Author Archives: Jane Gallagher

Spring exhibitions

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British Theatre 1860-1940 Exhibition PosterAlthough it’s hard to believe it, time has flown and suddenly we’re almost at the end of another term. For us in Special Collections, that means it’s exhibitions time again!

As I type, the reading room is humming in a state of barely contained excitement, and that’s just the staff. This year, we have ribbons, we have German accents, we have curtains and we have bunting; there has even been a promise of costumes for the opening on Wednesday at 4.30! Needless to say, the activity is adding excitement to a grey and rainy day.

It’s hard to believe that we’re here (once again) so soon. It only seems a few weeks since all of this started back in the new year when Helen Brooks, lecturer in Drama, and I sat down with our diaries to work out the timescales for this semester’s DR575: British Theatre 1860-1940 module. The main idea of the module is to immerse students in archival material through seminars at the beginning of the term and use of sources for essays and assignments. The semester culminates in a student curated exhibition in Special Collections on a topic of the students’ choosing. In addition to this, each of the 3 groups produces a website to accompany and outlast their physical exhibition. These websites are then linked to the Special Collections website. You can have a look at last year’s exhibition pages on the website now.

We made only a few changes to last year’s module, giving each group an allotted slot in Special Collections each week (hence the Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning closures) and bringing the deadline for the website forward to two days before the exhibition. Now we’re in April and the hard work and dedication which the 17 students of the British Theatre 1860-1940 module have shown is paying off.

As with last semester, we have 3 groups of students working on 3 very different topics:

  • Theatre and war
  • The changing nature of melodrama
  • The function of music hall

Each of the groups has carried out extensive research and is now in the process of sharing out the allotted Velcro in order to fix their materials to their exhibition boards. Today is the ‘get in’ day: all three groups have today to put up everything in order to be ready for the opening tomorrow. It’s going to be a busy day but, I’m pretty sure, it will all be very rewarding.

The exhibition opens tomorrow; there is a special launch event between 4.30-6. After that, the exhibition will be open until 9th May during normal reading room opening times (Monday-Friday, 9.30-1 and 2-4.30) excluding public holidays. I intend to have the web pages live as soon as possible, so that even those of you who can’t journey all the way to Canterbury for the exhibition can still enjoy the event.

Once again, my thanks go out to all of the students for working incredibly hard and listening attentively to me endlessly repeating our  rules about the handling and use of archival materials. Huge thanks are also due to Helen Brooks, who came up with the idea of student curated exhibitions using Special Collections materials and who has been innovative and enthusiastic in her use of archival material, as well as inspiring her students and others to use the collections.

Sadly, this module won’t be running next academic year, but we hope that it will be back in the autumn of 2012, better than ever! In the meantime, please do come along to have a look at the exhibition and let us know what you think.

New theatre programme collection

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A selection of programmes from the Foulkes Collection

Foulkes programmes

In Special Collections, we’re not just custodians of dusty books and archives which have been in the University’s possession for decades. In fact, the biggest part of our collections are the Theatre Collections, and we constantly try to update and renew all of the collections in our care. The latest addition to our constantly evolving holdings is the Foulkes Collection, programmes donated to Special Collections by drama historian Professor Richard Foulkes.

Professor Foulkes is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Leicester, where he is also a member of the Centre for Victorian Studies. His specialisms are Shakespearean and 19th and 20th Century theatre. He has also been involved in the ‘Victoria and Albert, Art and Love‘ project, which ran a major exhibition at Buckingham Palace during 2010. Professor Foulkes is chairman for the Society for Theatre Research and has donated programmes dating from the 1960s up to 2008.

The Foulkes Collection provides an excellent companion to our existing theatre collections, particularly the Reading Rayner Collection. Jack Reading, who donated the Reading Rayner Collection to the University, was a founder member, chairman and then vice president of the Society for Theatre Research. The majority of Professor Foulkes’ programmes focus on provincial theatre, particularly in the midlands, while also containing material from London and America. Donated in two batches between 2009 and 2010, work has now begun on cataloguing all of these programmes.

Because the majority of our programmes cover the period from the 1940s to the 1980s extensively, but provide less coverage of more recent decades, the decision has been taken to catalogue the materials in reverse chronological order. If you have a look at the search feature on the website, you will see that Professor Foulkes’ programmes for 2008 have already been catalogued. We’re working on a webpage about the collection to stand alongside information about other collections which you can find on the site.

Another major advantage of this collection is that some of the programmes contain cuttings and reviews of the productions. Considering how frequently we are asked for reviews of specific productions, I’m sure that this will be extrememly useful to all of our researchers. If the programme includes reviews, this will be noted on the catalogue record.

It’s still a work in progress, of course, and the complete cataloguing of the collection will take a considerable time, but I will be uploading records to our website for each year as it is completed. I hope that you will find these new resources useful for your research and we would like to thank Professor Foulkes for his donation to our evolving theatre archive.

