The Wider Earth at the Natural History Museum

DARWIN THE WIDER EARTH

This coming-of-age story follows a rebellious young Darwin, who aged only 22, set out on an intrepid five-year voyage on HMS Beagle to distant and exotic lands

TICKETS: thewiderearth.com

When someone mentions Charles Darwin my mind goes to the classic statues and photographs of an older gentlemen with a long beard, and of course the theory of evolution. I’m sure there’s a lot of people whose first thoughts are the same but how many of you know that Darwin was only 22 when he set sail on The Beagle, his home for the next five years, and whilst he published an account on his travels he didn’t publish anything on evolution until he was 49.

By the summer of 1858 Darwin had written a quarter of a million words on evolution and it was only a letter from Alfred Russell Wallace, an admirer of Darwin’s, that compelled him to go public. Inspired by the Beagle Voyage, Wallace had independently arrived at a theory of natural selection wanted Darwin’s advice on publishing. Darwin went public with his groundbreaking theory of evolution by natural selection, whilst making sure that Wallace received some credit. In 1859, Darwin finally published his new theory of evolution, and more than a decade later in 1971, he found the courage to publish ideas he’d once hinted at in ‘Origin of Species’.

I was inspired to go and research Darwin after getting to go behind the scenes at The National History Museum to meet the cast and see a few short scenes of ‘The Wider Earth’ which will be shown in the first performance theatre ever to be built at the museum from 2nd October. Written and directed by Dead Puppet Society’s Creative Director David Morton this coming of age story follows a rebellious young Darwin setting out on an intrepid five-year voyage on HMS Beagle to distant and exotic lands, and stars some incredible hand-made puppets brought to life by the cast members. There’s over 30 puppets in the show, made up of 10,000 individual pieces, which took 18 months to design on the computer individually before being sent to a laser cutter for 8 months of construction.

The cast have a mix of puppetry experience and spent a lot of time researching the animals they were bringing to life and were fascinating learning more about how they move, how they live, what they do and all the tiny details. They’ve all grown attached to their individual puppets and said that the way in which the puppets have been crafted that a lot of the work is done for them, less is more. All the cast are now highly skilled with the puppets but there was a moment during first rehearsals when the giant tortoise lost a leg and you can imagine how terrifying that was at the time.

Away from the traditional proscenium arch environment the staging set up is a revolving stage which will have a skirting structure bringing it to one level. There will be built in smoke and light effects to change the environment and behind the set there will be a panoramic projection screen that receives illustrations, in the style of Conrad Marten, including maps, locations and Darwin’s internal thoughts. The immersive surrounding should make you feel like a part of the environment. I would definitely recommend getting tickets for the show and I for one can’t wait until I go and it in a few weeks.