What a week! We’ve all been very busy here at CEDAR, and what with the new term looming I’ve been focusing on preparing workshops for the students and getting in touch with our partners to work with them a lot closer in the new term.

But, to the archive! Matt and I have been wading through the Hackney Empire archive and have finally chosen the posters that will be digitised. As we were doing it we were constantly struggling with choosing what not to include. What is irrelevant about any of the material? It all contributes to the history of the Hackney Empire. But one of our guiding principles was to choose a range of material that reflected this extraordinary diverse theatre, and the final collection is mind-boggling. Ultimately Hackney Empire is all about the audience it aims to perform for, and if there is any sort of through-line with this material it is, simply, wanting to give the audience a good time. Thats not to say that it’s repetoire appealed to the lowest common denominator, quite the contrary, but was always conscious of having a programme that stretched a wide arm to a multitude of disciplines (including opera!) Many theatres could learn from the Empire’s shining example.

The CAST material is currently being sorted by Matt and our in-house archivist Caroline Lam, and should be ready to be digitised soon.

Talking about archivists, on Tuesday 17th August I held a focus group for archivists at UEL. The group consisted of Alex Hailey and Lynda Barraclough from the British Library, David Bennett who works on the Siobhan Davis archive at Coventry University, the lecturer Lucie Sutherland and archivist Richard Hunt  from Nottingham University. We spoke about a broad range of topics; the ontology of the archive, digitial vs physical, the notion of ‘gaps’, context…and it was absolutely fascinating! What strikes me about the archiving profession is the incredible respect they have for  material and their profession as a whole, and considering the recent cuts that have been announced they have to defend their profession even more vehemently than they have had to do in the past.

I sensed that the practice of archiving isn’t as critqued as other disciplines, which is extraordinary as the practice of recording is as old as mankind. But, as came up during discussion they do have a very time-consuming job and, in practical terms, they just don’t have time to constantly reflect on their practice. However, I wouldn’t want to suggest that there are no theoretical frameworks surrounding archives, quite the contrary. When you consider regimes such as the Soviet Union, record keeping is an extraordinarily powerful tool,as in 100 years people will be relying on these records to understand that time, and therefore the archivist is in a very influential position (how many other professions potentially create collective memories?). When considering ELTA, it is our responsibility to present the material in as useful and unbiased way as possible…if,indeed, that is possible.

Yesterday Matt and I went to Royal Holloway University to select material from their Gay Sweatshop collection, with the invaluble help of their in-house archivist Vicky Holmes. As this was a collection that concerned a company as opposed to a theare, we decided to focus our selection on specific productions that the company performed. There were some extraordinary photographs, which when we were looking at them made us feel, in some very small way, connected to the original live production. When we had a stack of visual material we looked at any meta-data that supported it; such as funding applications, tour dates, audience feedback etc. This last one was of particular interest for me as when put with letters and early drafts of scripts, combined with the photographs, these comments  allow us  to understand how the play was received after the performance, and what reactions it provoked in spectators. These comments can not only tell us about an individual production, but how a companies ideology translates into a mode of performance. But what I think makes Gay Sweatshop stand out from other political/social orientated companies ( which were very afffluent in the seventies and eighties) is their committment to experimenting with alternative dramatic forms. In other words, they seemed to care as much about theatre as an art form as they did for it’s ability to analyse and critique society at large. I feel that this will make an invaluble contribution to ELTA and provide fascinating parallels between the Hackney Empire Collection.

Next week: Hackney goes digital!

