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Posted on @rawstates
Barter Theatre, where a ham bought a seat
1933
Abingdon, Virginia
Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Robert Porterfield came home from a Broadway with no work to a valley with no cash and matched the two problems: forty cents or the equivalent in produce got you a seat, and the company ate what the audience brought. Playwrights were paid in Virginia ham, which Noel Coward accepted and George Bernard Shaw, a vegetarian, declined in favour of spinach. It survived to become the State Theatre of Virginia, and Gregory Peck and Ernest Borgnine worked its boards young.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Location: historic site
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