as part of tete a tete festival 2023 ​

@ cockpit theatre

​

Music: Sun Keting

Words: Teresa Howard

​

Mary: Emily Thorner

The Duke: Lauren Macleod

George: Harry Fradley

Joseph: Theodore McAlindon

​

Mary Anning (1799-1847), from a poor family in Lyme Regis, became one of the most influential Palaeontologists (Fossil Hunters), of the 19th Century, bringing some of the greatest minds from all over the world to study by her side. While still in her twenties she discovered the complete fossilised skeleton of a Plesiosaurus, but convincing the establishment that she had found a new genus was more difficult than she had hoped. New Genus, the opera, brings to life the controversy that erupted over the find, and places the characters face to face on the Jurassic coast at Lyme in 1823 to battle it out: Mary Anning, her brother Joseph, the Duke of Buckingham, and the great man of science, Georges Cuvier. 

​

​