Through acting in my village drama group I attended a workshop run by a professional theatre director, Nancy Meckler. During the workshop she asked if any of us could ballroom dance because she wanted three people for the ballroom scene in The Cherry Orchard which she was currently directing at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre. I volunteered and was allowed to take some photos of the production during the technical and dress rehearsals.
On the evening of the First Night, it is customary for actors to give each other a little present related to the show; I gave each of the cast a mounted photo of their character in the production. These photos led me to become the production photographer for the Leicester Haymarket Theatre and, over the period 1984-1990, I photographed over 60 productions and more than 300 actors - not only in Leicester, but in theatres nationwide, including: The Alhambra in Bradford, The Marlowe in Canterbury, The Nottingham Playhouse, The Royal & Derngate in Northampton and several London Theatres, including The Almeida, The Old Vic, The Adelphi, The Duke of York's and The Alberry.
This archive contains a variety of scanned images selected from over 14,000 negatives, including commissioned portraits of several actors and playwrights, as well as rehearsal and production photographs. All the production photographs were taken during performance runs in the full dress rehearsals; they were not taken as part of a photo call session.
In those
days, the majority of production photos were shot in black
and white,
although I have included a few colour photos of certain
productions
where I was asked to shoot in colour.
For the black and white work I used mainly Kodak TriX film
developed in
May & Baker's Promicrol, since most of the productions
required the
film to be pushed to 800 or 1600 ISO (or ASA as it was known
in those
days). Later on I used Kodak's TMax film and developer.
Where colour
shots were required, I used Kodak VR 1000 colour negative
film and,
occasionally, tungsten-balanced slide film rated at 640
ISO. The photographs in this archive were
scanned from the
original negatives using a Veho
Smartfix
VFS-008 scanner.
I have usually included a least three photographs of each production to give a representative picture of the show and a view of most of the cast - both major and minor characters. You will find a variety of well-known names, including: Julie Walters, Peter Bowles, Emma Thompson, Robert Lindsay, Trudi Styler, David Threlfall, Sir Ian McKellen, Peter Sallis, Koo Stark, Christopher Timothy, Kevin Whately, Tim Pigott-Smith, Edward Fox and Jill Bennett.
The productions are presented chronologically in the Theatre Work Collection. They are listed alphabetically in the Theatre Catalogue, together with a list of Actors, Directors and Playwrights.
I hope you enjoy the photos and will find them a useful resource. If you find any errors, please email me and let me know.
Acknowledgements
Sadly,
I had lost (or never possessed) the theatre programmes for a
few of the
shows I photographed. Accordingly, I should like
to thank
Harriet Roy (Company Manager at the Leicester
Haymarket
Theatre 1984-2003)
for generously letting me borrow her copies of the missing
programmes. I am also indebted to David Gooderson for
providing
information about Wind in
the Willows,
which he adapted, and Tim Flavin for spending an hour with
me in
between his performances in 42nd
Street at Curve
theatre in Leicester in
December 2011, reminiscing about the shows we worked on in
1989 and
providing information about Dames
at
Sea and Cabaret
which
he directed. Edward Fox was also kind enough to answer my
correspondence requesting details about his 1990 production
of Another Love Story.