A Collector of Oddities

By MinBannister

100 years ago today

The Empire Theatre burned down, taking with it The Great Lafayette and many of his performers and animals.

What better way to commemorate it than a photograph of eminent psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman filming a teenage boy playing the keyboard dressed as a teddy bear?

This was part of the Lafayette Seance performed at Edinburgh Secret Society. I am allowed to speak about it since it was put out as a webcast (which I am yet to see-been busy). It involved getting 500 people to exit and enter a theatre within about 5 minutes which was a pretty neat trick in itself!

Unfortunately, as this was never intended to be a "serious" seance we did not get an appearance from the man himself. However, I did get to be on my own in the theatre for a bit (with the seance crew behind the safety curtain and the sound and light guy at the back which is as about on my own as I could get) which was quite spooky.

There is a reason a teenager was made to dress as a teddy bear and perform on stage by the way. And it was not just to give us all a laugh (which it did). Lafayette had a mechanical wind up teddy bear which was in fact a young girl. She sadly died in the fire also alomg with her brother. 300 000 people turned out to their funeral.

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