From Enthoven to East: Theatre and Performance at the V&A

Date: Monday 4 September 2023

We’re delighted to announce our third ‘Theatre and Performance Working Group’ online event. It will take place 5.15-6.30pm on Monday 4 September. This has been planned to follow on from our working group Business Meeting, which has been scheduled for 4pm-5pm on Monday 4th September. The event will give us some all-important updates on the re-opening of the V&A Theatre and Performance collections. The Business Meeting is open to anyone who wishes to join the conversation about the WG’s activities and future plans – you do not need to have been at this year’s conference in order to attend. If you wish to sign up for either of these, or both, please email us on theatrehistory@tapra.org and we will send you the relevant links. From Enthoven to East: Theatre and Performance at the V&A The V&A is currently undergoing its most intense period of transformation since being founded as the Museum of Manufacture in 1852. 2023 sees the opening of Young V&A (formerly the Museum of Childhood), 2024 marks the Theatre and Performance Collections’ centenary, and 2025 heralds the much-anticipated opening of V&A East, comprising a new museum and new research and collections centre. This session is an opportunity to hear from V&A Theatre and Performance curators directly about their current work, the team’s plans for the future, and what this means for the National Collection of Performing Arts, having evolved greatly since Gabrielle Enthoven’s gift of 80,000 playbills in 1924. Jane Pritchard M.B.E Jane Pritchard is Curator of Dance at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Exhibitions and displays for the museum include On Point: Royal Academy of Dance at 100 (2020), Anthony Crickmay: Photographing People and Performance (2017) and Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909 – 1929 (2010). Prior to joining the V&A, Jane was archivist for Rambert Dance Company and English National Ballet, and created the Contemporary Dance Trust Archive. Harriet Reed Harriet Reed is Curator of Contemporary Performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She has co-curated the exhibitions Censored! Stage, Screen, Society at 50 (2018), Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser (2021) and Re:Imagining Musicals (2022) and contributed research towards the exhibition Diva (2023). She is part of the curatorial team behind The David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts, set to open at V&A East in 2025. She is a Committee Member of the UK Society for Theatre Research and the Membership Secretary for SIBMAS (International Association of Performing Arts Collections). Simon Sladen Simon Sladen is Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Theatre and Performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and Senior Tutor (Performance) on the V&A and Royal College of Art’s History of Design MA programme. Recent exhibitions and displays for the museum include Re:Imagining Musicals (2022), Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser (2021), Laughing Matters: The State of a Nation (2019), Ivan Kyncl: In the Minute (2019) and Censored! Stage, Screen, Society (2018). Simon is Chair of the UK Pantomime Association, on the editorial board of the British Theatre Guide and chairs the Academic Advisory Board of Blackpool’s new museum Showtown. He is currently co-chairing a V&A-wide initiative about the future of curation and is part of the curatorial team behind The David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts. All are very welcome to join us for this event. If you would like to attend, please email theatrehistory@tapra.org  to receive the relevant link to MS Teams.