Silk and satin theatre programmes were frequently produced in the 18th and 19th centuries to commemorate special theatrical and musical events, the less expensive ones with integral fringing made from fraying cut edges, and the more expensive with separately applied silk or metallic fringes. This programme was produced for a performance by 'The Original No. 1 Pepper's Ghost and Spectral Opera Company' that specialised in plays that included the stage effect known as Pepper's Ghost, because it was developed by John Henry Pepper as a theatrical effect after seeing a demonstration of 'the Dircksian Phantasmagoria' in 1862 by its inventor Henry Dircks at London's Royal Polytechnic Institute. Strong light cast on a performer under the stage cast ghostly images of actors on stage, with the use of an angled mirror. Other companies used the technique, including 'Northcote's Pepper's Ghost and Spectral Opera Company' that toured plays including A Christmas Carol and The Haunted House.

The plays that the Original No. 1 Pepper's Ghost and Spectral Operas Company performed at the Mechanics' Hall in Forres on the 19th June 1896 were "the powerful slave drama" "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and 'the laughable spectral farce' PPP, or, the Poor Poet's Plagues. The following evening it was The Corsican Brothers. The performance on the 19th June included a concert, and was advertised as being under the patronage of Sir W. and Lady Gordon-Cumming and 'the Elite of Forres and Neighbourhood'. Sir William Gordon-Cumming (1848-1930), a local landowner and former friend of Edward, Prince of Wales, was considered a social outcast in London by 1896 but still liked locally. His wife was the American heiress Florence Garner, and the production of the silk programme indicates that they attended the performance. Gordon-Cumming was born near Forres, in the north of Scotland, on the Moray coast, near Kinloss. The sole proprietor, presumably of the Company, is given as Mr. Albert Drake.