Playbill for No Place To Be Somebody: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Playbill, volume 8, issue 9 featuring the play, "No Place To Be Somebody," written and directed by Charles Gordone and performed at the Morosco Theatre, New York, in 1971. The top third of the front cover is the masthead, with a square of white with gray pixels on the left and black centered type that reads [Morosco / Theatre], and a yellow rectangular field on the right with black type with the magazine's title centered, [PLAYBILL / the national magazine for theatregoers]. Below the masthead is a black field with a white illustration depicting a flat glass radial fracture that extends through a second graphic of a mirror image of a clock with handles pointing towards 3:45. The title of the play, which is also the main coverline, is written below the fracture illustration in white stylized text, [NO PLACE / TO BE / SOMEBODY], on the bottom third of the cover. The back cover features an ad for Tareyton cigarettes. All of the pages are glossy and bound together with staples. Most of the interior pages are off-white with black type with mostly black-and-white images and a few color images. The magazine has thirty-six (36) pages.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: September 1971
• Published by: Playbill, American, founded 1884
• Published by: Metromedia, American, founded 1955
• Subject of: Charles Gordone, American, 1925 - 1995
• Subject of: Morosco Theatre, American, 1917 - 1982
• Type: theater programs
• Medium: ink on paper with metal
• Dimensions: H x W x D (Closed): 9 1/16 × 6 × 1/16 in. (23 × 15.2 × 0.2 cm)
• Dimensions: H x W x D (Open): 9 1/16 × 11 9/16 × 9/16 in. (23 × 29.3 × 1.5 cm)
• Place used: New York City, New York, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Broadway Theatre
• Topic: Drama (Theatre)
• Topic: Identity
• Topic: Race relations
• Object number: 2015.64.11
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Kathleen M. Kendrick
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The underlying object's rights statement is: Playbill used by permission. All rights reserved, Playbill Inc Permission required for use. Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.