THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
A torchlit walk through the cemetery and Magic Lantern Show with Jeremy and Carolyn Brooker
On Saturday the 27th October 2018 at 8:00 pm

ARRIVAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY - As the Cemetery will be closed to the general public from 5 pm, the only entrance that will be open for the performance is the one on Old Brompton Road. We chose this entrance as it is located directly next to the West Brompton underground station. The entrance will be open from 7:30 pm and the performance will start at 8:05 pm. Please note latecomers will not be admitted.

' Astonishment seized me. My bones shivered within me. My flesh trembled over me. My lips quaked. My mouth opened. My hands expanded. My knees knocked together. My blood grew chilly, and I froze with terror.'

The magic lantern is believed to have been invented by Dutch polymath Christiaan Huygens in the seventeenth century. Samuel Pepys reports having attended a demonstration of one in his diary for 1666. The early itinerant lanternists or “gallantry showmen” would set up stall in wayside inns or at country fairs, projecting eerie visions of demons, skeletons and phantoms, which could be utterly terrifying for audiences who had never before seen any form of technology. In the Victorian age with its obsession with the Gothic and spiritualism whole theatres were devoted to magic lantern shows, where magicians would conjure up ghosts and seemingly raise the dead.

For London Month of the Dead 2018, lanternists Jeremy and Carolyn Brooker will summon up this art of illusions with his 19th Century Magic Lantern in the cemetery Chapel. Watch and quake as skeletons waltz across the wall and nuns bleed to their death despite a life of virtue.

Tickets £15 including a Hendrick's gin cocktail. Please click here to buy.

 

 

 

 

The Dissenters' Chapel, Kensal Green Cemetery, London. Ticket includes tour of the catacombs.