IN THE MOMENTS BEFORE DISASTER 'CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO' GIVES NEW MEANING TO THE TERM 'BLACK-BOX' THEATER.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

If you base a play on the transcripts from the cockpit voice recorders of six major airline crashes, you're bound to get a lot of varied audience reactions. But there was one that the show's co-creator Bob Berger didn't expect, and ``it happens over and over.''

``People tell us after they see the play that they are less afraid of flying,'' says Berger, whose play ``Charlie Victor Romeo'' opens Wednesday at UCLA's Macgowan Little Theater for a three-week run. The title refers to the alphabet code for CVR, the cockpit voice recorder or ``black box'' that crash-site searchers are always eager to recover.

Audience members say they have more confidence after seeing the play because they have some conception of what airline pilots do, says Berger. ``You don't look at them as glorified bus drivers behind some door that you don't know what's going on.''

``Charlie Victor Romeo'' is a 70-minute dramatization of six flights gone wrong. It takes place on a darkened stage with only the cockpit illuminated. With only the help of some sound effects, the tension arises from watching people only moments away from disaster.

There was another unexpected reaction to the play, which had its debut at a 60-seat off-ofroadway theater. Pilots and airline professionals started showing up. Even a West Point instructor, Lt. Col. William Shattuck, who teaches a class in engineering psychology that deals with human error and machines, took his students to see the play. ``Charlie Victor Romeo'' was even written up in the Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine. Eventually, the production drew so much interest from the aviation community that it was also filmed by the U.S. Air Force as a training video for pilots.

Before we go far off course, though, let's go back to how this ``inspired,'' `visceral,'' ``vivid,'' ``riveting'' - as critics have called it - piece of theater began.

Berger says that the genesis for ``Charlie Victor Romeo'' came from a walk to a bookstore with his friend Irving Gregory in 1998 and a discussion about the rising exploitation of sex and violence, especially in reality-based television programming.

``My feeling about reality-based television is that it's anything but,'' says Berger, who worked for CNN as a field engineer and cameraman. ``The reality of a police car with a camera crew is just that. The reality of a police car with a camera crew.''

When they got to the bookstore Gregory and Berger started thumbing through volumes along the lines of what they were talking about when they came across ``The Black Box'' by Malcolm Macpherson, a collection of transcripts from 28 plane crashes. By the time they got back to their theater, Collective: Unconscious - located in the East Village - they were convinced that they had the perfect fodder for a play and enlisted theater manager Patrick Daniels to help develop the project. Then they came up with a list of things they felt they needed to do the play correctly.

One of the choices they made early on was ``not to dumb down the play.''

``I think what we end up with is something that washes over the audience ... without them necessarily understanding all the jargon,'' says Berger, who equates it with readers who may come across a word they don't know but understand it in the context. He points out that for those who are interested in learning more about some technical terms, there are some explanations in the program as well as a list of resources to learn more.

But the reason behind not dumbing down the play was more philosophical. Berger says that while working for CNN, he help cover the TWA Flight 800 crash in 1996 and saw how such a catastrophe ``ripped through thousands of people's lives.''

``I wanted (the play) to hold up to the scrutiny of these people,'' he says, as well as to that of pilots and aviation professionals. At first, the play's creators relied on a friend of Berger's, a Navy pilot, to help them with technical questions. ``As directors, we wanted to be able to answer any question the cast might have, and if we didn't have an answer then we would get it as fast as we can,'' Berger says. That interest in being accurate didn't go to knowing where every switch was. Since the play opened in the fall of 1999, though, the cast and crew have had thousands of notes from pilots offering technical advice as well as some spirited discussions after performances about the situations.

Overall, ``CVR'' has drawn much praise from the experts. Any number of suggestions have been incorporated into the production - although, as Berger notes, ``they don't make a difference to lay people. But we want to do them because it helps the cast and company feel like it's more authentic, and it's something the pilots appreciate.''

But what the trio was going for instead of ``hyper-accuracy'' was to reproduce ``a certain kind of psychological state as accurately as possible.'' To that end, they didn't make the roles gender-specific nor did they want the actors to research the real characters their roles were based on, telling them instead to put themselves in the situation and react.

Some of the situations portrayed in ``CVR'' are eerie lessons even for those outside the aviation field. The 1996 crash of AeroPeru Flight 603 after takeoff from Lima is such a case. The ground crew had taped over the electronic sensors to wash the plane and had neglected to remove the tape. Unable to read the airspeed indicator, altimeter and other crucial readings, the two pilots begin arguing about what to do.

``Because that argument was going back and forth,'' says Shattuck, ``they actually missed the opportunity to diagnose the plane properly.'' All they had to do was disengage the autopilot and fly the plane manually, he says. Somehow, though, the pair couldn't disengage from their own conflict, and the plane went down, killing all 70 aboard.

The thing about being a good pilot that comes up again and again, says Berger, is not having the Capt. Kirk syndrome - ``I'm an island and I'm in command and you can't help me'' - and also knowing your limitations. Berger adds that airlines work on strategies on how to avoid such situations, on how a subordinate can tell a superior he might be making a mistake and get the right response.

But ``Charlie Victor Romeo'' isn't just about disaster and mistakes, says Berger. ``You have a much better understanding of a certain level of commitment and professionalism (of the pilots) and what I think is the core content of the play - raw heroism. Even in those who don't resolve the situation successfully.''

And in this he sees a sort of grace. ``What they actually do in the play is live and live hard. It's not about death. You don't see death here. You see this incredible energetic struggle for life.''

``CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO''

Where: UCLA's Macgowan Little Theater.

When: 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays until July 15. (No performance on July 4.)

Tickets: $35 general, $12 for UCLA students with valid IDs. Call [phone] or charge online at www.performingarts.ucla.edu.

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The actors in ``Charlie Victor Romeo,'' portraying the pilots of doomed commercial flights, have received and incorporated many suggestions from real-life aviation professionals who have flocked to see the show.