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In a tiny corner tucked away on the first floor of Christie’s famous auction house, a delightful treasure trove for theatre lovers is up for grabs.Summary
Rating
Unmissable!
Ever so slightly dwarfed, it has to be said, by a late Rolling Stone next door, the Out of the Margins exhibition at Christie’s is home to a small but beautifully formed selection of scripts, playtexts and notebooks. Each is uniquely adorned with a famous writer’s spidery hand-written notes, musings, scribbles and, in the case of Tina Fey’s Mean Girls the Musical script, a delightful and deftly doodled self-portrait.
Each lot provides direct insights into where plays come from, how they get made and how challenges along the way are resolved. The experience is akin to seeing everyone’s homework and, make no mistake, there’s A+ quality work going on from writers such as Tom Stoppard, Caryl Churchill, Joe Penhall, Dennis Kelly, Tonderai Munyevu and Suzie Miller. The latter has donated the working script for the recent Broadway transfer of Prima Facie. It couldn’t be more up-to-date or exciting for fans.
It is all so tangible too. These are real objects, right there, fresh, new, alive and unfiltered. Not intended for posterity, there is nothing glamorous or remotely ‘showbiz’ about these working documents, but that is surely why they feel so important. As I was lucky enough to attend the press launch, I was invited to reach into the exhibition’s glass cases and flick through any particular items that caught my eye. I declined for fear of breaking something so precious.
Christie’s is, of course, an auction house. It has been in the business of finding the highest bidder for over 250 years now. These items are quite definitely for sale. Some, you can imagine going for eye-watering money: Jack Thorne’s notes on The Cursed Child, anyone? Thousands and thousands and thousands, no doubt. But other equally fascinating, if slightly lesser-known, works are on display. The exhibition is only the tip of the iceberg too. The bulk of the 60 lots feature online.
The organisers are writers and theatre practitioners themselves. This shines through in their choices but also, in chatting to them, the genuine excitement with which they describe what they’ve brought together. They too, it is abundantly clear, hold the intricacies of the theatre writing process dear. I shall use the term enthusiasts. They are far too cool to be labelled nerds. Famously responsible for five-star Calais-based drama The Jungle, which has been, by any measure, hugely successful on both sides of the Atlantic, the good folk at Good Chance are raising money for future work. They bring diverse communities together and co-create theatre with refugee artists. As our politics seems destined to get bleaker and more divisive, I can think of few causes more deserving of funding right now.
The art of playwriting continues to fascinate and beguile. Each of Out of the Margins‘ lots has clearly been donated and received with a huge amount of love and compassion. Both the exhibition and auction deserve to be a huge success.
Out of the Margins exhibition runs until Thursday 28 September.
The Online Auction runs until Friday 6 October. Further information can be found here.
