NICHES AND MICROFICHES

Wednesday 17th September 2025

Via lifts and port-holed doors, today I caught glimpses of the labyrinthine workings of the British Library. From post rooms to stores, philatelic cataloguing to staff canteens, it is vast.

Standing in the Eccles Institute next to crates of books labelled ‘for deaccessioning’ Iris Bachmann, Curator of Latin American Published Collections shared information on the colour coded stamping of volumes by laser and hand – one of the ways the chaos of unruly books and knowledge is controlled. She points to the stamping crew, waving to a space beyond a makeshift wall of bookcases dividing teams that catalogue and allocate shelf numbers. The fate of some of these deaccessioned books at my feet may be ‘the shredder’- an almost sacrilegious utterance in this sanctuary of books.

The foyer bookshop shelves are filled with books about books, about lovers of books tracing stories of bibliophiles and Biblioteques. A PhD researcher cataloguing a donor’s specialist archive of Victorian porn and 1960s comics says his friends tell him his ‘love language is bibliography’ – passing on books and recommendations, reading inscriptions, deciphering notes in margins – finding a place for things and words. I wonder how much actually ends up in the shredder of doom as I read one of my pile of books for today – ordered up last week to be picked out by robots and driven to London from the British Library’s store in Boston Spa, Yorkshire.

Voices from the Federal Theatre

Dangerous Theatre

The Federal Theatre 1935-1939

John Housman’s foreword to ‘Federal Theatre Project: free, adult, uncensored’ mentions the fact that in 1949 it was recommended that the archives of the Federal Theatre Project that I now research with such curiosity be destroyed. Who gets to decide what is kept and remembered, forgotten, banned or censored? Curator of Modern Archives and Manuscripts Alex Lock beams in on zoom with an introduction to the Lord Chamberlain’s Collection – a record of the absurdity and bigotry of theatre censorship from 1737-1968 in which original play manuscripts are accompanied by ‘reader reports’ – readers being mainly retired military officer bureaucrats charged with passing often damning judgement on every public theatrical production in Britain – their blue pencil marking Ibsen and Pinter.

As Hallie Flanagan, Director of the Federal Theatre Project stated “The theatre, when it’s good, is always dangerous.” And so I journey into this dangerous history – of an era when the Living Newspaper Unit’s productions that I focus on were labelled ‘communist’ by their critics and ultimate censors whilst pushing the boundaries of a theatre and art that reached beyond a cultural elite and engaged with the issues of the time. As with all of the Works Progress Administration initiatives of the era the core underlying aim was ‘relief’ - employment for the mass unemployed in the era of the Great Depression. Their productions involved not only out of work theatre professionals but unemployed newspaper personnal. Combining factual information with theatrical symbol and intense soundscape, a key feature was the ‘voice of the living newspaper’ - a voice that became that of the public – questioning and challenging officials and the status quo.

“The Living Newspaper was a new dramatic form. A committed documentary that informed the audience of the size, nature and origin of a social problem, then called for specific action to solve it.” (Federal Theatre Project: free, adult, uncensored). The first of the Living Newspapers ‘Triple A Ploughed Under’ (1935. Written by Arthur Arendt and directed by Joe Losey and H Gordon Graham) about the Dust Bowl called for the Soil Conservation Act and Farm Labour Party. The Living Newspaper Unit plays often involved rowdy audience interaction and were a divisive and controversial antidote to a commercial theatre that in FTP Director Hallie Flanagan’s words continued “to tell in polite whispers its tales of small triangular love stories in small rectangular settings.” I hone in on this unit amidst the broad catalogue (from Vaudeville to historical drama) of the New Deal’s Federal Theatre Project because they innovated in form - bringing together the languages of avant-garde theatre, analogue multimedia and newsroom. What can I take from this stagecraft, the combined sources of the theatrical, the bureaucratic and the archival? I look to the Living Newspaper Units influences in Russian agit prop and constructivist theatre, to the epic non naturalistic theatre of Brecht and my early immersion in these and Meyerhold during my MA Scenography in Prague’s Theatre Academy. How can these influences fuse and adapt to considering a Living Newspaper Unit for this time? A work that isn’t theatre made for the stage but that stages a form of Living Newspaper in print and performance that speaks to and addresses these times.

A list of Living Newspaper Unit plays reveals their chosen themes continued relevance.

TRIPLE A PLOUGHED UNDER: Agricultural policy. INJUNCTION GRANTED: Unionised Labour. ONE THIRD OF A NATION: Housing. POWER: Energy Democracy and a call for the public ownership of utilities.

