The laughs, loves, heartbreaks, defeats and triumphs of a great woman told with all the resources of modern musical theatre.
The Five Theas
Five women. One extraordinary life. Thea von Harbou is played by five actors, one for each phase of her life and career: the actor, the screenwriter, the celebrity, the artist, and the survivor. Each Thea is the focus of one scene to create a five-scene play in two acts, running about two and a half hours with an intermission..
Dynamic Staging
Woman in the Moon: The Musical is a full-scale musical play, but it can be performed on a small stage or even in the round. No flats or other rigid scenery is required. The physical production requires only a few movable platforms, pieces of sfurniture, and some free-standing “sandwich” signs with created movie posters. The emphasis then is on lighting changes and imaginative costumes.
Minimal Cast Size
In addition to the five female leads, the play requires four male leads (although two of those could be doubled if needed). All other roles are performed by members of an ensemble of six men and six women.
Hear the Music
Several demo recordings of songs from the show are now available on SoundCloud—including “My Leading Man,” “Blue Martini,” “Everything I Am,” “I Like the Way That You Think,” and the title song, “Woman in the Moon.” Please note that all of these songs are currently included in the show, but some have been revised, and those revisions are not reflected in these demos.
Contact us for the full vocal/piano score
Read a Synopsis
Read the complete story of the play in digest form, separated by scenes and acts.
Read An Excerpt
Click on the link below to access a PDF of the Prelude and the first scene of the play. The scene includes two musical numbers—“Double-Strand Life” and “My Leading Man.”—available on Soundcloud.
First Time in English!
Thea von Harbou’s adventure novel that she and Fritz Lang adapted into their first screenplay provides a critical perspective on the nature of their working relationship. Comparing the films Lang wrote before he began working with von Harbou and the way they changed her novel for the epic screenplay of The Indian Tomb reveals the remarkable synergy that produced all their landmark films that followed, including Metropolis, Dr. Mabuse, Die Nibelungen, and her talking film masterpiece M—A City Searches for a Murderer.
Until recently, the critical insights provided by an examination of this novel have been denied to non-German-speaking scholars. We have provided an authoritative English translation available in several formats from Amazon. Click here to go to Amazon.