What do acid-house raves and a century-old bloodbath have in common? Quite a lot, according to Manchester's Library Theatre
In an empty industrial building to the north of Manchester, the 19th-century democratic campaigner Samuel Bamford is making euphoric gestures of a distinctly non-19th century fashion. Bamford was one of the key participants in the 1819 Peterloo massacre. But at present he's waving his arms in the air to an acid-house dance track. "This is freaky," the actor playing Bamford, Pete Ashmore, declares. "It's like trying to imagine how a ghost might feel on drugs."
The room is littered with items both from Bamford's era and the rather more recent past. Remnants of the carnage of St Peter's Field mingle with items that could have been left on the dancefloor of the Hacienda. There are bonnets and beanie hats, skeletons and smiley badges; plastic riot shields lie next to cavalry sabres. It all leads you to wonder what a 200-year-old social-reform campaigner is doing at a rave in the first place.
The answer is that these are preparations for Manchester Sound: the Massacre, a site-specific production by the Library Theatre that aims to present a theatrical re-mix of the two most significant mass-movements in Manchester's history: the Peterloo demonstration and the apex of dance culture in 1989. It's a bold concept with plenty of scope for comedy, as witnessed by a hilarious improvisation I come across in the toilets, in which a pair of young clubbers attempt to explain how a hand-dryer works to a female reformer in petticoats. But beyond the obvious culture-clash, does the druggy era of pills and thrills really bear any relation to one of the most notorious bloodbaths in British history?
The play's writer, Polly Wiseman, believes it does. "The play is about a pair of revolutions, one political and one cultural, that changed the world," she says. "Both were peaceful events on which the authorities came down disproportionately hard; and both led to changes in the law." The government's response to Peterloo was a harsh suppression of radical meetings and publications (which led directly to the foundation of the Manchester Guardian by a circle of non-conformist businessmen who had been witnesses to the massacre). The acid house explosion prompted the controversial "rave clause" of the Criminal Justice Act, which gave police the right to break up gatherings for music legally characterised as "a succession of repetitive beats".
Even so, the stakes were hardly the same. In 1819 an estimated 60-80,000 marched in protest at appalling social conditions and lack of democratic representation in Parliament. At least 15 people died when cavalry charged the crowd, and many hundreds were injured in the subsequent stampede. The 1989 generation, by comparison, were fighting for little more than the right to party. So why Peterloo, why acid house and why now?
"We wanted to create a show that reflected the changing nature of protest," explains the director, Paul Jepson. "Just two summers ago, we saw riot police on the streets of Manchester in response to a protest that seemed to be about nothing more than the looting of consumer electronics and leisurewear. Acid house marked the point where mass movements became almost completely apolitical. It was a benign, peaceful phenomenon – influenced by the drugs, of course – but the ecstasy generation didn't demand anything other than the right to have a good time without harassment."
They were also arguably the last to organise on a mass scale without the aid of social media or the internet. "It already seems extraordinary that so many people managed mobilise without Facebook or even mobile phones," Polly Wiseman says. "It all happened via word of mouth, photocopied flyers and congregating in motorway lay-byes to receive instructions where to go."
Manchester Sound: the Massacre aims to replicate the unpredictable experience of attending a rave by keeping the location of the performance a closely guarded secret. Ticket holders will be issued with an assembly point, where they can expect to be met by a large community cast of clubbers giving out directions, bottled water and coloured tablets (which in reality will be Skittles).
It seems apt that the audience should not be entirely sure where they are going; the physical legacies of Peterloo and acid house have both become hard to find. The Hacienda nightclub has been turned into a suite of expensive apartments. Peterloo is commemorated only by an easily missed plaque on the side of the former Free Trade Hall, now the Radisson hotel; though there has been a long campaign in the city to erect a more fitting memorial.
"Even now people seem to underestimate the significance of what happened at Peterloo," says Jepson. "It changed the course of democracy in this country and ultimately for the entire world. It was Manchester's Tiananmen Square."
And what of acid house? What did the era of Madchester ultimately achieve? "It established a cultural energy which is still palpable in the city," Jepson says. "And it provided the foundation for so many creative careers. One of the charming things about the Tony Wilson era was that it felt like a playground. It was a bit chaotic, but it is one of the reasons why the arts in Manchester are so strong today. Nearly every cultural executive in the city will gladly admit to being an old raver at heart."