Exciting, eh? Tash Reith-Banks writes about this immersive theatre experience in a January 5, 2018 article for The Guardian (Links have been removed),
HG Wells hold a special place in the hearts of many sci-fi enthusiasts and scientists alike. Best known for his novels The War of the Worlds, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and The Invisible Man, Wells’s work is renowned for its prescience and has been revisited and adapted many times, so modern do some of his fears and preoccupations seem.
The Crystal Egg is a short story written 1897. Set in a grimily familiar depiction of Victorian London, it is a disturbing piece combining an almost Dickensian family-run curiosity shop, a pleasing account of scientific method and altogether more eerie references to portals into other worlds and alien beings.
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I asked the show’s producer, Mike Archer, and director, Elif Knight to talk me through their interest in Wells, the challenges of adaptation and how Victorian sci-fi sits alongside more contemporary fiction, film and television.
What drew you to HG Wells in general and this story in particular?
Mike Archer: I have been a fan of Wells’s work since I was a boy. I encountered The Crystal Egg in 2005 and was drawn to the idea of it extending the mythos of the invasion from Mars in The War of the Worlds.
Recently, I started to feel the story had something to say about things that are happening in the world right now. When we went back to the story, myself and my partner Luisa Guerreiro thought about how we could use The Crystal Egg as an inspiration, and wanted to adapt it into an invasion story for the now.
Elif Knight: I was aware of HG Wells as a very prescient writer of science fiction. The fact that he had predicted many of the inventions and developments of the 20th century – not least manned flight and the internet – demonstrated that his imagination was not just wide-ranging but also accurate. But the question arose: how to show what an extraordinary piece of work The Crystal Egg is? And when the producers offered me the Vaults as a location, I had my answer – to recreate for the audience the atmosphere of the late nineteenth century, so that they could get a sense of how astonishing Wells’s vision was at that time.
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Were there any particular challenges in staging the story?
MA: Yes, several. The biggest for me, was how to honour the source material whilst making it engaging on a relatable level and feeling somewhat fresh. The book is very scientific in its vision, but that scientific vision alone doesn’t necessarily translate to a two hour show.
Denizens of the curiosity shop attempt to unlock the strange object’s secrets. Photograph: Morgan Fraser PR
I like sci-fi to feel real. For me the best kind is when you have a world that is recognisable and believable and sci-fi just so happens to be a part of it. I think that is where the semi-immersive nature of part of the show came from. Bringing the audience, themselves aliens in a foreign world, face-to-face with the creation of Wells. This means you have to have a believable world in which to play. We did a lot of research into the Seven Dials area, the context of the story’s creation and began to extrapolate it out.
EK: That was a challenge : to re-create the slums of Victorian London in the Vaults. For example, with a small cast we had to create a busy market day in the London of 1897. But that is where things get interesting; that’s where I have used other media and interesting sonic and filmic devices to bring the area to life.
An immersive adaptation of H.G. Wells’ mystery novel. Dive in to Victorian London deep underground, using multimedia to enhance your immersive experience.
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They Are Watching!
London’s newest immersive, multi-media experience is about to land in a sci-fi extravaganza at The Vaults, Waterloo.
The Crystal Egg Live by H.G. Wells tells the story of Charley Cave. After watching his father dash into the night, Charley is taken in by Uncle Wace, an eccentric old man who, with his dysfunctional family, runs a curiosity shop in London’s Seven Dials Rookery.
When the body of his father is found in the river, Charley inherits the sole possession found with it – a crystal egg. Believing the object to be of value, the family plan to sell it quickly and improve their lives. However one night Wace makes a chance discovery about this seemingly innocent item, a discovery that threatens to tear the family apart and plunge the world into a greater danger.
Old Lamp Entertainment invites you to The Vaults to uncover the secret for yourself. Fusing multiple art forms including light, sound, video, and performance; this production will bring to life the work of seminal writer H. G. Wells, author of ‘The War of the Worlds’ and ‘The Time Machine’ like never before.
Step back into 19th Century London to discover an object of immense power amongst the dusty relics of Wace’s curio shop, and come face to face with creatures of another world.
What would you do if you knew you were being watched? Watched by someone you were not even aware was there?
Just hours prior to the terrorist bombings in Paris (Friday, Nov. 13, 2015), Tash Reith-Banks published a Nov. 13, 2015 essay (one of a series) in the Guardian about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as those specialties apply to humanitarian aid with a special emphasis on Syrian refugee crisis.
