The Before the Wall theatre show was presented on stage in the main auditorium at the National Museum of Scotland as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019, in partnership with festival promoters Gilded Balloon. It is a period drama, telling the story of the Second Opium War in 1860, the siege of Beijing, and the infamous looting of the Summer Palace by British and French soldiers. The show coincided with the opening of a new South-East Asia gallery which contains artefacts from the Summer Palace, and it allowed the Museum to address this contentious history in an open and honest way. British Asian actors played all the parts, both the Chinese and the invading Europeans, in a piece of casting which worked brilliantly. The show is a great example of how original theatre commissions can be used to tell the stories behind museum and gallery collections, including difficult stories, in a way that involves no legal risk for the institution.
The Fringe show followed the successful commissioning in 2016 of Poetry House Live, a full-length portfolio theatre show staged at Kings Place and The Cockpit Theatre in London, and subsequently translated into six European languages. This show is a fine example of theatre in the round, an effective and inexpensive way of telling original stories and staging compelling contemporary drama. It also demonstrated the potential for digital capture of theatre content, subsequently being filmed on a black box stage in Glasgow in 2017.
As a result of the work he has done in theatre, Graham Henderson has excellent connections with actors, theatre companies, theatre technicians and up-and-coming playwrights, and is well-placed to commission and stage exciting new work.
For more information email The Company of Adventurers at [email protected]