While I have been an artist in residence at Trowbridge Town Hall, Rosemary, one of the volunteers, has been supplying me with fascinating stories and folders of her meticulous research on the building. Discovering that Poole's Myriorama shows took place here has opened up a whole box of intriguing treasure! I think what has fuelled this interest is my background in film and specifically, set dressing. Myrioramas or moving panoramas were often seen in melodramatic plays. It became a new visual element to theatre and a precursor to early cinema. In the mid-nineteenth century, the moving panorama was among the most popular forms of entertainment in the world. From the simplicity of the Panorama, the Poole brothers developed the ‘Myriorama’ show and toured Britain in the 1900s.
Stories of travel and adventure were popular: the action was conveyed by hidden stagehands, moving shaped flats across a fixed backdrop. They added elaborate effects - cut-out figures moving across the scene, accompanied by music, lighting and sound effects. One naval scene saw them manoeuvring ships accompanied by gunshot noises, puffs of smoke and Rule Britannia with waves on a rippling cloth at the front of the stage.
The show presented huge paintings wound on rollers scrolled past the audience, with special effects introduced by lighting changes. They always involved a narrator, styled as its ‘Delineator’ or ‘Professor’, who described the scenes as they passed and added to the drama of the events depicted. The pictures for Poole's Myriorama were painted by some of the first-class scenic artists of the day, who received what was then considered big money for their work.
The programmes included about 50 myriorama subjects, six vaudeville turns, cinema shorts 'shown by limelight' and, later, the first 'talkies' - gramophone and cinema worked by hand. The variety turns included musical acts, ventriloquists, comedians, gymnasts, marionettes, vocalists, and animal acts. Performing foxes, cats, bears, monkeys, bulls, pugs, cockatoos were also featured, and there was a miniature circus with clowns, trapeze artists and a ringmaster.
Some of the first films seen in the UK were presented in late 19th century myriorama shows. Although cinema eventually replaced the myriorama, this kind of entertainment stayed popular until the late 1920s.
I can already sense a new body of work through this subject and the Town Hall's history appears to be an endless supply of inspiration!
