A play about the first Apollo moon landing and the people on
the ground who made it happen. The Blue-Sky Boys
dramatizes the imaginative and somewhat unorthodox creative
process used by a group of maverick engineers to accomplish the
seemingly impossible task of landing men on the moon and
returning them safely to earth. There are extended sequences
that dramatize the “encounters” they had with such influences as
Buck Rogers, Icarus, Galileo, Apollo, the Red Baron, Louis Leaky
and others. A story about the intersection of creativity and
science, The Blue-Sky Boys is a comedy in two acts with
an all-male cast. Although inspired by history, the play is a
work of fiction. Commissioned by the Ensemble Studio
Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology
project. Galileo Prize winner (EST’s lead commission for 2004).
15 Characters to be played by 8 Men
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Howard Haggerty: An
astrophysicist from MIT. President’s Science Advisor. 50. |
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Delbert Lee:
Creative leader of the Apollo mission. 40 |
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CJ Caldwell:
An intuitive engineer who can’t do math. Loves duck hunting.
23. |
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Vencel von Volp:
A numbers man. German. 30 |
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Jed Berman:
Administrative head of the Apollo mission. 40. |
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Buck Rogers:
The comic book character. |
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Galileo:
16th century Italian astronomer, inventor of the telescope &
author of Starry Messenger the first description of the
moon’s surface. |
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Apollo:
The Greek God. |
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The Red Baron:
The German World War I fighter pilot. |
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Icarus:
The character from Greek mythology who tried to fly to the sun |
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Snoopy:
The dog from the Peanuts cartoon strip |
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Dr. Charles Townes:
American Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1964. |
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Louis Leakey:
The British paleontologist who wrote on prehistoric man in
Africa. |
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Tycho Brahe:
The 16th century Danish astronomer. |
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Reporters |
