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V&A to launch performance galleries with rare theatre memorabilia

Published Wednesday 12 November 2008 at 15:30 by Lalayn Baluch

The Victoria and Albert Museum is to open Theatre and Performance Galleries in March 2009, featuring more than 250 objects representing all forms of live performance over the last 350 years.

The collection will include a 1623 first folio of Shakespeare’s plays, an original 1957 poster for Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court and a guitar Pete Townshend smashed during a seventies performance with the Who.

It will also feature the only known Handel promptbook produced during his lifetime, the 1971 score for Jesus Christ Superstar marked with alterations made by the conductor during rehearsals and an early draft manuscript of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedy The School for Scandal. The pages of each will be digitalised to allow the texts to be explored in detail.

Along with sketches, paintings and stage props, a large selection of costumes worn by leading actors such as Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh will be on display.

A new film specially commissioned for the gallery will feature interviews with playwright Michael Frayn, directors Peter Hall and Peter Brook, and actor Henry Goodman. Visitors will also be able to see archive footage and photographs of well-known performances and performers including Rudolf Nureyev, Marlene Dietrich and Carlos Acosta.

Admission to the galleries will be free and the V&A will also be touring the exhibitions around the country and presenting them online. In 2010, the museum will stage the exhibition Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.

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