The Irving Family: Lives Beyond Theatre

Over the past six months, a generous private donation has made possible the cataloguing of BTC30: The Irving Family papers. Donated in 2006, with a recent addition of papers kindly donated by the family of Sir Henry Irving’s grand-daughter, Lady Elizabeth Brunner, this collection spans four generations and 140 years of the legendary Irving family and documents their place in theatre history. Through the collection we gain an insight into the business of theatre, the minutiae of running a theatre, designing for theatre and film and researching theatre history. At the same time, we witness the transition of theatre from risqué demi-monde to cultural powerhouse, capable of catapulting its exponents to stardom with the right role and even the birth of film as a medium. We also get a glimpse of the people behind the celebrity and witness the breakdown of marriages, the grief over the early death of a son and the struggles of subsequent generations to reconcile themselves to the long shadows cast by their most famous forebear.

BTC30/2/1/17/16: Sir Henry Irving as Mephistopheles – drawing for a menu card for the Irving Banquet at the Edinburgh Pen and Pencil Club, 1 September 1887

The figure of Sir Henry Irving arguably marks the apogee of the rise of the great actor-manager, becoming the first actor to be knighted for his theatrical work.  His papers in the Irving Family Collection mainly deal with the minutiae of making theatre, comprising legal agreements over the rights and commissioning of pieces and Lord Chamberlain’s licenses for the performance of specific plays as well as theatre licenses and wines and spirit sale licenses (BTC30/2/2/1). And yet amongst these seemingly mundane papers there are glimpses into Victorian popular culture at its height. An agreement over the transfer of rights to the music for a production of Macbeth in 1888 (BTC30/2/1/31) directly connects three legends of Victorian popular culture. The composer for this production was Arthur Sullivan, most famous of course for his operatic collaborations with W.S. Gilbert, and the role of Lady Macbeth was played by Ellen Terry, Henry Irving’s leading lady from 1878 to 1902 and one of the most famous actresses of the age. So electrifying was her performance on the opening night, that John Singer Sargent allegedly left the theatre and immediately began work on a portrait of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, which now hangs in the Tate (‘Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth‘, John Singer Sargent, 1889 | Tate). And so, this one agreement brings together composer, actress and artist, uniting the worlds of music, theatre and art in one single document.

The collection also reveals the darker side of Sir Henry’s acting celebrity. Although he reached, arguably, the height of Victorian society, Sir Henry’s decision to pursue an acting career caused an irretrievable breakdown in his marriage. Although we might consider that the conservative Victorians disapproved of divorce, BTC30/3/2/1 reveals the ways that the Irvings negotiated this disapproval, organising a formal separation which covered Florence Irving’s maintenance, the custody, schooling and visitation of their children and even Florence’s concern that Sir Henry’s friendship with another woman would, despite their separation, reflect on her.

BTC30/5/7/1 Henry Brodribb Irving and the cast of the Oxford University Dramatic Society in As You Like It

The collection reveals the long shadow that Sir Henry Irving cast, and the very different ways that his descendants chose to forge their own paths. Sir Henry’s elder son Henry Brodribb Irving began acting in student productions for the Oxford University Dramatic Society before beginning, despite his father’s reservations, his own acting career. Henry tried to forge a separate path from his famous father, although on a parallel track; founding his own acting troupe, which toured South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, before taking over the lease of the Savoy Theatre and following his father’s lead as actor manager. He also reprised some of his father’s productions, including The Lyons Mail and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (although he used a new dramatic adaptation by J. Comyns Carr, rather than the infamous Richard Mansfield version that his father had brought to the Lyceum in 1888).

BTC30/5/7/3 & 4: Henry Brodribb Irving as both Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, c. 1910
BTC30/5/7/3 & 4: Henry Brodribb Irving as both Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, c. 1910

His brother Laurence Sydney Irving, on the other hand, worked directly with their father, acting with Sir Henry Irving’s troupe for several years. However, Laurence forged his own path as a writer, with several of his plays performed by Sir Henry’s Lyceum troupe before he went on to found his own acting troupe, taking it on tour in the USA and Canda. It is unclear to what extent Laurence Sydney Irving would step out from his father’s shadow since both Laurence and his wife would perish in the sinking of the Empress of Ireland steamship, sunk as it left harbour in Canada, in June 1914 with the loss of up to 1000 lives, including that of the young Irvings.

