On Friday 30th, Saturday 31st July and Saturday 7th August 2021, BOLDtext Playwrights’ new site-specific & science-specific show, Power of Invention, will be performed at Soho House, the home of Birmingham’s Lunar Society. The show will explore the ground-breaking scientific advances inspired during the society’s full-moon meetings towards the end of the 18th century. Centred on the home of industrialist Matthew Boulton, our audience will meet Matthew and his daughter, Anne, as well as fellow ‘lunaticks’, James Watt, Erasmus Darwin and Joseph Priestley. We’ll also hear from the below-stairs folk who kept the household going, and protected them from dangerous riots. Collaboration between the physicians, engineers, chemists, botanists, geologists, philosophers, poets and entrepreneurs of the Lunar Society led to the development of many of our modern technologies.
Our show takes place at Matthew Boulton’s home, Soho House in Birmingham, with input from Birmingham Museums and ThinkTank, and funding from Arts Council England and the Sir Barry Jackson Trust.
Following the success of Behind Bars: Ghosts of the Lock-Up at Birmingham’s central lock-up, we look forward to bringing the Lunar Society and its important scientific discoveries to life in its original space.
BOLDtext Playwrights 