A treasure trove of theatrical images, including costume designs and production photographs from more than 60 years of panto, is at the heart of a new initiative which aims to bring Bristol University’s Theatre Collection to an even wider audience.

The Theatre Collection, one of the largest of its kind in the country, houses more than 300,000 items relating to the history of theatre and is a fully registered museum and major educational resource.

Thanks to an exciting initiative – the Visualising Theatre project – more than 1,000 images from the Collection have been digitised to provide a fully searchable online picture library for researchers, students, schools and other users.  The images can be downloaded free for educational use. 

A wide range of theatrical subjects are covered, including stage and costume design, 18th, 19th and 20th century prints and local production photographs, including an image from each production staged by the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Company between 1946 and 1986.

Among the items relating to panto are photographs of numerous Bristol Old Vic productions including Aladdin (from the 1940s), Puss in Boots (1950s) and Dick Whittington (1970s), colourful costume designs for characters from Widow Twankey to Mother Goose and elaborate stage designs such as the colourful gouche illustration of the front cloth that transported the audience to ancient  Arabia for a more recent 1998 Bristol Old Vic production of Aladdin.

Jo Elsworth, Keeper of the Theatre Collection said: “Digitising rare and sometimes fragile items in this way will help to protect and preserve them for future generations whilst making them available in the most accessible way.  We hope that researchers, teachers, schoolchildren, and anyone else with an interest in theatre history will benefit enormously from this important resource.”

To celebrate the Visualising Theatre project, a small display of some of the images available online can be viewed at the Theatre Collection, 21 Park Row from  Monday 22 January to Friday 23 March 2007, opening times 10am – 3pm.

Visualising Theatre was an Arts and Business project (Skills Bank Scheme).  It was funded by MLA South West and the University of Bristol (through the Alumni Foundation, the Faculty of Arts Research Directors Fund and the  Vice-Chancellor’s Strategic Fund).  Other project partners were Institute of Physics Publishing and TASI (Technical Advisory Service for Images).