Word: m
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...music of 1000 Airplanes, composed by Philip Glass and performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble, drives the production. It powers and parallels M's changes in mood, fluctuates and pulses as M's tenuous grip on reality weakens, strengthens, weakens again, and eventually disappears entirely. M rants and raves about the sound, "THE SOUND," which attacks her soul, tearing her away from the reality she hopes and fears to embrace and pulling her toward an alternate reality she simultaneously loves and abhors...
...cage, shaking your elbows, your knees, your thighs. Harmonies become distorted, and as they change, they disrupt the rhythm of your heartbeat. A hint of melody develops, disappears, reappears; it is the theme to E.T., except it appears to have been rewritten by someone under the influence of LSD. M appears onstage and the music subordinates itself to the patterns of her monologue, but only temporarily--it frequently rears up, roaring, driving M deeper into the depths of her insanity...
David Henry Hwang, whose Tony award-winning M. Butterfly is still on Broadway, wrote 1000 Airplanes on the Roof and remains true to Glass's experimental use of time and changing rhythm. At one point M, sinking hopelessly into madness, cries out "Time is a lottery!"--a lottery that pays off only delusion. Hwang also plays with the notion of illusion being more powerful than reality, continuing with a theme he develops in M. Butterfly. Like M. Butterfly, 1000 Airplanes on the Roof is in many ways a study of what happens to the human spirit when all conventions...
...light, too, heightens the audience's sense that M has been cast adrift. Jerome Sirlin's innovative set makes use of a multitude of opaque and translucent screens upon which are projected images as diverse as primeval forests, alien spacecraft and New York City brownstones. The shifting patterns of light chase M around and dance with her in a malevolent pas de deux, whimsically trapping her and letting her go as her mood shifts from hope to despair. The light and sound join forces to overwhelm M, sometimes leaving her a helpless lump on the floor...
...this may give you the impression that M is nothing more than a hopeless space cadet, but she's really not. She is an intelligent, warm, funny, sensitive woman who, above all else, wants to be loved and wants to be able to control the visions haunting her. She wants someone to be with her, to help her face the slings and arrows of her outrageous fortune, but she finds herself "always alone with what I fear most--the sound of my memories...