Today marks ten years since I graduated from the Shakespeare Institute and - inevitably - that fact has led to not a little soul searching. Ten years on, and the performance database remains incomplete and I'm having to accept that some of the 560 or so remaining entries will never be filled. The jubilation of tracking down an elusive visit to some Corn Exchange or Civic Hall is often over-balanced by the sense of frustration when there is no mention in the local press of any theatrical activity.
Feeling frustrated with my inability to complete the task I'd set myself, I wondered if there was actually anything useful I could do with the material I did have. After all, although I might not have the rep for every visit, I am reasonably sure that I've managed to place the companies for around 99% of the time they were on the road. After the Tyne Theatre conference in September, I'd wondered about the feasibility of creating a map to track the progress of each company and yesterday, I finally bit the bullet and started on it. Using Google maps, I added a marker for every place a Benson company visited, creating an individual 'layer' for each company so that it is easy to see the spread of each company and the overlap. I've also started to add notes about the dates played at each location and intend to include some information about the venue as well.
Google maps store any changes I make to the cloud and I can also share the information easily through this link Benson Companies Touring Map and can, should I wish to do so, ultimately make it visible to google searching.
Immediately, the visual impact of this task was incredibly useful: places which had been little more than names suddenly had an actual geographic location. The concentration of the South/C/London company in the Southern part of Wales - at this time, the mining centre of the country - and the heavy concentration of the Principal company around the outskirts of London are both really noticeable.
The markers helped to not only show where the companies had been, but also to highlight where they hadn't. For example, looking at the North Yorkshire area I was surprised to realise that reasonably big market towns such as Richmond, Thirsk and Pickering were not on the South Company's tours at all. This cannot have been because of difficulty of transport ( as was clearly the case in the Northwest of Scotland or the centre of Wales) as a rail infrastructure was there.
Equally, towns like Doncaster and Swindon, which might reasonably have expected visits from the North or Principal companies, do not appear to have any visits at all (and both were notable 'railway towns' in the late 19th and early 20th centuries). Either I am missing key touring dates to some of these places, or the data speaks for itself.
I had never before thought about what might be missing from the touring schedule of the companies, assuming the four corners of the country had been equally covered when in fact there is a real imbalance, a favouring of the east coast of Scotland over the west, the midlands and the south over the north and west of England and very little attempt at venturing beyond the major towns in Ireland.
Some places have multiple tags and appear for two, three or even four companies - often beginning with the Principal company and then receiving visits from the North (B) company and latterly the South (C), London or Midland Companies before being revisited by FRB as part of his post 1920 touring under the 'Bensonian' or H.V. Neilson.
Clearly there are questions which need to be answered about the touring circuits Benson companies followed and it would be interesting to know if any of the equivalent companies 'on the road' at around the same time (Martin-Harvey, Calvert etc) visited similar places.
As always, the more I think I know, the more there is to find out...!
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| Benson as Shylock c.1900 |
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