Newham Plays: Three Ghosts of Silvertown

Newham Plays returns this August 2026 with its 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.

These 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 renewal mirrors the play’s spirit: reclaiming what was abandoned, reanimating what was lost, and returning power and possibility to local hands.