On 27 November the Royal Court Theatre announced the launch of Living Archive, their first ever standalone online archive. The digital archive holds information on every play which has ever been presented on the Royal Court stages from when it opened its doors in 1956 to the present day, totalling almost 2000 works by over 1000 writers.
The website will be accessible to all and can be navigated by users through pathways created by guest curator-writers. It has been designed to challenge preconceptions around what we archive, who gets to decide what is archived and how we mark historic projects. The site also features an interactive portal, where visitors are encouraged to contribute to the archive themselves.
Living Archive evolved out of Living Newspaper, a project the Royal Court undertook in 2020. Living Newspaper raised questions around the politics of archiving, and who gets to decide what is remembered. This led to a series of research and development performances and the performances in turn led to the Living Archive website. In line with the Royal Court’s commitment to supporting and developing writers, the archive is, in the first instance, being targeted at emerging writers.
Living Archive presents an innovation in archiving, and marks the beginning of a total democratisation of Royal Court archive access. It is built around the idea that an active theatre archive can and should never be finished.