Screen Plays – Project History

This resource is one of the major outputs of the AHRC-funded research project Screen Plays: Theatre Plays on British Television, which was based at the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) in the School of Media, Arts and Design at the University of Westminster from June 2011 to May 2015.

The aim of the research project was to document and to develop new critical approaches to the presentation of theatre plays on British television from 1930. The documentation of this central component of television programming is achieved through the online database, whilst formal and historical analysis of theatre plays on television, with a focus on the screen languages, has been extensively explored in our various events, conference papers, lectures and publications (and for details on these see the Screen Plays blog).

The project sought to understand the institutional, production and technological contexts for these television productions within both broadcasting and British theatre, developing a historical poetics (the term is David Bordwell’s) to understand the principles of television production as they inform the forms and screen languages of television theatre plays in particular historical circumstances. This involves drawing together critical analysis with cultural and institutional histories in broadcasting, theatre and in the funding structures of the arts; media, film and theatre studies; intellectual history and performance studies; and the histories of production technologies and craft practices.

The Principal Investigator on the project was John Wyver and the Research Fellow was Amanda Wrigley.