TAMAR ELUNED WILLIAMS
Adrodd Straeon | Ysgrifennu | Gweithdai
Gaslight
1 hour 15mins, 12+
GASLIGHT (noun): a light that uses gas as fuel. The widespread method of lighting cities during the Industrial Revolution.
TO GASLIGHT (verb): to trick or control someone – often a woman – by making her believe that her memories are wrong.
First came giants, who were made from the bones of the land. They burned bright. They sat around their great hearths, and with their heavy lips they told stories of the land, of the seams of black gold that ran below the green grass, and its deep secret power.
Then came men, who slowly uncovered the layers of rock and earth, who found the black gold and set fire to it. Steam engines began to crank into gear. Cities began to grow. Factories churned day and night under the gleam of gas-lamps. People spoke of being on the brink of the biggest change the world had ever seen: an industrial revolution. There was danger and there was opportunity: if you burned bright enough, you could change your fortune.
And then came two women who did just that.
Gaslight is history told as myth, the story of two Victorian women who forged their own paths all the way from the mountains and shorelines of Wales to the stages of London, Australia, and America. For Sarah Rees, “Cranogwen”, the daughter of a seaman, opportunity lies on the ocean, in crafting poetry, and in being with the woman she loves. For Vulcana, performing weight-lifter, as her flame burns ever brighter, she is kept from the children she loves.
Award-winning Welsh storyteller Tamar Williams brings Cranogwen and Vulcana together in an swashbuckling steampunk fairytale, journeying from storm-torn seas to dusty gaslit music halls, as the modern world is birthed into life in the fires of industry.