This first essay focuses on how engineering and mathematics are essential when dealing with crises (from Reith-Banks’s Nov. 13, 2015 essay), Note: Links have been removed,
Engineering is a clear starting point: sanitation, shelter and supply lines are all essential in any crisis. As Martin McCann, CEO at RedR, which trains humanitarian NGO workers says: “There is the obvious work in providing water and sanitation and shelter. By shelter, we mean not only shelter or housing for disaster-affected people or refugees, but also structures to store both food and non-food items. Access is always critical, so once again engineers are needed to build roads or in some cases temporary landing strips.”
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Emergency structures need to be light and fast to transport and erect, but tend not to be durable. One recent development comes from engineers Peter Brewin and Will Crawford of Concrete Canvas., The pair have developed a rapid-setting concrete-impregnated fabric that requires only air and water to harden into a water-proof, fire-resistant construction. This has been used to create rapidly deployable concrete shelters that can be carried in a bag and set up in an hour.
Here’s what one of the concrete shelters looks like,
A Concrete Canvas shelter. Once erected the structure takes 24 hours to harden, and then can be further insulated with earth or snow if necessary. Photograph: Gareth Phillips/Gareth Phillips for the Guardian
There are many kinds of crises which can lead to a loss of shelter, access to water and food, and diminished safety and health as Reith-Banks also notes in a passage featuring mathematics (Note: A link has been removed),
Maths might seem a far cry from the sort of practical innovation described above, but of course it’s the root of great logistics. Alistair Clark from the University of the West of England is using advanced mathematical modelling to improve humanitarian supply chains to ensure aid is sent exactly where it is needed. Part of the Newton Mobility scheme, Clark’s project will partner with Brazilian disaster relief agencies and develop ways of modelling everything from landslides to torrential downpours in order to create sophisticated humanitarian supply chains that can rapidly adapt to a range of possible disaster scenarios and changing circumstances.
In a similar vein, Professor Amr Elnashai, founder and co-editor of the Journal of Earthquake Engineering, works in earthquake-hit areas to plan humanitarian relief for future earthquakes. He recently headed a large research and development effort funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the USA (FEMA), to develop a computer model of the impact of earthquakes on the central eight states in the USA. This included social impact, temporary housing allocation, disaster relief, medical and educational care, as well as engineering damage and its economic impact.
Reith-Banks also references nanotechnology (Note: A link has been removed),
… Up to 115 people die every hour in Africa from diseases linked to contaminated drinking water and poor sanitation, particularly in the wake of conflicts and environmental disasters. Dr Askwar Hilonga recently won the Royal Academy of Engineering Africa Prize, which is dedicated to African inventions with the potential to bring major social and economic benefits to the continent. Hilonga has invented a low cost, sand-based water filter. The filter combines nanotechnology with traditional sand-filtering methods to provide safe drinking water without expensive treatment facilities. …
Dr. Hilonga who is based in Tanzania was featured here in a June 16, 2015 posting about the Royal Academy of Engineering Prize, his research, and his entrepreneurial efforts.
Reith-Banks’s* essay provides a valuable and unexpected perspective on the humanitarian crises which afflict this planet *and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series*.
*’Reith-Banks’s’ replaced ‘This’ and ‘and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series’ was added Nov. 17, 2015 at 1620 hours PST.
Thanks to Alex Bellos and Tash Reith-Banks for their July 30, 2015 posting on the Guardian science blog network for pointing towards the Bridges 2015 conference,
The Bridges Conference is an annual event that explores the connections between art and mathematics. Here is a selection of the work being exhibited this year, from a Pi pie which vibrates the number pi onto your hand to delicate paper structures demonstrating number sequences. This year’s conference runs until Sunday in Baltimore (Maryland, US).
To whet your appetite, here’s the Pi pie (from the Bellos/Reith-Banks posting),
Pi Pie by Evan Daniel Smith Arduino, vibration motors, tinted silicone, pie tin “This pie buzzes the number pi onto your hand. I typed pi from memory into a computer while using a program I wrote to record it and send it to motors in the pie. The placement of the vibrations on the five fingers uses the structure of the Japanese soroban abacus, and bears a resemblance to Asian hand mnemonics.” Photograph: The Bridges Organisation
You can find our more about Bridges 2015 here and should you be in the vicinity of Baltimore, Maryland, as a member of the public, you are invited to view the artworks on July 31, 2015,
July 29 – August 1, 2015 (Wednesday – Saturday)
Excursion Day: Sunday, August 2
A Collaborative Effort by
The University of Baltimore and Bridges Organization
A Five-Day Conference and Excursion
Wednesday, July 29 – Saturday, August 1
(Excursion Day on Sunday, August 2)
The Bridges Baltimore Family Day on Friday afternoon July 31 will be open to the Public to visit the BB Art Exhibition and participate in a series of events such as BB Movie Festival, and a series of workshops.
I believe the conference is being held at the University of Baltimore. Presumably, that’s where you’ll find the art show, etc.
