More Messages of Support

Thank you for all you are doing. I remember the joy at the opening of the Theatre Museum after many years of dedicated work by an enthusiastic team of volunteers. It is such a short sighted decision. Each year I take a group of students to visit the museum as part of their course work - I was there last week - and each year students say to me that they never realised it was there - even though they had walked past the building. I notice very little publicity for the TM at the V&A - I think the marketing department have some work to do on this!

Good luck with the campaign.

Sheila Dickie - former Education Officer at Sadler's Wells Theatre - now lecturer at Birkbeck.

• On behalf of the over 700 members of The Stephen Sondheim Society, may I add our support to your campaign to halt the closure of the Theatre Museum.
  
  It is a much-needed educational and cultural resource and for the past few years has offered us support and a spiritual home.

Lynne Chapman, Administrator, The Stephen Sondheim Society

The Theatre Museum is just too important, for researchers and common people. It helps preserving the memory of our society and culture. Please save it!

Patrizia Veroli

• Whatever I can do to help keep the Theatre Museum open, I will do. Just ask. Perhaps we should threaten a sit-in performance of something.

Julian Pettifer

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE. THROUGHOUT THE WORLD BUILDINGS ARE BEING DESTROYED BY WARS AND PRICELESS ARTEFACTS WERE DESTROYED BY RELIGIOUS FANATICS. SAVE THIS THEATRE MUSEUM, FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!

Wim Vorster - RIGHTS ADMINISTRATION - DALRO (Pty) Ltd., Bramfontein, S Africa

• I visited the Theatre Museum when I was in London last. It was the highlight of my trip. It is the place I will be going back to first, when I return next July. This museum is so important as the keeper of the foundations of English language theatre- London as the beginnings and centre of our culture- please keep it open.

Sue Lindsay, a visitor from Australia.

As an American professional theatre designer and director, to visit the Theatre Museum is a an illuminating experience, and is of vital historical significance to our heritage on both sides of the pond.

Michael Newton-Brown

• There are a great many amateur actors who enjoy visiting the Museum and support the campaign to save it. May I suggest that your form gives \"theatre amateur\" as an option for people to click? In any case, good luck with the campaign!

Warwick Hawkins

So many valuable things have been lost because executives and administrators have failed in their responsibilities as stewards. Through ignorance and arrogance, they ignore the wisdom of the craftspeople they are charged with representing. The museum must be given a fair public hearing in order to expose the errant motives of those willing to extort the value of these resources to their own benefit and return the gift of learning and history to our children and our children' children.

Bill and JoAnn Atkins

• I vigorously support your campaign to keep the museum open.
  
  Your web site form wants me to describe myself as a theatregoer OR a teacher OR a researcher. I am all three. My colleagues and I have used the Theatre Museum, to great advantage, for our own research and for teaching students whom we bring to London and take to plays. It is a most valuable facility for creating the next generation of intelligent theatregoers, researchers, and teachers. (It's also fun to be a consumer there, buying posters etc at the the shop.)

Leon D. Black Professor of Shakespearean Studies, English Department, Dartmouth College Hanover NH 03755 USA

It took such a lot of hard work and dedication to establish The Theatre Museum in the first place, it would be tragic for it to be closed, or moved to Blackpool.
Graham Padden

• One of the greatest things about the theatre scene in your country is that it embraces its remarkable theatre heritage. The Theatre Museum is a remarkable resource for this heritage. I have been to it many times over the years and make new discovery or re-discoveries that enrich my theatre knowledge and know-how. We recently returned from London and, while there visited the Museum once again. What a thrill to see the current display on 50s-60s theatre scene, to watch clips and documentaries on great productions and performances and see history unfolding before your eyes.

Screenwriter, West Texas

Add my voice to the chorus against the closure of the museum. As an American, I have been to the museum on many occasions and discover something new, valuable, even profound on every trip. It is a remarkable resource and one that keeps the great, great legacy of British Theatre...the most magnificent theatre in the world...alive and fresh. The heritage it safe-guards must be protected. More, it must be made available for future generations to discover and delight in.

Charles Edward Pogue

• The Theatre Museum is not only for the UK, but for all the people of the world who love theatre. We must save it!

Tatsuro Ishii, Japan

This museum must be kept open in its present location to keep British and West End theatre history available to the hundreds of thousands who visit London each year, many to soak up
the best variety of theatre in one place - anywhere in the world!

