The laughs, loves, heartbreaks, and triumphs of a great woman told with all the resources of musical theatre.
The Three Theas
Three women. One extraordinary life. Thea von Harbou is played by three actors, one for each phase of her life and career: the author, the celebrity, and the survivor. Each Thea is the focus of the story as it progresses in chronological order, but fhey also appear in each other’s scenes to provide narration and commentary. All three are introduced in the Prelude, but their individual character names are never heard by the audience: They are all Thea.
Why a Musical About Thea von Harbou?
Thea von Harbou was an extraordinary woman whose loves and struggles and defeats and triumphs form a story of almost Shakespearean proportions. She is the story of the 21st century but in the first half of the twentieth century, and only a musical play can fully realize all the dimensions of her life, loves, and hardships. Today, she is known, if she is known at all, as the wife of director Fritz Lang and author of Metropolis and his other German films. However, she was so much more: At various times, she was an actor, an author, a director, a screenplay writer, an advocate for women’s reproductive rights and for animal rights, and more. She spent her entire life pushing up against the “glass ceiling” of the patriarchy of Weimar Germary, and then the authoritarian patriarchy of Nazi Germany. But she survived. And this is her story.
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 furniture, and some free-standing “sandwich” signs with created movie posters. The emphasis then is on lighting changes and imaginative costumes. A theatre with more resources may choose to use projections or a video wall, but they are not required.
Minimal Cast Size
In addition to the three female leads, the play requires three other women who double the other female roles. Four male actors double all the men’s parts. A larger cast may be used at the discretion of the director.
Hear the Music
Demo recordings of several songs from the show are available as MP3 files with the corresponding piano/vocal score. Some are voice and piano, and some are voice and MIDI. Some MIDI with AI voices, and some are MIDI only. Please contact us for access to these recordings.
does the play include any dance sequences?
Yes: A Baroque dance in the first act, and a Busby-Berkely-like sequence that opens the second act. There are also several scenes that require choreographed movements for actors.
How Long is the Play?
We estimate a running time of two and a half hours, not counting a fifteen-minute intermission.
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.”
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.