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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.

 

‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ by Polly Tisdall

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Polly Tisdall, the current recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award, is publishing an audio diary 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.

Polly’s audio diary is available to listen to here: ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ or via Polly’s website with new episodes being published throughout her residency.  We’ll also post episodes on our blog page with transcripts, with the first episode available below:

Speaker 1 (Polly Tisdall):

Bristol City centre. Just got off the bus, after wending my way through Fishponds and Eastville and St Pauls and just loving all the colourful leaves. This is my favourite time of year and I’ve got that kind of sense of beginnings, I suppose that I get still, like a new school year.

I still get that at this time of year and it feels a bit like a first day at a new school, and I’m just winding my way up Orchard Lane and thinking this maybe isn’t the quickest way to the Theatre Collection, but never mind.

Going on a little adventure.

Found the many, many, many steps past Trenchard Street car park. I remember this.

This is the route, the very steep, huffy, puffy route up to the Theatre Collection. At least it’s the one that I know. I have come up this way before.

And there’s something about coming through Bristol this morning with my mind half in the play that I’ve pitched for the Kevin Elyot Award that I’m going to be writing (Ahhh!) in the next year. And having that in mind and thinking through one of the characters I’m interested in potentially exploring in the play, it’s all very early days.

But I think trying to see the city a little bit through her eyes and imagining some of her impressions of Bristol if she was coming here for the first time, which, I think for that character she lives very rurally. I don’t think she gets to the city much and Bristol’s kind of her big, big city on the horizon.

Quite interesting to think about, even though I know the city really well these days, what she would make of my morning and the route I’ve been on and all these steps.

  1. And I’m here! ‘Theatre Collection, Archive and Museum of British Theatre and Live Art, Visitors Welcome, Admission Free, University of Bristol’.

And for those of you who maybe have never been here or don’t even know quite where it is, it’s not far from Park Street. And it’s a sort of a quite amazing building, with a rounded front and, sort of, I guess you would call them crenellations along the front. So it looks a bit castle-like, a little bit magical and it’s time to step inside.

So inside you come into a big panelled room, you can probably hear it’s a little bit echoey and quite exciting and someone’s coming down the stairs to greet me….

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Theatre collection. We have your items for you, if you’d like to follow me.

Speaker 1:

Thank you.

———

Speaker 1:

Wow. So it’s been quite a fascinating morning.

I’m now standing just outside the reading room of the archive, just having a quick cup of coffee and refreshments because no food or drink is allowed in the reading room itself, with the materials from the archive, which is understandable.

And just reflecting on my first foray into the Kevin Elyot Archive. I asked for a lot of different materials really for my first day, mostly around My Night with Reg, which is one of Elyot’s most famous plays and I definitely asked for too many things!

I’ve got 4 big boxes. Blue boxes of materials around My Night with Reg, all sorts of notebooks and planning from Kevin as well as different scripts and drafts and also some screenplays from when My Night With Reg became a film. And each folder is just beautifully organised and wrapped up with, like, sort of canvas ribbon which might be very, very familiar to people who work in archives a lot. But this is all quite new to me and quite exciting.

And it feels a little bit like being given some gifts and treasures from Kevin’s work and his process.

And really today I’ve just looked in detail at two of his notebooks of his very early starting point ideas that become the play My Night With Reg.

But what’s fascinating looking through the notebooks is seeing that actually a lot of the ideas that surface in My Night With Reg start their life in other plays, in other ideas for other plays, for short sequels or sketches.

And they’re all just jotted down. And these themes keep popping up and reoccurring.

Some ideas that Elyot clearly didn’t want to lose, and he’s written notes to himself. Like ‘Don’t forget the tomato sauce theme’.

And it’s really reassuring and exciting to see, as I suppose somebody who is right at the beginning of their journey with playwriting. Because I’m thinking I’ve got notebooks strewn with some of those sorts of notes and not as detailed as Kevin’s, and certainly not as many notebooks. Not yet. But there’s a familiarity to me in seeing those process notes to yourself and all these questions he’s asking of himself and of his characters and of his ideas. There’s lots of question marks in brackets.

And I think that’s something that really strikes me about the process of playwriting. Certainly for me, where I’m at right now with thinking about the play that I’ve pitched for this award that’s in its extreme infancy. And also, I suppose as you go through a process: that you’re always in conversation with yourself.

A little bit like I am in this audio diary. You’re always in conversation with yourself.

Asking yourself things, bucking yourself up. There’s some really encouraging notes that Kevin has written to himself where you can see there’s been a burst of enthusiasm about the project and he’s written:

Oh! ‘My Night with Reg could be a real event. I just need to write a really good play’. And find the right set of characters and there’s like 3 exclamation marks. And that burst of energy feels familiar to me too, as a creative.

