CVR - Charlie Victor Romeo
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
Sun, 16 Apr 2000
by Derek Donovan
NEW YORK - As the flight attendant begins her rote demonstration
of how your seat-belt buckle operates, you look around and size up
your surroundings. Your seat is uncomfortably close to the one in
front of you. Strangers around you make uneasy small talk as they try
to make room for their coats and bags. The air is too still, too
close, for such small quarters. You know from the outset that you're
in for a rough, emotionally draining voyage.Six of them, to be exact.
Because tonight, you aren't packed into an airplane on a
cross-country flight. You are on the Lower East Side, seated in the
off-off-Broadway theater Collective: Unconscious, where "Charlie
Victor Romeo" has been playing to capacity audiences since October.The play is a stark dramatization of verbatim cockpit voice
recorder (CVR, or "Charlie Victor Romeo" in aviation parlance)
transcripts from six real-life airline accidents. Featuring an
ensemble cast that includes Raytown native Audrey Crabtree and former
Columbia, Mo., resident Dan Krumm, the show has become one of the
Collective: Unconscious troupe's largest commercial successes in its
five-year history."Charlie Victor Romeo" has touched a nerve not only in the New
York theater scene but also in the aviation community. Pilots, air
traffic controllers, students and others in the air safety industry
have avidly attended the show's performances since the beginning of
its run, often making up half of the audience of 60 and enabling the
Collective to extend the original five-week run through May 27, an
unprecedented seven-month run. Plans are under way for a British tour
and an educational film based on the show.Airplane safety investigators have long studied CVR recordings to
determine how and why a crash occurred, and aviation students read
the transcripts for lessons about how to, or how not to, handle a
crisis situation. On the printed page, the transcripts are spare,
almost clinical. But when performed by actors in a small performance
space, the words snap into sharp focus and provide an unusually
moving piece of theater.This is not a playwright's idea of what a plane's captain and
crew might say in the middle of an emergency; this is the real thing.
What it might lack in poeticism it makes up for in eloquence.Approach: United 232 heavy, can you still make the slight right
turns?Captain: Yes. Right turns are no problem, just left turns ...
Approach: Roger.
Captain: Well, mamma. We'll make those baseball games after all.
Bob Berger, one of "Charlie Victor Romeo's" five
director/producers and a founding member of the Collective:
Unconscious, recently described how the idea came about to dramatize
the transcripts in such a direct fashion: "(Co-director) Irving
Gregory and I were at a bookstore one day, and they were looking for
a book for me in the back. I saw this book of CVR recording
transcripts and pulled it off the shelf. Irving took it aside and was
reading it, and I said, 'Hey, we should make this into a play. This
could be a script.' "Berger and Gregory, along with director/producers Patrick
Daniels, Michael Bruno and Stuart Rudin, have chosen to stage
"Charlie Victor Romeo" very simply. The only set piece is a
nondescript console that serves as the airplane's nose cone and
cockpit. The audience, sitting only inches away from the action,
views the flight crews as if through the plane's windshield.It might be tempting to compare "Charlie Victor Romeo" to the
Fox network's reality-based programs such as "The World's Scariest
Explosions: Caught on Tape!" However, Berger says the show is in
fact the antithesis of the anything-for-a-thrill mentality: "Irving
and I were having a conversation about millennialism and decadence,
the fascination with violence and blood. (It) was interesting,
because 'CVR' is sort of the inverse of that style of entertainment,
insofar as those things are all about sensationalizing spectacular
death at some level. Jet boats, motorcycle accidents and airshow
disasters... Or even down to shows like 'Cops.' Basically those
things are all about the moment of spectacular impact, whether that's
a crew of riot police wading into a crowd in Peru or an accident.
It's all about a spectacular thing happening."But in reality, this show is not about that at all. In the
theater you have 55-60 people sitting in a room that's about the size
of an airplane, cramped in economy class. And right in front of you,
you have real people, actors, portraying other real people's
experiences right in front of you. A real human experience ... it's
about the struggle to survive, not about death. There's no special
effects or focus on visual spectacle. ... The people who are coming
for the experience of disaster, or the macabre ... they're getting
something very different out of it."I find what really happens to these people very inspiring and
impressive. I can't imagine what I'd be doing, other than screaming
and freaking out. These pilots are showing heroism, in whatever way
you might be able to describe it."Co-pilot: Lower the nose, lower the nose.
Tower controller: Two seven heavy, roger.
Aircraft commander: Goin' down.
Co-pilot: Oh my God ... .
Aircraft commander: Oh ...
Crabtree, a regular member of the Collective: Unconscious troupe,
was drawn to the show because of its focus on the crew members'
humanity and bravery."It's not like any other show I can remember, because there's
nothing scripted about it," Crabtree said. "As an actor, you don't
have the same problems as you have in some other plays, wondering,
'How can I say this and make it true?' because these are the real
words. Somebody really said this in the middle of this situation.
It's become a drama now, and it really works."Another important element in creating "Charlie Victor Romeo's"
impact is sound designer Jamie Mereness' omnipresent field of sound
effects and ambient noise. The sound effects fill the theater with a
low rumble of the airliners' engines throughout the play, and the
cacophony of warning buzzers, failing machinery and whistling air
builds each segment to a fevered pitch. It is a visceral experience,
one that you feel as much as you hear."I know the first time they brought (the sound) in, it gave me
the chills," Crabtree said. "It creates an ambiance, an
environment, and it really gives me the sense of being there. When
you hear the audience talk about the show, it's almost always one of
the first things they mention."Mereness, who also works as chief technical engineer at Philip
Glass' renowned Looking Glass Studios in Manhattan, created the sound
effects for "Charlie Victor Romeo" from a wide array of sounds,
some taken from real life and others created in the studio."We pulled a lot of things, like cockpit alarms, off the Web,
from people's aviation Web sites. ... But some of it we faked, like
the sound of a bird getting sucked into an engine. I used an arrow
swooshing backward and then a little explosion and some winding-down
turbine sounds. There is no sound effect like that in a library, and
it's not something you're allowed to do, throwing a bird into an
engine," Mereness said with a laugh.The success of "Charlie Victor Romeo" has been welcome and
gratifying for the members of the Collective: Unconscious. In
particular the positive buzz and attention in the aviation community
has been an unusual learning opportunity for the cast and crew."This show was a requirement for a class on human error at West
Point," Berger said. "It was an amazing experience for us to sit
and talk with these guys after the show, as aspiring professionals in
the field of air safety control, and getting their impressions.""This was theater, and it was more to the aviation people,"
Crabtree said. "Now we've had people walking in who never would have
come into a downtown show, and certainly not into our theater, and
they're leaving excited about it. That's a great feeling for us.
That's why we do this."To reach Derek Donovan, call (816) 234-4722 or send e-mail to
donovan@kcstar.com