theatres
Billy Waters: The Busker of the West End
Thus poor Black Billy’s made his Will, His Property was small good lack, For till the day death did him kill His house he carried on his back. The Adelphi now may say alas! And to his memory raise a stone: Their gold will be exchanged for brass, Since poor Black Billy’s dead and gone.…
Read MoreIndigenous actors at the heart of empire: A letter from the Strand to Buffalo Creek
In 1818, seven members of the Seneca nation were in London performing in the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane. The Hartfort Courant, an American newspaper that ran in Connecticut, published a letter they intercepted from the performers to their families and friends. Through the words of the performers themselves, this article hopes to highlight their…
Read MoreDracula Stalks the Strand
On the back wall of the Lyceum theatre in Burleigh Street are three engraved names: Stoker, Irving and Terry. They honour three great characters of the British theatrical world in the late 19th century. Henry Irving was the actor/manager of the Lyceum from 1878 to 1902. Ellen Terry was one the most famous actors of…
Read MoreA Dickensian Necropolis, our ‘new normal’ London
As we entered a new decade, little did we know that three months down the line our bustling thoroughfare would come to be haunted by the shadows of London’s Victorian past. Transforming into a flaneur-like figure in the dead of the night to combat his insomnia, Charles Dickens documented his traversing of London in the…
Read More#MyStrand: Justin Sherin, playwright and screenwriter
I often scour Instagram for gorgeous, strange, or mysterious looking photographs of the Strand, historical and contemporary. @WychStreet, an account run by Justin Sherin, is an account I return to again and again, as the photographs – and generous evocative captions – instantly transport me into the past. Justin was kind enough to share some…
Read More‘I’d Rather Be an American Girl at the Savoy Hotel…’ — sponsored content, early-20th Century style
Sponsored content might sound like a development of the internet age, but far from it. On television and in the print media, companies have been managing their brands, shaping their public images and enticing consumers this way for years. Often called advertorials, these pieces blurred the lines between advertising or entertainment and objective journalism. They…
Read More‘Gaiety George’ and the Making of Modern Celebrity
During the 1890s and 1900s the Strand’s Gaiety theatre played host to a string of dazzlingly successful shows featuring the ‘Gaiety Girls.’ For the project Moving Past Present I invited artist Janina Lange to ‘reanimate’ two of the Gaiety’s best-known stars, Constance Collier and Ellaline Terriss, as digital avatars. The process of researching their lives…
Read MoreThe Vaudeville Theatre
A few doors down from the Adelphi is the pretty building which houses the Vaudeville Theatre.Built in 1870, Henry Irving acted on this stage for a while, as Ronald Bergan’s book The Great Theatres of London tells us.
Read MoreMlle. Sarah Bernhardt and the National Theatre
In Matthew Arnold’s essay on ‘The French Theatre’ (1879) he urges on the movement to found a national theatre and fancifully imagines French comediens departing for London and passing ‘along the Strand… I see a fugitive vision of delicate features under a shower of hair and a cloud of lace, and hear the voice of…
Read MorePanoramas, Dress Circles and Tubes
In 1787 Robert Barker put a patent on a way of seeing: ‘panorama’. It is said that he came upon the term when surveying the city of Edinburgh from the top of Calton Hill. Moving to London, Barker reconstructed 360 degree views in a Leicester Square art gallery; an initiative mimicked by his son on…
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