The V&A Theatre and Performance Archives strives to reflect the breadth of creativity of performing arts in the UK, encompassing diverse forms from ballet to circus, and capturing the work of practitioners in all aspects of the creation of performance, including writing, choreography, and design. Despite these efforts, there will always be room to diversify our representation of the performing arts further and to shed light on those aspects that have remained underrepresented or overlooked. The craft of wig design is one such aspect of the world of theatre; until the acquisition of the archive that is the topic of this blog post, the V&A did not hold an archive dedicated to wig and hair design, and out in the industry, wig makers, designers, and supervisors rarely receive credits for their work.
In 2022, the V&A was offered the archive of the late Linda McKnight by her family. McKnight was one of the UK’s most industrious and respected wig designers/supervisors of the past several decades, and the donation of the materials created and accumulated throughout her career was an exciting opportunity to fill a gap in our collections and bring representation to what Linda herself felt was an overlooked craft.
Linda McKnight (1961 – 2021) worked in wigs, hair and make-up across theatre, television, and film, as well as for photoshoots and exhibitions, but she was especially prolific in the West End, supervising and designing hair and wigs for many major musicals, including Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Jersey Boys, and the London run of Hamilton. She was involved in all stages of the wig creation process, from initial design, to fitting, alterations, and repairs during show runs, and this is reflected in the great variety of materials in the archive. These materials include: annotated scans of concept art, character designs and reference photographs; Linda’s notes and instructions on necessary materials, budgets and head measurements; character/costume plots and breakdowns; and diagrams of actions to be carried out on wigs. The archive also importantly features wig and hair bibles. These provide continuity shots of the wigs on head blocks and cast in costume often with annotated instructions for dressing, and those within the Linda McKnight Archive are currently the only examples the V&A holds in its collections of this vital tool for maintaining consistency across shows.
Whilst the archive itself is relatively modest in size, comprising of just twelve boxes, one portfolio, and several gigabytes of digital photography, the sheer range of productions represented in the material made it a painstaking task to catalogue to make it accessible to the public. Over one hundred productions are mentioned in some capacity in the material, primarily across the years 1997 to 2020, with sixty-eight theatre productions and ten television and film productions warranting their own files. As much of the material was generated in the course of working within the fast-paced world of theatre, it lacked a clear order and context in places upon arrival, so I both had to rapidly try to develop an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of what’s been on stage in the West End and beyond since the late 1990s, and rely on my best sleuthing skills, sometimes working with as little as a low-resolution jpeg and a first name, to identify the productions and order them chronologically.
What made the archive challenging to work with at times is also one of its greatest appeals however; in places it is messy, it has its idiosyncrasies and its short-hands for wig terminology – and a noticeable whiff of hairspray – but that reflects the realities of its creation, and is testament to the fact that these materials were actively used in the industry, rather than printed for posterity. It was a pleasure to learn about an aspect of theatre that I knew little of beforehand through Linda’s work, tracing different stages of the design process and seeing what has to happen behind the scenes for actors to come out on stage with perfectly coiffed hair each and every time.
The catalogue for the Linda McKnight Archive is now available on the V&A website; I look forward to 2025 when V&A East Storehouse opens and many more people will gain the opportunity to explore the archive in our new study rooms and discover Linda McKnight’s contribution to theatre and beyond.