What elements can be adapted to my work now? The processes of writing the Living Newspaper? the collaborative editing? the adaptation of cinematic and projection devices? Where is my stage? Is it in miniature? In the microfiche units that house the headlines of the era’s newsrooms? If so, why choose to work with seemingly defunct, analogue technologies in a digital, ai advancing age? The impacts of the recent cyber-attack on the British Library are far reaching and the value of the analogue suddenly made apparent in stories of microfiche and card catalogues being the only thing up and running in the aftermath of this serious data breach. Can I adapt and play with the languages of how we consume our ‘content’ and assess fact and truth, transferring swipe and scroll to a reimagining and reediting of the microfiche bed? What is the legacy of the Living Newspaper Unit when now newspapers themselves are part of a ‘legacy’ media?

Slightly overloaded with questions and book dust I upload caffeine in the foyer café sitting next to a young man quizzing his friend with questions from the ‘Life In The UK’ test. I admit that I can barely answer any of the questions. Vaguely remembered histories drift into focus – Guy Fawkes, 1066….. They are identifying lochs and national flowers as I get up to meet Laura Carderera, Programme Curator for Research & Scholarship at the Eccles Institute for an appointment with a microfiche reader. A more urgent gauge of citizenship would be a ‘Life on Earth’ test – are we aware of our interconnectedness? the value of each niche within a wider ecology. Everyone in this place is busying themselves on their niche – co existing and contributing to the diversity of knowledge and life. Can you tell the stories of the materials that surround you? Q1. What is a pencil made of? Carbon (graphite), clay, wood (I ‘ve been thinking a lot/obsessing about pencils prompted by the many ‘Pencils Only’ signs) Do you understand the infrastructures that support you? Social, technical, political. I pack up my bags to face London Underground, purposely not thinking of the tunnels’ depth and the earth’s weight by imagining the books lurking below the city surrounded by ancient clay. Strange eczema blotches my hands. A reaction to history erupting from paper, ink and records of multiple voices and times.

REQUIRED READING ROOM

Thursday 11th September

I had meant to stick to Wednesdays as my British Library day but bombing it to Snowdonia and back on a speculative mission stopped that this week. Today I get acclimatised, work out how things work, how to order up books, newspapers, rare print. I will start with the books on my reading list: ‘The Federal Theatre Project 1935-1939: engagement and experimentation’, ‘Bread and Circuses: A Study of Federal Theatre’….

I’d forgotten that on the list of things not allowed in the reading rooms are pens. Pencils are the tool here. Joined and probably superseded by digital device but still… I hold it carefully, aware of how it could quite easily become defunct without an accompanying pencil sharpener. No sharp objects allowed. Perhaps there is also something in this restriction. If only pencils are allowed maybe I work with that. Might not be that linked to my main aims but another way of documenting and recording time here in a different way?

Being unprepared for compulsory graphite, I was forced to buy a pencil for 50p from the shop. As I’d already packed away all cash I browsed to add something to the order and projects collided as I reached, as always, for a sunflower – a card of an image taken from Hortus Eystettensis, originally published by George Mack, Nuremburg 1931. A sunflower recorded as war brewed. It sits next to the Birthday cards stating ‘another year around the sun’ - all these dizzying years of humanity spinning around the sun - of trauma and tragedy, joy and justice. Gutenberg Press. Nuremberg Chronicles. Nuremberg Trials. Reading the information boards and looking at the select displays in the vast public spaces of the library makes clear this history of the printed word and its political implications. The acknowledgement that the library holds items that were originally acquired through the profits from slavery or imperial theft. One of the collections that merged to become the British Library was ‘The India Office Library and Records’ assembled by the East India Company and India. The consequences of words stolen, erased or repurposed.

As I take a clear plastic bag labelled Reading Room Requirement I see a stack of flyers – ‘London is Anti-Fascist.’ This is a clear and needed statement but it is not a given. Democracy takes constant work – a process undermined by words becoming laws until the only word is oppression. When George Orwell says ‘our times’ from his desk somewhere in the 1940s he speaks to ours. An extremely slim pamphlet in the distinctive new white and red Penguin series see his words speaking out from bookshop displays across the country – ‘Fascism and Democracy.’ I pick it up and walk through the biographies of Musk, the voices of minor celebrities, sporting legends, the bestseller lists, stacked crime fiction and recipes towards the till where it faces me again - forcing us to confront some truth amid the fluff and loveliness. (See Hugh Bonneville on the red carpet of Downton Abbey’s premiere). And if I ‘m always struck by how many new books are on display in the bookshops and those I wish were not written, I marvel at the sheer weight of the words stored here. The immensity of volume. The written displays state that as the British Library is a legal deposit collections they have a legal duty to collect and preserve every copy of every book, newspaper, magazine and map published in the UK, as well as printed music. Since 2013 that includes the UK web archive. The sheer cacophony of words - the poetry and politics, descriptions and drafts, evidence and headlines. If ‘Night at the Museum’ was made in the British Library there would be all out war. A place where the om mani padme hummmm becomes a futurist zang tum tummm collision of ancient and modern prophets and profiteers. A place where peace has to be fought for. I sit in front of the towering glass walls of the temperature controlled ‘Kings Library’ bequeathed to the nation by King George III. Books as beautiful objects to care for and conserve for generations. But the words - the words contained in this ocean liner are wild – an ark with wondrous, dangerous cargo. Words inciting hate and revolution, love and war. Words that sing across centuries of the best and worse of what it is to be human in our journey around the sun.