BTC30/7/4/5: Laurence Sydney Irving in Typhoon, c. 1912-1914

The collection also reveals the rise of the celebrity actress. Perhaps learning from the breakdown of their parents’ marriage, both Henry Brodribb and Laurence Sydney Irving married fellow actors. In the case of Henry Brodribb Irving, his wife Dorothea had already begun to carve out her own theatrical career and her part of the collection reveals some of the difficulties faced by actresses in the era, the potential for them to reach meteoric success and even the difficulties of being too closely associated with one role. BTC30/6/3/2 are transcripts of letters exchanged between Dorothea Baird, her future husband and other members of her family describing the trials of life on tour, including the difficult line walked by actresses who wished to retain their so-called moral character. The letters also reveal Dorothea’s attempts to provide her own costumes as well as her enthusiasm for the new hobby of cycling. However, this enthusiasm had its downside when Herbert Beerbohm Tree had to provide Dorothea with specific makeup since her relentless cycling had made her altogether too healthy for her to be a convincing corpse in the final act of Trilby!

BTC30/6/5: Page from a press cutting album kept by Dorothea Baird recording her career

By the third generation, the Irving family’s theatrical talents had developed in other directions, although Henry Brodribb and Dorothea Irving’s daughter Dorothea Elizabeth  (Lady Elizabeth Brunner) had a brief acting career before turning her attention to charitable activities, becoming Chairman of the National Federation of Women’s Institutions, organising the building of the Women’s Institute training centre Denman College and founding the Keep Britain Tidy Campaign. Her brother, Laurence Henry Irving also kept the theatrical flame alive, albeit as a designer and theatre historian rather than as an actor himself.

After a wartime stint as a pilot in the Royal Naval Air Service during the First World War (during which he was awarded the Croix du Guerre), Laurence Henry Irving enrolled at the Byam Shaw Art School and then the Royal Academy School, hoping to begin an art career, and in the 1920s he illustrated two books. A fortuitous introduction in 1926 set him on a theatrical path, and incidentally, led to the creation of one of children’s literature’s most enduring, and endearing, characters. In 1926, Laurence Irving was invited to design the sets for two numbers in the musical revue Vaudeville Vanities, and he struck up a friendship with the writer of one of the numbers, one A.A. Milne. As both men had young families of about the same age, Laurence Irving organised a trip for their children to London Zoo, the highlight of which was to be a feeding of Winnie, a Canadian Black bear, who had been brought to the UK as a regimental mascot for a Canadian regiment during the First World War, and who had remained in the care of London Zoo after the war. Milne’s young son Christopher, after some initial reservations, became fascinated by Winnie and this interaction inspired Milne to create his fictional bear, Winnie-the-Pooh.  But without Laurence Irving’s involvement with Vaudeville Vanities, Christopher Robin would never had met Winnie the bear, and thousands of children’s lives would have been immeasurably poorer!

BTC30/8/7/150: Letter from Christopher Milne 
BTC30/8/7/150:  Photograph from the unveiling of a statue to the bear Winnie, 21 October 1981

Laurence Henry Irving continued to be closely associated with the theatre, designing sets and costumes for numerous productions including Punchinello at the Globe, Becket (the play in which his grandfather made his last ever appearance on the night he died) and even Hamlet for the Old Vic. In 1929, silent film star Douglas Fairbanks invited Laurence Irving to California and he began a career as a film designer, designing for two Douglas Fairbanks films; The Taming of the Shrew and The Man in the Iron Mask.  Returning to Britain in the 1930s, Laurence Henry Irving continued to design for several British films, most notably Moonlight Sonata, starring Polish statesman turned concert pianist Jan Paderewski, and Gabriel Pascal’s adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.  The latter allowed Laurence to finally call a halt to an acrimonious dispute with George Bernard Shaw which had begun two generations earlier with Shaw’s disparaging comments on Sir Henry Irving’s funeral.

