‘All art should be about using history as a lens to talk about now,’ said playwright Alana Valentine.
In the case of Flight Memory, a new song cycle co-written by Valentine and composer Sandra France, and commissioned by The Street Theatre, the production is an opportunity to explore the Australian cultural cringe by telling the story of scientist David Warren, the inventor of the now ubiquitous black box flight recorder.
Warren, who died in 2010, was not celebrated for his important contribution to air safety until late in life.
‘In David Warren’s case it wasn’t until he was in his 80s that he got an Order of Australia. It’s kind of amazing to me how long it sometimes takes to valorise people, but it is also shameful that we so often think that if something’s going to be good, it will be done overseas, you know? People use the term “cultural cringe” as if by naming it, that solves it. And I don’t think that it does,’ Valentine said.
‘I just think it’s a time to actually start interrogating: why is it that we keep doing that? Why don’t we look at the person next to us and go, “Wow, this is maybe world class, and that’s really original. And hey, why shouldn’t that come from Australia?”’
A Very Practical Man
Warren’s daughter Jenny, who Valentine interviewed while researching the project, said her father wouldn’t necessarily be thrilled by seeing his life’s work explored on stage.
‘I think dad would be a little miffed because I don’t think he ever saw himself as an artistic man or being portrayed artistically, as a way of telling your story, because he was very practical man,’ she said.
Describing her father as ‘dogmatic’ and ‘incredibly intelligent,’ Warren said he was also a visionary.
‘He knew, right from the moment he had the vision of this thing [the black box flight recorder] how important it would be. And it was a vision, because he imagined it long before anyone talked about doing anything like this, in terms of analysing vehicle accidents.
‘Of course, we’ve done autopsies for hundreds of years, even thousands of years, to understand why and how humans died, but to actually try and record human voices or noise recordings, to actually go back and work out what happened before a plane crash was outrageously unusual,’ Warren said.
In 1958, David Warren described his vision of the black box flight recorder, how it would work and what it would do for aircraft safety and aircraft investigation, in a newspaper article.
‘You read these couple of sentences and you go, “Oh my god, in 1958 he predicted exactly how and why we use the black box in 2019. And if you consider the technology that’s been developed since 1958 – I mean in 1958 the first Sputnik went into space and there was no such thing as a personal computer. There was no such thing as the mobile phone. In the 1960s, computers filled entire rooms. And dad had this way of seeing something practical that would be meaningful, and has proved to be meaningful, despite all the extraordinary technological changes of the 20th and now the 21st century,’ his daughter said.
RESISTANCE AND COLLABORATION
Not everyone shared Warren’s belief in the importance of his invention. Working at what is now known as the Defence Science and Technology Organisation’s Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne in the 1950s, Warren was forced to work on the prototype of the black box in his spare time.
Valentine explained: ‘It was really inspiring that he had doggedly kept on with his invention even when his boss said, “You can work on it in your lunch hour but if I catch you doing it in in your work time, I’ll fire you.” He was just so incredibly determined and artists love a determined person.’
Flight Memory is not Valentine’s first foray into the world of science and technology – she’s previously interviewed astrophysicists and astronomers for her play Ear to the Edge of Time, and presented a play at the Seymour Centre after spending a year talking with nutritionists – but it’s an area she’s keen to see more artists explore.
‘Scientists are just as crazy and curious and committed and creative as any artists I’ve ever met,’ Valentine said, ‘they really are. And the world of science is so conjectural in the same way that the arts is; you have to be an original thinker as well as an incredible data cruncher, and resourceful about your funding. I’ve found some real colleagues among scientists, if I can put it that way.’
She hopes the more traditional arts audience attending Flight Memory’s world premiere season in Canberra will find something new in the production to inspire them – perhaps even leading to future collaborations between artists and scientists.
‘I’m hoping that by mixing in the science community on the opening night with the theatre-goers … that it will give something new to the audience. That’s always my aim when I work in these real-life shows and community based shows – to give our audiences a new kind of flavor of experience,’ Valentine explained.
‘Great artists have an appetite for difference, an appetite for looking at the world in a different way, and I have found for myself that collaborating with scientists, getting into their brains and kind of rummaging around is one of the most pleasurable creative experiences I’ve had. So I would say to my fellow artists, “Go for it”.
Flight Memory runs from 14-16 November at The Street Theatre, Canberra.
