A two-hour workshop for adults discovering pre-cinema Victorian entertainments. Kent MOMI is home to over 100 magic lanterns (invented c.1659) and 20,000+ lantern slides of all types -- early panoramic, hand-painted, photographic, transfer, toy, and moving.
Projected, in the Victorian era of the oxy-hydrogen gas light, the larger of them threw images 30 foot wide on the screen, in colour, and with stunning detail.
Come and see the slides close up, handle them (with care!), learn about their history, how they were used, what we know (and don't know) about the stories and showman's repartee that accompanied them, and the various eras of lantern performance, from the times of the lowly, lone itinerant lanternist to the late-19th-century "optical pantomimes" of the Royal Polytechnic Institution and the musical Temperance shows of the early 20th century.
Workshop approximately two hours. Please do not arrive more than 15 minutes before the workshop starts.
Places are very limited so book early to avoid disappointment!