This exciting production of Brechts’s play took place in the O’Reilly Theatre at Keble College with a new translation by a team of students, known as Velvet Vest Productions, which was approved by the Brecht estate.

The storyline is about the story of the research of Galileo Galileo, the first scene in Padua, Italy, and follows the reception of his theory that the Earth revolves around the sun, other than vice versa. He proves this through his improved telescope. This is contradictory to the belief that the Sun revolves around the Earth, which had been the mainstream belief for 2000 years, this clashed with the religious doctrine of that time, the seventeenth century.

The play has had a history of performance since it was originally written in 1939, including productions in Oxford. This performance took a fresh approach, as well as a new translation, Brecht’s original poems were set to newly composed music and sung by a choir, which happened during scene changes. The stage set featured white globes evoking the sun and planets which lit up in different colours. The roles weren’t played in traditional gender, with a female Galileo and members of the cast seemed to play more than one role.

At the beginning of the show, two globes were displayed on the stage floor, during the action they lit up, one yellow, representing the sun, and one blue, representing the earth. The actors handled these to demonstrate the development of ideas about rotations in the solar system, walking around in circles. Film projected onto the backdrop at points in the production showed imagery of the sun, Milky Way and planets.

This staging of Galileo has been linked to exploring ideas about climate change, since the play engages with ideas about science and truth. The production facilitated engagement with the history of science, and debates relating to science and religion.