Theatre collection

Archives theatre collection

Introduction

The City of Westminster Archives Centre has built a collection of thousands of playbills and theatre programmes relating to the West End and other London theatres.

Although some seventeenth, and more eighteenth century, playbills are represented, the collection is mainly comprised of nineteenth century playbills. The collection is arranged by theatre, and then in chronological order.

Early playbills tended to be plain, giving only basic information. Playbills became more elaborate by the nineteenth century. They typically gave not only the name of the theatre and the production, but also the names of the actors and their roles, plus times of performances and seat prices. The names of the better-known actors tended to appear in large lampblack typeface. Advertisements started to creep in towards the end of the nineteenth century, somewhat to the detriment of full cast listing. However, the advertisements can be a valuable source for social and cultural historians.

Important groups of nineteenth century and earlier twentieth century theatre programmes have been manually indexed by theatre, and then by the date of production. Photographs of actors, both individual and group portraits, are also manually indexed. The future bodes well with regards to the intellectual control of theatre material. Westminster City Archives is in partnership with the University of Kent Canterbury and other organisations in the Backstage Project. The project aims to provide electronic access to a national database of historical performing arts material in the UK.