antiquedealersblog

We are delighted to announce that the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project, ‘Sold! The Year of the Dealer’ has emerged from hibernation and we have started rehearsals again for the restaging of the play ‘Quinneys’ (1915). Thanks to a further extension to the Year of the Dealer project from the AHRC we can now continue the project, which now ends on 31st December 2021. We will update you on the remaining proposed events and the museum trails later in the summer, but for now, we are all really excited to announce that Quinneys is alive and well.

Rehearsals are currently taking place online via TEAMS – which makes it an interesting if somewhat challenging experience, but our actors and George Rodosthenous, our Director, are doing brilliant work in this virtual space. Here’s a screen shot of the most recent rehearsal, with George (top left) directing the actors, and with Samantha Willetts (top middle) our new Theatre Company Manager and Lighting Designer. The actors are – Stephenson Catney (top right) who will be playing the part of the American millionaire collector Cyrus P. Hunsaker; Sebastian du Pury (bottom left) one of our new actors, playing the part of the American millionaire collector Dupont Jordan; India Walton (centre middle) playing the part of Mabel Dredge, Quinneys’ typist and a love interest of James Miggott in the play; Malcolm Webb (right middle) another of our new actors, playing the part of the antique dealer Sam Tomlin; Samuel Parmeter (left) and Fergus Johnston (right) (centre bottom), playing the parts of the antique dealer Joseph Quinney and James Miggott, Quinney’s workshop foreman, respectively; and Hannah Rooney (left bottom), playing the part of Mrs Susan Quinney. We are missing Annabel Marlow is this photograph (who plays Posy Quinney, the daughter of Susan and Joseph Quinney, and the other live interest of James Miggott) – and there’s a tiny image of me (Mark) in the bottom right corner, taking the photograph!

The pandemic has of course meant that we have had to rethink our plans to restage a performance of the play in a theatre – but the exciting news on the Quinneys project is that we are making a film of the play instead. We will be filming Quinneys at the University of Leeds in early July and following that we are planning to have a ‘premiere’ of the film at a cinema later in the year – so do look out for updates on the antique dealer project website antiquedealers.leeds.ac.uk and on this Blog of course.

In the meantime, here’s another photograph of the Quinneys rehearsals on TEAMS, with all the actors – and this time including Annabel Marlow (left centre), who pays Posy Quinney in the play/film.

We very much look forward to welcoming everyone to the World Premiere of our film of Quinneys later this year.

Mark