THREE GHOSTS OF SILVERTOWN to Make World Premiere as 7th Newham Play
James Kenworth's site-specific production will be staged at Tate Institute, directed by Jade Ward McFarlane.
The 7th play in the long-running The Newham Plays, Three Ghosts of Silvertown by James Kenworth, will premiere in August. Directed by Jade Ward McFarlane, the show will be staged site specific in Tate Institute, Wythes Rd, London E16 2DN. Performances will run Monday 24 – Sunday 30 August
James Kenworth's epic The Newham Plays return this August with the boldest and most haunting production yet: Three Ghosts of Silvertown, a kaleidoscopic, phantasmagorical journey through East London led by three class-war ghosts resurrected from the poverty-stricken streets of Silvertown at the turn of the 20th century.
The Newham Plays are a groundbreaking theatrical series by former long-term Newham resident and Playwright/Creative Writing Tutor James Kenworth, celebrating the stories, spaces, and people of Newham.
Staged in site-responsive locations, the plays merge professional performance with community participation, particularly involving local youth. These productions aim to reconnect Newham's residents with their cultural roots, reinterpreting history and literature through a local, socially conscious lens.
In Three Ghosts of Silvertown, the ghosts - casualties of a vampiric capitalist system run rampant - carry the scars of abandonment, exploitation, and neglect. Each one bears witness to the brutal conditions of their time, and together they guide us through a nightmarish Silvertown of slums, factories, and unrelenting hardship. As they drift between centuries, their stories collide with the present, revealing the enduring cycles of inequality that still shape life today.
Refusing to remain mere relics of history, the ghosts decide to re-stage the famous Silvertown Strike, led by socialist firebrand Eleanor Marx, Karl Marx's daughter. But this time, the ending is entirely their own - fierce, defiant, and radically different from the one that history recorded.
Set to a pulsating techno and house soundtrack, Three Ghosts of Silvertown fuses past and present into a fever-dream of spoken word, movement, and raw theatrical energy. With Newham Plays' signature blend of professional creatives and the young rising voices of tomorrow, the production becomes a
visceral act of resistance - a spectral uprising against the forces that created them.
Three Ghosts of Silvertown has been inspired by the remarkable resurrection of the Tate Institute in Silvertown by the ReSpace Project - a building, like the ghosts themselves, brought back to life by the power of citizenry-led imagination. This act of renewal mirrors the play's spirit: reclaiming what was abandoned, reanimating what was lost, and returning power and possibility to local hands.
The resonance deepens considering the Silvertown Strike took place just a few yards from the Institute itself. Both the strike and the building were central to the same tightly knit industrial community along the Thames, with the Institute serving as a hub for workers, including those from the nearby Tate & Lyle factory.
Staging the play here brings past and present into powerful alignment, making the historical and modern echoes feel especially immediate and alive.
Director Jade Ward McFarlane performed in the very first Newham Play, When Chaplin Met Gandhi, in 2012 as a teenager.
James Kenworth said, “What a fantastic full-circle story it is! Jade performed in my When Chaplin Met Gandhi, back in 2012 as a young teenager. Since then, she's gone on to carve out an impressive career as a theatre and film director. Jade is Newham born and bred and is passionate about locally made stories that celebrate and foreground the borough's rich history and heritage. Alongside her professional directing work, she was also Head of Drama at Newham's Cumberland Community School, so I know she'll be a tremendous asset to the team, bringing a wealth of experience alongside her deep knowledge and love of Newham.”
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