The Cutting Room

New works are near and dear to our hearts and have become an essential component of our identity and programming. To expand our new play development we have begun a new initiative called: The Cutting Room.

Playwright

Jonathan Alexandratos (they/them) is a Non-Binary, NYC-based playwright born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee. Their work explores intersections of pop culture, Queerness (new and old), and home-building. In 2015, Jonathan was an Ingram New Works Lab playwright at Nashville Repertory Theatre, where they made We See What Happen, the immigration story of the playwright's grandmother as told by knock-off superhero action figures. The following year, Jonathan's play Duck, an animal allegory about friendship and Star Wars action figures, was produced in Strasbourg, France, by PEACE Productions. Jonathan's Ingram play, We See What Happen, would later go on to win the Greenhouse Award from Strange Sun Theater. They have also won awards and commissions from Parity Productions (2020 Parity Commission Winner), Abingdon Theatre (Father Hamblin Commission), Fresh Ground Pepper (BRB Retreat Artist), Queens Council on the Arts (New Works Grant Winner), Mission to (dit)Mars (Playwright in Residence), and others. Beyond the stage, Jonathan's work on the cultural impact of toys and action figures can be seen on PBS, read on Tor.com and Toy Wizards, and heard on the Is It Transphobic? podcast and more. Jonathan's book, Articulating the Action Figure: Essays on the Toys and Their Messages, is out now from McFarland. Find them on Twitter @jalexan.

Artists

Research and Design

“Black Box” or Flight Recorders

Woven throughout ‘Ground Effect’ is the use of a ‘black box’ recording of the final moments of Northstar 865. This theatrical device connects the characters through the ideas of flights and crashing.

Some may find it interesting to know that the ‘black boxes’ on planes today are no longer black, rather they are BRIGHT orange. The terms came from the British during World War II who had electronic devices encased in non-reflective black boxes. The system is generally in two parts: The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and The Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR). What the public refers to as the ‘black box’ actually refers to the Cockpit Voice Recorder, which only records audio in the cockpit, while the Flight Data Recorder records numerous data points (at minimum 88 points) about the plane and flight. For example, the FDR would log time of day, engine information, altitude, pitch, yaw, roll, selt-belt information and a plethora of other things.

FDR’s and CVR’s must be extremely sturdy to survive a crash and be located after. They come equipped with an underwater locator beacon. This beacon transmits ultrasonic pulses that can be detected by sonar and audio equipment, up to 14,000 feet. Intregrated into these units is a robust battery with a 6 year shelf life. After a crash the recorder will send out signals for 30 days.

Before being put on an aircraft they are tested. They must be able to withstand an impact of 466 miles per hour, a static load of 2.25 tons for 5 minutes, temperatures of 2,012 Fahrenheit for an hour, and underwater pressure of up to 19,700 feet.

Orginal recorders would etch information on long metal foil spoils and by the 1970’s the data was captured on magnetic tape reels. In the 1960’s FDRs and CVRs became mandatory for all airliners across the globe. A huge advancement in recording technology came in the 1990’s in the form of solid state memory. Other than how the data is stored not much has changed about flight recorders.

Following Malaysia Airline Flight 370 the SAFE Act was reintroduced in the House of Representatives. This demonstrated the limits of flight recorders. Investigators need to physically have the recorder to get any information about the flight. However, in this case, since the flight disappeared there was no FDR or CVR. There has been a call to supplement or replace current recording systems with live streams of data to the ground. This would allow for the tracking of the flight in real-time.

Terrain Avoidance and Warning System (TAWS)

Aircraft are equipped with systems that provide information to flight crew members about potentially hazardous terrain situations. With that information, they are able to make adjustments and changes to avoid crashes or Controlled Flight into Terrain (CFIT) events.

These systems were added in the 1970s to mitigate CFIT accidents and the first iteration was called the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS). While effective there were severe limitations. GPWS was dependent on the radio altimeter to the relationship between the aircraft and terrain, and unfortunately, this did not leave much time for pilots to react. In the late 90s an update for the system was developed called the Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) specifically to address that limitation. The update used radio altimeters and GPS information.

From Sky Brary:

TAWS equipment must provide the following functions:

• A Forward Looking Terrain Avoidance (FLTA) function. The FLTA function looks ahead of the aircraft along and below its lateral and vertical flight path and provides suitable alerts if a potential CFIT threat exists.

• A Premature Descent Alert (PDA) function. The DA function of the TAWS uses the aircraft’s current position and flight path information as determined from a suitable navigation source and airport database to determine if the aircraft is hazardously below the normal (typically 3 degree) approach path for the nearest runway as defined by the alerting algorithm.

• An appropriate visual and aural discrete signal for both caution and warning alerts.

• Class A TAWS equipment must provide terrain information to be presented on a display system.

• Class A TAWS equipment must provide indications of imminent contact with the ground for the following conditions:

  1. Excessive Rates of Descent

  2. Excessive Closure Rate to Terrain.

  3. Negative Climb Rate or Altitude Loss After Take-off

  4. Flight Into Terrain When Not in Landing Configuration

  5. Excessive downward deviation from an Instrument Landing System (ILS) glideslope, Localizer Performance and Vertical Guidance (LPV), or Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Landing System (GLS) glidepath.

