Ghosts On A Wire, written and produced by Linda Wilkinson, will gets its world premiere at the Union Theatre, Southwark, London SE1, as part of this year’s Totally Thames Festival, from 21 September and run to 8 October.
Mary Shelley’s prophesies in her book ‘Frankenstein’, the Modern Prometheus, came to fruition some hundred years after publication on the banks of the Thames at Blackfriars. Electricity, the source of her supernatural themes, became a true force of power in the world, a force as destructive as it was beneficial.
Ghosts On A Wire follows the development of the world’s largest coal powered electric plant, The Pioneer as it lit the houses and streets of the affluent North Bank of the Thames, whilst destroying the homes and working-class communities on the South. One woman, Octavia Hill, fought for the rights of the ordinary people of Southwark to have decent homes and clean air.
Her story and that of our ghosts, recounts a tale of unworldly events, corruption, greed and resilience in the face of a Leviathan that was able to consume everything it encountered.
Ghosts On A Wire, which uses spectacular back projection effects and photography, was commissioned by Southwark Council, who had previously commissioned Linda Wilkinson to write ‘Albion in Flames’. Wilkinson is thrilled that the same creative team behind ‘Albion in Flames’, are back together again for Ghosts On A Wire.
The cast are: Gerri Farrell as Octavia Hill, Andrew Fettes as William Shelfer, Timothy Harker as William Blake, Ali Kemp as Sarah Shelfer, Deborah Klayman as Harriot Yorke and Tom Neill as Michael Faraday.
