The play “Watts” in a Home, written by Britain’s Electrical Association for Women (EAW) and first performed in 1930, stages a history of domestic electrical lighting in Britain between 1880 and 1930. The play bears similarities to other triumphalist “electrical propaganda” produced in a range of media during the same period. However, analysis of the play’s script, performances, and reception highlight the crucial dramaturgical role played by the physical presence of audiences of “Watts” in a Home. This paper accordingly situates the play in the history of electrical performances which focuses on the role of the sensing human body and its capacity to feel (via touch) and to see. In doing so, it argues that “Watts” in a Home is best understood not merely as a play, but rather as a hybrid play and demonstration, which presented its audiences with a history of domestic electrical lighting in order in instruct, amuse, and – most significantly – engage them in the act of visual sensing to convince them of the merits of electrical lighting. Investigating how “Watts” in a Home straddled the form of play and demonstration unites the histories of electrical spectacles with later electrical showroom demonstrations. It also complicates histories of interwar electrical popularization by attending more directly to the relationship between the form, content, and audience of interwar "electrical propaganda."