BTC30/8/1/12 Photograph taken during filming of Moonlight Sonata with Laurence Irving’s sets, 1936
BTC30/8/1/15/2: Laurence Irving’s design for John Hastings Turner’s Punchinello at the Globe Theatre, 1929

The collection also reveals the deeper impacts Laurence Henry Irving had on the development of twentieth century theatre. In 1933, shortly before he returned to Hollywood to design Douglas Fairbanks’ film version of The Man in the Iron Mask, Laurence Irving had become involved in the Canterbury Festival of Music and Drama, which commissioned as its first annual play The Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot, beginning what some consider the revival of religious drama, and Irving remained involved with the Canterbury Festival for decades. He was also a board member of RADA, continuing three generations of Irving involvement in the school; following on from Sir Henry Irving’s role as a trustee of the school and Henry Brodribb Irving’s donation to the school of a portion of the proceeds from his starring in an early film.

Laurence Henry Irving, and later his son John, also carved out their own place in the Irving family as historians and researchers. In 1959, Laurence Irving published “Sir Henry Irving; the Actor and his World”, a biography of his grandfather, following it up with “The Successors” in 1968, the first of a proposed trilogy of books covering a century of theatre history as seen through his own family history. John Irving, Laurence’s son, while continuing his own career in television and radio (and one of John’s letters to his father is particularly interesting for its descriptions of the preparations in his BBC department for the arrival of television) continued his father’s interest in their family history. In 2006, John oversaw the publication a section of his father’s autobiography dealing with his time in Hollywood as “Designing for the Movies”  (BTC30/10/1) and he was also an influential figure in the Irving Society, conducting research on and bringing together copies of many of the collections of Irving material held in overseas collections, including Harvard University, San Marino California and the papers of Stephen Coleridge, as well as conducting family research on the Brodribb family, into which Sir Henry Irving had been born, having changed his name from John Henry Irving Brodribb when he began his stage career.

As well as the professional lives of Irving family, the collection also allows us glimpses into the private lives of these celebrated theatrical figures. BTC30/2/1/53 is especially poignant. At first glance a routine programme for a regular touring performance of Henry Irving and his company in Becket and The Merchant of Venice, a closer examination of the date reveals that the last performance of The Merchant of Venice advertised, never took place as Sir Henry Irving died on the evening of 13 October 1905, after the evening performance of Becket, truly a farewell performance.

BTC30/2/1/53: Programme for a farewell performance of Becket and Merchant of Venice, 10-14 October 1905

Only a decade after Sir Henry Irving’s relatively early death, Florence Irving would lose both her sons within five years. Laurence Sydney Irving died in 1914 when the steamship Empress of Ireland on which he was travelling was sunk in harbour in Canada, inciting a flood of condolence correspondence to his mother and brother. Then in 1918, Henry Brodribb Irving died of a kidney disease at the age of only 49, leaving his mother, his wife and his two children. Celebrity is no defence against grief, and despite their legendary reputation, the Irving Family collection reveals both the public commiserations and the very private griefs.

: BTC30/5/5/4: Letter sent to Henry Brodribb Irving on behalf of King George V and Queen Mary sending their commiserations on the death of his brother Laurence Sydney Irving, 1914

These are just a very few of the many stories that have been revealed during the cataloguing of the Irving family papers and we are expecting a new addition to this collection that will hopefully reveal many more. Or you can search for some of these stories yourself. The Theatre collection is open to researchers from Tuesdays to Fridays and we welcome visitors and researchers alike. Or you can consult our online catalogue (Theatre Collection (calmview.co.uk)) or our website (www.bristol.ac.uk/theatre-collection) for more details.

