Tom Stoppard, Wole Soyinka, Caryl Churchill, David Hare, Jez Butterworth, Richard Curtis, Tina Fey, Tanika Gupta, V (formerly Eve Ensler) and Inua Ellams are among the 50 leading playwrights who are kindly donating annotated first and special editions of play texts and musical scripts to be auctioned. Organised by Good Chance Theatre, hosted by the Auction Collective, in collaboration with Christie’s, the Out of the Margins Auction will be In support of refugee artists in the UK.
The 50 annotated texts being auctioned include some of the world’s best-loved theatrical productions such as Leopoldstadt, Jerusalem, Prima Facie, The Vagina Monologues, The Doctor, Closer, The Empress, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, The Play What I Wrote, Wicked, Jerry Springer: The Opera, Mean Girls and Matilda the Musical. The texts have been annotated by hand, offering a unique insight into the writer’s creative process, and reflections, memories, thoughts and feelings.. The texts are completely original and are highly personal and intimate.
The Out of the Margins auction will represent the largest collection of annotated play texts and scripts in theatre history, sharing the private thoughts and feelings of some of the world’s greatest living contemporary playwrights, covering some of the most significant moments in the last fifty years of theatre. Out of the Margins collects these texts together for the first time, providing a unique opportunity for members of the general public, theatre lovers, and collectors alike to bid for a piece of theatrical history.
Out of the Margins will be an online three-week timed auction hosted by The Auction Collective from 15th September – 6th October 2023. A free exhibition of selected texts will be on public display from 21st to 28th September 2023 at Christie’s Auction House in St James’s, London.
Highlights from the upcoming auction include:
- A heavily annotated rarely available boxed first edition of Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard, awarded Best New Play at the 2023 Tony Awards.
- Annotations of scripts of screenplays and films including Love, Actually by Richard Curtis and The Theory of Everything by Anthony McCarten.
- V (formerly Eve Ensler)‘s annotations of a rare edition of The Vagina Monologues that was printed only for the first ever V Day event in 1998.
- Annotations of some of the best-loved musicals such as Wicked (Winnie Holzman), Mean Girls (Tina Fey), Six the Musical (Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss) and Matilda the Musical (Dennis Kelly).
The money raised from the Out of the Margins charity auction will fund Good Chance Theatre‘s work supporting refugee artists in the UK. Since it was founded in the Calais Jungle refugee camp 8 years ago by playwrights Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, Good Chance Theatre has provided 250 refugee artists with 1-2-1 support in the UK as well as placing over 750 artists from refugee and migrant backgrounds in paid employment and training. Good Chance Theatre runs several full-time programmes supporting migrants and refugees in the UK including the Good Chance Ensemble, a programme which tackles barriers to entry for refugee artists in theatre and art today through various projects.
For more information on how to register to bid and take part in the Auction from 15th September, visit https://theauctioncollective.com/auctions/out-of-the-margins
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