Month: March 2025

Episode 2 of Polly Tisdall’s audio diary, ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’

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Polly Tisdall, the current recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award, is publishing an audio diary, ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ as part of her residency at the Theatre Collection as she explores the Kevin Elyot archive and her own writing practice.  The annual award established in 2016, generously funded by an endowment from members of Kevin’s family, supports a writer-in-residence at the Theatre Collection to inspire a new dramatic work or other creative or academic outcome.  It is given in memory of Kevin Elyot (1951-2014) – an alumnus of the University of Bristol Drama Department – and the influence he has had on writing and the Arts.

Episode 2 is available to listen to below along with a transcript.  If you haven’t listened to episode 1, please head to our earlier blog post.  Polly’s audio diary is also available to listen to via Polly’s website with new episodes being published throughout her residency.

Dec 2024 Dreaming in Doodles Transcript

So today I’m in the Reading Room at the archive about to delve back into three big green boxes full of scripts and programmes and press cuttings and letters. And I’m still focusing on My Night with Reg. One of Elyot’s most famous plays, as I mentioned before, and at the moment I’m just really intrigued to understand as much as I can about his process of writing that play.

And I’m just looking back through my notes over the last few visits that I’ve made here and one thing that just keeps coming back to me and standing out, which is less about the play and more about, I suppose, as playwrights, how we dream. Even as we’re making notes to ourselves.

There’s a note that Kevin Elyot’s written after lots of different ideas of what form the play could take and ideas for through lines, many of which are very comic. He’s then made a little note in capitals, it’s sort of like a doodle. And it reads ‘Miriam Margolyes, Alan Rickman in Making It by Kevin Elyot’. And then he’s done a similar thing with My Night with Reg. He’s sketched out a playbill which reads ‘Coming next at the Bush Theatre’.

And I think there’s just something so human about these doodles. Maybe they seem egotistical, but I don’t know how real they were for Kevin, or how fantastical really. I may well come to find that out, but I think for me they just resonate because as artists we have to dream and we have to dream big and dare to imagine that this, these notes that we’re making in a spiral bound notebook in our house or in a cafe somewhere, or in a library, however mundane they might seem, we have to imagine them growing into something so much bigger and so much more public. And we always have to think about the audience and about the actors and about all of these elements that are going to come together to make our writing live. And I just love seeing these, these doodles, this sort of dreaming by doodling that Elyot does in his notes to himself.

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So, I’m just in the little kitchenette for staff and volunteers, that’s just outside the Theatre Collection Reading Rooms. And once again having a little break, some tea and yeah, I’m still thinking about this idea of dreaming and it’s making me consider how I dream, how I kind of I suppose find my way into the vision, the big vision for the stories I want to tell and what helps me make that live, particularly in the early stages. I’m really right at the beginning with this new play that I’m thinking about and that I pitched for this award.

And at the moment I know that there are three characters and I’ve got a kind of sense of where they come from. One of them, I think is very much this Wiltshire woman. This lady who lives very rurally, who I mentioned in my last audio diary. And then I think I’ve got a Bristolian, a young man. And then an American as well.

So I sort of know that much, but when I’m dreaming into those characters at the moment, I’ve realised, very different to the notes I’m finding in Kevin’s scribblings, I’m casting them with with people that I know – with friends, other actors who I know from drama school, for example, or people that I’ve worked with before and that I have had fun working with. And that’s interesting, I suppose in some ways it’s making me think, should I be dreaming bigger?

And that’s not because I don’t want to work with my friends and with those people. But there’s something interesting about what Kevin’s doing there I think when he’s dreaming about his plays and who might perform them. I feel like he’s thinking really big. Whether or not that ends up happening, whether he gets Alan Rickman, in fact, I know now from looking through the productions of My Night with Reg today that he doesn’t get Alan Rickman on stage for that. I don’t believe Alan Rickman ends up in any of his work that I’m aware of so far, from my reading of his notes. But maybe it’s about helping him to think really big and to believe in his work.

