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Teresa Dingman, former costume director at Orlando Family Stage (formerly Central Florida Civic Theatre), holds a stack of documents she brought to the theater on Sunday to be scanned into its digital archive. Dingman said that one of her favorite productions was Midsummer Night’s Dream.<\/p>\n
Lola Fontanez<\/p>\n
Orlando Family Stage alumni span decades, from performers who took the stage 40 years ago to students fresh from its most recent summer camp, gathered with the UCF history department for its latest History Harvest on Sept. 27 at the Orlando Family Stage theatre.<\/p>\n
The History Harvest invited people to share stories, photographs, documents and other memories connected to the theatre. The materials will become part of UCF\u2019s digital archive, the Regional Initiative for Collecting History, Experiences & Stories.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n “RICHES’s collaboration with Orlando Family Stage is really about preserving as much of its 100-year history as we can and making that history accessible to the public,” Geoffrey Cravero, digital archivist for the project, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The History Harvest<\/a> is part of an effort to document Central Florida\u2019s history through the experiences of the people who have lived it. Rather than relying only on official records, the RICHES archive collects personal stories and materials that can help researchers and future generations understand the region\u2019s past.<\/p>\n “I’ve been working with Madeline Lane to digitize materials from Orlando Family Stage’s own archives, and the History Harvest allows us to expand on that by bringing in materials that are still held by members of the community,” Cravero said.<\/p>\n