{"id":97794,"date":"2015-11-10T16:42:08","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T21:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=97794"},"modified":"2023-11-21T10:53:02","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T15:53:02","slug":"five-facts-about-they-fly-through-the-air-and-sam-wheeler-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2015\/11\/10\/five-facts-about-they-fly-through-the-air-and-sam-wheeler-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Five facts: Sam Wheeler ’17 directs Corwin’s ‘They Fly Through the Air’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"In

Sam Wheeler \u201917 directs a stage version of “They Fly Through the Air With the Greatest of Ease.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Director Sam Wheeler \u201917 brings radio storytelling to life in his stage production of Norman Corwin’s World War II-era broadcast play They Fly Through the Air With the Greatest of Ease<\/em>, .<\/p>\n

A cast of five performs the play three times this weekend in the Black Box Theater.<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are five things to know about Wheeler and the production:<\/p>\n

1. Corwin was one of the first playwrights to use entertainment as a medium for spotlighting serious social concerns.<\/h4>\n

Wheeler, who is a theater and sociology major from Skowhegan, Maine, learned about Corwin from his parents, Timothy Wheeler and Maura Smith, who co-direct theatrical productions at Skowhegan Area High School.<\/p>\n

“That’s where I went to high school and they were my directors,” says their son. “They were instrumental in my pursuing this project and in my wanting to direct my own shows.”<\/p>\n

An influential writer and director, Corwin wrote They Fly Through the Air<\/em> in 1939 for his weekly CBS radio program Norman Corwin’s Words Without Music.<\/em><\/p>\n\t\n\t

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\"They Fly Through the Air,\" directed by Sam Wheeler '17. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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\"They Fly Through the Air,\" directed by Sam Wheeler '17. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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\"They Fly Through the Air,\" directed by Sam Wheeler '17. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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\"They Fly Through the Air,\" directed by Sam Wheeler '17. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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\"They Fly Through the Air,\" directed by Sam Wheeler '17. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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2. The story takes place in a warplane that bombs civilians during the Spanish Civil War.<\/h4>\n

The production will feature period-appropriate language and clothing \u2014 but the questions that it poses about humanity and violence are, according to Wheeler, \u201ctimeless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Human conflict is \u201cthis never-ending thing,\u201d he reflects. \u201cAnd I said to the cast, \u2018There are three big things that never really change in this world: love, death, and people fighting.\u2019 And all three of those are explored in this play.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Rather than casting to specific roles, Wheeler created a five-member ensemble cast.<\/h4>\n

Each will play several roles, allowing for more characters. For example, the original script gave most of the dialogue to the narrator.<\/p>\n

By dividing the narrator role among three characters, Wheeler both balanced the dialogue and enhanced the storytelling, creating, as he says, \u201cdifferent angles on the same story.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cast comprises Nick Muccio \u201916, of Concord, N.H.; Claire Sullivan \u201919 of Montville, N.J.; Tricia Crimmins \u201919 of Chicago; Becca Havian \u201919 of Piedmont, Calif.; and Michael Driscal \u201919 of Cleveland.<\/p>\n

4. This project is part of an independent study requirement for the theater major at Bates.<\/h4>\n

The project helps to prepare juniors to write a senior thesis, and Lecturer in Theater Corey Hinkle is Wheeler’s adviser on the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is typically done during junior year is an independent study in directing. It\u2019s got parameters of like a 25- to 40-minute show with a small cast, a very small set. It\u2019s really just exploring stuff that you\u2019re interested in,\u201d Wheeler says.<\/p>\n

For Wheeler, \u201cit\u2019s exploring this one piece of literature \u2026 and seeing how it translates to a traditional play setting.\u201d Where the original radio production sought to create images and action through the imaginations of its listeners, Wheeler’s challenge was using his imagination to put images and action on the Black Box Theater stage.<\/p>\n

5. They Fly Through the Air<\/em> runs only 30 minutes.<\/h4>\n

But, Wheeler says, that’s \u201clong enough for people to really get involved and think about how these kinds of issues affect their everyday lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tone of his production, he says, will reflect the wide range of human emotion: \u201cIt ranges from being very heartfelt, to comedy at times, to being dark and tragic. I think everyone can relate, one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his Nov. 13-15 production of the broadcast play “They Fly Through the Air With the Greatest of Ease,” Sam Wheeler \u201917 brings radio storytelling to life. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":97906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[11010],"tags":[6889,9087],"class_list":["post-97794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","tag-performing-and-visual-arts","tag-visual-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97794"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158786,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97794\/revisions\/158786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}