Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) preserves and makes available to all students, faculty, and researchers many kinds of original and scholarly materials. Subject areas in SC&A include Northern Virginiana, Planned Communities, Congressional Papers, Performing Arts, Maps, the Civil War, and George Mason University. Formats in SC&A include manuscripts, rare books, playbills, musical scores, audio and videotapes, architectural drawings, photographs, and slides.

Theater holdings in SC&A's American Theater Collection include the following:

• The Arena Stage Collection. The Arena Stage Collection contains materials which span the theater's 50 year history including production notebooks, photographs, playbills, scrapbooks, and handwritten correspondence. Currently, the collection includes 440 linear feet of material.
  
  

• Robert Breen/ANTA. Documents recording the foundation and day-to-day operation of the Arerican National Theater and Academy (ANTA) and the work of its former Executive Secretary, Robert Breen. The collection consists of materials such as correspondence, memoranda, ANTA publications, playscripts and other theater-related items, scrapbooks and newsclippings. Contains over sixty linear feet of material.
  
  

• Theater of the Thirties. A collection of Federal Theater Project (FTP) materials , oral history interviews, and research aids. Sources of donated materials include persons formerly employed in the FTP, various theater historians, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Library of Congress. Types of materials include administrative records, billboard sheets, music, photograph prints and negatives, playbills, radio scripts and videotaped lectures. Contains over 130 linear feet of materials.
  
  

• Robert C. Schnitzer Collection. Included in the Robert C. Schnitzer Collection are textual materials, photographs of the ANTA theater troupe in Europe from 1951-1955, posters for ANTA overseas productions, newspaper clippings, working papers, and other materials regarding Schnitzer's work with the University of Michigan Professional Theater Program.
  
  

• Becher Playscript Collection. Playscripts from the Special Services Division of the U.S. Army used in productions for servicemen and women during World War II. Also, several scripts for non-military productions are included. Contains nine linear feet of materials.
  
  

• Arthur H. Peterson Theater Collection. Books, published plays, and journals relating to American theater donated by Arthur Peterson, former FTP (Chicago) employee who later appeared in several television programs, most notably in "Soap." The Collection includes scripts for these programs. It contains over twenty-one linear feet of materials.
  
  

• Cynthia Garn Film Collection. Original film scripts, including "Colossus" by James Bridges and "Freud" by John Huston and Wolfgang Reinhardt. It also contains scrapbooks representing artistic design research compiled by Hecht-Hill-Lancaster for Universal Studios' 1957 production of George Bernard Shaw's "The Devil"s Disciple." 3 linear ft. of material.