Guest Blog: Nick Paine On THE WIDER EARTH at the Natural History Museum

In 1831 Charles Darwin joined the voyage of HMS Beagle, leaving the comforts of home behind for what turned out to be a life-changing journey of discovery. One hundred and eighty-two years later, we found ourselves in a similar position. In place of a tall ship we had a small theatre company, which, despite being totally unseaworthy, has taken us on our own adventure.

The story of the creation of The Wider Earth began in early 2013 when David was completing his Doctor of Philosophy at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. After a long evening of edits, he left the proof on the coffee table, and by the time we woke, Nick's father Darryl had read it.

One of the chapters in the paper was about the work of Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones from Handspring Puppet Company in South Africa, a company whose work we had always looked up to. Over breakfast, Darryl mentioned that one of those names was familiar, and when we showed him a picture of Adrian he saw a picture of a boy he had grown up with almost a lifetime ago in South Africa.

By the time we had collected our jaws from the floor, Darryl had Adrian on the phone. Both these voices from each other's pasts couldn't believe the fact that two families from the same tiny village next to the Red House River in Port Elizabeth had turned out puppet companies.

Long story short - we got our affairs in order, our visas cleared, and our lives reduced to two small suitcases. A few weeks later we landed in Cape Town, South Africa, to spend two months under mentorship with Handspring, and we haven't stopped moving since.

One night, during our time in South Africa, Basil happened to mention that Charles Darwin had stopped in Cape Town during the final stages of the voyage of HMS Beagle.

While this in itself wasn't a surprise, we were gobsmacked that he was still in his mid-twenties at the time. This vision of a young man in his early twenties setting off to see the world seemed to sit at such odds with the image of the elderly gent with a long grey beard.

This discovery felt like a gold mine, the largely unknown past of a figure whose name is almost universally recognised. We decided we just had to tell this young man's story. It also seemed a perfect excuse to turn new skills to practice and create a suite of animal puppets.

We started development on the production at St Ann's Warehouse in New York City as part of their Puppet Lab program. With an initial draft and a reading under our belt, one thing became alarmingly clear - to give any sense of the reality of Darwin's experience, we needed to see some of these landscapes for ourselves. The answer was obvious: it was time to head to the Galapagos.

These islands were like nothing we had ever experienced before. We waded through schools of baby hammerhead sharks, and swam with their fully grown parents while flocks of blue-footed boobies bomb-dived into the water from high in the sky above. We basked with marine iguanas, and were followed up and down a beach by a sea lion pup whose tireless mother would collect it every time it strayed too far.

It was on these literally unbelievable islands that the script was refined, accompanied by the ever-welcome distraction of finches that landed on us as though we were part of the vegetation, and giant tortoises who wandered through the long grass just outside the front door with the gravity of drifting continents.

After continued development and the construction of a lot of puppets based on the animals we'd witnessed on our adventures, the production premiered as part of Queensland Theatre's 2016 season and was picked up for a run at the Sydney Opera House as a part of Sydney Festival.

The best part is that totally out of the blue, we were introduced to London-based producer Trish Wadley, who was also originally from Brisbane. For the past year we've been working with Trish to find an avenue to bring the show to the UK.

After months of discussions, and a presentation at Australia House, the dice finally landed in June of this year. Word was in - the Natural History Museum were interested, and accepted the proposal of turning the Jerwood Gallery into a theatre to house the production.

Not only that, but alongside the dramaturgical input from Sebastian Born, they paired us up with Professor Adrian Lister - who had just published a book on Darwin's fossils - to help us further refine the script.

In 1836, five years after he set sail on HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin returned home to England. One hundred and eighty-two years later, five years after we set out on our own adventure, we can't shake the feeling that The Wider Earth is finally coming home to the Natural History Museum.

The Wider Earth at the Natural History Museum until 30 December

Photos courtesy of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum

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