Core Collections
Overview
Historically, 'artificial collections' were established within the Theatre Collection to group together, according to type of material, smaller donations to make them more accessible to researchers.
Theatre Collection Archivists stopped using this cataloguing system in 2018, but the legacy still forms a core foundation of our holdings. The artificial collections were classified by:
| Theatre Collection | The Theatre Collections holds several core collections organised by type. This includes: Designs, Audio-visual, Objects, Photographs and Portraits, Playbills and Posters, Programmes, Promptbooks and Playscripts, Rare book collection, and Written documents. |
| Theatre Collection: Designs | This artificial collection is broken down into five categories: costume designs, decor designs, publicity designs, set designs and theatre architectural designs and plans . Much of the material is 19th and 20th century, with notable designers including Wilhelm, Doris Zinkeisen and Yolanda Sonnabend. |
| Theatre Collection: Audio-visual | Audio-visual material within this collection includes live performances and recordings for radio. Audio-visual formats include VHS video, audio tapes, LP record, Mini DV, CD-ROM, and DVD-ROM. Some of these items have been digitised, please contact us for more information. |
| Theatre Collection: Objects | Four costumes, including gloves worn and signed by Laurence Olivier from the Royal Court Theatre production of the Entertainer (1957) and a nineteenth century child's pantomime costume. Ephemera includes Silver Tickets from the Theatre Royal, Bristol and an evening handbag belonging to Vivien Leigh. |
| Theatre Collection: Photographs and Portraits | Within Photographs and Portraits are: Character portraits, lanterns slides (including the Magic Lantern Slide Collection), miscellaneous photographs, portraits, scenes and images of theatres. |
| Theatre Collection: Playbills and Posters | There are nearly 2000 posters and playbills within this collection, dating from the 18th century through to the 20th century. |
| Theatre Collection: Promptbooks and Playscripts | A small collection of promptbooks and playscripts featuring including The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde written in the international language of Esperanto. |
| Theatre Collection: Rare Books |
This is the Theatre Collection's collection of rare books, as distinct from the main run of library books. To be classified as rare, a book needs to be pre-1900, a limited print run, published by a private press, heavily annotated (but not considered archival material) or unusual. Items include Howard Staunton facsimile of the First Folio (1623) of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, published 1886 and Guy Tracey Watts Theatrical Bristol (Holloway & Son, 1915). The Theatre Collection has a much larger collection of rare books as part of the University of Bristol library catalogue. Please email theatre-collection@bristol.ac.uk for more information. |
| Theatre Collection: Written Documents | Written documents are separated into categories including: correspondence, miscellaneous, playbills and posters, printed material, scripts, technical production papers and programmes. Productions from Bristol and Bath are particularly well represented within the programmes, as well as London theatres including Ambassadors Theatre, Apollo Theatre and Almeida Theatre. If you cannot find the programme you are looking for, please contact us. |
‘Artificial collection’ means that the items in the collection were not all acquired from the same place and owner (the provenance of the items throughout this collection is not the same). Instead, several accessions have been grouped together (by format in this instance).