to shorter impromptus and sonatinas. In the 2000s, Forman became Resident Composer for Soundscapes, a Taos-based chamber music group, and for the Taos Jewish Center.

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Content Description

The collection contains music scores, plays, and other written works created by Joanne Forman, including operas, liturgical and choral works, chamber music, ballets, song cycles, musicals, puppet plays, poems, and short stories. Also included are articles written by Forman on the arts scene in Taos, New Mexico and elsewhere for publications in New Mexico and in the United States. Information about groups founded by Forman is included, such as The Migrant Theater, the Downeast Chamber Opera, the Southwest Chamber Opera, and the New Mexico Women Composers Guild. Material in the form of songs, stories, and articles exhibit Forman’s activism regarding social issues such as draft resistance, welfare, migrant labor, and more. Personal and professional correspondence includes letters between Forman and composer Kay Gardner and authors Anne McCaffrey and Jonathan Santlofer, as well as organizations formed by Forman and planning required to stage and record her works. The collection also has publicity, fundraising material, programs, and photographs.

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

Copyright Information

The researcher assumes full responsibility for observing all copyright, property, and libel laws as they apply.

Restrictions on Use

Statement on Potentially Harmful Language and Images Found in Collections

The American Heritage Center aspires to approach all areas of our work in ways that are respectful to those who create, use, and are represented in our collections. For a variety of reasons, however, users may encounter offensive or harmful language or images in some of our finding aids, catalogs, and collection materials.

Note that the AHC does not censor or alter contents of the collections as they provide context and evidence of a time, people, place, or event. Therefore, we encourage users to bring questions and concerns about descriptions in our finding aids to our attention via email or anonymous web-form. For more information, read our full statement.

Preferred Citation

Item Description, Box Number, Folder Number, Collection Name, Collection Number, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

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Administrative Information

Related Materials

There are no known other archival collections created by Joanne Forman at the date of processing.

Acquisition Information

The material was donated by Joanne Forman in installments from 1981-2024 and Peter Carleton from 2017-2019.

Processing Note

The collection was processed by Leslie Waggener in April 2016 and updated by Jamie Greene in June 2017, August 2018, January 2020, July 2022, and February 2025.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

Container List

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

  • Atomic bomb--Japan--Hiroshima-shi--Drama.
  • Children's theater--United States.
  • Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Drama.
  • Music theater.
  • Musical theater--Political aspects--United States.
  • Punch and Judy--Adaptations.
  • Puppet making.
  • Puppet theater in education--United States.
  • Puppet theater--United States.
  • Women and socialism--United States.

Personal Names

  • Austen, Jane, 1775-1817--Adaptations.
  • Austin, Mary, 1868-1934.
  • Vernon, Susan, Lady (Fictitious character).

Corporate Names

  • Jane Austen Society of North America.
  • New Mexico Composers Guild.
  • Taos News.

Geographical Names

  • Taos Region (N.M.)--Intellectual life--20th century.

Form or Genre Terms

  • Chamber music--20th century--Scores and parts.
  • Chamber music--21th century.
  • Children's plays.
  • Composition (Music).
  • Mime.
  • Opera--20th century.
  • Plays, American.
  • Poetry--Musical settings.
  • Political plays, American.
  • Sacred vocal music.
  • Song cycles.

Occupations

  • Dramatists, American--20th century.
  • Puppeteers--United States.
  • Women composers--United States.

Other Creators

  • Personal Names

    • Gardner, Kay--1941-
    • McCaffrey, Anne--Dragonriders of Pern.
    • Santlofer, Jonathan--1946-
    • Silverberg, Robert--1935-

Processed by Leslie Waggener
2016

CC Attribution
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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