Fly Me To The Moon
From 13th October 2003
To 18th October 2003
by
John Godber
Description
A comedy in one airport! John Godber brings his ear for panic and his eye for social observation to the Fear of Flying Course. Set over one day and in one location, you can’t fail to feel the tension as the pressure builds and the nerves become frayed! It’s humour through clenched teeth!
Anne wants to fly off on holiday and enrolls her and her husband, Dave on the Fly with Confidence Course thinking she is doing them both a favour. Dave is not so keen, having been in a plane struck by lightning in 1993 and September 11th has confirmed his desire to keep his feet firmly on the ground. They are joined on the course by Madge, clinically nervous of flying, Dougie, part-time crooner and full-time lorry driver, timid Fern, the environmental science graduate, and Stella who loves flying so much that no-one knows why she is on the course. Their instructors form an interesting crew: Stew, the pilot, who loves the ladies, but hates heights, customer-hating Kelly the stewardess and Dr Ken Jones, the psychologist who is in need of help himself.
So check in your baggage, take a seat in departures and fasten your seat belts – it looks like you are in for a bumpy ride! Join us for what we will believe will be a world premiere of this new Godber play. Royalty-free, thanks to a commission from WWF – the global environment network, the play is released for performance solely for amateur companies from 1st September 2003.
The Nonentities in the Main House (A)
Directors Notes
John Godber has many successful plays to his name, including "Bouncers", "Shakers", "Teechers", "Happy Families" and "On the Piste".
He also writes for Television and over the years has contributed to "Brookside", "Crown Court" and "Grange Hill". He also writes for and is fascinated by film. He is the Artistic Director of the Hull Truck Theatre Company.
As a notable contemporary playwright, he has allowed this play to be premiered by Amateur societies throughout U.K. hence the Full House Project supported by the "Amateur Stage" and the "World Wild Life Fund".
All over the Country, workshops have been set up to talk and work on the text with the author. Five of the Nonentities team have attended such a workshop. It was an opportunity to question some of the anomalies found in the script and to discuss the stagecraft he envisaged.
We were delighted to learn that John Godber himself is "not absolutely happy" in a plane, and that nearly all of the characters in the play are based on his own observations of people on a "Fly with Confidence" course which he attended at East Midlands Airport. His verbal description of the actual course was hilarious, but also showed the absolute paralysing fear that envelops anyone with such a phobia. He is sure that nearly everyone has some inkling of this fear on occasions when flying, even if we don’t admit it!
Mr.Godber has structured the early part of the play almost like a film, "jump cutting" forward from fade to fade, as a way of moving the action on and building up the nervous tension in the "Soon to be Flying [fingers crossed] Passengers". In this style of drama, he is concerned that the actors should be as "real" as possible, although in fact he uses a non-realistic theatrical "conceit" of occasionally "freezing" the characters. This is to ensure that some may not hear what the others are saying about them. We hope we have achieved this reality. Certainly in rehearsal we have discussed many aspects of each character and allowed for the hesitations of speech and the sub textual thoughts, which often underlie the actual words that are spoken out loud. The humour is implicit in the truth of the characters' situation and emotions as they cope with the tension, which Godber suggests, should build throughout the play.
Lets hope we have done his concept justice.