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Léonie Scott-Matthews with the theatre memorabilia and scripts found in the home of Chris Harbon |
Secret stash of plays found in late campaigner’s council flat
Friend’s search of home uncovers treasure chest of drama memorabilia
HE was known to Camden councillors as a tireless activist, the imposing chairman of the Palgrave House Tenants’ Association during the 1990s and the figurehead for the campaign for the Fleet Community Centre.
But Chris Harbon, who died in June, aged 73, was also a prolific writer, the author of scores of successful play and film scripts, a cache of which were recovered this week from his former home. The manuscripts had been destined for the dustbin, but a last-minute call to Léonie Scott-Matthews, who runs Pentameters Theatre, saved them from being lost.
Now Ms Scott-Matthews plans to house the documents in her theatre archive and is considering reviving one of the plays of Mr Harbon, who lived in Wells Court sheltered accommodation in Oriel Place, Hampstead. “A warden at Wells Court called me and said she had a lot of Chris’s stuff,” said Ms Scott-Matthews. “There were letters, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings. He was a hoarder, like me.
“I said if there was anything to do with theatre, it would be of interest for my archive.”
Mr Harbon worked for a time as a drama teacher, and counted actor Kenneth Cranham as among his pupils. As a teacher at Tulse Hill Comprehensive, he taught former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and poet Benjamin Zephaniah. His memorial service, which was attended by more than 100 people, including some of his former pupils, was held last week at the Rosslyn Hill Chapel and his ashes were scattered in a garden outside Pentameters, which is opposite his former home.
Ms Scott-Matthews said: “The theatre memorabilia goes back to Chris’s school days in the 1950s. I have his university doctorate from 1958 on the poetic dramas of TS Eliot. There is also an unfinished script for a film about schizophrenia.”
Ms Scott-Matthews staged one of Mr Harbon’s plays, Marching Orders, a single-act drama about a polytechnic, at Pentameters in 1984. The pair lost touch, but Ms Scott-Matthews unexpectedly met up with Mr Harbon shortly before his death.
“I saw him in the street on Oriel Place and started chatting with him,” she said. “He said he was living in Wells Court. I went round to his flat and we had a long chat in a room full of books and scripts. Above his fireplace was a poster for his adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which was staged at a big theatre in Seattle in the 1980s. It was signed by the cast and was obviously his pride and joy – a very happy time for him.”
The poster mysteriously ended up in Keith Fawkes’ bookshop on Flask Walk, where Léonie recently purchased it.
It is not known if Mr Harbon left behind any family.
Former Camden councillor Gerry Harrison, who worked with Mr Harbon on the campaign for the Fleet Community Centre, said: “His personal life was a bit of a mystery. He was reluctant to talk too much about it. Ending up in Camden council accommodation, he had obviously had some sort of decline, and the road that led him there, I wouldn’t say he was ashamed of it, but it was something he didn’t want to discuss.”
Dugald Gonsal, a friend of Mr Harbon, said: “He led three kinds of lives – there was the life that I knew, which was his work in the community, his life in drama and the theatre, and a third life to do with social work and anti-smoking campaigns.”
Mr Harbon’s collection, which includes stacks of his scripts, photographs and old theatre programmes, can be viewed upon request to Ms Scott-Matthews. |
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