INVISIBLE ACTORS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 May 1939, Page 5

INVISIBLE ACTORS

IN DROP OF WATER. London's most unusual theatre, for ordinarily invisible actors and actresses was opened recently in London. Here 200 people at a time, sitting comfortably in tip-up chairs in the theatre, will see on a luminous screen some of the queer primitive creatures the scientist surveys through his microscope. For many months now Mr Edward Henry Ellis has been at work building up enormous colonies of many species of micro-organisms. Behind the scenes at the theatre during a performance there is exciting activity. A team of scientists works with swlf precision. picking up from tanks and test-tubes specimens of the occupants putting them into slides for the pro-jection-microscopes and then returning them quickly to their tanks when their “turn” is ever. A trained commentator will tell the audience all the weird activity of the moment. Upon the screen will swim minute dragons and invisible serpents mad; mighty by the microscope. Dendrocelium will wobble at woirc speed and motion about the lumincu' circle, a creature that is all shapes and any shape in turn. Daphnia, among the giants of the cast, is the ordinary water-flea, jus visible to the naked eye. upon which aquarium keepers feed their pets. Hehr it becomes an enormous transparent i animal, whose big. black, central eye glare, whose heart can be seen beating ■ in a close-up view. So strange are some of the thrill ■ | given by these immensely magnified i specks of life that sometimes it will need the word of the commentator 1c remind you that after all they are only specks that cannot escape from the water-drop world —and if they could, would be harmless to humanity.