Museums and galleries have long worked with actors to resurrect past events, but today’s projects are seeing live performance being used in an increasingly inventive way.
For a project designed for children aged between six and 12, the National Maritime Museum, part of Royal Museums Greenwich, teamed up with Punchdrunk Enrichment to recreate the adventure of a journey on the high seas for its exhibition Against Captain’s Orders: a Journey into the Unchartered.
The exhibition, spearheaded by the museum’s learning team, is inspired in part by stories of Grace Darling, who in 1838 led a daring rescue of shipwrecked sailors and Sir Francis Drake, one of the first men to circumnavigate the globe.
Sarah Lockwood, the head of learning and interpretation at the National Maritime Museum, says that the exhibition, which runs until 31 August, will quash any preconceptions that the museum is all about boats and water, rather than journeys and discoveries. She does, however, acknowledge the challenges of established venues doing something different.
So far, the venture has proved worthwhile with tickets (admission is £19.75) selling out for the first four performances.The ability to let go of traditional approaches towards presentation and publicity also proved useful when working on such a collaborative project.
“We knew that Punchdrunk Enrichment would come back with an [exhibition] title that was a bit bonkers but described the experience entirely,” Lockwood says.
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London is home to extensive collections related to live performance so it’s unsurprising that it regularly collaborates with theatre practitioners and performing arts organisations (see box).
However, it has taken its work in this area a step further with an annual performance festival, which will be held for the second time from 23 April-3 May.
Last year, the festival celebrated the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, while this year it marks the museum’s acquisition of theatre director Peter Brook’s diaries, rehearsal notes and scripts, photographs and correspondence with Harold Pinter, Spike Milligan and Ted Hughes.
“It is particularly exciting when practitioners create work that responds to or illuminates the collections,” says Anna Landreth Strong, the curator of modern and contemporary theatre at the V&A.
Fully integrated live performance isn’t just the preserve of large national venues though. Smaller museums such as the John Bunyan Museum and Library, attached to the Bunyan Meeting church in Bedford, are also waking up to the benefits.
After hearing about the Full House theatre group at a conference, the museum’s curator and only paid employee, Nicola Sherhod, decided that a collaborative project would be a good way to illustrate the story of John Bunyan. The writer and nonconformist preacher was jailed in Bedford in 1661 for 12 years for preaching, which was forbidden as part of the state’s efforts for religious uniformity.
“The idea was to tell the story using the site, the collections and history, and not just be a venue for acting,” Sherhod says.
The final performances, mainly aimed at school children, saw the drama of Bunyan’s life recreated in the Bunyan Meeting church, where the stained-glass windows depict his most famous work, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and in the museum, which has a mock-up of a 17th-century jail and kitchen.
The event, which involved six performances in March, included funding of £14,500 from Arts Council England’s Grants for the Arts programme. It was the first time the museum had secured an arts award, and Sherhod believes the link with arts and drama was key to that.
If used correctly, live performance can be a powerful tool to widen audiences, generate income and spark fresh interest in museums buildings and collections.
The Victoria and Albert Museum uses performance in many ways. As well as presenting plays and performances by talented companies to a mix of audiences, we might use performance to illuminate and enhance an object’s story, to add a layer of interpretation or narrative to the collections, or by commissioning a company to create a response to the collections or building.
As performance curators, we are also interested in bringing a sense of performance to the exhibitions we create as a department, working with theatre-makers and performers including director Katie Mitchell, playwright Tanika Gupta, performer Annie Lennox and theatre designer Tom Piper, to imbue the objects and exhibition design with a sense of theatricality.
Anna Landreth Strong is the curator of modern and contemporary theatre at the V&A
For a project designed for children aged between six and 12, the National Maritime Museum, part of Royal Museums Greenwich, teamed up with Punchdrunk Enrichment to recreate the adventure of a journey on the high seas for its exhibition Against Captain’s Orders: a Journey into the Unchartered.
The exhibition, spearheaded by the museum’s learning team, is inspired in part by stories of Grace Darling, who in 1838 led a daring rescue of shipwrecked sailors and Sir Francis Drake, one of the first men to circumnavigate the globe.
Sarah Lockwood, the head of learning and interpretation at the National Maritime Museum, says that the exhibition, which runs until 31 August, will quash any preconceptions that the museum is all about boats and water, rather than journeys and discoveries. She does, however, acknowledge the challenges of established venues doing something different.
So far, the venture has proved worthwhile with tickets (admission is £19.75) selling out for the first four performances.The ability to let go of traditional approaches towards presentation and publicity also proved useful when working on such a collaborative project.
“We knew that Punchdrunk Enrichment would come back with an [exhibition] title that was a bit bonkers but described the experience entirely,” Lockwood says.
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London is home to extensive collections related to live performance so it’s unsurprising that it regularly collaborates with theatre practitioners and performing arts organisations (see box).
However, it has taken its work in this area a step further with an annual performance festival, which will be held for the second time from 23 April-3 May.
Last year, the festival celebrated the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, while this year it marks the museum’s acquisition of theatre director Peter Brook’s diaries, rehearsal notes and scripts, photographs and correspondence with Harold Pinter, Spike Milligan and Ted Hughes.
“It is particularly exciting when practitioners create work that responds to or illuminates the collections,” says Anna Landreth Strong, the curator of modern and contemporary theatre at the V&A.
Fully integrated live performance isn’t just the preserve of large national venues though. Smaller museums such as the John Bunyan Museum and Library, attached to the Bunyan Meeting church in Bedford, are also waking up to the benefits.
After hearing about the Full House theatre group at a conference, the museum’s curator and only paid employee, Nicola Sherhod, decided that a collaborative project would be a good way to illustrate the story of John Bunyan. The writer and nonconformist preacher was jailed in Bedford in 1661 for 12 years for preaching, which was forbidden as part of the state’s efforts for religious uniformity.
“The idea was to tell the story using the site, the collections and history, and not just be a venue for acting,” Sherhod says.
The final performances, mainly aimed at school children, saw the drama of Bunyan’s life recreated in the Bunyan Meeting church, where the stained-glass windows depict his most famous work, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and in the museum, which has a mock-up of a 17th-century jail and kitchen.
The event, which involved six performances in March, included funding of £14,500 from Arts Council England’s Grants for the Arts programme. It was the first time the museum had secured an arts award, and Sherhod believes the link with arts and drama was key to that.
If used correctly, live performance can be a powerful tool to widen audiences, generate income and spark fresh interest in museums buildings and collections.
Bringing a sense of performance to exhibitions
The Victoria and Albert Museum uses performance in many ways. As well as presenting plays and performances by talented companies to a mix of audiences, we might use performance to illuminate and enhance an object’s story, to add a layer of interpretation or narrative to the collections, or by commissioning a company to create a response to the collections or building.
As performance curators, we are also interested in bringing a sense of performance to the exhibitions we create as a department, working with theatre-makers and performers including director Katie Mitchell, playwright Tanika Gupta, performer Annie Lennox and theatre designer Tom Piper, to imbue the objects and exhibition design with a sense of theatricality.
Anna Landreth Strong is the curator of modern and contemporary theatre at the V&A
