The National Video Archive of Performance is a film and video archive in London, England which holds recordings of stage performances. In 1992 the

Theatre Museum The Theatre Museum in the Covent Garden district of London, England, was the United Kingdom's national museum of the performing arts. It was a branch of the UK's national museum of applied arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum. It opened in 1974 ...

, a branch museum of the Victoria & Albert Museum, began recording stage performance in the United Kingdom. The project was named the National Video Archive of Stage Performance and later renamed the National Video Archive of Performance. The model for the project was the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...

at the

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...

. The first production recorded was the

Royal National Theatre The Royal National Theatre in London, commonly known as the National Theatre (NT), is one of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House. I ...

production of ''

Richard III Richard III (2 October 145222 August 1485) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat and death at the Battl ...

'' starring

Ian McKellen Sir Ian Murray McKellen (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. His career spans seven decades, having performed in genres ranging from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. Regarded as a British cultural i ...

and directed by

Richard Eyre Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre (born 28 March 1943) is an English film, theatre, television and opera director. Biography Eyre was born in Barnstaple, Devon, England, the son of Richard Galfridus Hastings Giles Eyre and his wife, Minna Ma ...

. The National Video Archive of Performance (NVAP) was the outcome of an agreement between the

Federation of Entertainment Unions The Federation of Entertainment Unions (FEU) is a joint representative body based in the United Kingdom, representing workers in TV, theatre, film, music, gaming, cinema, publishing, new media, professional football and other performing arts. The ...

and the V&A Theatre Collections enabling the museum to make high quality archival recordings of live performance without payment of artists' fees.NVAP on the V&A website
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References

Theatre in the United Kingdom Film archives in the United Kingdom category:Archives in London {{film-org-stub