Deborah Crooks likes birds.
I mean, you kinda have to like birds to write an entire musical about birds. But when she called me a few months ago and asked if I could help her out with her folk opera, I knew very little about what I was getting into. Sure, I knew she was a great songwriter from her solo work and her impressive catalog with Bay Station Band, but it's one thing to write a few songs, another thing entirely to spend years assembling characters, narrative, and compositions to tell a story onstage with ensemble cast.
The story "Flight Lessons" tells is one rooted in place, and that place is Jingletown: a gritty arts district in West Oakland along the estuary where the Tidal Canal is crossed by the Park Street and Miller Sweeney bridges. The whole play is held together by the narrative voice of Lenny, a wildlife biologist (voiced so effectively in our production by the marvelous Mick Shaffer) who talks us through how Jingletown's wild people and birds coexist in the urban West Oakland neighborhood.
Rehearsals were intimate; a clustered affair of elbows and guitar tuners in an Alameda sitting room. The songs, however, were expansive. The close walls would fall away as our seven voices lifted the chorus of the titular song, "Flight Lessons" into the heavens, "OH, YOU WERE BORN TO BE FREE!"
With a very limited run up to the show, I originally came encumbered with guitar, bodhrán, and mandolin, but reverted to just the smallest of those for 90% of the show, clacking along rhythmically or trilling delicate embellishments up the small frets as the songs demanded.
Did I mention I got the play the bad guy?
That's right: and the antagonist of the show is a "pigeon fancier." If, like me, you're not familiar with pigeon husbandry, there are several divergent practices around the raising of pigeons that range from farming to military applications to exhibition. Among those in the exhibition category are "tumbling," or "roller" pigeons: birds trained to do literal head-over-tail somersaults. In "Flight Lessons," Hank's maniacal focus on his domesticated flock of roller pigeons leads to him taking pot shots at the local wildlife.
So, on one hand, Hank is a protector of his defenseless avian charges. On the other, he is a gun nut terrorizing his neighbors and shooting members of an endangered species. Either way, Hank's pigeons are a tempting snack for "Flight Lessons" protagonist, "Haya," a peregrine falcon.
"Flight Lessons" isn't a Pollyanna narrative about a bird shot by a bad guy who returns triumphant and intact to the harmonious natural world she was torn from. Deborah's plot arc is nuanced and unexpected, far more interested in the complexity of disruption and entropy than it is in happy endings.
Likely, that's because it was based on actual events from Deborah's life. If she came away with some wisdom from those actual events, maybe that is expressed in the play's epilogue, when Lenny reflects that
"life always moves on, with and without us...informed by what came before and full of possibilities."
Compositionally, "Flight Lessons" does what the very best of musicals do: delivers great songs. There aren't any pieces that exist out of some narrative necessity alone; every song is a solid piece of music in its own right. Several of the pieces would get stuck in my head and there was never a rehearsal I didn't leave without a different earworm from the show.
Our production had a single performance: on Friday at Rhythmix Cultural Works in Alameda. The space at Rhythmix is really lovely - a vaulted hall with a raised stage and good theatrical lighting. The production was scheduled alongside an exhibition at Rhythmix of local art about birds. They even had bird-themed cocktails for sale at the little bar set up in the gallery!
It had been a long time since I was part of a theatrical cast, and it felt good to be in the anticipatory space of a green room, watching folks grab a bite to eat, wrestle with their nerves, apply makeup, tune instruments. I was able to snap a few quick photos of the cast during sound check, there was time to grab a bite to eat, and then it was curtain!
Those playing birds took to the stage wearing round yellow-framed glasses with yellow tube socks (to resemble avian scutes), and I donned a baseball cap. It must be said, I think the cast delivered their very best performances on the Rhythmix Cultural Works stage that night.
There was a full house and a lot of positive feedback during intermission, but when the audience rose to a standing ovation at the end of the show and Deborah stood in the bright lights to receive it, my heart soared like one of Deborah's peregrine falcons.
The world is waiting for a full cast recording of "Flight Lessons," but until that exists, just a few weeks ago, Tania Johnson, Elizabeth Stuart, Kwame Copeland, and Deborah Crooks recorded the titular track, which you can find on Deborah's Bandcamp site.
