The University of Bristol Theatre Collections: the Mander and Mitchenson Collection and more

I first saw the wonderful collection of theatre memorabilia lovingly formed by actors Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson many years ago, when it was still in Beckenham Palace. It was an Aladdin's cave of printed material and artefacts. Its future was then uncertain.  From 2001 until 2011, it was housed at Trinity College of Music in Greenwich, where it became part of the Jerwood Library.

The collection  moved in 2011  to the University of Bristol Theatre Collection where it joins a wealth of other theatre collections, including 150,000 theatre programmes, and 2750 playbills and posters. Many of the University of Bristol collections are catalogued, and there are over 1,500 images online through the Visualising Theatre Project, a selection of which can be seen in the form of Powerpoint slides.

The Mander and Mitchenson collection is currently being catalogued and list of the collection is available for download. Commercial image requests are handled by Arenapal, and a free Mander and Mitchenson E-brochure is available on this site.

The University of Bristol Theatre Collection is currently being refurbished and is closed from today (April 23) until October 2012.

(C) University of Bristol Theatre Collection