Hallowe'en: The Black Hall opens 100 years after cursed actor Henry Flynn closed the horrors within
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00:00 She's not standing up.
00:02 She's not standing up.
00:04 She's not standing up.
00:06 Who's this Henry Flynn?
00:13 Ah well, Sir Henry Flynn was the man who opened the Theatre of Light here,
00:17 at this hall, back about a hundred years or so ago.
00:20 And Sir Henry was a fine actor, a wonderful troupe of actors.
00:25 People came from all over the world to see his troupe act.
00:28 And then he got invited out to Eastern Europe, out to Transylvania in the early 1920s
00:32 when they started making these new films.
00:34 Let us out!
00:36 Sir Henry took the bait and went.
00:41 And well, when he came back, everybody expected the Theatre of Light to open again.
00:45 But, unfortunately not.
00:46 Sir Henry went in and closed the doors and we ended up with the Black Hole.
00:49 I'm in a building up inside me.
00:54 And what is the Black Hole?
00:56 The Black Hole is what Sir Henry has made of this space over the last hundred years.
01:01 He locked his performers in.
01:03 They rehearse endlessly now for a show they're never going to give.
01:06 So, there's a lot of twisted, angry, desperate people in there.
01:10 No! Not yet!
01:15 John, it's great stuff.
01:17 It's brilliant, the sort of views.
01:19 But, at Bald Heritage, it's really a sort of theatrical feel.
01:23 It's not just the usual sort of jump scares like there's a bit more to it.
01:26 There is. And that was the plan.
01:28 I'm a theatre producer and obviously what I want to do is bring people entertainment
01:33 and tell them stories. Stories is the important thing.
01:36 Like I say, I'd never really bought a Halloween up until last year.
01:40 And I was asked at last minute to do something for the council.
01:44 And I just saw the vibrancy that there was in the city over that weekend.
01:49 And I thought, right, okay, well I'd like a wee bit of this.
01:52 And as you say, this is a beautiful piece of Bald Heritage right here in the city centre.
01:56 I mean, the Forum, the Guildhall, everything is within stone-throwing distance.
02:01 And it's fantastic to have something on in here and animate this space.
02:05 They're doing really well. They're bringing this space back into life in the city centre.
02:09 It's a huge, huge space.
02:11 And I'm just very delighted to be able to add to that.
02:14 I think the goal is to turn this into a creative order.
02:18 And there's chimes of that very much over.
02:22 Oh, it does. I mean, we're standing here looking across Deverton Square and the funfair
02:25 and the facilities it provides. You've the Playhouse, you've the Manningham Forum,
02:28 you've new Gait Arts Centre just round the corner.
02:30 So again, this really has the capacity to be a real kind of heartbeat in the centre of the city
02:35 in terms of entertainment and cultural output.
02:37 So Halloween is a thing for the city, so we're doing something for that this year.
02:42 Every birth, rather, it is my living death to be dead and yet to be alive!
02:48 (scary music)
02:50 (cheering)