Annotation Practices in German 20th Century Actors’ Scripts

The Boy Gobert Estate

Individual Research Project

This project breaks new ground by developing and applying an analytical framework for a type of written artefact that has been largely overlooked in the context of modern and contemporary European theatre: the actors’ script.

Actors’ scripts are based on clean copies of a play (whether in manuscript, typescript, or print) that actors use to learn their lines. These personal copies are then often enriched and reshaped by the actors’ own accumulating handwritten annotations, which range from memory aids to complex psychological scores of the characters to be performed. Most of these annotations are made during the rehearsal period, e.g. in preparation for staging the play, but they can also be added during the performance period. As such, they are crucial for the technical and textual repeatability of the theatre production in question.

Besides their technical significance, actors’ scripts also convey the actor’s personal and subjective interaction with the text of the play and the written artefact itself. Through annotation, actors foster a handwritten interaction with the script, take ownership of it, and weave their interpretation of the character into the text. This interaction is materialised in the written artefact.

While actors’ scripts are unique among written artefacts for staging in modern and contemporary European theatre (and also crucial to its processes), actors’ scripts have received little to no scholarly attention, neither within the study of manuscript or written artefact cultures, nor in theatre or literature studies. Due to their private nature, actors’ scripts are rarely preserved in theatre archives.

However, the Hamburg ‘Theatersammlung’ (theatre collection) at the State and University Library Hamburg contains the archive of the Thalia Theater under its acclaimed (and sometimes maligned) 1969–1980 artistic director and stage star Boy Gobert – and Gobert’s very own actor’s scripts as a part of it.

Based on this prominent local example, the project aims to develop a methodological approach to the manuscript practices of actors’ scripts. It will then conduct an in-depth analysis of the Hamburg material, contextualising Gobert’s annotation style within the broader historical framework of individual actors’ scripts within the ‘Theatersammlung’ (dating from approximately 1750 to 2000), and examining the intricate relationships that the annotations have with the pre-existing formats and materialities.