News and Events
Theatre programmes, and what to do with them
25th Feb 2011
There's nothing like moving house to induce a sense of proper self-loathing about the acquisition of stuff; a sensation all the more vivid as we seem to hover on the brink of mass digitalisation. (Stuart Jeffries wrote a salutary piece on this very subject the other day). I marvelled at a friend's "invisible" CD collection at the weekend - he uploaded everything, gave the CDs away, invested in a super-brilliant memory-box affair for his Mac and wonderful speakers, and away he goes. That's not quite the stage I am at - I've brutally edited my collection (Marie Curie Cancer shop in Highbury, London, is the winner) but feel I can't chuck all those liner notes and opera libretti. Ditto books - boxes and boxes have gone to the charity shop. Unless I have any intention of reading you again, baby, you're out.So, having sort-of solved the CD and book dilemma with a compromise, I am now staring my quantities of theatre and opera programmes in the face.
At the weekend, the wrath of the clearer-upper came upon me, and I started to bag them all up ready for the recycling. Then I paused, consulted eBay, and realised that these old RSC and Royal Opera programmes do have a value, to some. One way out of the problem, then: to start a side-career as an eBay dealer. But no thanks. That's a skill (obsession?) I don't think I've the patience or time to acquire. Then I began to wonder whether I was cheating myself out of future memories - whether in years to come I will flick through my old programmes thinking, "Ah yes, I was there at the first night of Frankenstein; how lucky one was to see Sir Benedict Cumberbatch before his first Oscar." I am told that my colleague Michael Billington, bless him, archives the lot - every single one. But 40 years of five-nights-a-week theatregoing puts you into a special category. That's a museum collection, not a personal archive. So what to do? My latest position is that I should keep the beautiful Royal Opera House programmes, with their never-changing design and lovely scarlet spines. And also to keep the RSC programmes, and a few more that seemed particularly memorable or significant. But as for the rest - (including all concert programmes and, rather arbitrarily, anything from Edinburgh ever) the recycling bin beckons, unless anyone else can think of a better idea.
Source The Guardian
