“There’s pleasure, treasure, toys and trash down the back of the chair,” as Margaret Mahy’s poem goes, but the Wānaka Theatre Group’s tiny shed houses all that and much more.

Decades of Wānaka social history pervade the treasures waiting to find new homes at the group’s massive clothing and costume sale in Wānaka this Queen’s Birthday weekend. 

The theatre group is selling about 10,000 items of clothing and accessories which it has collected since the 1980s.

Among the 10,000 items is everything from a Star Trek jumper and clown’s pants to a tulle sequin ball gown; fur coats, 1950s tea frocks and 1960s lurex dresses.

Susan Manson is expecting people to come from all over the country after she advertised the sale across retro and vintage online sites; and a representative of Wellington’s Costume College will also attend.

Susan joined the theatre group in its early days and was involved in wardrobe, props and production during the group’s heyday, when it alternated big musicals with smaller musicals, a variety show or play annually.

“Dennis Schwarz was the founding force and his family and all his kids danced their way up through the years.”

The late Margaret Trimble, Wānaka’s head librarian, started the wardrobe section in the old A&P building “that got hit by the cyclone [circa 2000]”, Susan said. “She was quite scary for a small lady.”

Productions included Oliver, The King and I, Finian’s Rainbow, Footrot Flats, and of course, The Sound of Music.

“We had two casts of children for Oliver. Those kids have all grown up and got children now,” she said.

The productions were mostly staged in the old town hall on Ardmore Street, which was knocked down in the late 1990s. Some more recent plays were staged in the Lake Wānaka Centre.

But the entertainment wasn’t all on the stage: there was plenty of backstage action, where relationships formed and others became “fluid”, Susan said, before referring obliquely to a garment known as “the wife swapper dress”.

The theatre group was a place people made friends, socialised, and broadened their horizons, but the world changed in the 1990s and community theatre groups came up against challenges.

“People got busy, people got lives. There were more choices for entertainment,” Susan said. 

“We’d have to hire the scripts and pay the copyright, people bought tickets in the shops. As things got digital it was easier for people to do their own thing.

“It took a lot of effort. It was definitely of its time, but I think that time has passed.”

After the productions stopped the theatre group kept renting out costumes to other drama groups and for events, but the group called time recently.

“The main thing was the Queenstown Lakes District Council asked for its land back.”

The theatre group shed is on a paper road behind the Upper Clutha A&P Society pavilion at the showgrounds, and the council needs to lay stormwater drains there. 

The group has gifted its shed to the Hāwea Food Forest, and it will be moved out to Hāwea Flat after this weekend’s sale.

The theatre group’s paperwork - minute books and so on - will be given to the Upper Clutha Historical Records Society. 

Susan feels a bit of sadness at the thought of the sale, but she’s spent so many hours at the site sorting through items that she said it won’t sink in until she sees an empty shed.

Former Mount Aspiring College (MAC) student, Ruby Urquhart, has come back to Wānaka from Christchurch to help her. 

“For the last 12 years or so I’ve had Students in the Community from MAC helping with returns and mending,” Susan said. “There’s been lots of good contact with the school kids over the years.”

A lot of items will also be passed on to other theatre groups. The Wānaka group’s Oliver costumes had been borrowed from other groups all over the country.

But as Ab Fab’s Patsy once famously said, “You can never have enough hats, gloves and shoes”, and the treasures on sale include boxes of bags, hats and glasses; lots of fabrics, sewing items, patterns, parasols, and - mysteriously - one carefully wrapped empty jam jar that Susan found tucked away.

“I just want the things to have another life. This stuff is cool and it needs to be worn. A lot of it, if it was styled differently, would rock.

“There’s stuff for guys and a rack of children’s clothes. We go from $5 to a pair of gloves up to $150 for a ballgown,” Susan said, adding that the prices are firm.

She said the money made from the sale “will benefit the community at some point”, but those decisions have yet to be made by the remaining theatre group committee.

The Wānaka Theatre Group’s Clothing, Collectables and Costumes Sale will take place on Saturday June 4 and Sunday June 5 from 9am to 4pm, at the A&P showgrounds. The site will be well marked.

There is no eftpos so people should bring cash. Susan said they may need to be patient due to the size of the shed: if it is full, people will be rotated out after 20 minutes. There will be marquees outside with items for sale too. From 12pm on Sunday there will be a ‘fill-a-bag’ option.

PHOTO: Wānaka App