Theatre programmes, playbills and related items

Miscellaneous collection of mostly programmes and playbills for plays, musicals and operas, with some other related materials. This also includes a Yearbook for The Actors Association in 1917 with a list of members; a file of five items relating to Joseph H. Riley concerts; a playbill for the "spiral globe ascensionist" Ethardo at the Shrewsbury Great Floral Fete; a book of the words for the opera 'Maritana'; several newspaper cuttings of reviews for various plays related to programmes within the collection; a newspaper cutting noting the death of actor H. H. Vincent Barnett; a selection of postcards mostly related to the theatre or signed by known actors; and a seemingly unrelated postcard of the Hans Holbein portrait of Anne of Cleaves.

Although the collection spans from 1818 to 1936, the majority of the files date from the 1880s to the 1890s or from the 1910s to the 1930s, with a few exceptions. Many of the programmes relate to performances held in Birmingham. but also for performances held in London, Worcester, Droitwich, Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon, Lincoln, Scarborough, and others. This includes mostly productions by well-established companies and theatres, but also some amateur performances.

Within the programmes can be found many contemporary advertisements for not only other productions but also for a wide variety of products.

Several of the items have been annotated in pencil and pen to note the date of a production, or to add information about the actors in a performance by an unknown author. Some of the programmes for performances by the Droitwich Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society have been signed by various members of the cast and production team.

The compiler of the collection is unknown.

Arranged in a single sequence of files in numerical order according to the numbers assigned, with unnumbered files at the end of the sequence in no particular order. Detailed information about productions, including venues, names of casts and production teams has been extracted from the contents of each file for each catalogue record.

Open, access to all registered researchers.

Source and date of acquisition is unknown.

Please see full catalogue for more information.

Papers catalogued by Christopher Olive, July 2018. Prepared in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G).

Permission to make any published use of any material from the collection must be sought in advance in writing from the Director, Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections (email: special-collections@contacts.bham.ac.uk). Identification of copyright holders of unpublished material is often difficult. The Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections will assist where possible with identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material.

The contents of this volume from MS 939/1 to MS 939/132 were formerly numbered and incorporated into a collection called the Theatre Collection, although MS 939/133 onwards was not part of this original numbering sequence. It has now been identified as an unconnected acquisition and catalogued as a discrete collection.
The provenance of this collection and the immediate source and date of its receipt is unknown. However, the collection was known to have been housed in the Special Collections Department by the 1960s. Each file was given a running number by library staff, but this numbering sequence does not appear to reflect the original arrangement by the creator which seems to have been alphabetical by title of play. At some point this box was reordered to sort the material by theatre in which performances were held, which disrupts the original numbering sequence. The files are now ordered chronologically by their original numbers, with the unnumbered files at the end of the collection.

The Special Collections Department holds other personal and artificial collections of theatre playbills, programmes, newscuttings and associated materials. These smaller collections, which were formerly incorporated into the Theatre Collection, include the following:

Theatre Collection, MS38;
Heron-Allen album of playbills, MS107;
Colyer-Fergusson albums, MS108;
The Williams Theatre collection, MS109;
Volume of playbills, MS110;
Album of programmes, MS111;
Louis Cohen Collection, MS112;
The Kemp album, MS113;
Volume of Shakespearian souvenirs and programmes, MS114;
Album of presscuttings, photographs and theatre programmes, MS808;
Theatre programmes, MS897;
Birmingham Repertory Theatre programmes, MS934,
Theatre programmes collected by Andrew Leigh, MS937;
Collection of miscellaneous theatre programmes, playbills, and related items, MS939;
Regional theatre programmes: artificial collection, MS991;
Theatre programmes and ephemera, MS1016;
Theatre programmes, MS1035;
Scrapbook for the 1912 production of 'Twelfth Night', MS1058;
Ephemera relating to Victoria Wood, MS1061;
Theatre programme of 1912 production of 'Twelfth Night', MS1062.