These images are playbills from The Theatre at Beverley, managed by Samuel W. Butler (1803-1845), second manager of the Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond. Part of a circuit with theatres at Northallerton, Ripon, Thirsk, Kendal, Harrogate, Whitby and Ulverston. See more exhibits from the eighteenth and nineteenth-century theatre, at the Georgian Theatre Royal Museum, open February to mid-December. Paul Iles is associate director of the Richmond theatre, and a member of their heritage performance group, with Doug Waugh, Dr David Wilmore and Tony Lidington.
See Christopher B Balme, ‘Playbills and the Theatrical Public Sphere’, in Charlotte M Canning and Thomas Postlewait, Representing the Past: Essays in Performance Historiography, Iowa, University of Iowa Press, 2010, pp.37-62.
