Performance material

The Shakespeare Collection includes thousands of production photographs and posters, capturing theatre, film and television performances from around the world. These include professional and amateur theatre companies and school productions.

Many of the images speak of a particular place, time or moment in history.

There are also 10,000 playbills dating from the late 18th Century onwards, including some advertising performances by Ira Aldridge, an African American actor who played the lead role in Othello. He was often called the ‘African Roscius’. This was a theatrical name that signified great dramatic ability.

The Shakespeare Collection also includes at least 2,000 musical scores as well as books containing songs and other musical material based on or inspired by Shakespeare’s plays. One of the treasures is the score for the music for the first great Shakespeare celebration, which took place in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1769.

From 2020 to 2023 the Everything to Everybody (E to E) project hosted six ‘Heritage Ambassadors’, students from the University of Birmingham who researched the Shakespeare Collection. They each wrote a series of informative articles. Follow the links below to read some of the articles:

• Karin Thomson
  • Everything you wanted to know about PLAYBILLS but were afraid to ask
  • Prompt Books of the Theatre Royal Birmingham
  • Shakespeare Without Class: Birmingham’s 18th Century Theatres
  • The Mysterious Mr John Ward: The Birmingham Based Grand-Daddy of 18th Century Shakespeare

In 2022 E to E commissioned a new work called 'Bodily Anguish' by Birmingham Poet Laureate Casey Bailey. Watch the video below.

To switch on subtitles for the video, move your cursor (pointer) to the bottom of the video screen, and click the subtitles/closed captions icon when it appears.

Page last updated: 25 October 2023