~ The First Flight with a Balloon ~

Summary
The play is about the first manned flight with a balloon realised by the brothers Montgolfier in France at the time of Louis XVI. Like today, national prestige played an important role. Similar to the first space flights in our days, before man dared to take the risk of a flight, the first passengers were animals.

Excerpts:

The First Flight with a Balloon

The scenery is divided into three parts. The left part shows Okras who flies close to the sun. The right part shows a chinese building (for example a temple) and a flying kite with a person holding on to it. The central part is covered at the beginning. In the background it shows the park of the castle of Versailles. In the foreground a podium that serves as the starting-place for the balloon can be seen. Above the podium hovers the balloon. Four story-tellers come on  stage.

Prologue

Story-teller 1:    My dear spectators, we would like to show you now how men flew for the first time.

Story-teller 2:    The dream to fly is very old.

Story-teller 3:    Even the Greek dreamt of the ability to fly. The Greek legend of Okras is already 2 600 years old.

Story-teller 4:    Okras built wings out of birds’ feathers and fixed them to a frame with wax.

He points at the left scene.

Story-teller 1:    But when he flew too high and too close to the sun the wax melted and Okras fell into the see.

Story-teller 2:    Perhaps at that time the Chinese had already succeeded to let a person fly.

He points at the right scene.

Story-teller 3:    It is well known that the Chinese were able to build large kites more than 2 000 years ago. With that kind of kite they could easily have lifted up a person into the air. If that really happened we don’t know.

Story-teller 4:    The first confirmed report of a person’s flight is of November 21st in 1783.

Story-teller 1:    The Montgolfier brothers had invented the hot-air balloon which was the first apparatus to lift up people.

Story-teller 2:    The story of the hot-air balloon started as follows.

Music is played.

Story-teller 3:    One day the chairman of the famous French association of scientists, the Académie Française, received a letter from a certain Joseph Montgolfier. In that letter Montgolfier told him that Montgolfier himself and his brother Etienne had succeeded to build an apparatus that could rise up into the air.

....

Characters

 According to the script 28 different characters are in “The First Balloon Flight”.

Scene

Non-speaking roles

Small role

Medium role

Larger role

Prologue

 

-

 

Story-teller 2 Story-teller 4

Story-teller 1

 

Story-teller 3

 

Scene 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Assistant 1

Assistant 2

Man

Woman 2

Court lady 1

Court lady 2

Messenger

Montgolfier

Woman 1

Queen

 

 

 

 

King

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scene 2

 

 

Count de Brest

Bishop of Toulon

General Lallemand

Secretary

 

 

King

Queen

 

Proposals for sceneries:

Example for the central scenery of Scene 1 and 3
( the castle in the background should constitute
Versailles in the first Scene and La Muette in the third Scene)

Photos of a production:

 

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