#archive week

#ArchiveWeek: Anniversary Archives - celebrating Sam Wanamaker.

As part of Archive Week we have been thinking about ‘big moments’ and in particular the 100th anniversary of the birth of our founder, Sam Wanamaker which will be celebrating on 14 June 2019.

Sam was born in Chicago, Illinois in the United States. His love affair with the idea of the Globe began in 1933 when as a 14-year-old he attended the Chicago World Fair, an international celebration in which Britain’s contribution was a mock reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

By 1936, Sam, now a drama student was performing in Shakespeare’s plays having joined the Blackfriars Company who were playing in another fair at Cleveland, Ohio in which another replica of the Globe had been built for staging Shakespeare’s plays. We are lucky enough to hold the programme for this production in our Archive.

Sam came to the UK in 1949, narrowly escaping being blacklisted by the US Government in the McCarthy Trials. Being such a fan of Shakespeare he went to look for the original site of the Globe theatre. To his disappointment, all he found was a plaque on a brewery wall early that was not even correctly positioned. In a statement in an affidavit, he says

I was shocked to find that the site was in fact a rundown redundant riverside industrial area. I was particularly saddened, as by this time, the concept of Globe reconstructions had taken a stronghold in the US, and this was part of and contributed to a great revival and interest in Shakespeare and America’s English language heritage…

Fuelled by his disappointing discovery and a love of Shakespeare Sam set out to build a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre on Bankside. Sadly he did not live to see it completed in 1997, as he died on 18 December 1993.

We all have much to thank Sam and his determination for and we are very excited to be working towards an exhibition celebrating his life and vision next year.  

Photography

Top: Sam Wanamaker and model by Brian Rybolt 

Middle: Sam Wanamaker in front of a replica of the Globe donated by the British Government at the Great Lake festival in Cleveland, Ohio, 1936-37, photographer unknown

Bottom: Sam Wanamaker celebrating the successful settlement of the 1986 High Court case against Southwark Council and Derno Estates by Alan Butland 

#ArchiveWeek: Music.

From 17-27 November we are exploring our Archive. First up is music. In this blog former Archive Assistant Lucy Armstrong gives an insight into the music related items we hold in our Archive.

The collections at Shakespeare’s Globe Library & Archive include sheet music from Globe Theatre and Sam Wanamaker Playhouse productions and Education events such as Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank. The music is composed by a range of composers such as Claire van Kampen (founding Director of Music and Senior Research Fellow), Bill Barclay (Director of Music), Nigel Hess and others, some of whom visit the Archives to reference previous productions.

The music is catalogued by production and typically includes a music director’s score, script, instrument parts (some musicians were multi-instrumentalists), deputy pads and onstage music. Several productions also include copies of drafts and adaptations for tours. The music is wonderfully annotated, giving us insight into musical decisions, interpretations and adaptations for the productions. Some of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse copies even include drops of wax from the candles used to light the performances!

Each pad is preserved in a separate archival file and information about the contents of the file can be found on our online archive catalogue. The music is a combination of newly written scores and collections of existing music curated for the production. For example, Apocalypse Meow (2017) included a range of well-known pieces ranging from ‘Away in a Manger’ to ‘My Favourite Things’ whereas all of the music for Romantics Anonymous (2017-18) was composed by Michael Kooman and orchestrated by Simon Hale.

The content of each box varies greatly depending on the needs of the musicians and the extent of what was kept at the time. A good example of a comprehensive music box is the 1999 Julius Caesar. As well as the scores and instrumental parts that one would expect to find, there is also a file of research on military drums, reading lists, descriptions of dances and Roman gods as understood by the Elizabethans. In addition there is information on the sound design, band calls, instrumental ranges and a description of the slide trumpet. Several of the productions include a diagram of the position of the musicians but the most unique item in the 1999 Julius Caesar box is the ‘bluffer’s guide to act V’ which gives an entertaining insight into how the musicians navigated this part of the play including the starred instruction: ‘Ear plugs Act IV/V break *Ear plugs*’. The guide was for the signal trumpet during the battle scene and involved instructions about the location of the musician (sometimes on stage), the ‘alarms’, ‘charges’ or ‘victories’ to be played and how the entries and exits coordinated with the actors. Of course there were also directions about how to move from the Act IV/V break into Act V depending on the action on stage and a reminder at the end to return quickly to the gallery for the jig.

The music collection is only one of many unique aspects of our performance archive that helps tell the rich and fascinating story of the Globe’s 21 year performance history.