DV8’s archive now catalogued and available to view

Following his retirement, Lloyd Newson, Artistic Director of DV8 Physical Theatre, took the decision to donate the company’s archive to the University of Bristol Theatre Collection. This blog post will give you an idea of who the company were, the contents of the archive, and the process by which we went about ensuring that this collection will be maintained safely and intelligibly for anyone who wishes to view it in the future.

DV8 Physical Theatre (London, United Kingdom) was officially founded in 1986 by Lloyd Newson (1986-2015), Michelle Richecoeur (1986-88) and Nigel Charnock (1986-1989, 1992). Newson led the company as choreographer and artistic director since its inception, apart from My Sex, Our Dance (1986), which was co-created and performed with Charnock.

Newson, Charnock and Richecoeur had become disillusioned with what they saw as the preoccupations of most contemporary dance, considering it disconnected from the real world. The term ‘Physical Theatre’ was chosen due to the looser restrictions that come with that description, allowing them to incorporate whatever they felt necessary to say what they wanted to say. This included, but was not limited to film, dance, circus skills and text. DV8’s work sought to take risks, aesthetically and physically, and, above all, tried to communicate ideas and feelings clearly and unpretentiously.

Since receiving the collection in the spring of 2022, the Theatre Collection have been working on preparing the records of DV8 for long-term preservation and access to the public. The collection includes material from all DV8’s stage and film productions, consisting of photographs, film, stage plans and technical information, programmes, press and other documentation.

Pictures of archival boxes with the names of DV8 productions written on them.

Archiving is a team effort.  As the collection is made up of physical and digital material, the work to process this collection has been undertaken by several of us here at the Theatre Collection including our Audiovisual and Photography Digitisation officers Nigel Bryant and Sarah Bustamante-Brauning, Archive Assistant Laura Dow, Digital Archive Assistant Sam Brenton, as well as myself as Project Archivist. The work has included safely storing physical items using specialist, inert archival packaging to enable the preservation of material over the long-term, creating accessible copies of digital files whilst ensuring that a set of digital preservation copies can be maintained, and creating catalogue records describing the items within the collection.  There are almost two thousand items listed on the online catalogue which are available to view at the Theatre Collection.

Notably, the collection includes full recordings of several stage productions including The Cost of Living, Enter Achilles, To Be Straight With You, Can We Talk About This? and JOHN, as well as copies of the films My Sex, Our Dance, Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men, Strange Fish, Enter Achilles and The Cost of Living.  All of these are available to watch at the Theatre Collection (Due to copyright restrictions, we are unable to publish these online, but four of the films produced by DV8 can be viewed online, via Digital Theatre and some clips are also available to watch on DV8’s YouTube channel.

Photograph of three male performers revelling on a high street.

DV8/1/20/4/3, promotional photograph for Enter Achilles (2020) Copyright – Hugo Glendinning

The collection also contains documents and diagrams relating to design, such as lighting plans and stage designs for productions including Strange Fish and Enter Achilles, and items such as projector slides, used as part of DV8’s performance piece at the Tate Modern London, Living Costs.

The DV8 archive contains a wealth of material of interest to researchers, students, educators, and those generally interested in live art, dance and/or theatre. DV8 was a radically innovative company reflected in the critical recognition the company received during its lifetime and the recognition given to choreographer and Artistic Director Lloyd Newson, who was cited by the Critics Circle in 2013 as being one of the hundred most influential artists working in Britain during the last hundred years. In that same year, Newson was awarded an OBE for services to contemporary dance and prior to this received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Roehampton (2011). DV8 garnered over 50 national and international awards during its existence.

The collection is ready to view in our reading rooms, and a detailed catalogue of its contents can be viewed here (clicking on the underlined RefNo ‘DV8’ will begin to open up the directory, or ‘hierarchy’ of the archive catalogue)Please get in touch with us if you would like more information.

