"[O]ne of the best examples of the increasingly popular genre of plays drawn entirely from verbatim transcripts."

TIME Magazine, Best Plays 2004
Richard Zoglin, 12/04


“[I]ntensely engrossing... impresses with its convincing performances… brilliant, unnerving sound … a powerful experience…”

The New York Times
Lawrence Van Gelder, 6/12/04
"[R]aw slices of real life – and death – transformed into the highest possible drama… Holds you in a hammerlock for 90 unforgettable minutes. It's the most frightening show I've ever seen… deadly serious… thunderous, enveloping…”

The Wall Street Journal
Terry Teachout, 6/18/04


“[S]ome of the most chilling moments I've ever experienced in a theatre.”

The Globe and Mail
Canadian National Newspaper
Simon Houpt, 7/3/04

“[N]o show in town can match its sheer intensity or hermetic artistic perfection."

Time Out NY
Robert Simonson, 6/10/04


One of the most unique and riveting theatrical experiences to hit New York in seasons, CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO (CVR) is a live performance documentary derived entirely from the "Black Box" transcripts of six major real-life airline emergencies. Allowing the audience into the tension-filled cockpits of actual flights in distress, CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO is a fascinating portrait of the psychology of crisis and a testimony to the ability to live to the last second of life. What is going on up there behind the door in the front of the airplane? Who are these people we trust our lives to, and what do they really do when things go horribly wrong?

CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO opened in the fall of 1999 at the Collective: Unconscious Theater in the heart of New York's Lower East Side's thriving artistic community. Due to the overwhelming response from the press, aviation community and the general public, CVR extended five times in an entirely sold-out eight-month run.

Embraced by the aviation community for its unsparing truthfulness and dedication to its non-sensational approach, CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO has been filmed by the US Air Force as a training video for pilots and has been observed by West Point cadets enrolled in courses studying engineering psychology and human error. It is estimated that over one-third of the production's audience have been members of the aviation community.

CVR has also generated great interest from the medical community and has been invited to be performed for groups of physicians and healthcare administrators studying the effects of human error and emergencies in a medical context.

CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO has been awarded 2000 Drama Desk Awards for Best Unique Theatrical Experience and Outstanding Sound Design and the 2000 New York International Fringe Festival awards for Overall Excellence in Drama and Outstanding Sound Design. Recently CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO was awarded the Backstage West Garland Award for Best Sound Design 2002.

Smithsonian Air and Space Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, The Hollywood Reporter, ABC News, PBS's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and many other sources have heralded CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO as an important dramatic and technical work. CVR is being developed for several media, including a national tour of the theater piece, production of video-based pilot training tools, development of an independent film and development of a computer-based multimedia visualization tool which correlates the recreations with actual flight data in real-time.

CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO in association with Mastercasters is a grand prize winner of the 2001 Absolut Angel award, an innovative business plan competition that recognizes creative concepts that use technology to advance the arts. The grant will help support the development of the CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO VISUALIZATION PROJECT as a web-based learning tool for aviation professionals. CVR is currently the subject of a 2001 NASA SBIR research grant application for flight safety and education applications.