Theatre Fans and Theatre Buildings, or "This Beloved Theatre of Ours"

In 2016, Bristol Old Vic in the United Kingdom celebrated its 250th birthday as the longest continuously running theatre in the English speaking world. This article draws on empirical research I conducted at that time with some of Bristol Old Vic’s most committed audiences: the members of Bristol Old Vic Theatre Club (BOVTC), which was launched in the 1940s as an audience-run organization led by enthusiasts to raise money for the theatre and otherwise support its activities. While BOVTC does not call itself a ‘fan club’, I argue that reframing the investments of its members in Fan Studies terms can produce valuable perspectives on the relationship between theatre and fandom. Specifically: for Bristol Old Vic’s most intensely engaged audience members, their love of the theatre blurs together enjoyment of the organization’s production work with an enduring attachment to the material building that houses it. Through discursive analysis of archival materials, I demonstrate that this affective blurring was central to the theatre’s historical identity during its 1940s rebranding, when Bristol’s Theatre Royal became the first venue ever to be funded by the Arts Council and was subsequently reimagined as a regional outpost of London’s Old Vic. When it comes to theatre fandom, the love of theatre as performance is often hard to separate from the love of theatre as place.