buy a word

Today, I thought I'd become a theatre impresario. Some of you will have spotted my previous posts about Theatre 503, which is a newly re-launched theatre in London and which has been well described across on Christina's blog. You might have even looked it up on wikipedia. Or read my review of their season-opening production, The Atheist.

Well, they are now trying to raise money linked to some planned pieces of new writing there called "Breakfast Hearts" and "Choirplay", both by Robin French. The two new artistic directors, Paul Robinson and Tim Roseman, invited Jennie Fellows to direct the plays as part of their opening season.

So because Theatre 503 has no public subsidy, there's a need to raise some money towards the production costs and this is to be done by selling the words of the play individually for £1 per word. We've heard about pixels being sold in the past, now lets see what happens with these words. So Jennie has set up a page on her company Tickle's website, and, already there's £100 donated. Jenny has also got some fine publicity from The Guardian, in their blog.

So anyone can select to buy any word from the text of the plays and even buy more than one. Yesterday someone bought "I love you" for their boyfriend. Someone else made a sentence from the words they bought. Another person bought a word that wasn't in the text just because they liked it so much: "perspicacity".

So I've bought a few words like 'it' - which saves some of the more spectacular ones for people to divine as they read through the script.

So, become a patron of the arts for a pound. Paypal works.