And actually today I had a little sneaky Google in the middle of my my archive research on Kevin because this has got me thinking that I think very local with my work, which is maybe a good thing. But I don’t really go out there and consider what are the big theatres who run playwriting schemes and where could I be sending off my scraps of writing to?

And maybe I should be doing more of that. So I looked up the Royal Court, which you would have thought that I would have done many times before, but I haven’t. I’ve been very focused on Bristol and the South West and I think that is great and I’m very passionate about regional work and I want to write stuff that is about this region in many ways, and can be staged here. But it is good to think a little bit beyond my immediate surroundings, I think and beyond the people that I know because it sort of puts an onus on the writing, on the work, to be excellent. It feels like a challenge. So that’s where I’m at and I think that’s the inspiration that I’m taking away today is to think a little bit bigger.

Forkbeard Fantasy – Rabbits, Monsters, and Other Assorted Props

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By Rosie Smith, Project Archivist

Using the reading room space to check the objects.

When we last left off, I had been through every box in the Forkbeard Fantasy Archive once and was beginning to infiltrate the digital archive.

Well, I got distracted.

January started with our annual closure week; a week in which the Theatre Collection is closed to the public to allow us to give the collection some TLC and do the jobs that we don’t normally have time for. It was suggested that while the reading room was empty, I should use the extra space to condition check and clean the Forkbeard objects.

The Square Dancers proudly displaying the square dance shoes.

Forkbeard Fantasy were known for their use of elaborate objects in their productions, many of which were later displayed in the Museum of Forkbeard. Objects were vital to Forkbeard’s work. Even their street theatre relied on large props. After all, what would The Great British Square Dance be without the Square Dance shoes? (For those unfamiliar with the production, The Great British Square Dance involved three members of Forkbeard and one unsuspecting member of the audience putting on shoes attached to a large wooden square and attempting to perform a series of dance moves.)

Miss Edwards being allowed to dangle in the Museum of Forkbeard.

Storing the objects brings its own set of problems. Many of them are of unusual shapes and sizes, meaning they require custom-made boxes. No box will suffice for some of them. For example, the seven-foot-tall bunny costume, which has been separated into parts and wrapped in Tyvek. Miss Edwards is still causing us some trouble as she needs to be stored upright but is unable to support her own weight. At the Forkbeard Museum she was allowed to dangle from a rope attached to her head, but this is impractical in our setting. I’ll keep thinking…

As the objects were originally created for plays, they were rarely created to last. The spring shoe from Forkbeard’s first big production, The Rubber Gods Show, was only intended to last for a few months. Hence it was made from a cheap metal spring which has since become very rusty. Now that we hope to keep it in perpetuity, we are left with the challenge of preserving something that is already degrading. Another good example is Moth from On an Uncertain Insect made in 1978. Moth was designed to be held in front of a lamp and its shadow would appear on stage. To make the shadows appear gradated, some parts of moth were made from semi-transparent materials. The wings are made of parchment paper, while the body was made from jelly. Unsurprisingly, not much of the jelly from 1978 has survived and there is little guidance available on how to preserve food stuff in an archive.

Dancing Frankenstein!

Food is not the only material that can degrade. As part of a production of Frankenstein, Forkbeard made a model of Dr Frankenstein, Igor and the Monster. When a button on the front is pushed, they dance. I know that I’m not supposed to have favourites, but I do and it’s this. However, to make the models dance, it requires 3D batteries. Batteries can degrade and leak, which would then cause damage to the object. But without the batteries it doesn’t function. So should the batteries be kept? In this case, it was decided to keep the batteries separate from the object so that if they do leak, they won’t damage the model.

Mammon, happy in his new home. But what is he?

Then there are the questions of classification. Take Mammon, the God of Dosh from Invisible Bonfires. Mammon would sit on a custom-built table with a hole in the middle. An actor would then climb inside Mammon and operate his mouth and light up shoes from the inside. Does this make Mammon a puppet, and thus a prop? Or is he a costume? I’m still working out the best way to define him in the catalogue.

