Val Lorraine Archive

Professional papers of Val Lorraine. The collection mainly comprises scripts and production information for Lorraine’s acting work from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s, but also scripts submitted to and workshopped by The Playwright’s Company in the 1980s (VAL/1 and /3 respectively). Lorraine’s involvement with the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Club is seen in a series of newsletters from 1950s to 1970s and correspondence from the late 1950s and early 1960s (VAL/2). Fifteen scripts in the collection were lacking provenance and have therefore been grouped together (VAL/5), they may relate to Playwrights Company submissions or may have been kept from Lorraine’s acting work. There is little personal material within the collection, save a collection of postcards from her children within her research notes (VAL/4). As an avid theatre-goer it is perhaps unsurprising that the collection contains a selection of posters and programmes from productions attended by Lorraine, mostly in and around her Bristol home.

Val Lorraine (1920 - 2001) was an actress and writer, a stalwart of the Southwest Scriptwriters group since its foundation in 1994. She rarely missed a meeting, and joined in with activities until just shortly before her death.

Val spent her childhood in Wimbledon and made an early stage debut, appearing in The Wind in the Willows at the Richmond Theatre aged 11. During World War II she worked at the BBC, serving under Richard Dimbleby as an assistant and broadcaster, before moving to Pinewood Studios to work as a music assistant. She married Bob in 1942 and lived in Liverpool until the family made their home in Grosvenor Lodge in Gordon Road, Clifton in the mid-1950s.

With her own acting career on hold while she brought up her children, Andrea, Elise and Ross, Val kept herself at the centre of the city’s theatrical life by taking struggling actors, writers and artists into her home. The list of illustrious lodgers and guests at Grosvenor Lodge includes Peter O’Toole, Pete Postlethwaite and Tom Stoppard. The playwright stayed with Val — she always insisted that he was a guest and not a lodger — between 1959 and 1961, and he wrote his first play, A Walk on the Water, at her dining room table. ‘She had a very sweet husband and they both loved the theatre very much,’ he recalled. ‘They kept a kind of open house for young actors, artists and friends who were passing through.’

Val chaired the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Club for many years and was involved with Southwest Scriptwriters’ predecessor, the Bristol Playwrights’ Company. She continued acting throughout the 1990s, with appearances including a Bristol Old Vic production of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, BBC1’s Casualty and a Radio 4 adaptation of Cider with Rosie. Val could always be relied on to read at Scriptwriters open workshop sessions and generously allowed the group to rehearse complete script readings at her home. A celebration of Val’s life was held at Grosvenor Lodge. The 70 guests included Tom Stoppard, Aardman Animation co-founder Peter Lord and members of Southwest Scriptwriters.

The Val Lorraine collection was repackaged, conserved and catalogued in 2018 as part of Bristol Old Vic's "Protecting and Sharing the Heritage of Britain's Oldest Theatre" project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Several other collections related to the Bristol Old Vic are held at the University of Bristol's Theatre Collection and Bristol Archives. These will also be catalogued as part of the project between 2017 and 2020.

The collection is arranged into four series by activity: Lorraine’s acting work (VAL/1), her involvement with Bristol Old Vic Theatre Club (VAL/2), Bristol Playwrights’ Company (VAL/3), and research and teaching work (VAL/4). A further two series contain scripts whose provenance is unclear (VAL/5) and posters and programmes collected by Lorraine (VAL/6). The Acting series is further subdivided into four sub-series by type: Stage (VAL/1/1), Radio (VAL/1/2), TV and film (VAL/1/3) and corporate and advertising (VAL/1/4). This sub-division reflects Lorraine's own organisation of the material.

Scripts were kept in (reused) brown envelopes by production. The envelopes have been disposed of, but information written on them - generally production/date/etc. - is recorded in file level description.

Open

DPA may apply to some records

Donated by ACH Smith, friend and Southwest Scriptwriters colleague.

None expected

Bristol Playwrights’ Company archive