Ian Williams

• I am Head of Drama in a Performing Arts College in Kent and I would like to support the saving of the Theatre Museum, as would my husband Matthew Carter who works in TV lighting and my colleagues in my department Sarah Boyle and Peter Catmull.We have used the facility intermittently over the years and it would be shameful if it were lost

Rebecca Atack

This museum is the most imaginative and interesting one and I visit it regularly. My daughter attended one of the workshops and thoroughly enjoyed it. Every time I come I find it is a lovely experience and its venue in the heart of theatreland is perfect.
To remove the museum would be one of the saddest things to occur to London for many years.

Maggie Levoir

• Living outside the UK, I can only wonder at the crassness of letting what other countries would cherish, fall from your grasp- cultural vandalism impoverishes us all...

Morgan Rue

We must protect our Heritage, otherwise we have nothing, it is all too easy to assume that memories are passed on, however, I believe that only by having a constant reminder of the past by seeing and experiencing what has been painstakingly collected, preserved and displayed in a Museum can our we and our children understand how the Theatre has remained one of the most popular forms of Art and Entertainment.

Alan Vaughan

• My 14 year old daughter and I visited this wonderful museum when we were in London last summer. She has grown up (as I did) going to the theater and was fascinated by the history and background information.
  It would be a great loss if this museum were not available to coming generations.

Nancy Segal

I strongly support the efforts to save the Theatre Museum. As a frequent visitor to London, and as both a professional actor (AEA) and an educator and researcher, I have found the museum to be a wealth of interesting and useful information. Please do not make the huge mistake of letting this valuable collection dissipate or disappear altogether. The location of the museum is ideal. Fund it!

Deborah Kinghorn

• The Theatre Musem is not only a draw for tourists and those interested in theatre, but an invaluable resource for theatre professionals. Its location is perfect and should be retained. To not have a national museum devoted to theatre when we have the greatest theatre heritage in the world, seems criminal. First we lost our museum of the Moving Image - now this. No wonder the arts in Britain are in such a state.

Olivia Fox

I am an American playwright who had a reading this summer in London. I stumbled into your museum on a morning off and was completely enthralled. It never dawned on me that the future of the museum was in doubt. Children were taking classes; families were talking about the exhibits; tourists were enrapt. Please find a way to keep the doors open and the lights on.

Faye Sholiton

• I have just received word from a friend that the Theatre Museum faces immediate dismantling. The collection has been known to me most of my adult life and seldom fail to drop by when visiting England. To destroy it would be an act of cultural vandalism.

Roger Parisious

We were shocked to learn that the wonderful Theatre Museum might be closed. My husband and I visit London yearly to attend the theatre and bask in the rich cultural heritage available, especially for theatre lovers. We always spend a few hours at the Museum. It is a treasure trove of artifacts, and really reflects the great theatre history in Great Britain. We urge you to look for alternative ways to find funding to retain this wonderful institution.

As Americans who work professionally in the theatre, we can assure you that arts lovers, students, and artists will never find anything to compare in our country. The Museum is intrinsic to London, and a major attraction to tourists.

Sarah May & Park Goist

• Whenever I find myself in London, I try to visit the Theatre Museum. London without a Theatre Museum would be a diminished London. Shame on the V&A--keeping the Museum open should be a no-brainer; it is after all a vital part of English heritage.

Cindy Lindau

Don't please let us lose another theatre resource in London, we must value our heritage, there are too many assaults on our long and cherished culture

Colin Bennett

• I am an actor and lecturer and I frequently (approx 7 times a year) take groups of theatre students on tours of the Museum. It will be an incredible educational and cultural loss if it
  goes. This is a major theatre capital, and a museum is a key part of the 'drama' of the city, not to mention our tourist industry.

Anna Gilbert

I held my father's post Memorial Service get-together at The Theatre Museum (the actor Leo McKern) and the staff couldn't have been more helpful and welcoming. It is a valuable cultural asset and it would be a scandal to lose it.
LONG LIVE THE THEATRE MUSEUM!

Abigail McKern

• To close the Theatre Museum and move its contents away from Covent Garden is outrageous and an act of vandalism.