If you would like any more information on any of the materials in our collections, or if you would like to book an appointment to view specific items, please email us to ask.

Probably the last closures of the term…

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I say ‘probably’ because I never know quite what’s going to happen, but these are definitely the only closures we have planned at the moment. For seminars and the putting up of the British Theatre 1860-1940 Exhibitions, the reading room will be closed to researchers all day on:

  • Thursday 24 March
  • Friday 1 April
  • Tuesday 5 April
  • Wednesday 6 April

The exhibition will be opening on Thursday 7 April and we invite everyone who is interested in theatre, history, archives and enthusiastic students’ work to come along and have a look over the Easter period.

For general readers, please be aware that spaces in the reading room will be very limited while the exhibition is on so it is essential to book well in advance.

Please note that the previous notice about weekly closures on Thursday mornings and Wednesday afternoons is still valid until 6 April.

If in doubt, you can check the Library News, where all of our closures are listed.

Canterbury Cathedral library

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Here at Special Collections, we’ve recently been taking an extra special interest in the work of Canterbury Cathedral Library. The University of Kent’s Templeman Library is linked to the Cathedral’s library through the acquisition of the Mendham Collection but unfortunately in recent years there has been little opportunity to further this link.

However, all that is about to change. Over the next few months, we’ll be undertaking staff working exchange visits between Special Collections and the Cathedral library, to get to know the work and collections involved and how we can help each other. The Cathedral Library and its team have already proved invaluable to us, offering conservation, advice and, when it comes to disasters, immediate assistance! We hope that we can now build up a co-operative service for researchers and lecturers from the University, to make the most of our combined collections.

In keeping with this spirit of shared information and expertise, we hope to be able to publicise Cathedral library events and news on this blog from time to time. The first of these announcements is the Cathedral library’s programme of events for 2011 – including the launch of the newly refurbished library building, at which Dr David Starkey will give a talk on his favourite books from the library. Do have a look at these and come along to discover the history and heritage which the Cathedral and its library has preserved for centuries.

A theatre manager’s arsenal

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Following on from my earlier Melvillodrama post, we have one brief typescript reminiscence of Walter Melville of the dangers of weapons on stage which I’m desperate to share (0599807/19). I often get this out for seminars, but I think most people don’t get around to reading it, which is a shame because it shows all the trademark humour and eccentricity of the Melville family.

‘A Melodrama would be lost without a scene in which a dagger, revolver or gun is used’, according to Walter. In order to legally use a weapon on stage, a licence had to be granted; in one case, Walter ran up against problems due to the fact that a named person had to be granted the right to carry a revolver. Since Walter himself was not playing the part, and could not be sure that the same actor would be in that role on every night, the imaginative ‘…Inspector of police…decided to grant a licence…in the fictitious name of the villain in the play. Thus a non existing person possessed a licence to carry a revolver’.

Discussing the dangers of weapons on stage, Walter relates the tale of a faulty prop, which, unknown to the Property man  ‘continually misfired’ and so was

‘loaded…until the charges came to the mouth of the barrel. This gun…exploded with wonderful effect – it put out every gas light in the Theatre.’

Although it seems a fitting drama for a melodrama, you wonder whether the people nearby thought it was a wonderful effect!

Publicity postcard for The Worst Woman in London

Publicity postcard

Disasters with weapons didn’t always involve blood or explosions, however. During an 1899 production of ‘The Worst Woman in London’, the gun with which the villianess was supposed to kill her elderly husband failed to go off,

‘…and the man in the wings who is supposed to safeguard this happening, for some reason of another did not fire the deputy shot. The Villainess realising the old man’s death was desirable for the good of the Show, crossed to the bedside and stabbed him with the end of the revolver. The old gentleman seemed perfectly satisfied with the change in the method of his murder and spoke his usual line – “I am shot”.’

Walter’s story of how he came to be in possession of a revolver of his own is a real-life melodrama;

An acquaintance of mine, not in the Theatrical business, got himself into some difficulties and decided that the only way out of the scrape was to shoot himself. He came along to my office and making up his mind very suddenly – he pulled out this revolver, fully loaded, and said to me – “Goodbye Walter” Acting on the spur of the moment, I brought my fist into play and knocked the revolver out of his hand, telling him that if he claimed to be a friend of mine not to do this dirty business in my office, but to go into the Street and do whatever he liked to himself there.

Of course, the others of the Melville family seem just as unusual as Walter. Walter once mentioned to his ‘Brother’ (presumably wither Fred or Andrew II) the necessity of having a licence for his firearms, pointing out that he had none and owned ‘100 rifles, 30 revolvers and 3 machine guns’, a sizable arsenal for a theatre manager. When this brother finally asked for a licence, in a provincial town,

‘the Inspector told him he was only in the position to licence one article and as he was in possession of an armoury, he had better get out of the office and do what he liked in the matter’.

I look forward to discovering more of the dramatic life and times of the Melvilles as I continue to get out parts of the collection for researchers!