IMC 2011: Sessions

The Worldwide Universities Network has funded a project in the Theatre Collection in the University of Bristol in 2010-11, which set out to uncover the archives of the pioneering work of 20th-century theatrical directors, the earliest of whom defied the censors to produce medieval English religious plays for the first time since the Reformation. The project, led by Professor of Medieval Studies, Pamela King, in collaboration with staff of the Theatre Collection and other partner universities, has worked towards identifying the location, range, and extent of the extant archives, and has begun to create an on-line collection level description of them. The archives in question are very various, and include set and costume designs, scripts, correspondence, programs, newspaper cuttings, photographs, and some sound and moving image material. In parallel with the collection level archive, the project has created on-line item-level catalogues of the Medieval Players’ Archive and other material held in the Bristol Theatre Collection, as well as the E. Martin Browne and Norah Lambourn archives of the 1951 Festival of Britain and subsequent productions of the York Play. It has also hosted an on-line archive of video clips from Meg Twycross's pioneering productions at Lancaster University. The project has sought to record and help to secure all these ephemeral materials for future theatre scholars, but there is more to be done, both in further recording work and in considering the materials concerned as a record of modern cultural memory. This discussion will focus on future directions of research on modern productions of medieval plays, and particularly their place in the intellectual, cultural, and political history of the twentieth century.

Participants will include Philip Butterworth (University of Leeds), Jo Elsworth (University of Bristol), Alexandra Johnston (University of Toronto), and Nick Trigg (Univeristy of Bristol).