APAC Symposium 2018

Breaking with Tradition: New Approaches to Performance Collections

John Rylands Library, University of Manchester – Wednesday 20 June 2018

 

APAC’s annual symposium will this year focus on breaking of tradition in how we collect, curate and catalogue materials.

 

The event is free for APAC members and £15 for non-members. Travel grants are available for APAC members.

 

Book your place

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/apac-symposium-2018-breaking-with-tradition-new-approaches-to-performance-collections-tickets-45950533282

 

Schedule and Speakers

Registration will be from 10.45am with the Symposium beginning at 11.10am and finishing at 4pm. During the day there will be the opportunity to tour the John Rylands Library and see some of their collections. Lunch is provided.

 

Heather Roberts, HerArchivist

Creating Manchester’s Contact Theatre Archive form scratch

Heather Roberts runs HerArchivist, a consultancy that helps people make sense of their heritage collections, creating archives out of their assets. She will talk about the process of creating Manchester’s Contact Theatre archive from scratch, from the basic processes to the more complicated decision making aspects of getting an archive into shape.

 

Karen Brayshaw, Special Collections and Archives Manager, University of Kent

University of Kent’s Stand-Up Comedy Archive

Karen Brayshaw will give a talk on University of Kent’s Stand-Up Comedy Archive, in particular Mark Thomas’s performance work.

 

Erin Lee, Head of Archive, National Theatre

Knitting the Narrative of Theatre

An overview of a project led by Soutra Gilmour to investigate how we can bring together the disparate threads of theatre craft, document them and make them accessible to future audiences.

 

Tim Procter, Collections & Engagement Manager (Archives & Manuscripts), Special Collections, Leeds University Library and Emma Gee, Ignite! Project intern, School of Performance & Creative Industries, Leeds University

The archive as mirror – how Red Ladder theatre took a long look at itself

This paper looks at how an archive-based internship went beyond the traditional questions asked of archive collections and inspired Red Ladder Theatre to reflect on its education role and its ethos as a radical company.

 

Janette Martin, Archivist-Curator and Reader Engagement Manager, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester

‘Shooting the f***ing polar bear’: Seventies performance art and the aesthetics of provocation

Priscilla Staples (stage name Rose Maguire) was a long-term mistress of Jeff Nuttall and she collaborated with him in the early seventies on the Jack Shows. In performances delivered in pubs and on street corners, the Jack Shows (1972-1976) pushed the boundaries with bawdy scripts, spoof lecture scenarios and lewd absurdist telephone calls. The Nuttall/McGuire collections offer a case study in the challenges of collecting Performance Art, particularly when no audio-visual recordings survive and we are left with only fragmentary traces.

 

Venue and Access

This year the symposium will be held at the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester. Directions and access information can be found here.

 

 

Stephanie Rolt | Secretary

www.performingartscollections.org.uk

 

 

Archives Officer

Queen Mary University of London

328 Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7882 3874

www.library.qmul.ac.uk/archives