Theatre & Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
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Funded by the AHRC, this collaborative research project examines theatre spectacle and spectatorship in the long nineteenth century by considering it as a significant and integrated part of visual culture. It brings together Jim Davis, Kate Newey, Pat Smyth and Kate Holmes from the University of Warwick Theatre & Performance Studies and University of Exeter Drama departments.
Theatre & Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
2y ago
– Patricia Smyth
London in the Olden Time as exhibited at the Royal Surrey Zoological Gardens, 1844, lithograph.
courtesy of the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum
When we think about nineteenth-century panoramas of cities, it is most likely the triumphalist portrayals of the modern metropolis such as Thomas Hornor’s Panorama of London of 1829 that come immediately to mind. Hornor’s 360-degree painting, exhibited at the Colosseum in Regent’s Park, showed the contemporary city in an all encompassing view taken from the top of St Paul’s cathedral, but simulations of old London, featuring urban locations ..read more
Theatre & Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
3y ago
From the early days of the project, I found myself noticing modern equivalents of panoramic images. Watching my project team members, Patricia Smyth and Jim Davis, interacting with the 1844 Illustrated London News pull out printed panorama1 led me to draw comparisons to Google Streetview even before our project started in 2018. What I found striking was how they mapped routes via this ‘new’ visual nineteenth century technology in a similar manner that twenty-first century digital technology invites. Connecting past analogue and present digital experiences influenced my approach to curating our ..read more
Theatre & Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
3y ago
When this project started in October 2018, we could all gather together in small groups. We could even peer into a large box with several other people and enjoy a showman conjuring a story from figures and small scale stage effects. At that point, we commissioned one of our project partners, Tony Lidington of Promenade Promotions to create a Peep Show.
We wanted Tony to adapt a melodrama and fixed upon The Vampire; or the Bride of the Isles by JR Planché. This was because of its unusual treatment of the vampire before the cultural trope became fixed, and because of its use of innovative stage ..read more
Theatre & Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
3y ago
Josip Martinčić reflects on our final online colloquium and where it leaves the community we have created. Josip is a third year University of Exeter and University of Bristol PhD student funded by the SWW DTP. His research looks at marginalised voices in theatre criticism in fin de siècle London. He has presented at BAVS, RSVP, TaPRA and London Stage and Nineteenth-Century World annual conferences. He teaches in the Drama department and is a visiting lecturer at Plymouth Marjon University. He has most recently been awarded a Doctoral Fellowship from the National Trust and British Library for ..read more
Theatre & Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
3y ago
Yadegar Asisi, Pergamon Panorama, 2011-12 (c) Creative Commons
We invite proposals for a collection of essays on the ways in which contemporary art and heritage practices have been engaging with forms of nineteenth-century immersive spectacle. The parallels between the technological transformation of our own time and the experiments of the early nineteenth century have long been noted and the origins of twenty-first-century immersive experiences are arguably traceable to that earlier period. In recent years, artists have revisited nineteenth-century visual presentations such as the 360-degree ..read more
Theatre & Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
3y ago
Jim Davis considers what another item from one our exhibitions reveals about how pantomime audiences were visualised by illustrators. Jim connects an item displayed in our Art of Innovation exhibition, at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, to other illustrations of pantomime audiences.
Hablot K. Browne (Phiz), Pantomime Night (Illustrated London News 8 January 1848, 7)
This illustration of a Christmas pantomime audience by Hablot K. Browne (1815-1882) – better known as Phiz – was published in the Illustrated London News on the 8 January 1848. A copy of this is also held in Bristol U ..read more
Theatre & Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
3y ago
On 27 August, 2021 Frozen opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The theatre had been dark for over 2 years, but not because of the global pandemic of COVID-19. Drury Lane closed it doors to public audiences on 5 January 2019, with that most theatrical and spectacular of musical revivals – 42nd Street. Drury Lane may have closed its doors to paying audiences then, but two weeks later, on 26 January 2019, it was opened to a group of about 100 theatre history aficionados – historians, architects, backstage personnel. We were the last audience allowed into Drury Lane before the theatre went com ..read more
Theatre & Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
3y ago
Jim Davis considers what one of the items in our Transporting and Evolving Views Bill Douglas Cinema Museum display reveals about Christmas Pantomimes and scene painters’ careers.
Panorama Publicity Handbill: Theatre Royal, Covent Garden / Roberts’ Moving Panorama in Ten Compartments (EXEBD 77257)
This advertisement for David Roberts’s moving panorama at Covent Garden Theatre reflects an annual aspect of the Christmas pantomime in this period. Held in the Bill Douglas Collection, it represents a series of episodes relating to the Russian advance on Turkey in 1828, after hostilities had broken ..read more
Theatre & Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
3y ago
Wide-angle photograph of Wilhelm Theatre Model Box (Ref: TC/O/M/8) with Model Scenary from Aladdin (Ref: TC/O/M/9) courtesy of the University of Bristol Theatre Collection
This image is a digital component of the current display at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection curated as part of this project.
The Art of Innovation: Experiencing nineteenth century theatre and Performance catalogue ..read more
Theatre & Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
3y ago
Feel free to zoom in on this picture of the University of Bristol Theatre Collection’s Star Trap:
A Star Trap from the University of Bristol Theatre Collection (TC/M/306)
This image is a digital component of the current display at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection curated as part of this project.
The Art of Innovation: Experiencing nineteenth century theatre and Performance catalogue ..read more