Recreating the Full Moon Theatre

In 1992, in Gourgoubès, in the south of France, an international team of physicists, engineers, artists, musicians, writers, choreographers, dancers, film directors, television producers led by the French opera director Humbert Camerlo and the Arup engineer Peter Rice created the first open air theatre performance exclusively illuminated by the light of the moon.

Thirty years later, we have recreated the Full Moon Theatre “Wonderful Laboratory” in Hooke Park in Dorset, as an opportunity to work together as a community after experiencing the isolation of the pandemic and reflect on the fragility of our ecosystem and on the impact of our design actions.

The new Full Moon Theatre has incorporated, developed and built on existing research to design and construct a site-specific open air Full Moon Theatre, equipped with locally digitally fabricated moonlight reflectors.

Part of the ongoing design effort is to create an online “Full Moon Library” which includes all the digital tools, documentation and techniques developed during the workshop that anyone could use to stage a Full Moon Theatre performance anywhere in the world in the future.