Apollo 13: Mission Control is an interactive theatre show about NASA's failed Apollo 13 mission.
The show premiered in October 2008 at BATS Theatre [1] [2] in Wellington, New Zealand and has toured Hamilton, Nelson and Auckland in New Zealand. It returned to Wellington for a season at the New Zealand International Arts Festival in 2010 and then embarked on an Australian tour beginning at the Sydney Opera House. [3] Subsequent tours to Australia have included The Powerhouse Theater in Brisbane and The State Theater Centre in Perth.
The show made its North American debut on December 21, 2012, at the Tacoma Dome Exhibition Hall in Tacoma, Washington, United States. [4] The following month, it toured to the Spokane Convention Center in Spokane, Washington, [5] and the Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. [6] After 45 shows in the United States, including an extended run in Winston-Salem due to sellouts, the production returned to Wellington in March 2013. [7]
The show tells the story from the point of view of Mission Control. Audience members are seated behind working computer consoles and are allowed to flick the switches, use the working telephones, interact with the actors and hear the three astronauts through headphones. The astronauts perform their part of the show in a command module in another room in the theatre. Each night they are joined by an audience member as the "guest astronaut" and their performances are displayed on two large screens at the front of the stage and on smaller TV monitors at the consoles. [8] An actor playing newscaster Walter Cronkite broadcasts live news updates throughout the show, interviewing audience members and astronaut James Lovell's wife Marilyn.
The Chapman Trip Theatre Awards were annual awards for Wellington theatre sponsored by law firm Chapman Trip, they have since been renamed the Ngā Whakarākei O Whātaitai / Wellington Theatre Awards.
Apollo 11 was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, and Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon's surface six hours and 39 minutes later, on July 21 at 02:56 UTC. Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later, and they spent about two and a quarter hours together exploring the site they had named Tranquility Base upon landing. Armstrong and Aldrin collected 47.5 pounds (21.5 kg) of lunar material to bring back to Earth as pilot Michael Collins flew the Command Module Columbia in lunar orbit, and were on the Moon's surface for 21 hours, 36 minutes before lifting off to rejoin Columbia.
Apollo 13 was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. The craft was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970, but the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module (SM) ruptured two days into the mission, disabling its electrical and life-support system. The crew, supported by backup systems on the lunar module (LM), instead looped around the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory and returned safely to Earth on April 17. The mission was commanded by Jim Lovell, with Jack Swigert as command module (CM) pilot and Fred Haise as lunar module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken Mattingly, who was grounded after exposure to rubella.
Alan LaVern Bean was an American naval officer and aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, NASA astronaut and painter. He was selected to become an astronaut by NASA in 1963 as part of Astronaut Group 3, and was the fourth person to walk on the Moon.
Apollo 13 is a 1995 American space docudrama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Ed Harris, and Gary Sinise.
Eugene Francis Kranz is an American aerospace engineer who served as NASA's second Chief Flight Director, directing missions of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, including the first lunar landing mission, Apollo 11. He directed the successful efforts by the Mission Control team to save the crew of Apollo 13, and was portrayed in the 1995 film of the same name by actor Ed Harris. He characteristically wore a close-cut flattop hairstyle and the dapper "mission" vests (waistcoats) of different styles and materials made by his wife, Marta Kranz, for his Flight Director missions.
Vance DeVoe Brand is an American naval officer, aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. He served as command module pilot during the first U.S.-Soviet joint spaceflight in 1975, and as commander of three Space Shuttle missions.
Ronnie Walter Cunningham was an American astronaut, fighter pilot, physicist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and author of the 1977 book The All-American Boys. NASA's third civilian astronaut, he was a lunar module pilot on the Apollo 7 mission in 1968.
Marooned is a 1969 American science fiction film directed by John Sturges and starring Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, James Franciscus and Gene Hackman about three astronauts who are trapped and slowly suffocating in space. It was based on the 1964 novel Marooned by Martin Caidin. While the original novel was based on the single-pilot Project Mercury, the film depicted an Apollo command and service module with three astronauts and a space station resembling Skylab. Caidin acted as technical adviser and updated the novel, incorporating appropriate material from the original version.
BATS Theatre is a theatre venue in Wellington, New Zealand. Initially founded as the Bats Theatre Company in 1976, then established in its current form in 1989. BATS Theatre has seen the development of many performing arts talents of New Zealand.
