From Long Shot to Moonshot

Kyle Kowalczyk, playwright of Moonshot: A Statistically Insignificant Musical, reminisces on how the name of the show changed during the New Works Festival.

Chad Berg (L) and Kyle Kowalczyk (R) perform together at the 2026 Benefit Cabaret.

The original title of this play, going all the way back to the original story by Haynes Brooke, was Long Shot. I never really liked the name. As the adaptation of the script took more of a turn, it seemed less and less “right”. At some point, I learned of the word moonshot and that made its way into the script in several places. Eventually I knew that the name of the play was not Long Shot, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

During the workshop, after everyone had gotten to really know the script and the story, we polled the whole cast and crew. We had several options including: One in a Billion, Shoot for the Moon, and If There Was a Chance. First, we voted which ones to eliminate, and lopped off the easy ones that no one really liked. When it came time to vote on the final three, we took a moment for the team to make a defense for the name they liked. I believe the finalists were Long Shot, Moonshot, and One in a Billion. It was a really close race until the eldest member of our group took the floor. 

Since he was the only one in the room who was alive during the moon race of the 1960s, he was able to give the historical context of the word “moonshot”, which he explained basically coined by JFK as a word play on “longshot” but with the connotation of something that’s pretty much impossible but we’re going to try it anyway. It became the rallying cry of the nation. Whatever else he said, we were convinced, and Moonshot was the unanimous decision. Of course, now, one can’t really imagine it being called anything else.