Lilana Archibald OBE & Joan Kelley CB

We really need the Theatre Museum, for students all over the country and for foreign students who are visiting the UK, who are either studying theatre or have an interest. Covent Garden is the heart of theatre-land in the UK and we must have a Theatre museum where theatregoers as well non-theatre can appreciate some of theatre’s inspirational works.Thank you for you campaign.

Ahmmad Makaddar Theatre Studies Student London Metropolitan University

• Is this another case of the government getting rid of a wonderful museum and all the artefacts depicting theatre throughout the years? Do they not realize how much that the theatre industry brings in both attending theatre throughout the west end and all the jobs that cascade down as a result. i recently spent a week in London and in that time (Mon Sat) i saw 10 shows and enjoyed every one

Howard Clough

I am writing to express my support for your efforts to prevent the Theatre Museum from being closed.
Collections have been donated in the expectation that they will be helping people to learn about theatre history in a dedicated building in theatreland. We often have short memories in Theatre- "on with the next show" and the important history of our stage culture should be celebrated. That's what tourists expect when they come to London, as they will in the build-up to 2012 & beyond. It took a lot of work to get the Theatre Museum established, it is a specialised centre for scholarship & it must not be dropped.

James Laws.

• There is no valid cultural nor economic reason for this act. This closure should be anathema to a country that prides itself on its theatrical heritage and, perhaps more pointedly, has an exchequer that reaps millions of pounds every year from the domestic and foreign audiences that crowd London's theatres, not to mention so many others across the country.

Paul Dempsey

The Theatre Museum is too valuable a resource to throw away - London needs it.

Diana Fairfax

• "I wrote to the director and the 14 Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum, challenging them for cancelling the building of the Libeskind extension, that superb, huge, angular spiral ‘sculpture’ to act as entrance, foyer, fulcrum. And I even got three replies! They wanted to build, and they had planning permission, but they couldn’t raise the money. The London Victoria and Albert Museum couldnt raise the money! Pathetic. Shameful. Sir Timothy Sainsbury agreed with me that not enough good architecture was going up in London. Well, no wonder! The V&A are also closing the Theatre Museum, which is in their care. They dont have the money. Eric Taplin once said, it’s so easy to close things. We obviously live in a poor city, in a poor country, in a third world country, whose water supply depends on neglected, 100-year old, leaking pipes, when we should have a generous infrastructure, bringing water from the mountains of Scotland or from the canals. They’ll be rationing air next!"

Peter Zander
(It’s noteworthy that the V&A hasn’t considered closing itself as a result of its failure to get money for the Liebeskind development. That solution is only suitable for its dedicated Theatre Museum)

There MUST be a theatre Museum. I certainly support the Cause.

Bernard Kops

• The Theatre Museum was the first museum to actively support LGBT HM by providing us with a catalogue of its LGBT related materials - still available on our website! It is our turn to support this wonderfully informative and exciting museum.

Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans History Month

I am a teacher/lecturer and a theatregoer, and am shocked that such a rich resource is under such devastating threat.

Susan Cockcroft (Dr)

• As Head of Drama and Theatre Studies at Stowe School , Buckingham, I used to bring parties down regularly to London , combining a visit to the Theatre Museum with a visit to a play. I would always lead my students round the Museum myself, adapting what I showed them to the students’ particular needs and interests. To have such vivid visual aids to hand was a teacher’s dream!
• The stimulation from such visits was invariably enormous. I can’t remember ever seeing a student look bored. Bored going in, maybe, but never coming out. The students loved the place, and the fact that it was situated in the heart of theatreland was an important plus too. There is an excitement about the Covent Garden site which is irreplaceable. The accessibility of many theatres to the museum was, for my visits, vital.
• Over the years visits to Theatre Museum became an important part of my teaching strategy, and it has been responsible for creating a love of the theatre in hundreds and hundreds of students! That it now faces closure fills me with sadness and despair. It has surely never been so important as it is today that young people emerge from school as civilised and culturally aware human beings, and the country will be much the poorer, and the fight for civilised values that much the harder, if Theatre Museum ceases to exist on its present brilliant site.

Anthony Meredith

I am a theatregoer, and believe that the V&A should not be allowed to close down the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden . It is as much a part of our culture and history as Buckingham Palace .

Brenda Diaz

• We would both like to register as Guardians of the Theatre Museum , both as theatre goers and teachers. For many years when teaching adult users of mental health services, and living in London , I used the museum as a wonderful teaching resource. We now live out of London but we would both be dismayed to see the museum lost to the public. I have registered online, but want to register my husband, who feels very concerned.