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is the visitor center at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida. It features exhibits and displays, historic spacecraft and memorabilia, shows, two IMAX theaters, and a range of bus tours of the spaceport. The "Space Shuttle Atlantis" exhibit contains the Atlantis orbiter and the Shuttle Launch Experience, a simulated ride into space. The center also provides astronaut training experiences, including a multi-axial chair and Mars Base simulator. The visitor complex also has daily presentations from a veteran NASA astronaut. A bus tour, included with admission, encompasses the separate Apollo/Saturn V Center. There were 1.7 million visitors to the visitor complex in 2016.
Space Center Houston is a science museum that serves as the official visitor center of NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. It was designated a Smithsonian Affiliate museum in 2014. The organization is owned by NASA, and operated under a contract by the nonprofit Manned Spaceflight Education Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization. The Johnson Space Center is the home of Mission Control and astronaut training.
Downstage Theatre was a professional theatre company in Wellington, New Zealand, that ran from 1964 to 2013. For many years it occupied the purpose-built Hannah Playhouse building. Former directors include Sunny Amey, Mervyn Thompson, and Colin McColl.
Malcolm Alan Murray is a New Zealand stage and television actor, best known for his role as Dr Alan Dubrovsky in the television soap opera Shortland Street between 1999 and 2001. In 2005 he won the Actor of the Year award at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards in Wellington for his portrayal of Dimitri Tsafendas in the Antony Sher play I.D.
When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions is a 2008 Discovery Channel HD documentary miniseries consisting of six episodes documenting American human spaceflight from the first Mercury flights and the Gemini program, to the Apollo program and its Moon missions and landings, to the Space Shuttle missions and the construction of the International Space Station.
NASA's Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center, also known by its radio callsign, Houston, is the facility at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, that manages flight control for the United States human space program, currently involving astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The center is in Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center and is named after Christopher C. Kraft Jr., a NASA engineer and manager who was instrumental in establishing the agency's Mission Control operation, and was the first Flight Director.
The Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards were the main theatre awards in New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, from 1992–2014, and have been succeeded by the Wellington Theatre Awards.
Victor John Rodger is a New Zealand journalist, actor and award-winning playwright of Samoan and Pākehā heritage. Rodger's play Sons won acclaim at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards (1998) and received the Best New Writer and Most Outstanding New New Zealand Play awards. In 2001, he won the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award. Other plays include Ranterstantrum (2002) and My Name is Gary Cooper (2007), produced and staged by Auckland Theatre Company and starred a Samoan cast including Robbie Magasiva, Anapela Polataivao, Goretti Chadwick and Kiwi actress Jennifer Ward-Lealand.
Joanna Ruth Randerson is a New Zealand writer, director and performer. She is the founder and artistic director of Barbarian Productions, a Wellington-based theatre production company.
Lynda Chanwai-Earle is a New Zealand writer and radio producer. Her written work includes plays, poems and film scripts. The play Ka Shue – Letters Home in 1996 is semi-autobiographical and is significant in New Zealand literature as the first authentically New Zealand–Chinese play for mainstream audiences.
Thomas "Thom" Monckton is an entertainer from Patea, South Taranaki, New Zealand. Monckton trained for two years at New Zealand's circus school CircoArts and two years at the physical theatre school Lecoq in Paris. He has worked around New Zealand as a solo artist and as an actor with the Ugly Shakespeare Theatre Company. He is now based in Europe. Thomas Monckton's solo silent work of circus and clown, The Pianist, has been performed in Finland, Scotland, England, New York and various cities in New Zealand. It won the 2014 Total Theatre Award for Best Circus Show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His previous show, Moving Stationery, was the big sell-out hit of the 2012 Wellington Fringe, sweeping the awards and going on to win Monckton a Best Actor gong at that year's Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. His production Only Bones, has been performed in Finland, Belgium, England, New Zealand, France, China, Czech Republic, and in Mexico. An acclaimed piece of physical theatre, Only Bones v1.0 the Best in Physical Theatre NZ Fringe 2015 and Best in Fringe at both New Zealand and Auckland Fringe Festivals in 2019. In Autumn 2017, Monckton premiered physical comedy The Artist, which has toured Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Its final season will be at Sydney Festival in January 2023.