For the first time in my life, I encountered plays as a university student. As an English major, I was fortunate enough to read some plays as part of my coursework. I had never been particularly fond of long novels—and consequently hadn’t read much literature—but plays were relatively short and easy to digest. I ended up reading quite a few plays, most of which belonged to the genre known as "modern plays" in theatrical history. It was a fitting subject because I was living in the era that followed that of modern plays. I was especially drawn to the works of the American playwright Eugene O’Neill, which I read in both English and Japanese. My fascination with drama grew only from his plays.
After graduating from university, I read fewer plays, but I began attending more live performances and enjoyed a wide variety of shows several times a year. During a year I spent in London, I made it a point to see a play every two weeks. Now that I have retired, I have found myself with an unimaginable abundance of time. This led me to the idea of creating a digital book of photographs or postcards of theatrical scenes scattered on the Web, and sharing them with all of you around the World. These images were photographed nearly a century ago and are free from copyright restrictions.
Among thousands of them are hundreds of photographs collected by Japanese enthusiasts of plays around 1930. At that time, new theater groups were emerging in Japan, drawing inspiration from Western drama. For these groups, photographs of stage scenes were likely the only reference material available for creating costumes and stage sets. Some of these images are so rare that even people in the West today could not find them—and I would like to share them with you all.
This is a starting point for this website. From here, I have expanded my search, scouring various countries to collect theatrical photographs, especially in Europe and America, from roughly 1890 to 1935, when theater was a major form of entertainment not just in Japan but globally.
I am very happy to invite you to step into that vibrant, spectacular world of theatrical plays.
This website invites all people in the world to enjoy viewing the various theatre scenes in Europe and America, especially from 1890 until 1935, when people enjoyed theatrical performances most of all times, but eventually drew to a close with the arrival of cinema.
Each blog of drama performances consists of these parts.
- Title of each performance of the play
- Simple annotation of the performance
- Additional annotation of the performance or the play or the playwright
- And, most important of all, the photographs and postcards and pictures of the performance of the play, which are basically in the public domain because they are over 100 years old
- Link to other sites for further information on each performance or each play.
HOW TO USE THIS SITE
・The easiest way to make full use of this site is to use the search window or gadget on the right-hand column of the blog, with such keywords as the name of the playwright, the title of the play, or the year or the place of the performance.
・Drama performances are arranged chronologically from the newest to the oldest and archived in the following way.
Year of Performance 1914 ⇒ 1914+100=2014 ⇒ Archived in the year 2014
But performances year after 1926 are all archived under the year 2026.
Year of Performance 1914 ⇒ 1914+100=2014 ⇒ Archived in the year 2014
But performances year after 1926 are all archived under the year 2026.
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