Photo courtesy of UAPresents "Charles Victor Romeo," or "CVR" as it is commonly referred to, reenacts the experiences recorded on crashing airplanes' black boxes. The show is recommended for mature audiences and runs through Sunday at Muse, 516 N. Fifth Ave.

Actual cockpit voice recorder transcripts become subject matter for docudrama

Media coverage of large-scale disasters - of airplane crashes, for instance - has a standard way of proceeding. An item runs on the six o'clock news - images of flaming wreckage played again and again, shots of on-lookers crying and recounting their experiences - with a brief remark as to the cause (often "mechanical failure" or "human error").

In short, our experience of disaster is often sensationalized and dehumanized, served to us as spectacle. But the story of what really happened, of what happened in the cockpit in the moments before a crash, almost always gets lost.

Enter "Charlie Victor Romeo," a theatrical docudrama that strips away the sensationalism of these disasters and presents its audience with the gritty truth.

The play, now running in Tucson, re-enacts the transcripts of the cockpit voice recorders of six real-life airline emergencies, in order to bring to light what the media does not show.

"The actual explanation or the detail of what happened is the least important thing (in media coverage) and tends to be simplified," said Bob Berger, one of the show's three creators.

The idea for the experimental drama, often simply called "CVR," grew out of a July '99 conversation in a New York City bookstore between Berger and Irving Gregory - another of the play's creators - about the exploitation of sex and violence in reality programming on television.

During the course of the discussion, which Berger said was "loud and interrupting with the flow of business at the bookstore," Berger used the nearby books - a coffee table book on invasive surgical procedures, for instance - to make his point. One of the books was on aviation emergencies.

"I said, 'That might be an interesting subject to create a play from,'" Berger said. "So, we left the bookstore with a bunch of research material."

In selecting from the hundreds of cockpit voice recorder transcripts, the production team read over the course of their research, Berger said they were looking for three main qualities.

First, the emergencies had to be interesting from an aviation perspective. They didn't want them all to be the same basic problem. They didn't want to incorporate too much aviation jargon so audiences could understand the emergencies.

And, Berger said, the play's creators wanted to mix well-known disasters with less familiar ones.

Third, they wanted each emergency to seem analogous to people's everyday lives.

"We wanted people to see situations that they have been in themselves," Berger said.

To this end, the production, in its staging and approach to the subject matter, has been focused toward the human experience of these emergencies in a way that does not replicate the same sensationalizing that the play is meant to critique.

"The thing that surprised us the most about the actual material is what the people do in these circumstances - the incredible effort in the face of disaster," Berger said. "The focus is on the way they are managing or not managing what is going on around them (during an emergency)."

Further, the production does not try to portray the actual people involved in these emergencies. The sexes of the real-life victims were intentionally switched. Accents were dropped. The idea, Berger said, was to abstract these people from their cultural and personal backgrounds so the audience would be able to identify with the situation.

"(We wanted to) get people to try to imagine themselves in that situation," Berger said. "That someone might have had an Alabama accent does not inform the emotional underpinnings of what's going on."

Working on this production has not made Berger fear flying, though. Instead, it has deepened his appreciation for it.

"I can't get on an airplane without paying attention a little bit more to the people who work there," Berger said. "They're not bus drivers; they're not waitresses.

"I think the audience of 'CVR' sees that."

Berger said "CVR" has received a positive reception both from the aviation community and from Tucsonans - even going up against "Phantom of the Opera." He said the play doesn't speak down to its audience.

"It's an incredibly deep and complicated subject and yet has that dramatic quality that is an emotional experience and a cathartic experience," Berger said. "I think that people are challenged by this in a way that is a very positive experience."

"CVR" runs through Sunday at Muse, 516 N. Fifth Ave. For tickets and show times, call 621-3341.