The Spectacular Century – Details, episodes & analysis

Kate Holmes visits one of our partner archives, the University of Bristol Theatre Collection. She talks to its Director Jo Elsworth, Archive Assistant Athene Bain and Catherine Hindson, who uses the collection in teaching and research within the Theatre Department. We discuss how their eclectic resources reveal how engaged nineteenth century audiences were and the archive as an inspirational place.

For more, including how to visit, see: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/theatrecollection

People, Plays, Places mentioned in this podcast:

• Professor: Glynne Wickham
• Object: Bristol Old Vic ‘Cannonball’ Counterweight
• Fan Culture: Tinsel Prints
• Actor/Manager: Herbert Beerbohm Tree
• Actor/Manager: Henry Irving
• Play: Davis, Leopold Davis (1871) The Bells
• Theatre: Bristol Old Vic Theatre
• Object: Artful Dodger Costume, Eric Jones Evans Collection
• Play: Potter, Paul M (1895) Trilby
• Object: Lillian Baylis’ desk (Theatre Producer & Manager)
• Social Reformer & Manager: Emma Cons, London Old Vic
• Suffrage Campaigner, Theatre Director & Costumier: Edith Craig
• Performer: Maud Beerbohm Tree
• Major Collection: Mander & Mitchenson Collection

Want to find out more after this podcast? Here’s our pick of free online resources.

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Kate Holmes and Kate Newey talk to Phil Wickham, Curator of the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum. Phil discusses how varied the museum’s nineteenth century holdings are and what they reveal about everyday audience-going.

For more on the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, including how to visit, see: https://www.bdcmuseum.org.uk

People and Entertainments named in this podcast:

• Filmmaker: Bill Douglas
• Entertainment: Magic lanterns
• Entertainment: Nineteenth-Century Panorama
• Entertainment: Diorama Paintings
• Entertainment: Peep (or Raree) Show
• Performer: Albert Smith
• Our YouTube Channel
• YouTube video on Playbills
• YouTube video on Music Hall Celebrity Postcards
• Entertainment: Praxinoscope
• Theatre Praxinoscope
• Film: Douglas, Bill (1986) Comrades
• Entertainment: Shadow Puppet Shows
• Entertainment: Thaumotrope
• YouTube video of Vampire Peep Show created as part of this project by Tony Lidington
• Book: Della Porta, Giovanni Batista (1658) Natural Magick

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Kate Newey and Kate Holmes talk about moving bodies, equipment assisting movement and why we should care about silent moving bodies. They touch upon gendered ideas, costume, risk and how elite ballet developed from the popular entertainment of pantomime.

Entertainments, performers, movements & incidents: 

• Entertainment: Pleasure Gardens (including Cremorne & Vauxhall)
• Entertainment: Music Hall
• Entertainment: Concert Dance
• Entertainment: Ballet. For more on differences between romantic & classical see: https://www.blackpoolgrand.co.uk/different-types-ballet
• Entertainment: Nineteenth Century Burlesque – this doesn’t have the same meaning as today. For more see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_burlesque
• Aerialist: Jules Léotard
• Physical Culture Movement: Muscular Christianity
• Aerialist: Mademoiselle Azella
• Ballet: Adam, Adolphe (1841) Giselle, ou les Wilis
• Train accident: 1918 Hagenbeck Wallace train wreck
• Stage technology: trap doors. See this video for nineteenth century traps still working at the Gaiety on the Isle of Man.

Want to find out more after this podcast? Here's our pick of free online resources.

Music: Ambient piano & strings by ZakharValahaa.

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One Audience: Art, Theatre & Visual Culture

Hear Patricia Smyth and Jim Davis talk about how popularity was an issue for the theatre and art and how newly expanded urban audiences’ emotional responses caused concerns for elite critics. They’ll talk about how theatre and art were part of a wider spectacular nineteenth century visual culture, what visual culture actually is and how it affected audiences’ lives.

Entertainments, books, paintings & people named in this podcast: 

• Painter: Paul Delaroche
• Painting: Delaroche, Paul (1833) The Execution of Lady Jane Grey
• Painting: Delaroche, Paul (1855) The Young Christian Martyr
• Painting: Delaroche, Paul (1834) The Assassination of the Duc de Guise, Château de Chantilly
• Entertainment: Nineteenth-Century Panorama, see more here: https://www.bl.uk/picturing-places/articles/the-spectacle-of-the-panorama
• Entertainment: Diorama Paintings, see more here: http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Daguerre's_Diorama
• Play: Boucicault, Dion (1860) The Colleen Bawn or The Brides of Garryowen
• Painting: Millais, John Everett (1851-2) Ophelia
• Academic Book: Meisel, Martin (1983) Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
• Painting: Solomon, Abraham (1857) Waiting for the Verdict
• Play: Boucicault, Dion (1857) The Poor of New York (in the US, first adapted to be: The Streets of London, before topical adaptations of the cities it was produced in).

Want to find out more after this podcast? Here's our pick of free online resources.

Music: Ambient piano & strings by ZakharValahaa.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Newey and Jim Davis are back talking about Pantomime as a rough demotic physical performance form that developed from Commedia dell’arte and defied censorship. They discuss panto as a profitable industry that continues to adapt and reflect its age and what that has meant over the last few hundred years.

Plays, people and performance forms named in this podcast: 

• 16/18th century performance form: Commedia dell’arte 
• Pantomime clown: Joseph Grimaldi
• Actor/Manager: John Rich
• Actor/Manager: David Garrick
• Actor/Manager: Augustus Harris
• Music Hall Comedian & Pantomime Dame: Dan Leno
• Actor/Manager: Eliza Vestris
• Recent Pantomime Dame & Pantomime Writer: Chris Harris, Bath Theatre Royal
• Recent Pantomime Dame: Clive Rowe, Hackney Empire
• Interview: Kate Newey speaking to Chris Harris & Clive Rowe
• Actor-Acrobat/Manager: George Conquest

Want to find out more after this podcast? Here's our pick of free online resources.

Music: Ambient piano & strings by ZakharValahaa.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jim Davis and Kate Newey talk about the origins of melodrama in the French Revolution, the politics of it being a popular form of emotional realism and why dismissing melodrama is to dismiss popular culture today.

Plays & people named in this podcast:

• Play: Holcroft, Thomas (1802) A Tale of Mystery (an unacknowledged translation of de Pixerécourt's Cœlina, ou, l'enfant du mystère)
• Playwright: René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt
• Play: Jerrold, Douglas William (1829) Black Eyed Susan
• Actor: Thomas Potter Cooke
• Diderot, Denis (1830 [written in 1770s]) The Paradox of the Actor
• Actor: NT Hicks
• Sensation novel: Braddon, Mary Elizabeth (1862) Lady Audley’s Secret. Melodrama adaptation: Hazlewood, Colin Henry (1863) first performed at the Victoria Theatre, London.
• Play: Boucicault, Dion (1868) After Dark: A Tale of London Life
• Play: Boucicault, Dion (1860) The Colleen Bawn or The Brides of Garryowen
• Playwright, critic & political activist: George Bernard Shaw
• Play: Lewis, Leopold David (1871) The Bells 
• Play: Pocock, Isaac (1831) The Miller and His Men

Want to find out more after this podcast? Here's our pick of free online resources.

Music: Ambient piano & strings by ZakharValahaa.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find out what to expect from the first few episodes of our new podcast.

Music: Ambient piano & strings by ZakharValahaa.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.