Andrew Dawson : Performer : Space Panorama

Space Panorama

Performed by Andrew Dawson
Narrated by Gavin Robertson
Directed by Jos Houben


Space Panorama is a sparkling recreation of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Standing behind a large black clothed table, accompanied by a narrator and music from Shostakovich's 10th Symphony, we explore this surface and the spaces above it using only hands, arms and upper torso to create a constantly entrancing documentary of the entire mission. He dextrously takes us from Houston to the moon and back down to Earth again, conveying the colossal distances and risks involved simply through the arrangement of one hand in relation to the other, with the odd facial expression thrown in for good measure.

The moon landing was a tele-visual event. Space Panorama triggers the memories if those pictures, the massive rocket at launch, the moments before landing, the helicopters and aircraft carriers on their return to Earth. In Space Panorama we can also create the shots that no camera could ever see and together they convey a sense of the eternity of space, and the triviality of our exploration of it.

Created in 1998, Space Panorama was conceived as a miniature piece of theatre but over the last ten years it has toured worldwide.

Andrew Dawson's account of creating and performing the show in front of Apollo 11 Astronauts: "On a hot August day in the ballroom of a hotel on the out skirts of Houston, Texas, a group of astronauts are attending a reunion, an astronaut reunion. For over 30 years people have flown in space. From the early 60's Mercury Mission's through Gemini, Apollo, SkyLab, the Space Shuttle and now the International space station. To date over 600 people have flown in Space. Every few years they take an opportunity to meet up eat drink and reminisce. This reunion will be different because I am there. I am there to perform a small piece of theatre with a really big story. I am going to present the entire Apollo 11 landing on the moon with my hands using a table for a stage. Their story, done in a way they have never imagined was possible.

The piece is called Space Panorama and it was commissioned in 1989 as part of the Northern Festival of mime and dance in Kendal, Cumbria. For 20 years I have worked in the world of "physical theatre" I had studied dance with Merce Cunningham in New York and theatre in London and Paris with Desmond Jones, Philippe Gaulier, Monika Pagneux and Jacques Lecoq. In 1984 I co-founded MTP (Mime Theatre Project) with Gavin Robertson. As a company we built up a diverse portfolio of work from the West End hit 'Thunderbirds F.A.B.' through 'Space Panorama'- to 'The Three Musketeers'. On TV I playing various aliens in Space Precinct'! I created the stage show of 'Wallace & Gromit.' And toured Europe with Jos Houben in 'Quatre Mains' . I am in the world of theatre where you event, dream and create the work yourself.

I proposed to the festival that I could create a piece of theatre on a table. They said yes! Now given the constraint of such a small space, what can you do? Leave this earth I thought. The biggest story I can tell… The 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. Using a classical music score from Shostakovich's 10th Symphony and Gavin Robertson as narrator, and working with Jos Houben as director, we created a Tele-visual documentary of the Apollo mission on the tabletop. Standing behind a large black clothed table, I explored this surface and the spaces above it using only hands, arms and upper torso to create a constantly entrancing documentary of the entire mission. Most of us have a common memory of the moon landing from seeing it on television. It is that visual memory that I tap into. When an audience see the show they see their own show in their minds eye, trigged by my movement and gesture. It is the nearest thing in the theatre you can get, to reading a book. Since 1988 Space Panorama has seen many corners of the earth. It toured extensively with my partner Gavin Robertson and our creation, Thunderbirds F.A.B. The piece joined Thunderbirds in 1989 when we played the West End in aptly named Apollo theatre, Shaftsbury Avenue. Thunderbirds at the time had no interval and were only 70 mins in length. We could not, at that time, lengthen the show. So I proposed that Space Panorama should become the first half. The Apollo seats 700 people and we did not know whether you could perform a show at a table and that everyone could see it in a theatre of that size. The very first performances were in a school classroom for 30 people, where I had built the table myself. It had little spotlights from a department store attached to it, which I controlled from a converted dimmer switch which had an empty herb bottle attached. This meant I could bring up and dim the lights myself with my foot. It also meant I could take as many curtain calls as I wanted as I controlled the lights! I needn't have worried about 700 people in the Apollo, some years later I played it to 2500 people in Osaka Japan. In many ways it worked best in a massive theatre, in the vast darkness of a theatre that large, the tiny gesture of 2 space craft, created by two finger tips, undocking in Luna orbit takes on a very different scale. There, under a spotlight we sense what it might be like to be that far from home. In the West End I had to use live music, So with the help of Ivan Hewit who composed special music for two concert pianists, instead of a show for two hands it became a piece for six.

In Limon a tiny town on the Caribbean coast the show played to an audience who maybe never saw the moon landing on Television. I think they were more interested in the dirt football game that was going on next door or enjoyed the bat that flew over the table, my first huge space monster, luckily the real astronaut's did not see one of them. I do think that the British ambassador and his wife enjoyed the show, even though they looked a little out of sorts, dressed to the nines as the rest of the crowd lit another spliff.

For the 30th anniversary of the moon landing in 1999 I was invited to the festival of the stars in Bergamo, Italy. I played the show in a cloister outside under the stars. With out the roof and just the deep dark sky above me space becomes a really big place. In London at the Hayward Gallery they held the Full Moon Exhibition of photographs of the moon presented by Michael Light. Each Saturday during the exhibition I wheeled out a miniature theatre, the table covered in a black cloth, 2 theatre lights and a sound system. Quickly I would set the show up in front of one of the grand vistas of the luna landscape and whoever was in the gallery at the time got a free performance. As the weeks went by people knew that on a Saturday afternoon this bizarre theatrical event would happen and subsequently the gallery was full to the brim. Then as fast as it appeared the equipment for the show was whisked away in to a cupboard and the gallery was back to normal. One of the great pleasures of Space Panorama is the non-theatrical venues it can play. It can transform a space. We travel on a journey into space in a space. Over 10 years I must have performed the piece a 1000 times. What is most remarkable for me is that I genuinely never tire of it. Each time I perform it I run the same film in my own mind. Each time wonder if they are going to make it. In the constraint of the music the table and my hands there is always room for improvement and fine-tuning and it is never the same twice.

In Houston I played in a ballroom. No backdrop, no theatre lights. Just music, narration and my hands and together with 200 astronauts we travelled into space, their space, a place they have been, A place where they have had the opportunity to look back at the earth, to look back at home. You might understand that I was a little nervous… what if they hated it? What if they said how dare you. I did not need to worry as the performance continued the atmosphere became electric the air was tangible; I could cut a slice out of it and bring it home. At the end the standing ovation said it all. For men like Buzz Aldrin, John Young and Rusty Schweickart, veterans of Apollo it must have been even more strange. After big Hollywood movies like "Space Cowboys" and "Apollo 13" it all came down to a simple gesture and the creation of an illusion to take them back 30 years. We all have our Tele - visual memories of the event. For them they saw it from the inside, they felt what it was like. For them 250,000 miles from earth, there are no borders, no different races, no wars, to the men in Apollo the whole earth is home."