David Tennant costumes up for sale!

Calm down - it’s NOT any of his Doctor Who stuff! Deep breaths.

News this week from The Royal Shakespeare Company, who are planning to hold a big sale of their excess theatrical costumes.

It is taking place on Saturday 12 February from 10am to 5pm at their RSC Rehearsal Rooms, Arden Street in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Around 10,000 items including costumes, shoes, hats and accessories will be available to purchase. This is identical to the Angels Costume sales that were held over the past couple of years.

The RSC Costume Store is currently home to over 40,000 costumes. Their last costume sale was in 2007, and the RSC now needs to free up more space, both to create better storage conditions, and to make room for costumes new to the Store.

By the sounds of things the bulk of stuff on offer are stock items (such as shoes: 1,000, shirts: 500 and hats: 300) originally constructed by the world renowned RSC Costume Department. These have been chosen from the RSC Costume Store, which hires out RSC costumes after they have finished being used in its productions.

There are also Egyptian head-dresses, a variety of military uniforms, cloaks, clerical outfits – including nuns and priests, jewellery and chain-mail. The items cover a wide range of periods, including retro, vintage, Early English, Elizabethan and twentieth century.

Amongst the items for sales are soldiers’ tabards and chain-mail from the RSC’s 1984 production of Henry V (with Kenneth Branagh) and later seen in Mel Gibson's film Braveheart, and – of interested to the Doctor Who fan community – numerous items worn by David Tennant (including his understudy costume from the 2008 production of Love’s Labour’s Lost).

Alistair McArthur, RSC Head of Costume, has said “We have items for sale from every area of the wardrobe, including costumes that first made their debut on stage back in the 1970s and 80s. The sale will include costumes designed by top theatre designers like Deirdre Clancy and our own Olivier Award-winning Tom Piper. With many items starting at just £3 we hope that people will take the opportunity to come along and purchase a piece of theatre history.”

I wonder what David Tennant stuff will be on offer, and how well it will be labelled.

We will see :)

By the way, did you know the publicity photo for Hamlet (shown above) is a recreation of a classic German painting from 1818 by artist Caspar David Friedrich, entitled Wanderer above the Sea of Fog? (see left)