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ROH rallies to Theatre Museum cause

Published Tuesday 28 March 2006 at 13:35 by Nuala Calvi

Royal Opera House managers are to join forces with London’s Theatre Museum in an attempt to save the collection from closure, chief executive Tony Hall has announced.

The ROH has set up a working party to draw up plans over the next eight weeks, to revamp the museum’s offering and make it more attractive to much-needed investment.

The exhibition’s permanent home in Covent Garden has been under threat since it failed to win Heritage Lottery funding for a second time, prompting owner the V&A to consider shutting it down.

Hall said: “We’ve got a couple of months before the V&A’s next board meeting to explore whether together we could put on an exciting programme there. As a neighbour with an interest in ballet and theatre, which uses this resource a lot anyway - for example for our designs for Sleeping Beauty - we have a lot of cross-working going on already. We want to look at whether we can do something that would really lift the place. If it closed I think that would be very, very sad.”

The opera house is also hoping that the Society of London Theatre and unions such as Bectu and Equity will get involved in the initiative.

Meanwhile, 31 MPs have now signed an Early Day Motion expressing their concern about the museum’s plight. MP John McDonnell, who sponsored the EDM, yesterday wrote to John Whittingdale, chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, calling for an inquiry into the funding of the museum and its future sustainability.

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