told them, ‘No matter what
your personality is, you’ve been
trained. You’re highly trained
professionals and that training
has to come through in everything you’re doing. Even though
you might be scared to death,
the training has to show.’”
That training comes through
when a crew hears a boom during a flight. The sound tells
them something is obviously
wrong, but they don’t know if
it’s a bomb, a door blowing off,
or the loss of an engine. Incidents in the play range from
bulkheads rupturing (causing
the loss of the vertical fin and
all hydraulics) to a simple piece
of tape left over the static ports
when the maintenance crew last
washed the plane (resulting in
the failure of crucial flight instruments to work properly).
During rehearsals, the cast was
continuously pushed a little farther and farther into the realiNewJerseyStage.com
ties of the situations. One of the
most intense moments of the
play deals with United Airlines
Flight 232. At one point, the air
traffic controller mentions “there
is a four-lane highway you can
look at.” Paprzycki asked the actors what that means. The reply
was, “It means you’re going to
kill at least 100 innocent people
on the ground.” Paprzycki said,
“Yeah, think about just how devastating that is.” When the actors redid the scene again, their
faces showed the realization of
being told they could land on a
highway that is probably packed
with cars and innocent people
who will be killed. Paprzycki told
the actors, “When you start hearing these things we have to see
the reaction of you the person —
through the training — because
we know that the audience is
thinking, ‘What if my daughter
and my three grandchildren are
in a car on that highway?’”
2015 - ISSUE 10
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