“Distract parcels in combined sums”: The Stratford Festival Archives' Stage-Managerial Collections

The Stratford Festival Archives houses the largest single-theatre archive in the world, spanning more than sixty years of performing history, artefacts, production materials, and ephemera. Uniquely, the Stratford Archives also hosts a growing collection of palimpsestic composite scripts, layered master texts which feature every dramaturgical cut in the Festival's history. Through consideration of Festival prompt-books and composite scripts, this paper illustrates Stratford’s approach to stage-managerial material, with particular focus on the industry of archivist Nora Polley. Featuring a collection of high-quality prompt-book scans, this paper examines the efficacy of composite prompt-books, both as a practical dramaturgical tool and effective work of ongoing archival memorialization.