We at CEDAR are working with the Hackney Empire on the Artist Development Program 2010, a chance for young people aged 13-19 to research, produce, direct and perform on a professional stage! The theme they have chosen is the history of the Hackney Empire, and the performers are working towards bringing such legendary figures as Charlie Chaplin and Marie Lloyd into the 21st Century. Last Wednesday three of the peer mentors on the project came to visit the Hackney Empire collection at UEL to research the history of the theatre and to see what extraordinary events have occurred in this monumental building. Watching these brave young people plough their way through the extensive range of material reminded me just how different conducting research in an archive is compared to reading a book…how is a letter discussing tour dates at all useful when you want to research a role!? Perhaps it isn’t, but after a little while I could see how this material was giving them ideas as to what they could potentially explore. The biggest problem was there was simply so much they didn’t know where to start! However, just by seeing the amount of material available made them realise how many contrasting theatrical practices have occurred in the theatres one hundred and nine year history, and gave them some understanding of what different theatrical forms they can experiment with; music hall, variety, cabaret, magic shows, stand-up comedy, pantomime…The biggest challenge for them now is to decide what parts of the history they are going to focus on, as I explained to them an archive avoids contextualisation so that the raw material can speak for itself.
Next week, me and our archivist Matt will be going to Royal Holloway to select material from their archive for digitisation.

This week I have been organising focus groups with academics and archivists to discuss the role(s) of the archive in higher education and in the broader field of research. One of the ‘big’ issues we’ll be discussing is the highly debated subject of digitisation and how it has changed our relationship with archival material. After researching this subject it is clear that the digitising process has had a profound effect on the way that material is now interacted with and consequently received and understood by those who are interacting with it. And this word, interaction, is one that has been frequently analysed to attempt to define what we mean when we say ineractivity? In this age of digital technologies the ways we interact with material- from podcasts, blogs, e-mails to paintings, maps and books-has multiplied drastically. Not only that, but just in the last ten years we have become accustomed to having many different types of material all available in the blink of an eye on our desktop computers. Because the internet is a limitless storage facility there is no great sense of authoratitive stores of knowledge i.e. the archive. Has the function of the archive now changed and, if it has, what is that new function? We will also be discussing the ontology of an archive (if indeed it has one) and how it has shaped our understanding of past events, in particular past performances.

If any of these interest you why not come and join the discussion? Simply send an e-mail to joseph4@uel.ac.uk and I’ll book a place for you!

On the 24^thJune, Dr Mary Smith and I attended a conference at the ICA entitled ‘The Digital Democracy’, which was organised by LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre). The subject was to discuss the debates surrounding the relationship between audience and performer and how our relationship with interactive technologies (Facebook, Twitter, online gaming) has created multiple opportunities to explore this relationship further. The debate explored some very controversial but exciting issues, the most interesting being that there now exists a generation that have grown up with digital technologies and can’t remember a life without it, unlike us old fashioned lot who can still remember the days when dial-up and mini-disc players were the cutting edge of technology! This ‘digital generation’ are now fully entrenched in world of interacting across vast distances and having the opportunity to contribute their own opinions and thoughts to a potentially unlimited store of material. What implications, then, does this have for live performance? Something that was thoroughly discussed was the opportunity audiences now have to have to contribute their own ideas to the process-of-the-making and not just the finalised product. As a theatre-maker, this struck me as very strange and potentially problematic; how many people will have a say in future experimental projects, and will this devalue the notion of original and creative thinkers? On the plus side, theatre is always struggling to reach wider audiences, and these technologies could encourage an entirely new way of encouraging people to come to explore the incredible rich assortment of theatre practices operating in the UK. Just looking at these brief examples you can see there is a lot to consider…I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

By way of introduction my name is Joseph (Joe) Dunne, and I am the new research assistant for ELTA.

Over the past few weeks I have been immersing myself in the fascinating and somewhat controverstial world of the ‘archive’; both as a tool for research and more abstract, ‘out of the box’ thinking. Just consider these questions for a start: Can people be considered an archive? What similarities are there to the processes of live performance and documentation? What new purpose or meaning does an object acquire when it is placed in an archive,who decides what that new purpose is? Does the relationship between user/archive and performer/audience have more in common than we think?

These are the sort of topics and debates that I would like to engage with; not just in theory but in practice as well. These research strands are forming the base of a case study that I am currently working on, which will provide exciting points of depature for the team to engage with.

The potential areas for creative exploration are vast, and we are very excitied about the implications such research can afford practitoners. Drama is a vast and ever-evolving discipline, and the archive could open up a whole new world of theatrical and performative innovation…the possibilities are endless!

If you have any thoughts on these issues and would like to discuss them further then get in touch at cedar@uel.ac.uk