Icarus will be creating and touring an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” starring Tim Hardy. Most of our rewards come with free tickets to the show.

Have a look at our tour schedule at http://www.icarustheatre.co.uk/shows/mountains.html

If you know Lovecraft, you’ll understand why we want to make this show – it’s an awesome story, and we’re really excited by the possibilities of this adaptation. The stars are right – it might not work on film (yet…), but this is going to knock your socks off!

If you’re new to Lovecraft… well, we don’t want to spoil it, but we can say this: there was an expedition to the Antarctic, and it went very, very wrong.

Our protagonist, William Dyer, only just made it back alive, and retreated into silence. However, he learns that that another expedition is planned. He must try and stop it, and breaks his silence to tell of what he saw – and what he could not possibly have seen – in those far, barren mountains.

More at http://www.icarustheatre.co.uk.

Why Kickstarter?

As we’re well in to pre-production, and already have around 30 venues booked, you might ask why we’re fund-raising now…

The money from Kickstarter will be incredibly helpful:

• It’ll go towards enhancing the production elements – we’ll be able to do more with set, lighting, and sound, and make the experience as polished and terrifying as possible.
• The amazing people who work with Icarus do it because they believe in what we do, and they’re proud of the shows they make with us. We never ask them to work for free, and we’d like to reward their loyalty by paying fees that respect what their work is worth.
• A really important part of what Icarus does is taking high-quality drama to people and places that usually get missed off the touring circuit. By putting us in a stronger financial position, we’ll be able to take more risks with which venues that we go to.

Stretch Goals

Should we surpass our initial goal of £3000, we have two Stretch Goals that may sound crazy, but we think we can really make work:

Goal 1: £15,000

Support writers of fantasy/sci-fi.

Once we cross £15,000, we want to help a current movement to create a new award for Science Fiction and Fantasy writers.  Not only did Lovecraft fail to get acclaim in his lifetime (and so too many brilliant writers of today), but there is a deeply personal and highly inspirational reason for us wanting to give cash support. We’ll update this section with the moving reasons for this goal as soon as we cross the £3000 mark.

Goal 2: £40,000

A performance in Antarctica.

No really; we want to do this.  We’ve looked into it and there’s a big tourist industry to Antarctica and tours, etc.  We figure we can persuade one of the touring companies to have us as entertainment at one of the ports of arrival over a summer when we won’t kill our team by sending them to conditions too frigid.  Expensive to get everything down there, but how cool would that be?!  No pun intended.

The Team

Our star, Tim Hardy, has acted for 50 years, his work ranging from the RSC to film to “The Bill”; in addition to performing and directing, he also teaches at RADA and The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. If you want to do a one-person show, the first, and possibly toughest criterion is a performer who can carry it – and in Tim we are privileged to have just that. Watch the video – good, isn’t he!?

The show is being adapted for stage and directed by Max Lewendel; Max has led Icarus’ work and directed their productions for over a decade and has also worked as an independent script consultant/adapter. He is powered almost entirely by bagels.

Theo Holloway will be writing the music and creating the soundscape. He has over 70 professional credits as a theatrical noisemaker, and is the original weird fiction enthusiast on the team. You can hear some of the other noises he’s made at https://theoholloway.bandcamp.com/

Source: ICNW