Artist-in-Residence Placement: Learning from Letters

It’s been nearly two months since my last blog post, and during my hiatus, my designated placement time with the Theatre Collection has been spent developing my research skills, as well as learning more about archiving and museum curatorial practices with Jill Sullivan (Assistant Keeper: User Services) and Athene Bain (Archives Assistant). These conversations have brought up some important context and theory behind archiving, as well as thought-provoking considerations about the preservation and access strategies of archives and museums. Furthermore, my gained understanding has supported my artistic process as I’ve begun to synthesise connections between particular archive items of interest, leading towards the creative conceptualisation and design of my performance.

My research has been guided by my exploration into the presentations of memory in theatre, either in the content of the play itself or discovered within the memories of the people who made and enjoyed theatre. I’ve paid particular attention to the visual materials such as photographs of actors, costume designs and set models, but I’ve unexpectedly been thoroughly engaged –and at several moments, entertained– by the written archives, more specifically letters.

I was helpfully directed to the Jessie & Annie Bourke Collection of correspondence (Reference: BTC80), five boxes of letters detailing the professional careers and later lives of Jessie, her sister Annie, and their cousin Eva Watson, actresses of the 1860s and 1870s. In this unique collection, I found a single telegraph addressed to Annie Bourke to be particularly intriguing. Characteristically short, I spent quite some time trying to decipher this cryptic message, and its greater meaning between the lines of the faintly penciled cursive.

An uncatalogued item in BTC80 Box 1: a telegraph addressed to Annie Bourke that reads ‘Don’t come, I have to go away’

My mind instantly wandered; I began to wonder whether this message was a simple warning that Annie would be met with disappointment at a previously agreed upon meeting spot? Or was this note emotionally charged, with unwritten but potentially weighty cause behind the sender’s impulse that they had no other option than ‘to go away’? Alongside the manifold number of long letters addressed to Annie – some even addressed to the name of the character she was playing on stage at the time – these letters allude to the intense adoration male audience members had for their favourite actors and the discomforting tension between declarations of admiration and harassment. Did Annie keep the reason for this telegraph in her memory? Did she remember the letters from her many admirers? Did she have favourites? Were there admirers whom she genuinely admired back, or whom she charmed for her own pleasure as the subject of adoration? Without her own responses, documented in the letters she did or did not send, we can never know. Moreover, I had found this moment of wonder to be incredibly formative for the devising process of my performance.

In addition to the sector knowledge and skills I have acquired, I have also learnt a hard lesson that any researcher must accept: unfortunately, it is impossible to see or research everything. Whilst I allowed myself time to explore tangential archive items, given the time constraints of the duration of my placement and my own time management between my final year units, I had to decide what leads I wanted to pursue and which I regrettably had to leave behind.

My direction of research has not been linear these last few months, but despite the twists and turns, the journey has been productive and, most notably of all, joyfully absorbing. Supported by Jill’s knowledgeable suggestions, I feel I have a solid foundation of research to begin to build the design conceptualisation of my performance, which I will share with you in my next post.

 

Firestarters project update: March 2023

In 2021, the Theatre Collection successfully applied for a Research Resources Award from the Wellcome Trust for the ‘Firestarters’ project to make available the archive of the arts organisation, Welfare State International (WSI). The project was developed in response to demand to explore WSI’s innovative methodologies from a broad spectrum of researchers and practitioners and the archive will provide evidence and inspiration for future research and practice.

Founded in 1968 by John Fox and Sue Gill, Roger Coleman and others, WSI was a loose association of freelance artists brought together by shared values and philosophy.  WSI evolved from radical travelling performers to become embedded community artists and celebrants, working to weave art more fully into the fabric of life.  Under the Welfare State umbrella, a remarkable group of engineers, musicians, sculptors, performers, poets and pyrotechnicians invented and developed site-specific theatre in landscape, lantern processions, spectacular fireshows, community carnivals and participatory festivals.  The scale of the archive means that the project will take over three years to complete.  A comprehensive archive catalogue will be published online, key material will be digitised for preservation and access, and conservation work will ensure the long-term survival of this important collection.

The ‘Firestarters’ project to catalogue and make accessible the archive of the arts organisation, Welfare State International (WSI) is now underway, so we thought we’d share a project update and highlight some of the work we’ve done so far.  This first part of the project has focussed on establishing physical and intellectual control of the collection as well as safeguarding the long-term viability of the AV material through conservation and digitisation.

