[PLAYBILL] Thespian Dramatic Company. St. George’s Hall, Perth. First Winter Performance, Wednesday & Thursday 21st & 22nd July 1880 at 8 p.m. “The Chimney Corner. A thrilling domestic drama in two acts … A Phenomenon in a Smock Frock. A farce in one act.

[Perth, WA : s.n.], 1880. Broadsheet, 330 x 205 mm (horizontal fold), lithograph-printed in violet on cheap white paper; illustrated border (which advertises a forthcoming performance of Boucicault’s play London Assurance); scattered foxing, upper two-thirds glued to nineteenth-century backing sheet; roughening and small tears at edges.

Perth playbill listing the casts of two amateur theatrical pieces. Performers include Mr. C. Woodhouse, Mr. J. C. H. James, Mrs. Wilkinson, Mr. F. Hart, Miss M. Clifton, Mr. J. H. Drake, Mr. Tom Hills; Mr. E. Mayhew, Mr. G. Leake, Mrs. J. Forrest, Mr. Haghe (scenery artist). Note: the reviewer in The West Australian, 27 July 1880, praised the evening as ‘the best amateur theatrical performance we have ever seen.’

A rare ephemeral printing dating from a time before there was any homegrown professional theatre in Western Australia (the first purpose-built professional theatre in Perth, the Theatre Royal, did not open until 1897).

Provenance: UK trade, ex UK private collection. Originally contained in a nineteenth-century commonplace album which was almost certainly compiled by a British immigrant to Western Australia in the 1870s-80s, possibly Mrs. Elizabeth Wilkinson (Clarke) (1844-1929), wife of Captain George Faulkner Wilkinson (1837-1884).