“Come and see the wonder of all wonders that ever the world has wondered at!”

This was the clarion catch-phrase of Gustavus Katterfelto – the eighteenth century showman and quack, who brought stories and wonderment to ordinary people before the age of moving pictures.

In an age before moving pictures, peepshows showed moralistic, fantastical and historical tales. Peepshows explored the potential of new technological discoveries, especially optical devices and they became associated not only with storytelling, but also new scientific discoveries and the presentation of other worlds. Peepshow men, or “Raree Men” as they were known, carted their paraphernalia from village to village, fair to fair or anywhere that there was a ready audience. Such entertainments sprang from the cabinets of curiosity that provided the images for reminiscence and storytelling in the Eighteenth Century and paved the way for itinerant showmen like Sergeant Bell in the nineteenth century, who wandered around the countryside of Britain and used their ingenious devices and the exotic experience of peeping into an animated world, to tell stories.

As a practitioner and academic, I research historical popular entertainment forms, re-imagine them and apply them to contemporary contexts. I teach part-time within the drama department of Exeter University exploring how historical popular performance forms directly inform and reflect contemporary interests. 

There hasn’t been a peepshow for 150 years – mine is the last one left, or more accurately, the first one since. We built this replica, from cardboard prototypes which we mocked-up by consulting contemporary illustrations and eventually constructed it from plywood on a nineteenth century cast-iron cart chassis, with iron-hooped cartwheels.

Raree men would adopt the guise of a trusted, authoritative figure, demonstrating a degree of control and mastery in the chaotic, fantastical world of their creation. They had authority and a knowing wink of irony, they were perceptive, experienced, accessible and fun. I present our peepshows as the ‘Raree Man’ – my character wears a showy costume, with a loud, cheeky demeanour that is essential for attracting crowds. Basing my costume on the many illustrations and engravings from the era by Cruikshank et al, I chose my character to be a veteran of Waterloo, with an attractive, but fanciful topcoat with gold bullion epaulettes, a Georgian waistcoat, knee breeches and leg stockings. I wear a bicorn hat with showy military trimmings and buckled shoes of the period. I am aided by a walking cane (which doubles as a pointer). My Napoleonic veteran’s status offers both the required sagacity and authority, as well as being typical of a raree showman’s garb. My character exists in the moment of performance as an anachronism in contemporary public space. People moving through a common environment such as a field, a car park or promenade, are drawn towards my heightened historicised costume alongside the intriguing physicality of the peepbox.

I am accompanied by a mute ‘Boy’ apprentice, suitably attired in a low status ship’s crew outfit of the period. The role of ‘Boy’ was practical in so far as I needed more than one person to help manoeuvre and operate the device (my eyesight made it tricky to decipher the cues on the Ipod in particular!) and also to help in managing the audience as they shift from passive observers to peepers and from peepers to those wearing earphones and fully immersed. I did not want to build a relationship with dialogue or double-act banter with the ‘Boy’, but rather for him to represent a naïve, clown-like foil to the garrulous master showman. ‘Boy’ is an apprentice to the Raree Man and also my minder!

Like a conventional Victorian theatre, our peepshow has animated scenery, lighting, swagged and rouched tabs, stage machinery and trapdoors but in addition, our twenty-first century interpretation has automated sound and 3-D projection mapping, all run from Lithium batteries, which means it can be presented in any of the sorts of original locations that the raree men would have performed, without the need for an electrical supply.

The peepshow is a private experience, providing a controlled environment in which light and sound and story create an intimate, immersive world – both illusory and haptic, mediated and immediate.

As part of this academic research enquiry into theatre and visual culture in the nineteenth century, I was commissioned by an AHRC-funded initiative led by Professors Kate Newey & Jim Davies (‘Theatre & Visual Spectacle in the Long 19th Century’), to devise a new peepshow which is a classic of its genre – ‘The Vampyre’ or ‘The Bride of the Isles’ by JR Planché, which was first produced in 1820. As always with peepshows, it is necessary to attract the passing crowd, so I drum-up trade by barking, blowing horns and a hand-cranked barrel organ (first introduced into Britain around the time of Planché’s work).

Planché’s 1820 play was an adaption and translation of John Polidori’s story “The Vampyre” which had been published a year earlier. Planché altered some of the characters’ relationships and added humour into the somewhat macabre proceedings and in view of this, I felt it appropriate to take my own liberties with the original structure – particularly as it would have to be performed by just 4 characters and the entire plot completed within 15 minutes! My previous experience of creating peepshows had taught me that people are reluctant to lean down to look inside a peephole for more than 12-15 minutes and also, if we were busking the crowd, the faster the turnaround, the better. Such practical considerations have been a major part of our embodied historical research.

