Dream Up Festival
9 September 2025
I am not sure what I expected from this show, honestly. I went into it knowing just the basics — a satirical comedy starring the characters of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin faking the moon landing.
What I got was something right out of Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s handbook and I cannot be more pleased about that!
This show was incredibly self aware, tongue‐in‐cheek, silly, ridiculous, over the top, and I loved every minute of it. It’s clever.
The basic premise of the show is simple: No man has ever walked on the moon, but the Space Race is well on its way and the United States government is desperate to win against Russia — even if it has no idea how. And that is why when two young aspiring actors, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (played by Collins Dennis and Teddy Fischer, respectively), go into an audition for the roles of “Astronaut #1 and Astronaut #2″ for a new Hollywood movie. Only to be told once filming has wrapped that neither of them could continue their acting career because they both signed a contract (which neither of them had read) stating that they must take on the roles of astronaut for the rest of their lives. This leads Neil to fall into a life of depression, desperate to just be an actor — to explore new roles and characters, and into a life of drinking his worries away. Buzz, being more content with the lie, has leaned into his new “job” as an astronaut and has even begun a political career.
The play itself begins at a press conference with the character, who is cleverly named “Mr. Redacted” (played by Christopher Hanks), telling the American public about NASA’s newest mission — the first “manned” mission to Mars! And by “manned”, he means, “Chimpanzeed” because that’s the pilot — a chimpanzee named Mr. Bananas.
Standing next to Mr. Redacted is Buzz Aldrin, who is standing tall, proud, just right for the part and Neil Armstrong… who is clearly drunk. In fact, he is so drunk that he gets into a drunken fight with Mr. Bananas (and loses) prompting the government to place him into a rehab facility — and that is where much of the show takes place.
Other settings that this show has include Buzz Aldrin and his caddy on the golf course and Mr. Redacted at his barbers’ shop — where he just wants his sideburns trimmed to exactly 8 cm.
But it’s really the other characters in this show that allows for all of the ridiculous hijinks to ensue.
There is the character called Nevada (played by Nicole Ponce) who is introduced to the audience as another client in the rehab facility that Neil is sent to. Nevada is a smart character — she’s witty, dynamic, believable, coy, mysterious. And her character, in this silly show, only gets more complex from there. Ponce did an absolutely wonderful job in portraying a character that is so layered and she did so with conviction. Not to mention that the chemistry between the characters of Nevada and Neil must be on point for this show to work and it very much was; it felt genuine. Two angry, smart people having no choice but to participate in childlike forms of therapy (an example of this being the characters forced to talk through sock puppets at the rehab facility).
The other actor that absolutely must mentioned is Patrick Walsh, who played the “Ensemble”. As in, he was Buzz’s golf caddy, he was Thomas — the guy who works at the rehab, he was Thomas’ mother, he was Mr. Bananas, he was a reporter, he was Sam the barber, and he was the literal moon! And he nailed it. Walsh even delivers a wonderfully meta monologue explaining what the character of “Ensemble” is and how it still an amazing acting gig!
While this show is about a conspiracy theory — it is also very much just about acting. And not just acting, but how easily an actor can be taken advantage of and the dangers of not reading the contracts you sign. It deals with putting on a role and living with it for so long that you find yourself believing you are that character. This show deals with what it takes to even make a film or put on a production. And this show deals with what it really means to be an actor, a writer, a creative person.
And this is all shown by essentially putting on a movie inside of the show. You see the character development as each character in the show evolves, you see the literal script writing process, you see the rehearsal, and you see the final product.
This show comes down to detail, detail, detail. From the second the audience starts to enter the theatre, they toss their ticket into an astronaut’s helmet. The music playing before the show and during scene changes included songs such as “Dancing In The Moonlight” by Toploader, “Fly Me To The Moon” by Frank Sinatra, and “Rocket Man” by Elton John.
And of course, this show delves into what it means to blindly trust — whether that is a person, a contract, a situation, even the government. In a show about government conspiracy, you cannot ignore the parallels to our modern political policies and how much the American people not only have no choice but to just believe what we are told by the government, but even more so, how it is expected upon Americans that we know and accept that our government will lie to us. That knowledge and acceptance that our government will lie to us is just part of being an American citizen.
And this is beautifully shown in a very simple, yet effective way when one of the characters receives an injury to their ear resulting in them wearing a bandage over his ear for the rest of the show. It would be hard to watch a character wearing a bandage on an injured ear and not see the connection to a certain conspiracy theory making its rounds on social media regarding an injury that was allegedly received by the President back in Butler, Pennsylvania.
And what a beautiful, smart way to connect a show about conspiracy to our modern audiences.
Well done.
