Cal Yeomans Collection

The Cal Yeomans Collection is comprised of play and multi-media scripts (in various rewrite stages), poetry, prose, notes, personal and professional correspondence, reviews, newspaper clippings, family papers, personal and exhibit photographs, ephemera, journals, audio recordings, financial records and business correspondence. The oldest items in the collection, particularly family photographs, date from the late 19th Century and the early 20th Century (found in Vada Allen Yeomans' pre-1950 photograph albums) and the most recent items from 2001 (the year of Cal Yeomans' death). However, the bulk of material was collected and saved by Cal Yeomans during his lifetime (1938 - 2001) including all Allen and Yeomans family historical and genealogical ephemera and Crystal River and Central Florida history.

Cal Yeomans was a prolific letter writer and his correspondents include Ellen Stewart (Founder of the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City); Eric Garber (aka "Andrew Holleran" - novelist, essayist and short story writer); Robert Chesley (playwright, theatre critic and composer); composers Boyd McDonald and Ned Rorem; actors Pat Bond, Dana Ivey and Grainger Hines; artists Michael Haykin, Egle Gatins, Rosser Shymanski, Raiford Ragsdale and Vance Hendrix; and photographer Mark I. Chester. The collection also includes extensive correspondence with Cal Yeomans' artistic collaborators, friends and family dating from childhood until his passing in 2001.

The Collection is organized in multiple groups, or series: FAMILY HISTORY, FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS, BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION - CAL YEOMANS, PHOTOGRAPHS OF CAL YEOMANS, MISCELLANEOUS PHOTOGRAPHS AND EPHEMERA (OVERSIZE), PHOTOGRAPHS OF FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES, JOURNALS, CORRESPONDENCE, SCRIPTS, POETRY, PROSE, NOTES, CAL YEOMANS - PHOTOGRAPHER (EXHIBIT PHOTOGRAPHS), REEL TO REEL AND CASSETTE RECORDINGS, JOURNALS (OVERSIZE) and RESTRICTED JOURNALS, CORRESPONDENCE AND PHOTOGRAPHS.

The FAMILY HISTORY and FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS comprise an eclectic perspective of the Allen (maternal) and Yeoman families including the personal and public lives of his mother and father. The bulk of this material was left to Cal Yeomans after the death of his mother in the mid 1980s. The BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION - CAL YEOMANS and PHOTOGRAPHS OF CAL YEOMANS groups include childhood, school, career and social ephemera and photographs pertaining to the life of Cal Yeomans. The individual folders also highlight ephemera collected by Cal Yeomans including material of personal interest (Gay Issues, Gay Theatre, HIV/AIDS, etc.), locales (NYC; Gainesville, FL; Center, FL; Key West; San Francisco; Amsterdam; etc.) and extensive promotional and background information on each of his produced plays, publications, readings, lectures and photo exhibits.

The JOURNALS, CORRESPONDENCE and PHOTOGRAPHS OF FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES groups offer a concise and colorful view of Cal Yeomans' private and public life. His prolific journal output and letters, along with his efforts to preserve all aspects of his life, create a vivid picture of family, friends, his chosen fields of endeavor, the world of show business, his professional colleagues, and the horrific impact of his emotional problems and his physical decline (with a backdrop of the gay community and the world-wide HIV/AIDS epidemic of the late 20th Century). The correspondence (to and from Cal Yeomans) is filed alphabetically (chronologically arranged within multiple folders) under the correspondent's name. Each correspondent is represented, if material is available, by a folder of BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION (following the collected correspondence folders).

The artistic side of Cal Yeomans is expressed through his collected SCRIPTS, POETRY, PROSE, EXHIBIT PHOTOGRAPHS, REEL TO REEL AND CASSETTE RECORDINGS and NOTES. Each play, dating back to the early 1960s (including the undated "first play" - There Ain't No Lemonade), is filed alphabetically by title and preserved in multiple stages of the creative process, including handwritten revisions and notes. His groundbreaking and controversial gay theatre productions of the 1970s and 1980s (Richmond Jim, Sunsets, etc.) are represented with correspondence, promotional ephemera and reviews. The POETRY and PROSE of Cal Yeomans date back to his childhood days and present a creative, thoughtful, sensitive, honest, sometimes angry, and often graphic mind at work. Each individual item is filed alphabetically and dated (if known) and includes handwritten revisions, notes and comments by Cal Yeomans. A single box of NOTES contains 4 folders of random ideas, thoughts, phrases, jottings, and fragments written on scraps of paper, envelopes, etc., and filed in no particular order. Yeomans wrote these notes to be used in future writings, readings, lectures and various projects and were found throughout the unprocessed collection.

The work of CAL YEOMANS - PHOTOGRAPHER (EXHIBIT PHOTOGRAPHS) is organized into Color and Black and White, as well as regular size and oversize (too large for the standard archival boxes). These exhibit photographs include still life, nature and travel studies, but are primarily male nudes (Filed under the specific name of the photo model - unless the name of the model is labeled "Unidentified"). Due to privacy concerns, restrictions have been placed on many of the images (See ACCESS AND USE RESTRICTIONS). Along with the Oversize photographic items, a number of Oversize journals and ephemera have been placed in labeled Oversize boxes and this designation is clearly noted throughout this descriptive guide.

REEL TO REEL AND CASSETTE RECORDINGS have been collected into a single box and include recorded reading and lecture rehearsals, recorded public lectures and readings presented by Cal Yeomans (c. 1970-91), recorded telephone messages left on Cal Yeomans' answering machine (1987-89), the Memorial Service for Bobby Redfern (Owner of the Curry House in Key West), six cassette taped interviews with Ernest Mickler (1988) and miscellaneous readings and reminiscences recorded by Cal Yeomans (circa 1971-95).