Despite their challenges, the objects are one of the highlights of the collection and really bring Forkbeard’s work to life. While we could only accept a selection of the objects that were housed in the Museum of Forkbeard, we did make a 3D scan of the whole museum, which can be accessed here. There are various ideas and plans for how to use this scan, so watch this space!

Student Placement at the Theatre Collection 2025

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This academic year we are welcoming two more UoB students, Keir and Madalena, to undertake the annual Artist-in-Residence placement with us. This entails learning more about how archives work, and engaging with in-depth archival research to create a piece of work inspired by the Theatre Collection holdings. Below are the first of their blogs, as they navigate researching in the archives and developing their ideas into proposed scripts.

Keir:

As a third-year Theatre and Film student, I am currently undertaking a placement with the Theatre Collection as part of my Professional Development in Theatre and Performance module. This Artist in Residence placement has provided a unique opportunity to engage with archival materials and explore how historical resources can inform contemporary creative practice.

During the first month of my placement, I have had the privilege of immersing myself in the archives of esteemed theatre practitioners. My research has spanned figures such as Ian Smith, Nola Rae, and The Kipper Kids, each of whom has left a distinctive mark on the world of clowning and physical theatre. Engaging with their materials – ranging from performance notes and annotated scripts to photographs, recordings, and personal correspondences – has provided a fascinating window into their creative processes, performance philosophies, and the broader theatrical landscapes in which they worked.

Initial research in the Theatre Collection.

These archival explorations have been instrumental in shaping my initial ideas for a script, allowing me to consider how historical clowning techniques and comedic traditions can be adapted for contemporary audiences. Clowning, in its many forms, has a remarkable ability to transcend language and cultural barriers, and I am particularly interested in how archival research can illuminate the enduring power of physical comedy. My current focus is on developing a comedic script that blends historical influences with a fresh, modern approach, exploring how the essence of clowning can be reinterpreted for today’s theatre landscape.

Beyond script development, this research has sparked broader questions about the role of archival material in creative practice. How can performance archives serve as active tools for contemporary theatre-making rather than simply as records of the past? How might forgotten or overlooked elements of clowning history inspire new modes of performance? As I continue this placement, I am eager to explore these questions further, experimenting with ways to bring archival discoveries to life in new and unexpected ways.

 

Madalena

Hello, I’m Madalena and I am also working as an Artist in Residence at the Theatre Collection for my Professional Development in Theatre and Performance module, alongside Keir. As a final year Theatre and Film student, I wanted to find a way that I could incorporate my love of film while still being involved in and inspired by theatre. So, I am grateful that this placement has provided me with the opportunity to explore the theatre archives and use my research and inspiration to write a screenplay.

I have a particular interest in culture and fashion during the 1840s to 1870s. I first looked through some letters that were written during Henry Irving and his wife’s separation, but was more attracted by the idea of reseaching less well-known theatrical figures. Archivist Jill Sullivan very helpfully pointed me towards a collection of five uncatalogued boxes (BTC80) detailing the careers of sisters Annie and Jessie Bourke, and their cousin Eva Watson in the 1860s and 70s. Within this collection are over a thousand letters written to the actresses from admirers, and I have only scraped the surface by reading plenty of those that are in box one! Learning to read nineteenth century handwriting has proven to be quite a challenge; sometimes individual letters are written very differently to how we would write them now. So it definitely has been a learning curve getting used to the writing, but once you are acquainted with it, the content of the letters can be quite rewarding and even entertaining to reveal. For example, in the small amount that I have been able to decipher so far, there are plenty of men who sent multiple short letters to Annie, asking to meet with her, only to follow up with one asking why she wasn’t replying to them and what they had done to anger her.

BTC80-1 A few of the Bourke letters

Though there are many more letters than I may have the time to read, it has been insightful getting an idea of the specific type of language and wording that was used in the nineteenth century, as I aim to write the dialogue of my script in the same way. I do not yet have a narrative in mind for the screenplay, but the content of the letters I have read so far has inspired me to possibly include verbatim extracts from them, perhaps in a comedic montage.

There is much more exploration of BTC80 that I would like to do, to begin conceptualising a narrative, and I am looking forward to seeing what I may discover within the collection.