Express Trains: Working at CPR

Digging (quite literally) through the piles of flood- damaged detritus, ephemera, un-filed old papers, photos, books, memorabilia and other dubious materials (for instance a small blue plastic elephant given to all participants in the 1991 ISTA in Brecon by Eugenio Barba) that constitute the material history of the last 30 years of my work, that seem to constitute the walls and floor of my office and that I suppose I am now meant to call my ‘archive’, I managed to find what I was looking for: evidence that I arrived at Cardiff Laboratory Theatre sometime in 1985 as the Assistant Editor of Theatre Papers in the footsteps of David Williams ⁽¹⁾ who, before he left for Australia, had started to make an introductory listing of the Centre for Performance Research for the forthcoming (and final) 1985 series of Theatre Papers, edited by Peter Hulton. ⁽²⁾ The path from Dartington to Cardiff was by that time fairly well trodden, with connections already stretching back to the mid-1970s in the form of performers, and a more recent visit of Cardiff Lab to the Council of Europe Workshop on Theatres and Communities, which had been held at Dartington in 1982 (directed by Alan Read). ⁽³⁾ I remember that on my first visit Richard Gough was ‘unavailable’ and that the unimposing Victorian building at No. 5 Llandaff Road, where the CPR collection was housed, was as cold and un-enticing then as it probably still is today. My purpose was to complete the ‘Introductory Listing’, and in doing so make some sense of an eclectic collection of detritus, ephemera, un-filed old papers, photos, books, journals, memorabilia and other dubious materials.