Susan and John Picton

The title "Theatre Museum" is somewhat of a misnomer: this is not only a repository for theatrical artifacts and historical snapshots but a living venue for related events with much potential; it should be kept open and alive!

Maureen Murray

• How can they not realise that theatre is still one of the few areas in which UK is a world leader. Our theatre, past and present, is a deep part of our culture. The Theatre Museum is a rich resource that registers this - how can the V and A let it slip through their fingers?

Jean Chothia, Reader in Drama and Theatre, University of Cambridge

This museum is one of its kind. Westminster is rich enough to save this monument where it is. Stars of yesterday must not be defeated by the Starbucks of today.

Mehmet ergen

• There is nothing in the world to equal or replace the theatre collection and its museum. Two of my books would have suffered, possibly fatally, without its rich resources. It would be criminal act to close it permanently.

Lee Davis

I work in Theatre based in Australia but always attend as many London shows as possible on my trpis to London. I always pop in to see what's on in the museum. The reputation of the Theatre Museum amongst people in Australia is massive. To have this remarkable resource move from the superb location is a disgrace. Keeping its proximity to the West End ensures it is not just another set of glass cases in an ornate buidling as so much is at the V+A, but a relevant vibrant and vital reflection on one of Londons greatest assets, Theatre.

Simon Carroll

• The closing of the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden will be a knife in the heart of international culture. It is shocking to think that the reality of this closing is upon us. Surely there must be a chivalrous knight in shining armor who will come to the rescue at the last minute. The closing is simply unthinkable! Do the powers that be really not understand the legacy of the Theatre Museum? Are they that blind? A voice from the colonies cries out for someone to make this terrible situation right!

Jack Lane

Please keep the Theatre Museum open while you consider proposals from the various stake-holders put forth in public forums. You are charged with preserving Cultural Heritage, yet this hasty decision betrays either ignorance or unsaid alternate agendas. We'd like to think you take your responsibilities more seriously than is shown by petty and spiteful policy decisions.

Daniel Kanter

• I work in the 'present' Theatre but we must never forget our roots. The Theatre Museum provides invaluable access to those roots for a worldwide audience. Don't let us loose that facility.

Andrew Treagus

Every summer I lead a group of American theatre lovers to London, and the first place we visit is The Theatre Museum. We love it and learn so much there. I can't believe the V &A wants to close it. The educational, historical and commercial value cannot be quantified. The location is perfect; the archives priceless. Please save The Theatre Museum.

Toni Mester

• Theatre history is one of the most important cultural and historical facets of London history. Without London Theatre history a large part of England's heritage is missing.
  
• There are few such museums in the world and we must try and save what is left safeguarding the history of the theatre in England as well as the world.

Marc Wanamaker

On behalf of staff and students in Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art, I would like to give every support to your efforts to keep the Theatre Museum open to the public in the heart of the world's most historic theatre district.

How has the expression of our theatre history suddenly become valueless? As a footpath keeps open a public way if used just once a year, so, if one person makes use of the museum just once a year it preserves that way of remembering the live expression of our culture. Thereis no place for economic rationalism in preserving history.

Carol Burns

• I strongly urge that the Theatre Museum be protected, saved, and allowed to continue in its current location and with its current mission. I have visited the Museum on various occasions and conducted research in its archives. It is one of the world's cultural treasures and should be
  protected and maintained. Thank you,

Nancy Lee Ruyter - Professor of Dance

Of course I support your campaign. My holiday this year was in Malta, the smallest country in the EU. They have a theatre museum, next to their main theatre in Valetta. If they can afford it ... Washington DC has a museum in the Ford Theatre - both a reconstruction of the theatre and a commemoration of the assassination of Lincoln. Half the tourists in London come to visit the theatres. What are we playing at ?

Robin Cave

• Please please please do not, NOT close the Theatre Museum. The United Kingdom's premier art form, recognised as such throughout the world both historically and at present, needs its entertainment and display presence in London's West End. It took so long to get it launched, and so many people then as now have felt so strongly about the need for it, that it would be a disgrace if the V & A authorities were to close it now, leading to the assumption that those in charge have no feeling for what is important in this supreme field. Another objection is that
  donations of artifacts etc. have continued to be made to the Theatre Museum for display purposes; it can be anticipated that these would dry up (and go to other collections) if the West End museum site is abandoned.
  
