Showing posts with label Steampunk Opium Wars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steampunk Opium Wars. Show all posts
Sunday, 23 June 2013
The Steampunk Opium Wars: Lord Palmerston declares war on China video
Egged on by Sir Jardine Matheson, Lord Palmerston declares war on China when Lin Zexu destroys the British opium stocks.
Poem "After Kipling: Apology for the First Opium War" written and performed by John Crow.
The Steampunk Opium Wars is written and narrated by Anna Chen.
With Paul Anderson, Louise Whittle, Hugo Trebels, Neil Hornick, John Paul O'Neill. Charles Shaar Murray on Guitar and Marc Jefferies on bass. Plus Deborah Evans Stickland and Gary Lammin.
More of The Steampunk Opium Wars
Sunday, 3 June 2012
Steampunk Opium Wars: gorgeous new photos & poems
Finally uploaded the lovely portraits taken by Sukey Parnell of the cast of The Steampunk Opium Wars debut at the National Maritime Museum in London earlier this year.
As well as Sukey's pix, the poems written by cast-members are also on these pages.
There's a serious intention in writing and performing the show. After we performed it, we were all pleased to hear audience members telling us that this was all new to them. However, I was then shocked to read Julia Lovell's The Opium War, published last year to acclaim and some pretty critique-free reviews. Reading it felt like having someone yelling "You're shit and you know you are!" in your face for hours on end.
Revisionist "historians" do this from time to time. The most shocking example is probably the move to blame Afro-Caribbeans for their wretched slavery because some black people and Arabs helped to run the slave trade in Africa. I hope The Steampunk Opium Wars is an antidote to some of the callous rewriting of this part of history.
THE STEAMPUNK OPIUM WARS: CAST PORTRAITS AND POEMS
Saturday, 3 March 2012
VIDEO Camellia and the Poppy from The Steampunk Opium Wars
Anna Chen sings The Camellia and the Poppy, the opening song of The Steampunk Opium Wars. Filmed at the National Maritime Museum on Thursday 16th February 2012.
With Charles Shaar Murray on guitar and Marc Jefferies on bass guitar.
Camera: Jeff Willis
The Steampunk Opium Wars pages here.
Monday, 27 February 2012
VIDEO Anna Chen sings at The Steampunk Opium Wars
I'm keeping them coming. Here's another video from the show at the National Maritime Museum on the 16th February, this time of me singing Anna May Wong Must Die! at The Steampunk Opium Wars.
With Charles Shaar Murray on Guitar and Marc Jefferies on bass. Jeff Willis took the video. www.annachen.co.uk
The Steampunk Opium Wars pages here.
Saturday, 18 February 2012
Premiére of The Steampunk Opium Wars: photos
MORE PIX HERE
The debut of The Steampunk Opium Wars went brilliantly well on Thursday to an audience of nearly 300, something approaching a record for the National Maritime Museum Lates. I feel honoured and very lucky to have such a talented and enthusiastic team entirely in sympathy with what I was trying to achieve with this piece. Not just the truly excellent cast, but all the friends who dived in to help: notably Jan Jefferies (hugely supportive as usual), Hi Ching, Lucy Sheen and Oliver Shykles. The stage and light tech, Jon Crawley, turned out be a great asset as well.
It was lovely having a sizeable audience to bounce off — and seeing so many friends cheering us on. The museum had originally planned to put out 90 seats and were surprised (although we weren't) when so many people made the effort to go to Greenwich on a dark winter's evening to get some of what we were offering. Afterwards I got some heartening feedback, mostly along the lines that most people didn't know anything about this dark episode in British History because it's rarely taught in school. Only one person so far has told me that she learnt about it in history lessons.
I've now posted the pictures that Jan took with my camera. Jeff Willis brought our Steampunk Victoriana baby into the 21st century with a live stream that reached friends in Canada and America. I've yet to see the video footage but I will get something together soon.
So, once more, thanks to: Charles Shaar Murray, Marc Jefferies and DJ Zoe Baxter for providing music; actors Paul Anderson, John Crow, Neil Hornick, Hugo Trebels, John Paul O'Neill and Louise Whittle; Gary Lammin and the Hackney Tea Ceremony; Sukey Parnell (assisted by Will) for managing to set up her studio in the main building; Denborah Evans-Stickland who was magnificent and scary as Britannia; and a double-mention for John Paul for his excellent Farrago History Poetry Slam — and all the poets who came along and took part.
We want to take this show further so, if you missed it, you may very well have a chance to see us perform it one day.
The Steampunk Opium Wars pages:
The Steampunk Opium Wars Home Page
Afterview
The Company: who we are and how to find us.
Gallery: debut performance at the National Maritime Museum.
VIDEO: Lin Zexu Just Says No!
VIDEO: Britannia sings "Money"
What they said ...
Thursday, 16 February 2012
Live stream of The Steampunk Opium Wars tonight
Get ready from 6.30pm tonight because we have a live stream of The Steampunk Opium Wars from the National Maritime Museum.
Show kicks off at 6.45pm.
Click on these links:
Thursday, 2 February 2012
The Steampunk Opium Wars at the National Maritime Museum
National Maritime Museum
18.30-22.00
Thursday 16th February 2012
A satirical extravaganza about China, Britain, imperialism and drugs in the 19th century in verse & music. See narco-capitalists & Chinese lawmakers slug it out, take part in a poetry slam, and watch the weirdest tea ceremony ever.
What do the humble cup of tea and the opium poppy have in common?
Britain’s craving for chinoiserie in the 18th and 19th centuries resulted in a trade imbalance that threatened to empty the treasury. To pay for the tea, silks, spices and porcelain we liked so much, the East India Company sold enormous quantities of cheap Bengal-grown opium to China, turning an aristocratic vice into a nationwide addiction.
The profits from the opium trade made fortunes, earned revenues for the British government, paid for the administration of the Empire in India and even financed a large slice of Royal Navy costs. When the Chinese tried to halt the import of the drug, the narco-capitalists persuaded Foreign Secretary Palmerston and Lord Melbourne’s government to go to war in 1839. The first military conflict, lasting a bloody three years, resulted in the Treaty of Nanking and the transfer of territory including Hong Kong to British rule.
A dastardly tale of imperialism, drugs and warfare, the story of this dark episode in British history is told in The Steampunk Opium Wars, a satirical extravaganza hosted by poet Anna Chen inside the belly of the beast, the heart of Empire, the Royal National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
Government narco-capitalists and Chinese law-enforcers slug it out in verse, and members of the audience have the chance to write and take part in a Farrago Poetry History Slam.
Featuring Paul Anderson, John Crow Constable, Neil Hornick, John Paul O’Neill, Hugo Trebels, and Louise Whittle.
With music from legendary writer Charles Shaar Murray and The Plague’s Marc “The Exorcist” Jefferies; former Flying Lizards singer Deborah Evans-Stickland singing her mega-hit “Money”; DJ Zoe “Lucky Cat” Baxter of Resonance FM; and Gary Lammin of The Bermondsey Joyriders in the weirdest tea ceremony you’ve ever seen.
Have your photograph taken in your finest steampunk paraphernalia on stage by Mrs Sukey Parnell, who has exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery, and maybe see it displayed on the interweb.
Celebrating Chinese New Year and the opening of the new Traders Gallery at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich
Come and play with us …
More here
Free entry but book tickets
Facebook page here
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