When the Corrick Family Entertainers – a vaudeville-style music troupe composed of Professor Albert Corrick, his wife Sarah, and their eight children – began touring in late 1900, they carried with them a modest collection of items: a tin trunk filled with sheet music and stands, a suitcase of performance clothes, and their instruments.

By the time they finished touring 14 years later, after travelling throughout Australia and New Zealand, Asia, the South Pacific, India, and Europe, playing for audiences that reached into the thousands, the Corricks’ luggage and equipment weighed seven tons, was valued at more than £4,000, and included a full electrical plant, portable arc and footlights, electric fans, a motion picture camera, projectors, stage scenery, ornate costumes and dozens of musical instruments.

Uniquely, it also included more than 135 films produced in the earliest years of the 20th Century. It is a selection of these films that form the basis of The Corrick Project. Possessed of a magical, playful charm, the films, created in a time before digital trickery, show performers of extreme physical skill doing extraordinarily difficult routines.

Donated to the National Film and Sound Archive by the family, the Corrick Collection is a treasure trove of extremely rare films, which in some cases are the only known copies still in existence. The films include mad chase stories, tender fairy tales, films of world travels and amazing early trick photography some of which are exquisitely hand tinted and stencilled. The Collection blends the earliest comic, travel and dramatic short films being produced in France, Britain the United States and Australia, the latter being made by the Corricks themselves.

Creative Development Team

Performers/Co-Devisors:  Alicia Battestini, Tom Flanagan, Alexandra Harrison, Kate Sherman, Matt Wilson, Emil Wolk
Writer: Lally Katz
Director: Patrick Nolan
Composer: Ben Walsh
Design: Anna Tregloan
Lighting Designer: Nicholas Rayment
Video: Mic Gruchy
Musicians: Matt Ottignon, Luke Dubber, Ben Walsh
Production Manager/Rigger: Jon Blake
Artistic Associate: Simone O’Brien
Stage Manager: Isabella Kerdijk
Design Secondments: Teresa Negroponte, Daniel Harvey

All images courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive.