DV8’s archive now catalogued and available to view

Posted on by theatrecollection

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

Posted on by theatrecollection

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

Posted on by theatrecollection

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

Posted on by theatrecollection

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

Artist-in-Residence Placement: Introduction

Posted on by theatrecollection

Hello, my name is Violet, and I’m a third year student in the Theatre and Performance Department here at Bristol. One of the final year units is ‘Professional Development in Theatre and Performance’, for which students work in partnership with a professional or community organisation to develop their professional skills on a specific project. I chose to work with the Theatre Collection, as an Artist-in-Residence, to create a performance piece based on archives and archival research.

As a third-year Theatre & English student, I’ve been lucky enough to take several units that utilised the archives and knowledge of the Theatre Collections staff. During my degree course, I have looked into the set design for productions of Chekhov’s The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard in ‘Performance Histories’, statoscopes in ‘Immersive and Site-Specific Theatre’ and even a clown costume, believed to be worn by Harry Payne, in ‘Clowning through History’. I was mesmerised by the physical fragments from the past, and the exciting process of research-informed investigation into the greater context of the item and its relation to theatre. These items preserved the liveness and creativity of performance, which is inextricably linked to the theatre makers and the projects they were produced for. This sparked my interest in contacting the Theatre Collection to ask if I could have my placement with the team to learn about archiving, freelancing as an artist and exploring what creative and performative ideas could be inspired by materials in the Collection.

My own interest in theatre is rooted in design. I have experimented with designing set, costume, prop and makeup in theatre units, student productions and my own performance as a drag artist. Most of my previous work revolves around creating dynamic and intriguing performance spaces, experimenting with the bounds of absurdity and authenticity in costume and makeup artistry, and exploring the tension between exaggerated scale and practicality in props.

Photographer: Yamuna Shukla
Photographer: Charley Williams
Photo by Moonshine Photographer

Before I pursue a postgraduate degree in performance design, I’m taking time to explore various avenues of artistry. As my interest was piqued by my previous encounters with the Collection’s archival materials, so I was intrigued to develop my own artistic practice, informed by researching designers and live art practitioners.

During the first month of my placement, I have taken my time to grasp the historical and contemporary works of live art, such as the work of Ian Smith, Nan Hoover and Crystal Theatre of the Saint. By investigating their creative process, promotional material, and recordings of their performances – with the support of the Theatre Collection team – I have built a foundation of archive research skills to begin my own process of producing a live art performance in early May. Please do look out for updates, as I will be posting regular blogs to show what archive items and artist influences have inspired me, the progression of my creative process and reflections on my placement with the Theatre Collection.