Growing up a kid invested in the Arts and surrounding myself with people who felt the same, I was excited to collaborate with an organisation that leant so much to their community specifically in the Theatre. As a result, it was exciting to partner with the North Shore Theatre Company (NSTC), originally known as the Chatswood Musical Society, and collaborate with them on their history as an organisation and as a feature of the community. This is a volunteer run community theatre organisation that is celebrating their 75th Anniversary and contribution to the community throughout those years. When speaking to the Committee members, they stated that they had boxes of undocumented archives that they wanted to try and arrange into a unique timeline. As a lover of Musical Theatre and someone who had personally attended four performances by them, it was exciting to step in and look behind the curtain.
When I contacted them, the Company was glad to take me in as they needed someone to investigate and document their archives as well as to possibly build a timeline from the contents. As an entirely volunteer group, it impressed me how much each member had already taken on with one already digitising all images and another interviewing their alumni. Stepping in, it was clear that I was a collaborator on a far larger project as opposed to an independent feature. My inclusion on the project by them was swift with a member delivering the contents of their archival boxes as soon as they were in the area and taking multiple trips between us to get them through the door.
We have started with organising as much as we can into excel spreadsheets which is a skill I am having to refine throughout the process. Between my own archival spreadsheets and the organisation’s, the amount of data documented continues to accumulate.
Alumni care deeply for the organisation and demonstrate it through them providing old photos, programs, and guides on where to look for more information. A member that has been especially helpful was the President of the Committee at the time of their 65th Anniversary who created their original timeline. Their 65th Anniversary timeline was traditional with program covers throughout the years. In their 75th iteration, they communicated that they may be interested in doing something different with a display at the Chatswood Library and a timeline with the unique features found throughout their music scores, memos, or old programs to name a few. There is a significant amount of information spread between the NSTC website, their previous timeline work, and several library archives. Putting it together into something as coherent as their 65th is a task that I will be doing with collaboration of the entire team and the assistance of the former President.
The core challenge with this project comes down to the simple fact of time: with each member of the committee and me having limitations on what anyone of us can do, we are having to get creative with how and what information is obtained.
The benefit to the North Shore Theatre Company is that I can support their team effort to document their organisation’s history with the greatest amount of information possible and to present that history to those who have been a part of it for the last 75 years. For that alone, it is a privilege.