Du Bois was a political activist, writer, playwright, and composer. In 1931 she entered Oberlin College to study music. The following year, her musical drama, Tom-Tom, was performed in Chicago. It was described by a critic as "the first all-black opera to be produced on a large [scale]." She was later appointed director of the "Negro Unit" of the Chicago Federal Theatre, where she put on successful productions such as Little Black Sambo and Swing Mikado. A political activist, she married W.E.B. Du Bois in 1951 and they worked together to improve the lot of underrepresented groups in the United States, increasingly through their involvement in leftist causes and groups. The couple moved to Ghana, and Shirley Graham Du Bois continued to live there after her husband's death, developing a national telecommunications infrastructure at Ghana Television.

Author and dramatist Gerstenberg attended Bryn Mawr College, wrote novels and plays, and was the co-founder of the Junior League Theater for Children (1921) and founder of the Playwright Theater (1922), both in Chicago. The collection contains correspondence between Gerstenberg and Nancy Cox-McCormack Cushman, who was a sculptor, recalling their lives in the art world of Chicago, as well as programs of plays written or produced by Gerstenberg.

Arts consultant, producer, playwright, lyricist, and writer, Priscilla "Nissy" Dewey Houghton began writing plays and staging them in her barn to entertain her children and their friends while she was recuperating from polio. She wrote the books and lyrics for several musicals, including Two If By Sea (1970, music by Tony Hutchins), which was produced off Broadway. In 1970, she co-founded the Charles River Creative Arts Program in Dover, Massachusetts, a summer day program which aimed to provide an environment in which children could develop and pursue artistic interests. She also co-founded and served as director of the North End-Waterfront Arts Council and as managing editor of the Freelance Press, publishers of musical theater and arts curricula, from 1978 to 1989. She remained involved in a number of theater organizations until her death in 2012.

Actress, director, and playwright, Judson's theatrical career began in the mid 1950s. In addition to performing in workshops and plays sponsored by the DeCordova Museum, she also joined their teaching faculty. In the early 1960s, she moved to London to study acting and stagecraft, earning a certificate of completion from the British Council Theatre. After returning to the United States in the late 1960s, Judson performed at local and regional theatres, colleges, historical societies, community centers, and other public venues. Judson's major theatrical accomplishments include writing, directing and producing Freedom and Angelina, a highly acclaimed drama-forum, which was performed in New York City and twenty-five community venues in eastern Massachusetts. She also served on numerous advisory boards and councils committed to the arts, including the Governor's Council on the Arts and Humanities.

Adrienne Kennedy is one of the first African American playwrights to incorporate non-linear structure and surrealism into her work, which also incorporates elements of her own life and examines issues of race and violence in the United States. Kennedy's first produced play, Funnyhouse of a Negro, won the 1964 Obie Award for Distinguished Play. In 1991, her younger son, Adam, was severely beaten by a policeman after driving with a broken taillight. He was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer but was found not guilty. Kennedy and Adam based the play Sleep Deprivation Chamber upon this disturbing incident. The play, together with Kennedy's June and Jean in Concert, won an Obie for Best New American Play in 1996. Kennedy has taught at a number of universities, including the University of California, Berkeley; and Princeton, Brown, and Harvard. She has won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Rockefeller Grants, and a lifetime achievement Obie Award, and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2018.

Writer and feminist, Merriam, primarily a poet, was also a playwright, teacher, and lecturer. She won several awards for her work. She and her first husband, Martin Philip Michel, had two sons. The collection contains publicity about her work, personal and professional correspondence, and radio and television scripts, among other materials. There is related material in the Additional Papers of Eve Merriam and the Audiovisual Collection of Eve Merriam.

Rosalie Stork Regen was a Quaker author and playwright. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1931, and then worked in publishing in New York City before marrying Curt Regen. The collection includes a booklet containing a sonnet, To My Husband (1936), and scripts of plays featuring Quaker men and women.

Playwright and teacher (Radcliffe, A.B., 1913), Speare founded the Department of Drama and Expression at Goucher College (1919-1920). The collection consists primarily of published copies of her plays including Jones versus Jones (1913), written when president of the Radcliffe Drama Club; The Star Gleams: A Community Christmas Choral (1919); and The Bride and the Burglar (1922). Also included are correspondence, programs, photos, a biographical sketch by her husband, and clippings.

Carola Bell Williams, actress and playwright, received her A.B. (1921) from Flora Mather College of Western Reserve University and did graduate work at Radcliffe College (1921-1923) under George Pierce Baker. Her career as a monologuist (both actress and author) began in the 1940s. She participated in Camps Farthest Out, an interdenominational, interracial Christian movement. This collection consists of plays, monologues, publicity, an audiotape, motion picture, and photographs of Carola Bell Williams. Her early monologues portrayed the lives of notable American women and her later work concentrated on devotional subjects.

Historian and playwright Howard Zinn was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College and a political science professor at Boston University. He authored a number of books and articles on United States history and government, including A Young People's History of the United States. The collection contains a photocopy of the script of Emma, a play by Howard Zinn about anarchist Emma Goldman that was performed at the Theater for New York City (1976) and at the Next Move Theater in Boston (1977), as well as photocopies of reviews of the Boston production.