The Royal Albert Hall is set to explore space in the first of its new science festivals, taking place throughout May and June 2018.
Created in collaboration with the UK Space Agency, Festival of Science: Space will be a mixture of of talks, screenings, comedy shows, concerts and family events taking place between the 2nd May until the 28th June 2018.
The festival is set to be headlined by Space Shambles – Chris Hadfield and Robin Ince’s all-star science show which will appear alongside ‘Films in Concert’ screenings of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek and Star Trek Beyond, the chance to delve into the celestial with Imperial College professors, and a comedy book club featuring acclaimed stand-up Josie Long.
Space Shambles will see Hadfield and Ince serving up a combination of science, music and comedy, alongside a host of big names. Previous special guests have included Hugh Grant, Stewart Lee, The Cure, Alison Moyet, Dara O’Briain and Richard Dawkins.
Talking about the news Lucy Noble, Artistic Director at the Royal Albert Hall, said: “The Hall was established in 1871 to promote the arts and sciences, and science remains such a key part of what we do. To launch our new science festivals, space seemed the perfect theme: the incredible exploits of Chris Hadfield and Tim Peake have captured the imagination of the whole world, and underline the incredible hold that the subject has on us.”
Highlights for the family strand of the festival will include the latest instalment of the Hall’s children’s concert, as a space-set My Great Orchestral Adventure lands in the auditorium, while the Elgar Room plays host to the wordless one-woman show, A Strange New Space – which blends physical theatre and puppetry – rhyming, peer-reviewed songs for every letter of the alphabet in Ensonglopedia of Science, and Albert Einstein and his rapping sidekick MC Squared starring in Relativitively Speaking.
Other events confirmed for the festival include Astronomer Donald Lyndon-Bell sharing stories and insights in an on-stage Q&A after a screening of Star Men and a live re-score of the cult 1983 film, The Moomins and the Comet .
The Festival of Science: Space will take place at the Royal Albert Hall from the 2nd May until the 28th June 2018. For more information visit: https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/series/science-series-space/