  6. Voice callout “Five Hundred” when the airplane descends to 500 feet above the terrain or nearest runway elevation.

• Class B equipment must provide indications of imminent contact with the ground during the following aircraft operations:

  1. Excessive Rates of Descent

  2. Negative Climb Rate or Altitude Loss After Takeoff

  3. A voice callout “Five Hundred” when the airplane descends to 500 feet above the nearest runway elevation.

Opiods

A struggle facing Appalachia and many other regions of the U.S. is Opioid addiction. This is key point facing the character Jewels in Ground Effect.

Opioid drugs are derived from the opium poppy and it has been long culivated my many cilivations. In fact it can be considered one of the oldest drugs. Morphine and codeine are both devired from the opium poppy.

It's history can be traced all the way back to 5,500 BC and has been culivated since at least 3,400 BC. Seeds can be found in archeological sites across Europe, Africa, and asia and many ancient civilizations reference the drug.

By the 1800’s opium pills were used on battlefield and were used extensively during the American Civil War.

Modern opiod issues can be traced to the Mid-1990’s when Purdue Pharma developed Oxycontin. This breakthru in synthetic opiods combined with pain being considered a urgent symptom that needed to be addressed led to excessive prescriptions being written.

Opioids in Appalachia

While the opioid crisis is pronounced in many regions of the U.S. Appalachia has been hit especially hard. According to studies by the end of 2017 opioid related overdose deaths were 72% higher in Appalachian counties versus non Appalachian counties.

The same disproportionate effects can be sense when analyzing the prescription rates between Appalachian counties versus non-Appalachian counties.

Prescription rates are not the only factors that contributed to the epidemic in Appalachia. Other socioeconomic factors aggravated the issue.

The Cost of Addiction

Addiction is devasting mentally, physically, and even monetarily. Continuing to use opioids after prescriptions stop is often exceedingly more expensive.

There are so many varieties of opioids at different price points that exact costs can be hard to determine. Coupled with how insurance companies can offset costs, finding a figure is even more challenging.

If taken 3 times per Oxycodone costs about $361.35 a year without insurance while it would cost $3,285 per year on the street. Like many drugs over time an individual will have to take more and more to achieve the same effects.

However, heroin continues to get less expensive but more potent which leads many suffering from addiction to switch. A bag of heroin costs between $5 and $20 per bag. Synethic opioids such as fentanyl are being mass produced further lowering the cost.

Naloxone is a highly effective counteragent to opiods with a single does being able to reverse an overdose in less than 5 minutes. Unforunately, access to this lifesaving drug is expensive and challenging. A dose of Naloxone nasal spray toay costs about $150 where as the same does 10 years ago cost $1.

Design

Sound design

This play has a rich sonic fabric that allows for a plethora of design choices. When sorting through the script and deciding what the most important elements to flesh out we landed on 2 things: Fire and Black Box Recordings. These 2 elements felt the most critical for this process.

“Why is the ground on fire?” -Ciel

The fire represents an ever-present looming force threatening our characters. Fire is live and full of chaos just like our characters. They must constantly keep internal flames in check or they will perish. The introduction of the forest fire adds an external element that the characters must contend with. It serves as an accelerant that forces the characters to deal with their issues much quicker than they ever could. As the fire grows the clock is ticking faster and faster. At any point, the fire could consume them. It was important for this process to hear and feel this ever-present and looming force continually growing. When constructing the fire we did not want to limit ourselves to one expression fire. Wildfires consume everything in their path constantly varying the sound. So many factors come together to make the timbre of a fire. There are the controlled pops and cracks of a controlled fireplace, the squeal of stream erupting from some flame coated object, the wind whipping the flames all over etc. Each scene added a new layer of fire, starting with a distant crackle before transforming into an engulfing inferno.

Next we had to tackle the ‘black box’ recordings. These recordings served as an expression of trauma and proof of tragedy. On a technical end a lot of research went in to how these rcorders fucntion. It was important to also keep the year and aircraft in mind. It became evident early that reality would to be set aside a bit. Often these recordings are hard to understand without subtitles. We decided we needed to keep the tone and harshness of the real recordings but increase how understandability.

Projection Design

Present the world as they see it, whether that is showing the ever-present fire that affects them all or manifesting the dreams and visions of Jewels and Ceil. 

The wildfire is the driving undercurrent of the show. Its seeming inevitability and looming danger literally and figuratively cast the actions and decisions of the characters in a unique light—one with long shadows and a stark contrast between light and dark.

Other than the fire, it is essential to see a few moments the way a character experiences them. One must see the vision as Jewels sees it. It was vital that as she spoke and responded to her hallucination, it responded in a way that made sense.

The constructed model airport was a central focus, especially for Ciel. It needed to feel magical and special. To accomplish this we chose to digitally make a 2-D representation of the airport projected onto the floor of Ciel’s house.

It wasn’t enough to have this as a static image. The airport lives and breathes and is connected directly to Ciel. They speak to it, they play with it, so it need to have some life.

Next, we needed to tackle the wonderfully vivid writing Jonathan used to describe Jewel’s vision in the forest.

This program brought to you by the generous support of the Tennesse Arts Commission