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Plans

Description

Drawings for RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) productions at Stratford-upon-Avon, London, and elsewhere, including e.g. theatre drawings and seating layouts.

It should be noted that:

a) The drawings are not comprehensive drawings for a complete production, but frequently just show specific details such as a chair, box etc.

b) There are engineering plans of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (later the Royal Shakespeare Theatre) for various years, showing layouts of offices etc,

c) There are layouts of audience seating plans for various UK venues that the Company used in its touring productions, including e.g. school halls.

d) Conventional theatre location abbreviations are used as on the drawings; e.g. u/s = upstage, p/s = prompt side etc.

Custodial History

Created by the RSC and deposited with SBT.

This record series is housed in a purpose-built rack and consists of almost 150 tubes of drawings.

Not all RSC productions are here. Very few drawings have survived pre-1950, and very few are available after 1996.

The drawings are NOT arranged in any specific order within these tubes (nor are the tubes arranged chronologically), although sets of drawings for a production are usually in the same tube.

Numbering is: RSC (the collection reference)/SW/Roll no./Item no. within a roll: e.g. RSC/SW/Roll 10/Item 7. Notes: a) For play titles, initial words 'The', 'A' etc. are omitted; e.g. 'The Tempest' becomes 'Tempest' b) n.a. = information not known or available c) RST = Royal Shakespeare Theatre, SMT = Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, etc.

Admin History

Drawings were produced by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) Drawing Office