Theatre Projects Consultants Collection

The collection consists of papers and drawings relating to the work of Theatre Projects Consultants on the construction of the National Theatre building on the South Bank.

Theatre Projects was founded in 1957 by Richard Pilbrow with Bryan Kendall in London, as an upstart lighting design and rental company. In 1959 sound design, rental and later sound manufacture was added under David Collison (the world’s first credited sound designer).

In 1966 Richard Pilbrow joined the building committee for the planning of the new National Theatre building and was later chosen by Laurence Olivier to be a full-time theatre consultant to work with him. He has also been consultant to the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Theatre; The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; and many other significant arts buildings in the North America, Europe, Hong Kong and the Middle East.

In 1967 Richard Brett was appointed as Theatre Project Consultants managing director and was responsible for the introduction of professional standards of consulting as well as for many breakthrough engineering innovations.

Prior to cataloguing the collection, it had been reboxed and briefly listed. However, there was no indication given as to whether the original order had been preserved in the reboxing process. No particular pattern of arrangement was discernable, except for some groupings of related material.

An original filing system was identified within the correspondence files, and it was thought appropriate to follow this where possible in order to preserve some aspect of original order. The drawings were (for the most part but not consistently) grouped by the company which produced them, and this arrangement has been preserved.

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Deposited by Theatre Project Consultants