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Kwame Kwei-Armah
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Save our Theatre Museum urge campaigning luvvies
AN attempt to kickstart a new bid to retain the now closed Theatre Museum on its current site in Covent Garden has been made by The Stage, the showbiz magazine, with a £10,000 donation made by its managing director Catherine Comerford.
The Stage was at the forefront of initial efforts to keep the institution in the West End and it has now become the first organisation to commit funds to an appeal by the Guardians of the Theatre Museum.
The group claims that the museum, which was closed earlier this year by parent organisation the Victoria and Albert Museum, is one of the UK’s most popular visitor attractions and can be run on as little as £600,000 per year.
Guardians’ chairman Ian Herbert said: “When I told Catherine Comerford that the Guardians were going to launch a real fundraising campaign to save the Theatre Museum, her response was immediate and typically generous.
“We are delighted at The Stage’s splendid gesture, and confidently expect the rest of the profession to follow this magnificent example in pledges large and small. There have been sneers that ‘the luvvies won’t support their own museum’. This is our chance to prove those doubters wrong.”
Mr Herbert added that he felt that if the organisation could secure a good proportion of the money by April, they were in with a chance of returning the museum to its Theatreland site. He also said that a number of people had already approached him with smaller donations after The Stage’s sum had kick-started the appeal.
The Guardians currently have around 13,000 people signed up in support of keeping the museum in the West End, including Cameron Mackintosh, Judi Dench, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Joanna Lumley and Simon Callow.
Ms Comerford announced the donation at the Stage’s annual New Year Party at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane and said that she hoped that other members of the profession would soon follow suit. She adds: “The Stage has pledged this sum in recognition of the fact that it is now insufficient simply to say it supports the campaign.
“Thousands have put their names on the Guardians register, and if the Theatre Museum is truly as important as this would suggest, it is time to put money where mouths are.
“I hope The Stage’s initiative will encourage everyone to give what they can afford – sadly, words and signatures are not enough.”
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