Museum’s at Night – The mystery of the vanishing professor

  Bagshaw Museum in Batley will be celebrating ‘Museums at Night’ on Saturday evening, 29 October, by taking visitors into the fantastical world of Steam Punk.
The museum in Wilton Park will be the setting for ‘The Mystery of the Vanishing Professor’, a ‘whodunit’ with a Steam Punk theme.
Steam Punk is a form of science fiction which draws on alternative versions of Victorian history and the American Wild West. It imitates how those cultures might have envisaged the future and features retro-futuristic inventions inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery.
So, like all good Steam Punk fiction, at the centre of the story will be an eye-popping, jaw-dropping invention – in this case a time machine which the reclusive and eccentric Professor William Ekkers Lyke plans to unveil to invited guests at his home, Bagshaw Manor.
Professor Lyke claims the machine is his greatest creation, a discovery that will shake the foundations of modern science! But mystery and intrigue are abounding and not all of the professor’s illustrious guests are not quite what they seem.
The mystery starts to unfold when it becomes apparent that the professor has vanished and it also becomes clear that many of his guests, and perhaps even his staff, are not quite as they appear. What are they hiding? Where is the professor? Has he really built a time machine?  And, ultimately, whodunit?
Taking the lead role of the detective investigating the professor’s mysterious disappearance is Becky Maries, a local performing arts practitioner who is also the writer and director of the play.
Other characters, including Geoffrey Geoffreys the Butler, the Housekeeper, an antiquarian explorer, a rival inventor, a local entrepreneur and the Professor William Ekkers Lyke, will be played by volunteers from Kirklees Museums and the local community.
The play, set in the year 1886, starts outside the museum and then will move inside and around the building before ending with tea and cake in the Long Gallery where all will be revealed.
Visitors can expect to get involved in the action as they try to work out what has happened to the professor and who is responsible. And they are invited to get immersed in the atmosphere by dressing in Steam Punk attire; there will be an opportunity for photographs with the cast at the end of the performance.
Tickets for this event, which starts at 6pm, are £8 (including tea and cake) and are available from Bagshaw Museum, Wilton Park, Batley, tel: 01924 324765.  Advance booking is essential; not suitable for under 12s.