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West June 21, 2001 |
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Black Box Theatre
By Jamie Painter Young
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Bob Berger could
never have predicted the journey he and his collaborators,
Patrick Daniels and Irving Gregory, would be taking when they
set out to create Charlie Victor Romeo, the title
referring to the aviation code for cockpit voice recorder. The
production premiered in October 1998 in an off-Off-Broadway
staging at the Collective: Unconscious Theater, of which
Berger is a founding member. Extended far beyond its initial
five-week run, the production recently began a national tour,
which kicked off at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and
will next stop in Los Angeles. UCLA Performing Arts will
present Charlie Victor Romeo beginning June 27 at
UCLA's Macgowan Little Theater.
As with many ingenious ideas, the conception for
Charlie Victor Romeo was accidental. Berger, who had a
longtime interest in aviation and who, as a former CNN
cameraman, had covered the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 in New
York, was thumbing through The Black Box, a 1998 collection of
published transcripts from 28 airline disasters, in a
Manhattan bookstore three years ago, when the idea first
crossed his mind. He immediately recognized the dramatic
potential of translating some of these transcripts into an
innovative stage drama and brought the idea to Daniels and
Gregory, also members of Collective: Unconscious.
The three men spent the next few
months developing a "live theatrical documentary" based
entirely on edited transcripts of cockpit voice recordings
from six airline crashes. As morbid as many of the outcomes of
these real-life accidents were, Berger stressed that this is
not a play about death.
"Ultimately I realized that we have a play about
life--about life at its most terrifying and most intense. We
have a play about the most incredible heroism that you could
witness, even in the case where things are not concluded in a
way in which everybody's lives are saved. It is a heroism
people don't necessarily think about when they think about an
emergency on an airplane," said Berger, who along with Daniels
and Gregory is co-producing, co-directing, and co-starring
(along with five other cast members) in the production.
Charlie Victor Romeo received
the 2000 New York Drama Desk Awards for Best Unique Theatrical
Experience and Outstanding Design (by Jamie Mereness, the
chief technical engineer at Philip Glass' Looking Glass
Studios), as well as two top prizes at the 2000 New York
International Fringe Festival. Recently the production was the
grand prize winner of the 2001 Absolut Angel award, a
competition recognizing creative concepts that use technology
to advance the arts.
More than
the artistic accolades, what has most caught Berger by
surprise is the overwhelming response from the aviation
community, which has turned up in droves to see the
production. For many pilots, Charlie Victor Romeo marks
the first time that they've seen, onstage or onscreen, an
accurate portrayal of what really goes on inside the cockpit
of an aircraft.
"I did the PR for
the show initially, and once I thought we actually were doing
a good job, which was very early on, I went nuts publicizing
it to the aviation world via the Internet and by phone calls,"
recalled Berger, who paid particular attention to technical
details during the research for this project. "We eventually
got reviewed by an aviation newsletter that has 200,000
subscribers. The review ended up posted on the union message
boards at airlines and it circulated on the Internet quite a
bit. These people came, and they respected it as a work of art
and as the first time they'd ever seen their lives and what
they think is important depicted in a way that didn't dumb it
down."
Most astonishing to Berger
is that top professionals in the aviation field have praised
this production as a highly valuable learning tool. Berger and
his company have, in fact, cooperated with the United States
Air Force to film Charlie Victor Romeo as a training
video for pilots. The video has become required viewing for
West Point cadets enrolled in courses in engineering
psychology and human error.
Likewise, the medical community has embraced the
play, which has been performed for large groups of physicians
and healthcare professionals studying the effects of human
error and emergencies in a medical context.
"We have been told that people's lives are going to
be saved from having seen this," noted Berger. "That's not
something that artists get told. It's rare enough that they're
telling us it's useful, but then to take this to a level of
saving lives is amazing. I never in a million years expected
this to happen."
"Charlie
Victor Romeo" runs June 27-July 15 at UCLA's Macgowan Little
Theater. For more information, call (310) 825-2101.
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