Cataloguing

As Project Archivist, I’ve undertaken background research and produced a full production list of more than 400 performances, events and projects for the period Welfare State International were operational to assist with the sorting process.  The first sort of 245 boxes has been completed and the second, more detailed, sort is underway with all performance-related material from the original accession now sorted by production. I assigned temporary reference numbers to all the AV material enabling digitisation to begin.

Metal film canister from WSI archive labelled with white tape that reads 'Ballad of Jimi Tunn' Welfare State Intl
Example of WSI film canister

AV digitisation

Since December 2022, Nigel Bryant, AV Digitisation Officer has digitised 146 magnetic and optical media items across 17 different formats including U-matic, VHS, Betacam, Hi8, Video 8, CD audio and DVD.  Both preservation archival quality copies and viewing copies have been produced. Digital copies of duplicate material have been identified and discarded and summary content descriptions of all digitised AV have been recorded.  Essential servicing of AV equipment also took place across several formats to ensure optimum quality of digital copies was maintained.

Video highlights have included a copy of the Barrow community film ‘King Real & The Hoodlums’ (1984) from 1” video tape, so very good quality.  The film was made for TV and involved 150 local people; script by Adrian Mitchell based on King Lear.  In addition to the film, there is also a recording of ‘King Real – making of’ feature from BBC Newsnight, which includes interviews with cast members from the local community.  This year is the 40th anniversary of the making of ‘King Real’, an occasion which has been marked by some of those involved in the film from WSI and the local community with a celebratory singalong in Barrow.

There are also recordings of other TV programmes featuring the work of WSI including the BBC2 programme Open Space with footage of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Belfast’ from a community residency in Belfast, June 1983, and the Thames TV programme Afternoon Plus featuring preparations for ‘Parliament in Flames’, interviews with WSI members, as well as audience reactions to the large-scale spectacle.  In addition to recordings of performances, there is extensive coverage of Ulverston Lantern Processions from the 1980s-1990s.

Footage of international projects includes rushes and an edit of a WSI performance ‘The Wasteland and the Wagtail’, a special commission for the 1st International Theatre Festival in Toga Village, Japan from July 1982, a complete set of high quality rushes from ‘False Creek: A Visual Symphony’ from World Expo ‘86, in Vancouver, Canada, footage of a performance of ‘The Dead Carpenter’ at Rotterdamse Kunststichting, The Netherlands in 1976, and rushes and edit of ‘Tempest on Snake Island’ for the Toronto Theatre Festival in May 1981.

Manual Film Inspections

In preparation for creating access copies for the cine film within the collection, Nigel and I have undertaken manual film inspections for all 152 16mm films, in addition to 7 Super 8mm films.  Before undertaking manual film inspections, I tested all the film for acetate film base degradation (vinegar syndrome), using A-D strips.  The small A-D strips are placed in the can and left for a specified amount of time depending on the storage conditions; the strips change colour to indicate the level of deterioration.

Manually inspecting each film is essential, so an assessment can be made about whether the film would be safe to run on a Steenbeck (flatbed film editing machine) to create access copies.  The inspection included identifying the film type and any edge codes to date the film, as well as measuring the film and core diameter to ensure appropriate storage.  A section of film was measured and compared to stock film to assess whether the storage conditions over the years had caused the film to stretch or shrink.

As the image below shows, the film was then manually wound onto a core, through a duration counter and viewer, so the film could be viewed, notes about the content recorded, and an estimated duration taken.  The film was also lightly cleaned during this process.  With manual film inspections, although possible to view the moving images, it is not possible to listen to any sound recordings, which makes the content more difficult to identify.

Man manually winding 16mm film from reel onto core
Nigel Bryant, AV Digitisation Officer manually winding film from a reel onto a core
16mm film passing through a duration counter and film viewer
16mm film viewer and counter

The majority of the films within the collection were stored on 2” cores or projection reels, so during the inspections all the films were wound onto the larger 3” cores for optimum storage.  Each film was assessed for physical damage including scratches, perforation damage, mould, dirt and oil, warpage and colour fading.  Splices were also inspected and repaired or reinforced where required.

