Out of the Margins auction for refugee artists and exhibition

From 15th September to 6th October the Good Chance Theatre with the Auction Collective and Christie’s are hosting an incredible event – Out of the Margins, with 60 playwrights donating items for auction in order to raise money for refugee artists. It sounds incredible and there’s also an exhibition of the donations that anyone can visit – details below.

Tony Kushner, Aaron Sorkin, Lynn Nottage,Tom Stoppard, Wole Soyinka, Caryl Churchill,David Hare, Jez Butterworth, Richard Curtis, Tina Fey, Tanika Gupta, V (formerly EveEnsler) and Inua Ellams are just some of the 60 leading playwrights who are donating annotated first and special editions of play texts and musical scripts to be auctioned in support of refugee artists in the UK for the Out of the Margins Auction organised byGood Chance Theatre, hosted by the Auction Collective, in collaboration with Christie’s.

As of 4th September, a further 10 leading names of stage and screen have confirmed they will be contributing to the auction, including Aaron Sorkin(West Wing), Lynn Nottage(Clyde’s) Alexander Zeldin (Faith, Hope & Charity), Kate Mosse (The Taxidermist’s Daughter), Mark Rylance (a private donor is donating a copy of Shakespeare’s Antony & Cleopatra annotated by Mark Rylance in 1999 when he played Cleopatra), Bryony Lavery (Frozen) and Tony Kushner (title of play to be announced).

 The 60 annotated texts being auctioned in aid of refugee artists include some of the world’s best loved theatrical productions: 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.Each text has been annotated by hand, giving unique insight into the writer’s creative process, and reflections, memories, thoughts and feelings since, in a highly personal and intimate way.

 During the run of the Auction from 15^th September – 6^th October, several of the participating playwrights will have new shows opening, including:

·       Anupama Chandrasekhar’s The Father and the Assassin opens at the National Theatre on 8^th September

·       Roy Williams’ Death of England: Closing Time opens at the National Theatre on 13th September

·       Simon McBurney’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is back on international tour from October

·       Tanika Gupta’s The Empress transfers from the RSC to the Lyric Hammersmith on 4th October

·       James Graham’s Dear England transfers to the West End from 9^th October

·       Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’sopens at the Donmar Warehouse on 13th October

·       while Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman ends at the Duke of York Theatre on 9^th September

·       and Mean Girls starts its US tour this month, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Matilda: The Musical, Wicked and Six continue national and international runs.

The Out of the Margins auction represents the largest collection of annotated play texts and scripts in theatre history, providing an unprecedented record of 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 brings 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.

The proceeds of 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, Good Chance Theatre (which does not receive public subsidy) has provided 150 refugee artists with 1-2-1 support in the UK as well as providing over 750 artists from refugee and migrant backgrounds with paid employment and training. 

To register your interest as a bidder, click here

Exhibition Details

Dates: 21^st – 28^th September 2023

Address: 8 King Street, St. James’s, London SW1Y 6QT

Entry: Free

About Good Chance Theatre

Good Chance creates ground-breaking “theatre that shakes hands with the world” [Sunday Times]. The Good Chance story began in Calais in 2015 inside a white canvassed dome – a theatre, a concert hall, an art studio and a town hall in one. Created with and curated by refugees, the original Good Chance Theatre of Hope offered people from all over the world, uprooted by circumstance, a space to come together and share their stories, their songs, their culture, to create, feel and dream.

Since then, through their award-winning productions The Jungle, The Walk with Little Amal and Fly With Me, Good Chance has continued to create new kinds of communities through theatre and art, working closely one-on-one with 150+ refugee artists and providing employment and training opportunities to 750+ more. Their mission is to bring people together to create new connections and encourage new conversations and action on the big issues of our time – migration and climate change – and make real change possible, all with displaced artists centre stage.

*post created with and images supplied via press release, all opinions are my own.