Theatre collection

About the collection

We house one of the largest publicly-accessible collections of historical material on theatre in the United Kingdom.

The collection focuses on the theatre industry of Westminster, including the buildings, stars and performances of the world-famous West End.

Researchers can explore the development and global significance of London’s theatre scene from the 18th century to the present day.

Our theatre collection is complemented by theatre plans, original artwork, letters and ephemera from our archives and local studies collection. A large supporting reference collection of books, pamphlets and journals is available at the Archives Centre and Westminster Reference Library.

City of Westminster Archives Centre has built a collection of over 100,000 programmes and thousands of playbills to the West End and other London theatres.

Playbills

The majority of our playbills date back to the 19th century, although we do have some 18th and 20th century bills in the collection.

By the 19th century, playbill design had become quite elaborate, making them a wonderful resource for art and design students as well as theatre historians and biographers.

Playbills typically offer the following information:

• the theatre and production
• actors' names and their roles
• performance times and dates
• seat prices

Our playbills are manually arranged by theatre name and date.

We are near completion of a performance database project, which will allow remote access to information on our playbill holdings. In the meantime, please contact us to find out whether we have playbills for particular theatres, actors and productions.

Programmes

Our collections comprise over 100,000 programmes, covering most theatres that have operated in the West End and Westminster since the mid-19th century. 

Programmes are often colourful and decorative cultural records of London's entertainment past, with beautiful cover designs and contemporary local adverts. As with playbills, they usually offer researchers the following information

• the theatre and production
• actors' names and their roles
• performance times and dates
• seat prices

Souvenir programmes are more lavish in design, and often include additional information and images. Some souvenir programmes may even include the script or libretto of the production.

The majority of our theatre programmes and playbills are acquired by donation. If you are interested in donating your collections to Westminster City Archives, please contact us.