The collections grow by 8km and 500 terabytes a year. How can they keep growing in the finite space of underground London and a 43 acre at Boston Spa? This is the same kind of incomprehension and wonder I feel thinking about how the world isn’t one big cemetery. All we are is dust in the wind. But where are the terabytes? What is the physical footprint of our digital lives? How much energy does this take? The constant hummmm of servers serving this operation. A hummmm is overwhelming the calm of study, in the life drawn to these words. Arundhati Roy states “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing.” I can hear her roar.

So amid these musings I move to get on with what I came here for – deeper research into the Living Newspaper Unit of the Federal Theatre Project. The context it emerged from – The Great Depression and Roosevelt’s New Deal US. The way these plays were made - scripted from headlines of the day, employing unemployed journalists. Their staging inspired by Soviet Constructivist Theatre, their innovative use of analogue technology and multi media. The way they were censored and banned. The House of UnAmercian Activities.

I double check I am meeting the reading room requirements. My own requirements. Don’t spend too long writing this as a first rule. 1 hour max. Compartmentalise by day. But leave room for diversions. Of which I instantly find one – checking the dates of the Kings Library I see that Jonathan Swift had similar ideas writing ‘The Battle of the Books’ in 1704 – a satire depicting a literal battle of books in the library. Results left inconclusive by describing the manuscript as damaged. Illegible in parts. Like history. Like life.

AN OCEAN LINER, AN ARK

I don’t know how I hadn’t seen it. I was so excited about my niche focus and the thrill of having this time and support to explore and make work that I hadn’t even thought more widely about the Library itself. The portholes, the expansive feeling of calm and possibility - built like an ocean liner. Eccles Institute programme curator Laura Caderera, starts our tour at the maquette of the site with the fact that the British Library was established in 1973 as a result of the British Library Act 1972. I had always thought it older but its just 5 years older than me - all this knowledge collected together in my lifetime. The pace of technological change and obsolescence. The collections house the calls of now extinct animals available to listen to in quiet shock and grief in the lower atrium listening posts.

I vaguely remember reports of the future King’s distaste at the building’s design - it only opened officially in 1998 - the year I moved to London, sleeping on a kitchen floor in a friends flat above a chip shop, getting my first job dishing out spag bol up the BT Tower and second one the day after as uniformed ‘invigilator’ at the Royal Academy keep watch of paintings and people. Prince Charles declared it looked like an ‘academy for secret policemen.’ Now it’s a listed building with a footprint deep below the Euston Road - mile of shelving deep below the raging street struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of printed and digital matter we humans produce and ‘legally deposit’ (Legal Deposit Act 2013).

Laura shows me the currently closed ‘Treasures Gallery’ - a space of alternating displays revealing the gems of what is mainly hidden from public view. So much is quite literally stored beneath the surface from the transcripts of the Kyoto Protocol to the Magna Carta. The room is shut because of some climate control issues. When the Magna Carta was on display in 2024 this ancient legal document was the target of Just Stop Oil protestors. Reverend Sue Parfitt and retired biology teacher Judy Bruce managed to walk through security with a hammer and chisel and proceeded to try to crack the protective glass with the statement ““The Magna Carta is rightly revered, being of great importance to our history, to our freedoms and to our laws. But there will be no freedom, no lawfulness, no rights, if we allow climate breakdown to become the catastrophe that is now threatened. We must get things in proportion. The abundance of life on Earth, the climate stability that allows civilisation to continue, is what must be revered and protected above all else, even above our most precious artefacts.”

As an obsessive disaster movie viewer I think of the film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ based on the 1999 book ‘The Coming Global Superstorm.’ The world is freezing and survivors do what they have to do in New York’s Public Library - burning furniture and precious artefacts/books - though even then choices are made on what print material is sacrificed - tax law going first. Prince Charles, continuing with the Stasi associations also oddly claimed this looked like a place for burning books when it feels the opposite - a place of sanctuary. So many people shelter here, to dream and make and plan surrounded by the matter of knowledge and imagination. So many people work here taking the steps to setting up businesses that the British Library set up the Business and IP Centre to offer more support.

For me, as I sustain an artistic practice and attempt to balance the demands of fundraising and production with time to imagine and make this fellowship is space - the space of ocean liners and the open sea. And although I have set myself a task and outlined a plan to investigate and make work around, these meanders and asides are part of this adventure. There is a falcon called Weatherby. There is a 5 story basement. A place full of people. Full of stories.