University of Bristol

University of Bristol at Bristol, England; established 1876 as University College, Bristol. In 1909 it gained university status. It has faculties of arts, science, medicine, engineering, law, and social sciences, and a program of continuing education.

Bristol, whose university was the first in Britain to have a university department of drama, has a long theatre history. Elizabethan companies on tour played in the city, and Edward Alleyn and Richard Burbage appeared there. The first permanent theatre opened in 1729 at Jacob's Wells outside the city boundary. Mrs Hannah Pritchard appeared there in the 1740s, as did Charles Macklin. It closed during 1757, reopened a year later, and was used for the last time in 1765. In 1766 a larger theatre was built in King Street, with a new-style horseshoe-shaped auditorium. In 1778 it obtained a royal patent and became the Theatre Royal, being run in conjunction with the Theatre Royal at Bath until 1817, a connection which brought prosperity to both houses. The stock company in Bristol was a training-ground for young actors, among them Kate and Ellen Terry; but as the centre of the city ceased to be a residential area the status of the theatre declined and it went through hard times, playing mainly farce and pantomime. When it closed after an air-raid in 1941 it seemed doomed to destruction; but in 1943 it started a new lease of life (see BRISTOL OLD VIC).

Bristol Old Vic. In 1943 the old Theatre Royal in Bristol, helped by the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA, later the Arts Council), became not only the oldest working theatre in England but also the first to be state subsidized. After reconstruction and redecoration it reopened with Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer—first performed there in 1773—and three years later, through the joint efforts of CEMA and the London Old Vic, a new resident company, the Bristol Old Vic, was launched under Hugh Hunt, soon achieving a national and international reputation. One of the theatre's most popular productions was the musical play Salad Days (1954) by Dorothy Reynolds and Julian Slade, which moved to London for a long run. A production of Love's Labour's Lost staged in 1964 in honour of Shakespeare's Quatercentenary, toured all over the world. Other productions successful in London were A Severed Head (1963), based by J. B. Priestley and Iris Murdoch on the latter's novel, Frank Marcus's The Killing of Sister George (1965), and Peter Nichols's Born in the Gardens (1979). When the Arts Council relinquished the lease of the theatre in 1963 it was taken over by a Trust and in the early 1970s extensive redevelopments were carried out, including the building of a new stage, improved backstage facilities, and the acquisition of the adjacent Coopers' Hall, an 18th-century guildhall, to form a new entrance and foyer. The main theatre now seats 647. In 1989 the Bristol Old Vic was the first regional theatre to stage a co-production with the National Theatre (of Molière's The Misanthrope). A studio theatre, the New Vic, which opened in 1972, was built in the space occupied by the old entrance, but has been closed since 1989 for lack of local authority subsidy. From 1963 to 1980 the Bristol Old Vic also presented plays at the city-owned Little Theatre in the Colston Hall. An excellent Theatre School was founded at the same time as the company, and since its inception the Bristol Old Vic has worked in close conjunction with the Department of Drama at Bristol University.