29 January 2002
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ARTS NEWS
January 26, 2002 IN the cockpit of a doomed AeroPeru Boeing
757, the first officer snaps at her co-pilot with increasing
stridency as their flight instruments malfunction. "The one down
there – the lower button. The lower one. The one down there!" her
voice escalates; the deep furrows on her brow are visible in the
soft glow of the instrument panel. Stunned by disbelief, neither
pilot is able to do what has to be done: switch off the autopilot
and fly the plane by sight. The aircraft slams its left wing and
engine into the Pacific Ocean, jolts up again to 60m and plummets
once more into the sea. All 70 lives on board are
lost. It is theatrical subject matter laden with acute sensitivities,
acknowledges co-director Bob Berger – never more so than in the
immediate aftermath of a high-profile airline disaster. Just 10 days
after the play first opened in October 1999, Egypt Air Flight 990
crashed off the coast of Massachusetts, killing all 217 people on
board. But audiences didn't appear to be deterred by the tragedy.
The initial season in the company's tiny Lower East Side theatre in
New York was extended four times as public curiosity over the human
dynamics within a cockpit grew, and aviation and military
communities recognised its educational potential for pilot training.
But after September 11, when images of the hijacked airliners
slamming into New York's World Trade Centre towers were seared into
the collective consciousness, Berger and co-directors Irving Gregory
and Patrick Daniels feared their play might compound the anguish.
The one performance on the immediate horizon – scheduled for
September 16 at Ohio State University – was postponed until early
2002.
"This play is a shocking, jarring, scaring thing," says Berger.
"It gives you pause – you know there's an effect. It's a very
stressful experience and there's a possibility of backlash."
When they could bring themselves to perform again – three weeks
later in St Louis – there was no perceptible change in the way the
audience responded, says Gregory. "The difference was with us – we
were nervous."
Artistic director of the Perth Festival Sean Doran asked Gregory
whether his team still wanted to come to Perth in light of September
11. The answer was an unequivocal yes, something Doran, born and
reared in Northern Ireland, instinctively understood. "When you grow
up with terrorism, culture becomes all the more important, and
retaining normality in your cultural presentation is critical," he
says. "The whole point of atrocities like that is to instill fear
and alter how a society behaves, so it's all the more important not
only to continue but to be seen to be continuing."
Right from the beginning, when Berger got the idea for the
production as he was leafing through The Black Box, a 1998
collection of transcripts from air disasters, the play's creators
understood the volatile nature of the material and tried to head off
charges of exploitation.
"We want people to feel this is done with respect, not as some
kind of entertainment spectacle," he says. "These are the most
stressful, terrifying, intense moments in anybody's life. [In some
scenes] you are listening to people dying and that brings a gravity
– we had to treat it with an amazing degree of care."
The play's bare staging is simple yet powerful. Overt
sensationalism is avoided – there is no blood, no grim video
footage. The focus is on the human drama among the flight crew,
rather than the carnage that follows.
A pilot was brought in to advise on technical detail, and the
cast was given books and films to study, including The Naked
Pilot, The Right Stuff, Stick and Rudder and Dr
Strangelove. Each tiny aspect – down to where their eyes should
be fixed on the instrument panel to check particular indicators –
was researched. The obsession with detail paid dividends. When the
show opened, theatre critics called it riveting and a community of
even tougher critics – pilots and air traffic controllers – was won
over.
"I thought no way in hell are they going to be able to [pull it
off]," pilot Gary Gladstone told the PBS Newshour program a
few months into the play's first run.
"I came down with a couple of friends one night and sat here, and
my heart started beating at a faster rate when the lights went out,
and it was a killer evening.
"Most [actors] miss the subtleties that other pilots sort of
recognise. This cast is absolutely drop-dead amazing."
The production also captured the imagination of the US military.
Over at nearby West Point military academy in New Jersey,
Lieutenant-Colonel Larry Shattuck incorporated it into the
coursework for his engineering psychology class. Air Force Major
John Varljen, who had read about the play in The Smithsonian
magazine, succeeded in his bid to get the Pentagon to video the
production for use as a crew-training video. Two of the crash scenes
were chosen to contrast the difference between good and bad
decision-making by flight crews.
"I was surprised at how good it was," Varljen told the Air
Force Times earlier this year. "It was about halfway through
seeing it that I realised this has great potential for us to use."
Wary of becoming fodder in the favoured sport of conservative US
politicians – vilifying government grants to the arts by speaking
out against controversial productions – Irving says the directors
weren't always confident of a positive reception, quipping: "We
debated whether they'd give us medals for doing this, or denounce us
on the floor of Congress – and which would be worse."
The success of the play surprised them all. Searching for reasons
to explain their modest hit, Berger credits the mystery that
normally prevails about what goes on in the front section of an
aircraft. The companies that provide air transport insist on
shielding their customers from the "granularity" of the experience,
he says, in a bid to reduce flyers' fears. Audience members often
tell him that they feel more confident flying after seeing the skill
and creativity of some of the pilots depicted in the play.
"Suddenly, the people who work on flights are not glorified bus
drivers or waitresses in the sky any more – they are intense
professionals, especially when things go wrong," he says.
The responsibility of recreating scenes from real life weighed
heavily on the company – especially on the night in April last year
when their audience included Al Haynes, the hero of the sixth
transcript. Haynes was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 232
in 1989 when the DC-10 lost power in two of its three engines
outside Sioux City, Iowa, crippling the plane's leftward steering.
With the aid of a flight instructor who was a passenger, Haynes and
his crew invented new flying techniques as Haynes's dark humour
helped defuse the tension: "We didn't do this thing on my last
simulator check," he quips at one point. Finally, the crew managed
to land the plane, saving the lives of more than half the passengers
aboard, in what aviation experts described as a textbook example of
calm, creative leadership during a mid-air crisis. Haynes, who quit
shortly after the incident so he could travel the country talking to
corporations and community groups about his experience, wept as he
sat through the performance.
"I don't want people to just go watch this show so they can be
entertained by the ghoulishness of what takes place," he said. "I
think they're getting some good out of it, and that makes me feel
good."
Charlie Victor Romeo plays at the University of Western
Australia's Octagon Theatre, Perth, from February 13 to 23.
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