Set during the events of August 1842 in the Calder Valley, the specially written play Waiting for Wesley is to be performed this summer at Halifax Museum.

Commissioned by Heptonstall Museum, written by Michael Crowley and first performed in August 2022 by The Brutish Multitude Theatre Company, the play has since been developed as a result of audience feedback to include the character of Ben Rushton, a significant figure in Halifax Chartism.

The new version of the play is to be showcased as a script-in-hand performance at Halifax Museum on 6 August this year – and there will be a Q&A session to follow.

Tickets are available here.

Waiting for Wesley is set in the Calder Valley in the summer of 1842 when a wave of strikes engulf Lancashire and Yorkshire. As well as demanding a reversal of wage cuts, many workers demanded the government give way to the People’s Charter and introduce universal male suffrage.

Supporters of ‘physical force’ Chartism were numerous in the area, Hebden Bridge Radical Association declared its belief in ‘the justice and right of the people to possess arms in their defence’, and thousands of troops confronted strikers, killing five and wounding many more.

The play shows how tensions mount in one family as a husband and wife are torn between allegiance to the church and organising the rebellion.