Within the collection there are a few 8mm and 35mm films, which will be inspected once additional equipment can be sourced.  As can be the case with older formats, the equipment required to play or view them is often scarce and therefore can be expensive.

There’s been some great footage on the 16mm film, including some projects filmed for TV, one for the arts programme Aquarius with footage from a 3 week residency in Burnley in 1975 including the final show featuring a large procession and ice sculpture, a 1982 performance of ‘Doomsday Fair’ and an early performance from 1973 made in Rotterdam.

Still from 16mm film of man with black and white makeup wearing black google and red military style jacket
Still from 1972 WSI performance seen through 16mm film viewer

There is also some footage of a naming ceremony on Bodmin Moor from the early 1970s and the South West tour of ‘The Travels of Lancelot Quail’ from 1972, which was one month of processional theatre from Glastonbury through Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.  The footage includes the finale of the performance, as the group of performers climb aboard a boat on the beach at Marazion and head out to sea and board a submarine.  It’s been brilliant to see moving images of performances, having only seen a few photographic images whilst sorting the documentation.

We look forward to posting more project updates as we go!

Siân Williams, Project Archivist

Miniature Stage Lighting demonstration

In January 2023, Keith McLaren, the depositor of the Miniature Stage Lighting visited the Theatre Collection to show us how the Miniature Stage Lighting worked and to give an insight into how the equipment could be used.

The Miniature Stage Lighting was deposited in October 2022 and has been catalogued as BTC334 Miniature Stage Lighting. It is equipment designed and made by Robert Stanbury who taught stage lighting to theatre design students at the Wimbledon College of Art in the late 1950s until the mid-1960s. He also made equipment for people including the eminent lighting designers Michael Northen and Richard Pilbrow and companies such as the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. This particular equipment was ordered by Rae Hammond who was General Manager of the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham and is generally for use with 1:24 theatre design models although the equipment is larger for practical reasons. The lighting includes a control desk and several luminaires.

I worked with a colleague who took photographs of the individual parts and the process of setting them up for use. I took notes of the steps and advice, and I am creating a guide for future staff to use the equipment. We hope that our work will enable future generations to access and use the Miniature Stage Lighting in an informed way.

The process included building the stand, connecting the control desk to the mains, and connecting the luminaires to the control desk. Trial and error were needed such as to find out which lamp was connected to which dial on the control desk and the depositor gave us advice about common problems. Some of these included wires touching the body of the lamp and dirty contacts (the parts on the control desk used to assign a lamp to the left or right control dial).

I originally invited Keith to the session thinking that we would light a set model. However, he said he found this idea interesting because you don’t generally aim to light the set directly, apart from possibly motivating light (sunlight, moonlight etc.), rather relying on incidental “bounce light” from actor light. We ran out of time anyway!

The Theatre Collection also holds other items relating to lighting including collections such as BTC 155 Michael Northern Collection. Michael Northen (1921 – 2001) was the first credited Lighting Designer in the UK and his work on “The Mousetrap” can still be seen in the West End today. The JD Joe Davis Archive contains the archive of Lighting Designer Joe Davis (1912 – 1984). There is also a Mander & Mitchenson Collection reference box for lighting & sound. In addition, individual items such as lighting plots, plans and diagrams can be found within many of the other collections held at the Theatre Collection and there is a lighting section in the Theatre Collection library.

If you have archives relating to lighting (or any other aspect of professional British theatre or live art) that you would be interested in donating, please have a look at our ‘finding a home for your records’ page. You may also be interested in finding out more about caring for your records.

If you are interested in finding out more about theatre lighting, then please have a look at our catalogue and read more about visiting us.

Keith turning a dial on the lighting control desk
Keith with the Miniature Stage Lighting. Copyright: University of Bristol Theatre Collection