Pre-Show Discussion

Note to Educators: Use the following assignments, questions, and activities to introduce your students to Take Flight and its intellectual and artistic origins, context, and themes, as well as to engage their imaginations and creativity before they see the production.

    1. Take Flight:  Web Site Basics.  Share the various articles, interviews, and information found on McCarter’s Take Flight Web Site with your students to provide an historical and creative context for John Weidman, David Shire, and Richard Maltby Jr.’s new American musical.

    2. Musical Theater and YOU?   Considered one of America’s greatest contributions to world theater, the contemporary stage musical is perhaps the most popular, prevalent, and profitable of dramatic forms today.  Most high schools with drama curricula or after-school programs/clubs mount a musical as a major (or only) production every year; musicals are typically the traditional theatrical fare offered by the average local community theater; professional performing arts centers around the nation feature touring versions of the Broadway’s latest blockbusters; and much of Broadway itself caters to the musical theater tourist dollar—at present, 26 of 34 shows running or in preview on Broadway are musicals, and one, Sondheim on Sondheim, is a multimedia musical revue which revisits and celebrate the work of American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.  Ask your students to discuss their experiences with and thoughts about the musical theater form below.

      • Compile a list of musicals that students have seen and/or in which they have performed.  Ask them to describe their interest in and/or relationship to musical theater.  Which were the students’ favorite shows and why were they their favorites?  For students who have little interest or a negative perception of musicals, ask them to explain their disinterest or dislike.  For fanatics of the form, ask them to give explanation to their fondness.

      • How is the musical theater experience different from the experience of seeing a nonmusical play?  Ask students to consider the way in which music and dance changes or affects the nature of theatrical expression and the audience response.  To what kinds of stories and/or subjects is musical theater best suited  (Ask them to review the stories and subjects of the list of musicals compiled on the board.)?

      • Ask students to consider what role music plays in their lives.  When do you listen to music?  Where do you listen to music?  Do you create or participate in creating music?  Are there any significant events in your life that are closely associated with music?  What meaning does music have in your life?

      • Ask students to consider what would appeal to them and their peers—in terms of subject material and style of music—for a new musical production.  Also have them consider what (hi)stories have yet to be told as musical theater and what music and style of dance might best serve each story.

    3. In Context: Take Flight.  To prepare your students for Take Flight and to deepen their level of understanding of and appreciation for the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, and Amelia Earhart in their historical contexts, as well as the theatrical form of the American Musical, have students research, either in groups or individually, the following topics:

        • A brief overview of the history of human flight/aviation
        • Orville and Wilbur Wright
          • Early years—family, education, and childhood
          • Development of their interest in flight/aviation
          • Otto Lilienthal
          • Octave Chanute and Progress in Flying Machines
          • Glider vs. flyer
          • Why Kitty Hawk?
          • The patent and patent war
        • Charles Lindbergh
          • Early years—family, education, and childhood
          • Early career in aviation
          • The Orteig Prize and The Spirit of St. Louis (the aircraft)
          • Lindbergh’s celebrity, decorations, awards, and trophies
        • Marriage, family, and kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh, Jr.
        • Germany, “America First,” and racism
        • Lindbergh’s legacy as seen through today’s eyes
      • Amelia Earhart
        • Early years—family, education, and childhood
        • Development of interest and early career in flight/aviation
        • Transatlantic flights, 1928 and 1932
        • Marriage and celebrity
        • 1937 world flight
        • Disappearance theories
      • Basic Principles of Flight:  roll, pitch, yaw
      • John Weidman
      • David Shire
      • Richard Maltby, Jr.

      Have students teach one another about their individual or group topics vial oral and illustrated (i.e., posters or PowerPoint) reports.  Following the presentations ask your students to reflect upon their research process and discoveries.

    4. Designer’s Collage Activity.  According to director Sam Buntrock, “developing a musical is the craziest beast,” and he found Take Flight especially challenging given his directorial vision that “it’s four musicals” in one (i.e., the musical tells the stories of the Wright Brothers, Charles, Amelia, and the larger story of the way flight takes hold of their minds and souls)  Buntrock enlisted his design team, including scene and costume designer David Farley, to come up with three different design concepts for each individual story as well as one all-encompassing look to unite the three. 

      Ask your students to imagine themselves as a member of Buntrock’s creative team and given the task of coming up with preliminary design ideas for the multiple narratives of Take Flight. One form of visual communication is collage, in which cutout images and text, material/fabric, and other small objects are glued to a piece of paper to symbolize the spirit of the play.  Have your students make a design collage for Take Flight based solely upon the lives and times of its historical subjects
    • First, students should conduct some basic research on the history of American aviation and the biographies and images (both still and moving) of Orville and Wilbur Wright, Charles Lindbergh, and Amelia Earhart.  Instruct them to record their visual, intellectual, and psychological/spiritual impressions of the aviation movement and of these historical figures/characters and their world, and any mood or themes that strike them as they research. 
    • Next, students should think of ways to visually communicate their impressions of the Wrights, Lindberg, Earhart, and the greater story of American aviation, keeping in mind differences in place, time, theme mood, style, color, texture, scale and movement.  They should seek out images online, and in magazines, and collect small objects and fabric/material for their design collage.
    • They will need an 8½” x 11” sheet of paper (either colored paper or paper that can be painted), scissors, additional color paper for cutouts, magic markers, colored pencils or paint for a background, and glue. 
    • Students should consider the placement of collage materials.  How will they present the “four musicals” in one collage? With what for each separate story do they intend to grab the viewer’s eye? How will they integrate the three individualized stories of the Wrights, Lindbergh, and Earhart into one overall story on the single page?  How do they want the viewer to look at and experience the collage? 
    • Educators might also opt for their students to create electronic collages by utilizing PowerPoint technology and images gleaned from the Internet.
    • Students should be given time to show their finished collages to the class and to explain how the objects, images and words in their collages express and symbolize the “four musicals” of Take Flight.

    1. An Actor Prepares…and Blogs.  Cast member Claybourne Elder who plays Charles Lindbergh has faithfully documented his Take Flight rehearsal journey on the McCarter Blog.  We invite you and your students to log on and read Claybourne’s observations and musings inside and outside of the rehearsal room.  To access the blog, click on this link McCarter Blog , select “Actors’ Voices” under “Categories” and then scroll down to find the most recent entry of “Lindbergh’s Rehearsal Log”—previous entries can be found below.  Feel free to post comments on Claybourne’s various entries.