Interview with Paul Herzberg, writer of The Moth
Playwright Paul Herzberg sat down with Lucy Smith to discuss the upcoming production of The Moth at the Finborough Theatre. Read their fascinating discussion below:
Why did you choose to write The Moth?
Jake Murray of Elysium Theatre approached me five years ago and asked if I had any monologues suitable for a YouTube project he was working on. I’d already written three scripts about the military experience in South Africa, exploring different aspects of conscription and war. I thought I’d exhausted the subject but there was one unaddressed anecdote I recalled with great clarity after talking to an Angolan war veteran, who had helped with research: a haunting story about a young, traumatised white recruit ordered to stand guard over his black freedom fighter captive, how the suffering of the man was affecting him, and the tragic choice he made. This was The Moth, which went out as part of the COVID-19 Monologues for Elysium on YouTube. We were staggered at its success, the many film festivals for which it was selected, and immensely proud of the Kwanzaa Film Festival New York award for best monologue it won. Many people expressed the desire to see it adapted for the stage, so I went ahead, working once again with Jake as dramaturg.
Of course, the moth itself is a key symbol. Why did you choose this, and what significance does it hold in the play?
The consequences of certain choices are inescapable. When those choices are made under extreme circumstances, in this case a brutal war, I wanted to find a way to manifest the guilt and torment soldiers can face when they have taken a life — and taken it in the case of the play, to blunt the horror of the moment. Without giving too much away, let’s just say the “fluttering of tiny wings” that plague the soldier is an eternal reminder of the tragic choice he made as a young conscript.
Could you give an insight into your writing process, and what it was like expanding from a 10-minute monologue into a full-length play?
One of the things that struck me in the reaction to the YouTube monologue was how people felt it was almost like hearing a ghost story that never leaves you, one you are then compelled to tell others. By bringing the white soldier into the story, we are able to explore the central issues of the play more deeply: the nature of forgiveness being central: what, in reality is it?; who has the right, if anyone, to give it?; does it help with the process of reconciliation or is it avoiding true justice? Where there was one story being told, there are now two parallel lives we are exploring — one man desperately seeking forgiveness, another, determined to withhold it because of his past and ideals.
Could you give an insight into the personal and wider importance of the themes of the play, especially in the cultural climate of today?
Growing up under Apartheid with activist parents gave me a deep sense of the injustice the country was facing. I have long been fascinated by the emotional and psychological factors that make people embrace racist ideas, and how easily manipulated and manoeuvred they can be. We are witnessing a terrible upsurge in xenophobia — on the one hand the civil rights movement and post-war consensus had a profound impact, creating more emancipated attitudes, but that seems to be changing with prejudice re-emerging and re-inventing itself, enhanced by the Wild West of the Internet. I cannot ignore that as a playwright.
Why did you choose to also focus in on PTSD and military trauma, and how did you go about translating this into the play?
The PTSD suffered by the soldier is incidental to the story rather than something on which I explicitly focus. But I was particularly touched when British ex-soldiers were moved by the play, having connected with it so strongly. The other character in the play, John Josana, the son of a renowned black activist, also, to some extent, suffers from PTSD given the terrible disruptions of his past and the ongoing racism and exclusion he faced as a boy growing up in South London.
The Moth runs at the Finborough Theatre from 27 Oct – 21 Nov 2026. Presented by Andy Jordan Productions and Elysium Theatre Company in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre. Buy your tickets from the Finborough website.
