These program notes appeared in the playbill for the live performances of Flying Lessons.
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DIRECTOR'S NOTE
The handsome gray dove that captures the attention of two of the Flying Lessons storytellers — the teller of "Flying Lessons" near the start of the first act and the teller of "Further Feathers" near the end of the second — is Zenaida macroura. No rare bird, this Zenaida, she is actually one of the ten most common avian species in the United States. You will find her in most parts of American suburbia.
This long-tailed gray dove, whose early-nineteenth-century cataloguer named her after his wife, breeds from late February until early October of each year, generally with the same mate throughout the course of the breeding cycle. Incubation takes place usually in a flimsy shallow nest built by the female from material brought to her by her male, but often in an abandoned nest borrowed from another bird species. The female lays two small whitish eggs and, with plenty of help from the male, tends them for about two weeks. Once hatched, the female and the male feed the little squabs with "crop milk," a non-milk substance that the parent bird regurgitates and delivers mouth-to-mouth to the youngsters. Seeds are added to the diet after about five days; grass seed and sunflower seeds are particular favorites.
You may know Zenaida macroura as the mourning dove, but that name is only spoken once in Flying Lessons, off-handedly near the end of the performance. The bird does not actually mourn, of course, although it has plenty of reason to, being one of the most hunted birds in America (about seventy million of the species are lost to hunters each year). The name "mourning dove" comes from the bird's easily recognized coo, thought by many to be mournful, but described instead by the teller of "Flying Lessons" (referring to the juvenile birds) as "soprano-like and light — lilting quills." As if determined to avoid any association her birds may have with mortality, this storyteller tends to notice only the aspects of the animals that give her comfort.
Zenaida is also known as the turtle-dove. When its voice is "heard in our land" (Song of Songs 2:12), that is when the "flowers appear on the earth," meaning that spring has arrived and, with it, the reawakening of nature — renewal, rebirth, the new dawn — and the "time for singing." We also recall the role of the dove after Noah's Flood, whose devastation rendered the entire world one "ground zero." You might say that event officially came to an end once the dove that Noah dispatched from the ark a third time to find dry land failed to return (Genesis 8:12).
In early Christianity, the dove came to represent the Holy Spirit or heavenly messenger (Luke 3:22; Matthew 3:16-17), and it appears in this context in any number of classical paintings. To the Jewish Talmudists, the voice of the dove would announce the coming of the Messiah, possibly in his own voice.
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Flying Lessons charts an emotional cycle ignited in the fires of September 11 and leading through chaos, grief, anger and the other emotions that will always be associated with that day, yet wheeling from them through contemplation, exploration and recognition and onwards to resolution and assertiveness, love and hope. Central to Flying Lessons is exploration of the need to look evil and heartlessness in the eye and yet to move on, with whatever wisdom and strength one is able to muster from the experience, rather than succumb to emotional disability. Several of our narrators, one of whom notes early that thankfully she lost no loved ones on September 11, still are overcome with forms of emotional paralysis that keep them indoors, abate their work, stifle their creativity, fuel various of their obsessions ("The Daily Ground," "Fan Mail," "Twin Taters," "Star/Stripe Story").
The struggle against these incapacities takes many forms. One form is to forge an empathy with "sisters" and their children in Afghanistan ... southern Italy ... Rumania ... New York ... women and children wherever they are denied or cannot find expressive range and emotional succor ("Course of Torture," "Agenda's Addendum," "Addendum To End 'Em," "Who Are We?", the "While a Child" sequence). The composition of Flying Lessons has offered a voice to these squelched souls. In a panorama of genres — verse, story, reminiscence, essay, fable, and song — Flying Lessons returns again and again to the humiliation and dehumanization of people, primarily women and children, and to the combative spirit they employ to retaliate against indignity ("All the Girls a Stage?", "Make a Move," "How You See a View").