• I fear that the V & A is badly advised by its staff or consultants. From the very beginning of the Covent Garden premises, the prognostication of visitor numbers was set at a figure so high as to be unreal. It was almost as if the V & A controllers were reluctant to sponsor the Museum wholeheartedly and were actually aiming at showing that it was not viable. Perhaps this is an unworthy thought - I hope so: it needs to be confounded by ensuring that the Museum does remain open where it is, and is adequately funded.
  
• Certainly the Blythe Road premises can be used for advanced research. Nonetheless a presence in the West End for the delectation and education of the general public is, one would have thought, a sine qua non for the V & A directorate if they take pride in its nrivalled
  theatre holdings.

Don't, please don't, let the nation down in this way - it would let down the V & A as well as the one art form in which we lead the world.

Derek Forbes:
Vice-President of the Society for Theatre Research, and supporter of the Theatre Museum ab initio;

I would like to register my dismay at the proposed closure of this museum - somewhere we need to keep as our whole culture is being eroded. Placed as it is, it is wonderful for visiting school parties. As teachers of drama we try to instil in our pupils the whole tradition behind their first struggling attempts on the stage. We need this resource.

Gwenda Williams - Head of Drama, Hawarden High School

• I am a member of Equity, a professional writer and I home school my younger son. I have received invaluable help from the museum's library, researching two novels, my home schooling son has loved the visits and has since designed sets and written playlets and my older son, inspired by an exhibition of costume designs is now making moves to be a costume designer himself. Being in Covent Garden has also made it wonderfully accessible and I have been able to combine theatre visits with return visits to the Museum.

Michelle Magorian

My late father, Richard Leacroft, made much use of material from the Theatre Museum in the preparation of his incredible cut-open drawings of many theatres for the wide range of books that he and my mother wrote on the history of theatre buildings. After his death my mother was approached by many organisations who wanted to obtain the collection of his work (including several American universities who were willing to pay) but she decided that the collection had to go to the Theatre Museum since my father held it, and its curators, in such high esteem and he had always wanted his work to be freely available to future students, historians and anyone else interested in theatre architecture here in the UK. For the exhibition of his work a few years ago much other material was loaned to the museum and my mother was persuaded to add this to the collection for, in the words of the official documents, "the benefit of the nation". Most of his work is of necessity stored away in the Olympia vaults but is available for access via Russell Street and can be included in other relevant exhibitions. If the Theatre Museum should close and its knowledgeable staff lost then this material will be hidden away in some back catalogue of a nondescripted subsection of the V & A and will not be brought to the attention of the nation.

Robert Leacroft

• It seems that just because the HLF refused a grant the Museum has to close. The building is a problem but it is one that can be overcome. It is in the right place and needs to be preserved not closed.

Kevin Flude

I volunteered for the British Theatre Museum as a child in the seventies when it was in Leighton House in Holland Park Road. To think that there will be no future display is criminal to the memory of the great many who worked so valiantly to see this valued institution created in the first place and then believed they had ensured its future with the move to Covent Garden. To lose such a facility in its entirety is simply an act of desecration and must be legally halted. Indeed this debate in and of itself seems to me nothing less than an act of ethical vagrancy. Without a Theatre Museum London could no longer be rightly hailed a capital of Theatre: Perhaps the relevant authorities might care to discuss this.

Dr. Bruce Wall, Executive Director, London Shakespeare Workout / LSW Prison Project

• I wholeheartedly support the campaign. once lost this can never be fully recovered. Another case of saving money regardless of the cost?

Brian Hutchings

I find it unbelievable that any sane person would think that this outstanding archive of UK theatre (our industry leads the world) should be put aside to a venue outside of theatreland. I implore everybody to campaign to save our site, and do whatever it takes. Be bold, don't sit on fences, this dedicated museum belongs to everyone and our future generations. Do not give in - let us, as we always have had to do, defend our proud heritage from distruction. Give in on this one and the remainder of the arts will also fall to the political axe.

Ian Fricker

• What kind of civilised country even DREAMS of closing an international arts resource? It makes me ashamed to be British. But not surprised- when it comes to supporting the arts, we've been shooting ourselves in both feet for years. Good luck to the campaign.

Kate Scarratt

 

 

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