Process

Pioneers of Aviation was composed of three biographies of iconic Americans, each
presented in its own style, dictated by the content and the strengths of its performers.
Essentially, Howard Hughes was a monologue, Amelia Earhart was an opera, and The
Lindberghs was a ballet.

For the tale of Howard Hughes, set during his last days of voluntary isolation, director Iris Rose
confined Chazz Dean to a hospital bed and limited him to a static, primarily spoken
performance. Hughes’ memories of his childhood, his romances, and his passion for flight all
came tumbling out in a disjointed, non-chronological jumble. To generate the script, Iris
asked Chazz to read Howard Hughes: The Hidden Years by James Phelan and note down the
most memorable images; she did the same. Iris compiled their two lists, then organized the
images not by chronology but by theme. The themes included sex, guilt, drugs, and
paranoia. She then asked Chazz to record a series of Jams as Hughes based on each of the
themed lists. Thus, the final script was a combination of historical research and Chazz’s
imaginative digressions in character. “Sex” script Iris divided the subjects covered into
memories, plans, his internal being, the external world, and hallucinations; as she
constructed the order for the performance, she alternated between these different modes.
Howard Hughes outline There was no physical component to the performance, other than
Chazz’s expressive face.

Howard Hughes included audio clips from Hughes’ favorite movie, Ice Station Zebra, which
he watched every day during his final period of self-imposed confinement, and music by
Joan Grossman. About a year earlier, Joan had served as a producer on Iris’ radio piece
Society of Mothers. Her original composition included various sounds related to Hughes’ life
such as a ticking clock, a beating heart, and wind. Joan’s friend Vin Tese created and
programmed a design for the MIDI, or Musical Instrument Digital Interface, and Joan used it
to compose and record the music.

In contrast to the static Hughes, Kurt Fulton and Melanie Monios as Charles and Anne
Lindbergh never stopped moving. The complex story covered their courtship, marriage,
flights together, the kidnapping of their first child, the resulting investigation and trial, and the
Lindberghs’ growing alienation from American society. Kurt and Melanie were required to
play multiple characters in multiple settings and switch instantly from one to another. Three
of the most commonly used Watchface techniques – Frankenstein, Bodies in Space, and
Emblem – were employed to generate the many, many individual movements that were
combined to form the choreography.
“Kidnapping” Frankensteins
“The Crime” Bodies in Space notes
“The Trial” Emblems

Previously, most Watchface shows were rehearsed in the participants’ living rooms. For The
Lindberghs, however, Iris rented loft space for their later rehearsals. This allowed the
performers to make greater use of the possibilities for movement through space.

The section Iris performed, Amelia Earhart, was more rigidly structured than The Lindberghs.
Iris wrote a dozen poems in three styles, though all were written in the first person from
Amelia’s point of view. Four of them represented Amelia’s flights. flight poems These were
sparsely worded and included specific repetitive motifs. Each began with a single word
starting with “A” – Above, Aboard, Alone, and Ahead – and contained a comparison of
clouds to a white food – beaten egg whites, potato soup, spun sugar, and a scoop of ice
cream. In each, Amelia uttered two sharp words – example: “Attention! Concentration!” –
and a reminder that something – her life, her ship, her career – “hangs in the balance” in
order to re-focus on the life-or-death task at hand.

Four subsections about Amelia’s personal life were written roughly in iambic pentameter and
covered her childhood, her courtship with George Putnam, “George” poem her
correspondence with her mother, and the challenge of balancing her marriage with her
passion for flight. Both the flight and personal sections were set to music by Conrad
Cummings. Conrad did not let the programmatic structure of the poems dictate the rhythm
of the individual pieces and, in some cases, specifically worked against it. “Marriage,” about
Amelia’s love for both her husband and flying, ended with these lines:

Amelia:
I here confess I was a bigamist
Wedded not just to a man but to an ideal
I split my time between George and aviation
And I can’t say which was my greatest love

To end the song, Conrad composed 19 variations on the phrase “I can’t say which was my
greatest love.” Learning all of the exact variations was a challenge for Iris, who was not a
classically trained musician like Conrad, a serious composer and professor at Oberlin
Conservatory in Ohio. She tried to notate the changes in her own way, 19 variations notes but
was unable to execute them in the exact time allowed. In the end, Conrad cut the number
down to seven and gave her leeway to improvise the later variations as long as she was in
synch with the backing tape on the final line, “I cannot say – which one was my – great-est love.”

The remaining four sections of Amelia Earhart, which were spoken rather than sung,
described her professional life. “The Grind” poem The writing was less tightly structured in these,
and unlike the others, they were staged with physical movements that traveled through the
same open stage space used by the Lindberghs. These actions were drawn from Bodies in
Space sessions in which Iris improvised physically on images from Amelia’s life. For the first
time, these sessions were videotaped and Iris was able to watch the tapes later and select
her own movements; previously this had always been done by other observers taking notes.
In contrast, the personal sections had no movement at all, other than facial expressions and
angles of the head, since Iris stood at a stand microphone to one side of the stage with a
small spotlight on her face. For the flight sections, she climbed onto a high wooden platform
and again sang into a stationary microphone, but for these she was able to make expansive
gestures with her arms and execute other movements that didn’t carry her too far from the
mic. These actions were also drawn from the Bodies in Space tapes.

Iris divided Howard Hughes into four parts: one at the beginning, one at the end, and one
each separating Amelia Earhart, which was performed as a single section, from the two parts
of The Lindberghs. This gave the show an alternating variety of styles, with Amelia Earhart,
which also included three alternating styles of sections, as its center.