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PRODUCTION ARCHIVE

Have something to add?

The archive is always looking for missing programs, posters, photos and news clippings. There might even be the odd correction required.

If you have something to contribute to the archives or have spotted an error, please let us know.

    Archive team

    Valerie Russell - Archivist
    Don Mann - Editor
    Ian Everdell - Web
    Victor Svenningson - Scanning

    Data Input Team
    Alina Adjemian
    Brenda Worsnop
    Fran Martin
    Kara Besson
    Sharon Rathbone

    The story of the archives

    For years the Players have walked by the many boxes kept in the cupboard area on the second floor of the Firehall. You passed them on your way to audition in the Blair Room, or as you made your way on to the stage.

    Those boxes contained the history of our shows for almost fifty years.

    They hold the key elements that make up a show file in our history. They all must contain a poster, a program, maybe something from a newspaper and hopefully a few photos.

    In 2019, Victor Svenningson and Ian Everdell discussed how we could turn these boxes of information into a digital version our membership could all enjoy.

    About six months later, Ian came back with what would become our archive. It was built on top of the existing website infrastructure and testing started with two shows that were current at the time, Chicago and Mary’s Wedding. Our archival web database was born.

    Now we had to start getting the material into this new medium. Before we were able to start, we needed a map, and we needed to look and see what was actually in those boxes.

    The map had been started years before by Jack Boyagian and Brenda Worsnop. Valerie Russell has been our archivist by organizing all the boxes. These boxes contain posters, programs and other bits of information. Val put the shows into the correct season and added from her boxes of older shows.

    The boxes were then handed over to Victor who started the task of scanning all of this material into a Google drive.

    Once the first ten years or so were scanned, we looked for people to enter this information into the database; over the next two years our volunteers have entered over three hundred shows! Tweaks and fixes to the database and code were made as we came across oddities in the way the data displayed.

    We hope that you enjoy this walk through the history of Northumberland Players!