“It’s a Barnum and Bailey world / Just as phoney as it can be / But it wouldn’t be make-believe / If you believed in me.”
- From the 1933 song by Harold Arlen (music), E. Y. Harburg (lyrics), and Billy Rose (lyrics)

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

238,857 miles out in space, a pock-marked sphere of stone exerts a mysterious force over the Earth, brightening the darkest nights and stirring vast ocean tides. As we look up to the heavens, the cold eye of the Moon meets our gaze – confounding us, inspiring us, and terrifying us.

Little Earthquake embarks on a fantastic voyage to the fake Moons of the past, present and future, as several sad souls reach out to imaginary lunar landscapes in an attempt to make sense of their earthbound existence.

EARLY DEVELOPMENTS

Little Earthquake is currently in early stages of development for It’s Only A Paper Moon. Phases of work with collaborators and partner venues began in Autumn 2011 and will continue throughout 2012, with a view to touring the production extensively through Spring 2013 and beyond.

At its heart, the production explores how and why people often look to the Moon to define, elevate or validate their existence and their place in the world. It explores the cultural history of Man’s relationship with the Moon over the last four hundred years, and the changes throughout this period which shaped our understanding of the Moon and its influence upon us.

The production interweaves four strands which revolve around fake, imaginary or artificial versions of the Moon, each strand explored through the personal story of an individual character:

• Jean Grenier, a French peasant who was tried in public court in Bordeaux in 1603, charged with being a werewolf and confined to a monastery to live out his days under observation;
• Georges Méliès, the early French filmmaker, looking at the making of his 1902 film A Voyage To The Moon, which got many of the basic elements of space travel right, and whose success led to the ruining of his career;
• Mani Hopkins, a fictional character conceived through Lunaception (a 1970s theory based on sleeping in rooms lit to mimic the changing cycle of the Moon) — as he searches for his estranged mother;
• Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the Moon during the Apollo space program, who now interrogates his experiences through personal paintings into which he incorporates Moon dust from his space suit.

Work-in-progress extracts of It’s Only A Paper Moon were presented as part of China Plate’s First Bite Festival in September 2011 and Bite Size Festival in March 2012. As part of a weekend of events coinciding with the anniversary of Apollo 10’s launch, there will be a special film screening and a further work-in-progress sharing at macin May. We will also be appearing at the National Rural Touring Forum showcase in June. (see Events for more details).

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GET INVOLVED

The production is the centre of a wider programme of events, activities and resources designed to give as many people as possible the chance to join us on the journey to the Moon:

• Moon Memories — an oral history project which invites people to share their recollections and experiences of the Apollo space program and lunar landings with us. This will lead to the creation of an online log of personal testimony and eventually to tie-in exhibitions and performances responding to these memories;
• Moon Museum — a visual arts project which invites six local artists in each partner venue’s catchment area to respond to the themes of space exploration by contributing to a miniature six-panel artwork which is reproduced and distributed to all performance attenders, session participants and exhibition visitors;
• Practical workshops aimed at KS1 and KS2 students exploring early cinema through a combination of sharing memories of favourite films, devising performances, generating sound effects, restaging Georges Méliès’ Voyage dans la Lune and hand-painting reproductions of early film cels;
• Curated programmes of tie-in old and new film screenings exploring themes related to the production — early cinema (such as Hugo and The Artist); space stories (such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon and Apollo 13); werewolf films (such as The Wolf Man and the Twilight saga).