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Beyond The Blue Horizon
(1996-97)scenario by Toby Wilsher and Joff Chafer
mimes/puppets (no singing/speaking roles)
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Abbreviations (PDF)
Boosey & Hawkes
Arts Theatre, Cambridge
Toby Wilsher, director/Andy Lawrence, puppeteer
Conductor: Mark Forkgen
Company: Britten Sinfonia/Trestle Theatre
The future
Set in the future, Beyond the Blue Horizon follows the quest of George, a man desperate to escape from a world in which the earth's resources are exploited to breaking point and population growth is out control. He breaks free from this existence by diving off a cliff, but finds himself submerged in a polluted ocean, filled with strange creatures. Eventually washing up on a foreign shore, he is confronted by the nightmarish scene of sunbathers, oblivious to their bodies burning and deforming under the baking heat. Pushing further into this desert landscape, he finally succumbs to heat and thirst. Rescued by a woman, Messinah, he enjoys the hospitality of her nomadic family before they part ways. Almost killed in a sandstorm of biblical proportions, George is again rescued by Messinah. Several years in the future, they are now a family, have a child, and survive in this harsh new environment. The child finds a piece of carpet in the sand, which George recognises as belonging to his crowded home of years before. They have arrived 'home', the image of two old refrigerators and an abandoned car, henge-like in the background, serving as a relic of the lost civilisation from which George escaped.
David Horne
Poetic