As expressed in Flying Lessons, the Taliban of Afghanistan are principal culprits in this process of degradation and humiliation. But Taliban attitudes are echoed in remote places: in Hollywood, in Georgia, in India, in inner-city Baltimore, in Sweden, in the abstract world of the song "Oral Morals" ... and in the cosmetic surgeon's office, the dance studio, the world of apparel design, the Botox party parlor. Again and again we return to scenes of women demeaned — even ones "at their peak" ("All the Girls a Stage?") — by their husbands, their fathers, their employers, etc. ("Again an Addendum," "Women's Hymn," "Moss Boss").
Some of the more superficial aspects of this illiberal attitude towards women are familiar, as from Naomi Wolf's Beauty Myth. The signs have been with us for years; what does this have to do with September 11? Let me suggest that what little we know about the attitudes of the September 11 hijackers and their mentors, and the great deal that we know about the Talib regime, show us that debased philosophies of male-female relations are associated with the ugliness and hatred that we have seen break out into acts of unspeakable, random evil.
For this reason, our glimpse of evil on September 11 is traumatic but also cautionary. Even in our free Westernized society, Taliban lurk — not strangers newly arrived, but our traditional friends and neighbors. The phrase "American Taliban" was co-opted a while back, but we should remember that it is best used not as a reference to a solitary post-adolescent fool, but to the pervasiveness of our society's dehumanization of women and children ("Sock It To You Saga," "Butt What?", "All the Girls a Stage?", "About Face," "Again an Addendum," "Mirror Martyr," "Not Blue or Pink, But Yellow"). Rebuilding the effects of that terrible day must take many forms; we could do worse than start by looking inward at how gender relations became perverted in so many places.
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About two-thirds of Flying Lessons is written in verse (spoken or sung), and whatever of Flying Lessons is in verse is written in rhyme (with much internal rhyme for added measure). This differentiates Flying Lessons from such examples of staged poetry as Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf and Russell Simmons' current Broadway show Def Poetry Jam, the text of both of which is largely free verse. Molière, however, had no problems with writing rhymed verse for the stage, nor did Shakespeare. Then again as far as I can tell Molière or Shakespeare never tried to rhyme words like "necrophiliac," "stereotype," or "suffragette." Flying Lessons offers a grab-bag of clever and surprising rhymes for the attentive listener.
Flying Lessons also differs from showpieces like For Colored Girls and Def Poetry Jam in that it is simply less angry. With plenty to be angry about, plenty of anger is on display; yet anger does not dominate Flying Lessons. Instead, the poems and moments that the work comprises are filled with humor, comfort, family, and friendship ("Precious Pressure," "Mixing to the Max," "Party Gals," "Katie's Crayon, Will's Wall and Gracie's Eraser," "Greener Grass"). Our aim in staging it has been to demonstrate these themes not only in the articulation of the text but through the orientation of our sisterhood of performers towards their words, towards each other, and towards you. I hope some of the story-telling tradition that imbues our culture and many other cultures suffuses your experience of the pieces that make up this performance.
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In staging Flying Lessons I have been privileged to work with seven marvelous performers whose talent and artistic resourcefulness never stopped amazing me, but the real lustre of whose work comes from their sense of identification with the text and the importance they find both in its subject matter and in the cause on whose behalf it is being brought to you. Some of our performers lost friends and colleagues on September 11. Whatever their personal experience, each performer recognized that she could easily have been at the Pentagon or aboard that flight on that day (or perhaps within the target area of Flight 93 which was lost in Shanksville, PA and is given glancing reference in "Public Address").
I know I will never forget the spirit of selflessness the cast of Flying Lessons exhibited during the period in which these performances have been prepared. Each of our performers placed aside many other opportunities for financial reward, career advancement, and creative expression in order to be a part of Flying Lessons. No matter what happens to this show, they should always know that while they put much more into it than they will ever take out, the families of September 11 have been helped.
Finally, my dear dear wife Paula lived this project nonstop essentially since the day of the attacks. With power and elegance, with passion and gentleness, Flying Lessons expresses nearly two years of her most intimate anguish, hope and love. More than anything, for the opportunity she has given me to help share her insights with others I will always be grateful.