Save the Theatre Museum?
17 December 2006
Written by 
I am confused. I got a letter in the post today from the ‘Guardians of the Theatre Museum’ asking to sign an online petition to stop the impending public closure (7th of January 2007) of the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden. Now, I’ve been following this case off and on for quite some time, and mostly thanks to articles over at the excellent Theatre Voice, which was/is housed in part of the Theatre Museum.
However when I had a look at the Theatre Museum’s website, a news entry from the 20/11/06 states that “The Covent Garden premises will close to the general public on 7 January 2007″ but that it will continue to run workshops and youth group activities and archives will be run as usual at the V&A Collections Centre at Blythe Road. It also stated that the V&A will be developing a new performance display at South Kensington.
So what’s going on? The Guardians state that they are aiming to get 100,00 people to sign up before Christmas, which looks highly unlikely given that the count currently stands at 8743. The Theatre Museum already seems to have negotiated plans with the V&A to ‘relocate’, or to regress to a state of ‘glass cases’ and loose the performance space that the current site offers. British Museums are generally in dire financial state (Tony to thank for that) and yet ironically the Theatre Museum pulled in more punters in Covent Garden and generated more visitors to its website than the V&A itself.
It seems to me that a large part of the whole problem is to do with management structures, and what the Theatre Museum really needs is to cut off its umbilical cord from the V&A, get its own site and secure funding source and start paving the way for a future of success. I haven’t come across another museum in Europe that boasts the sort of collection the TM has. Theatre is a massive cultural facet in this country’s heritage and it needs a flagship venue to do it justice.
Having perused some of the material in the TM’s archives at Blythe House, and seen the sheer size and importance of the collection, there is no doubt in my mind that more should be done to save raise awareness and raise the profile and level of debate over the outcome of this museum.
Dear London Blog,
My name is Fadel El Hallou from Morocco, Casablanca Amercican School. I am actually doing a research for Commedia Del Arte costume designing for my International baccalaureate and would like to have some information on the history of costume designing for Comedia. I am specially concentrating on Arlecchino’s costume and would like to have any possible advices you can give me for my research.
Sincerely, El Hallou Fadel
Welcome Fadel,
and thanks for your comment.
In order to help you properly with your research on costumes in Commedia Dell\’ Arte i\’d need to know the period(s) and context(s) your research deals with.
Otherwise, the best I can do is give you general recommendations of books and websites, a few of which follow below.
Hope this is of some help and good luck with your work.
Websites:
Wikipedia entry on Arlecchino: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlecchino
An interesting timeline that frames Commedia historically: http://commedia-dell-arte.com/timeline2.htm.
An article on Commedia from Theatre History.com: http://theatrehistory.com/italian/commedia_dell_arte_001.html
Renowned Italian mask maker, Antonio Fava\’s website: http://commediabyfava.it
An independant site on Commedia: http://geocities.com/commedia_dellarte
Ophaboom theatre Company: http://ophaboom.com
Books:
John Rudlin\’s Commedia Dell\’Arte in the 20th Century: A Handbook
John Rudlin and Ollie Crick\’s Commedia Dell\’Arte: A Handbook for Troupes
Meredith Chiltern\’s Harlequin Unmasked: The Commedia Dell\’arte and Porcelain Sculpture
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