February 14, 2022
Jed
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In celebration of Valentine’s Day, I decided that I would share a touching moment that I experienced while researching English melodramas ca. 1900 in the library of the Royal Academy of Music, London. RAM, it turns out, was quite a melodramatic hotbed around 1900. A.C. MacKenzie, who was director of the institution from 1888-1924, wrote…
Last Tuesday, while we were making a little film about the Van den Berghe sets, João Luís Paixão dropped in to see what we were doing. Fortuitously, the set we were working on at that moment showed a country church at sunset, with light pouring from the windows, which inspired João Luís to an impromptu…
December 11, 2021
Jed
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The Van den Berghe theatrical decors were painted to be lit with electric light…but certainly not with today’s LED bulbs. I have no expertise in hanging or lighting sets, so I was very grateful that we could convince Chris van Goethem (who teaches historical theatre techniques at the RITCS-Erasmushogeschool in Brussels) to come to Leiden…
December 9, 2021
Jed
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The project around the Van den Berghe decors has been supported by a number of institutions, without whose aid this mad but wonderful endeavour could never have come to pass: The Utrecht Early Music Festival, the Leidse Schouwburg and Leiden University. I will return to these partners in a later blog…but I do want to…
December 8, 2021
Jed
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The adventure with the Florent Van den Berghe decors continues…perhaps it is worth mentioning how we are working and what our aims are. Firstly, what are we dealing with? The collection consists mainly of drops painted on linnen or cotton, and attached top and bottom to wooden battens. These battens are labelled with a number,…
December 5, 2021
Jed
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Today was the first of three days in the Leidse Schouwburg (Leiden’s municipal theater) in which I will be able (with the help of a crew of hearty volunteers) to explore the collection of theater sets I purchased just a year ago now in Belgium. The sets were created somewhere between 1900 and 1920, yet…
December 3, 2021
Jed
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Van den Berghe theatre sets It is time for me to start sharing some of my fun experiences with historical acting, declamation and theatre. My first posts will be about the upcoming collaboration between Stichting Musica ad Rhenum, The Utrecht Early Music Festival, Leiden University and the Leiden municipal theatre (Leidse Schouwburg). Last year I…