The moments when you get really behind yourself and really fired up and then other moments where you start to lose the plot and wonder if you have anything to say at all.

And that also came up in these notebooks. At one point, Elyot had scribbled down an idea for a play that was about a writer who actually had absolutely nothing to say.

And wow, that sort of stopped me in my tracks. Because isn’t that every playwright’s greatest fear that actually, we have nothing of interest to say?

So of course we don’t know, but I wonder if Elyot came up with that idea in one of those moments, or reflecting on those moments in the creative process, where you really doubt yourself as well.

———

And that’s it. I’m back outside the Theatre Collection, standing on the chilly streets, looking over at the very lovely Greek bakery. Looks very tempting.

First day of my residency through the Kevin Elyot Award, done!

Those questions that Elyot asked himself. All of these question marks at the end of sentences and what ifs. I’ve noticed he does a lot of writing out of ‘what if’ kind of paragraphs, of just ‘what if this is the through line?’

‘What if the dishy guy is somebody they never meet?’ Question mark.

Just as he’s scribbling to himself.

And already it’s really made me want to just go and write my own questions of my own characters, my own sort of ‘what if’ paragraphs. So I think that’s what I’m going to do now. I will pop across the road, maybe treat myself to a hot chocolate from the Greek bakery, and do some writing.

Forkbeard Fantasy – An Adventure in Opening Boxes

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By Rosie Smith, Project Archivist, Forkbeard Fantasy 

I have been tasked with cataloguing the Forkbeard Fantasy archive. Having learnt about the company, the next step was to find out what is actually in the archive.

Tim’s explanation of why he should not be allowed to play Alice

There are 77 boxes, all of which I have now opened and investigated. I did no sorting or cataloguing; just looked at what’s inside. Thankfully I had been provided with a box list, so I knew whether to expect ‘production material’, ‘photos’ or ‘Penny’s designs.’ While a very helpful starting point, those titles do not do justice to the array of funny, joyful, and sometimes downright bizarre contents of the archive. 

When starting a new production, the Forkbeards would each purchase an A4 black notebook. In these notebooks they would scribble their thoughts and ideas, sometimes in words, sometimes in cartoon form, until slowly but surely a script emerged. Not only are their notebooks a fantastic insight into how Forkbeard developed productions, but they are also filled with Tim and Chris’s humour. One contains a drawing by Tim of himself as Alice in Wonderland, drawn to convince Chris that having him play Alice was a bad idea. Another contains a to do list that reads: ‘work out what to do and do it’ (very helpful advice). My favourite so far is a paragraph complaining about how hard it is to write a play but never mind because a new notebook will fix all the problems!  

A hand painted set design from The Little Match Girl

The Forkbeards were all artists, meaning the archive is often very pretty. Penny’s hand painted set designs for The Little Match Girl are a particularly gorgeous example. Alongside Forkbeard Fantasy productions, Tim made animated videos, often about nature and history. These can be found on YouTube – just search Forkbeard Animations – but finding the original paintings brought me great joy. Again, it’s all infused with humour. Tim measures time in ‘grannies’ – 1 granny every 50 years – the only acceptable way to measure historical time in my mind.  

Liquid film

Rummaging through the Forkbeard archive revealed not only paper documents, but also some smaller objects. In one of the boxes was a small bottle of ‘fairy liquid,’ which I’m fairly certain was washing up liquid mixed with glitter. Currently sitting on my desk is a bottle of liquid film; a piece of film negative sitting in some sort of gloopy liquid. These were used as publicity for a production called The Fall of the House of the Usherettes, which revolved around a film hunter from the National Archives searching for the mysterious and illusive liquid film. Unlike the film hunter, I now have a bottle. Now to work out if it requires special storage conditions…

There’s been some less pleasant surprises too. The archive has been stored in a barn for the last few years, resulting in all sorts of odd bits of dirt making their way into the boxes. Coffee had been spilt on one notebook, which had then grown mouldy. We are pretty sure the mould is dead, but just to be sure, the notebook is having a little holiday in our quarantine room. 

A drawing from one of Tim’s animations. The creatures are coming to say “hello!”

I now have a very good overview of what is in the physical archive. But we live in a digital age, and the archive also contains 10 hard drives of various ages. Sadly, you can’t just take the lid off to open these. Cables must be sought, some of which haven’t been sold in years. Software must be downloaded so that old file formats can be opened.  I had to learn what a driver is. And that’s all before you get to the process of trying to create a system to let you open Mac files on a Windows computer…once I’ve managed all that, I’ll let you know what’s on the hard drives! 

