Miss Milly’s Magical Lanternarium

‘There were fire eaters, tarot readers, stilt walkers, goat riders, tall people, small people, hairy people, and scary people. And they loved Mermaid, she was an overnight crustacean!’

In the years before cinema and photography, Magic Lantern Showmen travelled the country telling stories and projecting images to eager audiences. They showed slides and told children’s stories and fairy tales, news items and traveller’s tales, horror stories and phantasmagoria…..

Milly’s Magic Lantern Show, otherwise known as Miss Milly’s Magical Lanternarium, was set up to tell the Story of ‘the Mermaid and the Selkie’. It involves the projection of original illustrations which tell the story along with Milly’s words and MUSIC. It creates a different kind of experience from movies or animation, as the story weaves between the words, music and pictures, in a live setting.

We are currently developing plans to create a modern Magic Lantern of our own, to allow us to show slides without mains electricity, using solar or candle power, bringing it more into line with our environmental aims.

Watch this space of future lanternarium developments . . . tales of nightingales & honeyangels, of wood spirits and night elves and, coming to a lanternarium near you . . .