I cheerfully admit to having a wide streak of sentimentality, which – along with an abiding love of potatoes – I claim as part of my Irish heritage. But getting emotional over binning some theatre programmes? Call a therapist! And yet…
I’d been putting it off, but when I started running out of room in my house to store the programmes I knew I had to act. Throwing away the contents of 10 large storage boxes was not an option, but I thought a library or drama school might want them – and then at least they would have a second life.
The programmes are an amazing resource because they contain so many informative essays (although I admit I referred to them only occasionally), but after several replies of “no thanks” and even more non-responses I realised with regret that to the recycling centre I would have to go.
Disposing of more than a thousand programmes has been a surprisingly emotional experience. I had accidentally amassed them since becoming a regular theatregoer in my teens, and then a critic writing about theatre and comedy since the Noughties. I try to keep any hoarding tendency in check so never deliberately set out to keep them but, like Topsy, they just growed.
The programmes divide, I would guess, roughly 60-40 into productions I have seen as a punter, and those I have reviewed – so I thought it might be fun to see which plays I had returned to repeatedly, either for work or pleasure.
I could have told you without looking that Shakespeare – particularly Twelfth Night, the Henry plays and As You Like It, my favourites – would feature heavily, as would Euripedes’ Medea, Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, which never, ever, get old for me. And so it proved, as programmes for them all rapidly sailed into solid double figures. (It was easy to assess because the programmes were stored by letter, though not strictly alphabetically. I like order, but I’m not a total nerd.) Hamlet was also well into the double-digit club.
But a substantial proportion of programmes were for new works, often by playwrights whose careers I’ve been able to follow over the years, starting in tiny spaces before reaching the West End and Broadway – James Graham, Lynn Nottage and Richard Bean among them.
Yet rummaging through the tightly packed storage boxes proved to be a big mistake, because that’s when the emotions kicked in. In one box of panto programmes, I found the one from when my late mother and I went to see Danny La Rue, her favourite performer. I’ve kept it as I think even professional organiser Marie Kondo at her strictest would allow me that.
Pensioners should not worry about the new pensions minister
Read MoreThe large number of Playbill programmes (given out in US theatres) also instantly reminded me of how far back my love affair with America goes, while the single-page cast lists of countless Edinburgh Fringe productions was evidence of how big a part of my life – professionally and personally – the festival has been, in the work relationships forged, the liver-damaging weeks spent in the UK’s most beautiful city with colleagues who have become friends for life, the sheer joy of being paid to watch (sometimes) very good theatre.
I found the programme for Arthur Riordan’s exuberantly daft comedy Improbable Frequency – my all-time Fringe favourite, which I reviewed in 2006 and still remember frequently with a laugh. So yes, overwhelmingly happy memories – but, still, of times past.
“You read a lot of magazines, lady,” said the workman at my local recycling centre as I fed yet more programmes into the dumpster. Well yes, every word of every one of those, even the shonky photocopied Fringe handouts. Psychologists say that throwing things away can unburden us. But I didn’t feel unburdened at all, just really sad seeing a chunk of my life gone for ever, and guilty that the programmes had been unceremoniously dumped.
I was trying to think positive thoughts when I returned home, only to find another large storage box lurking, somehow forgotten, under my desk.
This one contains programmes from the Wimbledon championships, another of my great loves, which I first attended as a 12-year-old. Can I bear to throw these out? I may need some therapy first.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( What an old pile of theatre programmes taught me about life )
Also on site :
- A look at six bills in Albany awaiting Gov. Hochul’s signature
- Israel tried to break Iran – but it may have actually helped unite it
- This 'Iconic' Cereal is Finally Making a Comeback and Fans Going Wild: 'Holy Smokes'