In keeping with the era, I decided to use 2D paper theatre characters – like those manufactured by Pollocks as the characters on stage. A visual designer helped evolve these ideas from historical illustrations into a more contemporary, yet period representation. I was keen to make these characters animated beyond just sliding along on their sticks, so one has moving body parts, one fires a gun and another has light-up eyes. My aim was to animate all aspects of the performance so that that there was a visual or oral treat for the audience every few moments.

The story required drastically shortening in length, so reducing the core story to its most essential elements was a key task. It was also important to consider how gender tropes were presented for a twenty first century story – the original tale had very compliant, reactive female roles and whilst I didn’t want to render the baddie Ruthven impotent, I wanted the key moments of resistance to come from female characters. It was impossible to do very much with Margaret – the eponymous ‘Bride of the Isles’, who is bewitched by the vampire Ruthven. However, I altered the storyline so that it was her maid – Effie who fired the shot to fell Ruthven and then reveal the truth to Lord Roland. In Planché’s text, the shot is fired by Effie’s fiancée, Robert, but I removed the Effie/Robert sub-plot entirely to keep the storyline sharp and short, as well as ethically acceptable for a modern audience.

It has been a feature of my peepshow work to try and demonstrate the scenographic techniques and stage mechanics of nineteenth century visual culture: the backdrops for the two principal scenes of the castle great hall and the Gothic chapel are painted onto perestrephic (scrolling) canvas, whilst the lightning effects are achieved alongside the sound effects of a thunder tube. ‘The Vampire’ is of course best-known for the ‘Vampire Trap’ to which this play gave its name. This is the climax of the story both on stage and within the peepbox show… it took a lot of experimentation, but the result is a triumph of model-making ingenuity.

Different forms of technological referencing have been part of the bricolage of different influences in making this piece: instead of simply using a digital device for the underscore of the chapel scene, we recorded Felix Mendelssohn’s 1830s ‘Prelude and Fugue in D Minor’, replayed on a 1970s cassette player adjacent to the peepers, as part of an assemblage of technical reproduction. Similarly, the music for the short peepshow film – set in Fingal’s Cave as in Planché’s original work, used Mendelssohn’s ‘Hebrides Overture’, also known as ‘Fingal’s Cave’ to provide appropriate dramatic accompaniment. The scenography of the film was inspired by lantern slides and drawings of the period, whilst the filmography deliberately references earlier film techniques such as those of F W Murnau’s ‘Nosferatu’, Hanna & Barbera’s ‘Scooby Doo’ and paper theatre practices of the last three hundred years.

Just like the peepshows of the past, this Peepshow Vampire production deliberately engages with past practices to provide resonances and meanings that are both historical and contemporary, social and technological, profound and accessible. Mikhail Bakhtin describes this accretion of meanings of historical form in the contemporary present as ‘heteroglossial’ – ultimately, it is a serious attempt to re-imagine the excitement and wonder of peepshows in the past by offering something that is fun and intriguing in the present.

The filming took place during the pandemic and after many delays to the schedule, once the conference dates were set, it was impossible to present the show in the intimate way in which it was intended – the very haptic nature of the piece contravened all protocols! Indeed, any showing of my peepshow has been prohibited for the last 2 years and for the foreseeable future until restrictions are fully lifted and there is enough time to book a tour. However, our aim is to tour this show alongside our other pieces: ‘The Banker’s Progress’, ‘Jack & the Beanstalk’ and ‘Lucky Dicky Crangle & the Cinnabar Moth’. In the meantime, we decided to create 2 films – one showing a ‘peeper’s view’ and another as a TED-style talk about the making of the piece. However, once again, COVID struck when my cinematographer tested positive 2 weeks ago, preventing him from working on the final stages of the piece: as a result, we decided to focus on the ‘peeper’s view’ film, which is what I am about to show you… obviously, as it was filmed during the pandemic, we were very limited in the locations that we could shoot, so it had to be done at our stores in Dawlish Warren. We also wanted to try and capture the intimate, haptic nature of the performance and the structure of the performed show, so my Vincent Price-style introduction and the credits help provide that context.

This is the first ever showing of this piece – I hope you enjoy ‘The Vampyre Peepshow’ – “The wonder of all wonders that ever the world has wondered at!”