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E. P. Conkle came to teach at The University of Texas at Austin in 1939, one year after the founding of the College of Fine Arts. Having received degrees from the University of Nebraska and his doctorate in Playwriting from the University of Iowa, and after spending two years at Yale in George Pierce Baker’s English 47 class, he developed and led the playwriting program of the Department of Drama (now Theatre and Dance) for thirty-four years. He also became the departmental graduate advisor and was instrumental in instituting the M.F.A. and Ph.D. degree programs. For eight summers Professor Conkle taught playwriting at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Banff, Canada.
Besides teaching and advising drama students Professor Conkle constantly wrote for the theatre, himself. He had more than fifty plays published, both one-act and full-length, and for a time his own writing included a weekly CBS radio show,
Many of his plays, rooted in American folk life, capture the humor and wisdom of country and small-town living a generation or more ago. The most famous of the short plays in this genre is the frequently produced
The Department of Theatre and Dance has produced several of Conkle’s folk plays including
Among Conkle’s students when he taught playwriting at the University of Iowa was Tennessee Williams; at The University of Texas students included Pat Hingle, Tommy Tune, and Fess Parker.
Ellsworth Prouty Conkle was born on July 10, 1899, and grew up on a farm in Nebraska. He received his bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Nebraska. He did graduate work at Yale University from 1926 to 1928, won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1929, and received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship from 1934 to 1936. He received a doctorate in playwriting at the University of Iowa in 1936.
Dr. Conkle is survived by his wife, Virginia, and a son, E. P. Conkle II, of Austin, a daughter, Alice Elena Cogdell, of Arlington, Texas; two brothers, Francis, of Wheatland, Colorado, and Orville, of Peru, Nebraska; and six grandchildren.
American playwright and long-time University of Texas at Austin professor of drama E. P. Conkle’s papers include manuscripts for his plays and other writings, correspondence, and professional as well as personal papers. Additional documentation for theatrical productions comprises clippings, music and orchestra parts, photographs, posters, production programs, and scrapbooks. Also present is Conkle's collection of Charlotte Gray, ingénue actress, singer, and dancer with the Sothern-Marlowe Co. and George M. Cohan.
The E. P. Conkle papers were originally part of the Ransom Center's Theater Arts Manuscripts Collection, but now forms a separate, discrete collection. The collection was originally described in a card catalog and this finding aid now replicates and replaces the former card catalog description. The card catalog segment remains organized into four series: I. Works; II. Letters (outgoing correspondence); III. Recipient (incoming correspondence); and IV. Miscellaneous (third-party works and correspondence). See the Indexes for Works, Letters, Recipient and Miscellaneous in this finding aid to further identify titles of works and correspondent names present in this collection
In addition to the above papers, this finding aid also describes materials recently added to the Conkle papers: a small 1999 acquisition; a few items found in an internal Conkle collection file; and an additional fourteen boxes of Conkle papers formerly held in the Performing Arts Collection. The fourteen boxes are arranged as:
Supplementary materials for Gray are found in Series IV. Miscellaneous in folder 52.2: two contracts, correspondence, a diary (1907), and other information such as a career chronology, lyrics for a song from
Gifts, 1976-1999 (G741, G11428). The E. P. Conkle Collection was formerly a part of the Center’s Theater Arts Manuscripts Collection, but now forms a separate, discrete collection.
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E. P. (Ellsworth Prouty) Conkle Collection (Manuscript Collection MS-00897). Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
Joan Sibley and Richard Workman, 2024, with assistance from Kayla Jones and Mireya Saldivar. Note: This finding aid replicates and replaces information previously available only in a card catalog. Please see the explanatory note at the end of this finding aid for information regarding the arrangement of the manuscripts as well as the abbreviations commonly used in descriptions.
Harry Ransom Center.