Transcribing Oral history Interviews

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Following Jan Wozniak’s  blog post in September 2024, students on this research unit have been contributing a series of blogs on their experiences of learning about and creating oral histories, with the final one – an overview of transcription, below.

 

Strengths and Weaknesses of Transcription in Oral History Research

By Bria, Louis and Danna

 

Transcription is essential in oral history research, enabling researchers to systematically approach and analyze data in depth. Through transcripts, researchers can repeatedly review interview content, easily identifying key themes and patterns. Text data allows for keyword searches, making locating specific topics or statements quickly; this is especially useful when handling large amounts of data. Additionally, transcribed materials are less prone to technical damage, making them well-suited for long-term preservation. This ensures that data remains accessible and can be utilized for future research. Furthermore, transcripts are convenient for direct citation in research papers or reports, helping readers to better understand interview content. Thanks to these strengths, transcription enhances the quality of oral history research and plays a vital role in the effective utilization of interview data.

Regarding the oral history research for our project, there are potential weaknesses and challenges in using transcription. Firstly, when dealing with qualitative data as we are, the process of transcribing can be a time-consuming and potentially expensive process. Due to our interviewees’ conversational and anecdotal nature, capturing tone and character is integral to analyzing the personal impacts and experiences of youth theatre. It can be argued that preserving these nuances in written text is challenging and the downside is losing the potentially critical qualities of the interview. Additionally, the existence and archival preservation of a transcript may discourage future researchers from watching/listening to the original interview recording. In effect this could produce potentially misleading analysis of our data.

Transcribing the interviews from an oral to a written mode structures the interview conversations in a form amenable to closer analysis, and is in itself an initial analysis (Rapley, 2007). Transcription is a detailed process that goes beyond converting spoken words into text. Transcription is a critical interpretive step that requires researchers to make choices about what elements to capture, such as tone, pauses, and emotional nuances. These choices shape the final analysis and can alter how findings are understood. Steiner Kvale, in Doing Interviews outlines different transcription methods – like verbatim and summarized approaches – explaining how each serves specific research purposes. He also addresses ethical issues, like respecting participant confidentiality and balancing accuracy with practical constraints. He highlights the need to protect participants’ confidentiality carefully when transcribing sensitive information from interviews, and advises researchers to anonymize any identifiable details to maintain privacy. At the same time, Kvale notes the challenge of balancing the depth of transcription with the time and resources available. He suggests capturing essential details that reflect the meaning and nuances of responses while accepting practical constraints, ensuring the data remains useful without overwhelming researchers with excessive detail.

Sources: Rapley, Tim. (2007). Doing conversation, discourse and document analysis. Sage Publications Ltd.; Kvale, Steiner. (2007). Doing Interviews. Sage Publications Ltd.

 

Final Thoughts on the Transcription Process

by Callum and Issy

 

Throughout this research project, a key idea has been how we record and preserve information. Oral history is a method for researching personal histories and stories; stories that may not always feature in larger, published cultural histories. But to ensure that the stories are preserved, the process of transcribing the interviews needs to occur. However, when evaluating this, we did identify a variety of strengths and weaknesses with this practice.

A primary and positive feature is that it makes the interviews, and therefore the information, much more accessible. For example, VHS tapes were once a norm in every household and so videos in that format were accessible to everyone. But now, we can’t remember the last time we saw a video player and so for us, that information is lost. Similarly, whatever audio format the interviews are stored on will at some point in the future becomeoutdated and inaccessible. But paper and written words will always be there.

Another benefit of transcribing oral history is that it is quicker and easier to analyse. In order to be able to search for a specific point in the recording, it must be transcribed, be that by AI or a human. Furthermore, from our perspective, by transcribing the interviews it means that we, as researchers, are going back through the information we have gathered and analysing it in closer detail.

In addition to the benefits of transcription, it can also have restrictions as a data medium. As opposed to audio files, transcriptions can be misinterpreted due to a lack of expression, speech tones and emphasis within the document. Researchers and readers then rely on a transcriber to correctly interpret emotion into words, making it a more processed form of oral history. As well as this, transcriptions are time consuming to create however easy to research. This means that researchers are able to decide on what they believe to be important information instead of what the interviewee decided to put emphasis on.

To conclude, transcriptions both pose positive and negative effects to the interpretation of oral history. With them, research can be more efficient, yet possibly more unreliable. However, for our research project, with the limited amount of time available, transcriptions will be an efficacious tool to aid our research.