On Friday, November 22, the Library Academy of Theatre and Dance organized a guided tour of the Theater Collectionfor staff members at the IWO depot in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost. The collection is a department of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Special Collections Allard Pierson Museum.
The Theater Instituut Nederland (TIN) was dissolved in 2012. Much of the collection then went to the UvA. Another part, theater playscripts and books, ended up in the Library Academy for Theater and Dance.
The Theater Collection has a museum collection consisting of costumes, models, props, paintings, prints and drawings, scene/portrait/accommodation photographs, posters, puppets and miniature theaters. Also included in the Theater Collection are archives of individuals and companies, texts and books from before 1945 and theater books and texts/scripts from after 1945, av materials, sheet music, production documentation and clippings folders.
Gonneke Janssen (performing arts collection specialist) welcomed us and showed us around (a fraction of) the collection.
Starting with the card files, as in the past the collection was described and entered manually. This method of making the collection searchable is hardly imaginable anymore. With the digital catalogs and databases, the metadata can be found much faster with “the press of a button” so to speak.
Some documents from archives of the Theatreschool and Toneelschool were presented. The archive is from the founding of the Tooneelschool in 1874 until the year 2010. As icing on the cake, we could take a look at the “Name list of the Tooneelschool.” In it, all in and out students were written down with a pen. A plan for the (mostly digital) archives after 2010 is still being developed.
The tour continued along long corridors with models of theater sets, mini-theaters of performed performances. And many props, such as Ramses Shaffy's accordion and Freek de Jonge's pink wig.
Unfortunately, the “Slingelandt stage” was not completely presented. The model is not a copy of the stage of the city theater in Amsterdam of that time (1780), but has many similarities with it. The sets were put together in the same way as in the theater and could also be changed in the same way.
The tour was surprising and actually too short, because there is still so much to see !
A good reason for a next tour, to immerse yourself in the world of all these special objects.
For more information: https://tin.nl/theatercollectie/
Thursday, November 14, the exhibition Audience in Pictures - Martin Monnickendam (1874-1943) opened at the Allard Pierson Museum. An artist who in the early twentieth century made beautiful works of, among others, the audience in theaters. In the library we have on loan the beautifully illustrated book about his life and work, published simultaneously with the exhibition.
In addition, the 100th anniversary of the Theatre Collection will be celebrated in February 2025 through a book and a symposium.
