Touring solo performance, written and performed by Mara Neimanis, Directed by Bryce Butler, Plane Sculpture by Laura Shults and Tim Scofield

Air Heart is a sixty minute solo aerial performance about the life, mystery and final flight of Amelia Earhart that takes place on a 12- foot tall spinning metal plane sculpture. The portable plane sculpture serves as a set, prop, aerial apparatus and character, thus creating playing space that incorporates both ground and air. Air Heart illustrates the athletic female body in partnership with the plane sculpture as a forum to share the events, courage, conflicts, and pioneering accomplishments of Earhart as a woman, aviator and feminist icon.

Through out the play, I have adhered to factual dates, events, and certain quotes of Amelia Earhart, but as a woman who flies on the stage, I have created her voice with a sense of what it means to dream of flight and become intimately driven by it. In this rich kinesthetic territory, the text in Air Heart works in partnership with the sculptural apparatus to create dramatic expression and fully embodied/three-dimensional character choices. The hybrid nature of creating theatre in the air also facilitates a richly metaphoric and imaginative way to devise an inner life of who Amelia might have been and the courageous risks she took to go beyond the borders of time, place, and gender in order to challenge limits, find levity, and become lost in the mystery of flight

Air Heart Technical Requirements:
The portable plane sculpture is a mounted apparatus. No aerial rigging used. The plane sculpture has rubber coating and can be set on any floor. Set up/ strike is approximately 3-4 hours. Minimum hall size 40x45, minimum ceiling height 14 feet to grid.
Lighting cues on excel express, sound on CD.
Sound technician provided, lighting technician needed.

Contact In-Flight Theater to discuss costs and details

Directed by Mara Neimanis and Bryce Butler
Featuring Monique Holt, Ben King, Bryce Butler, Tim Chamberlain and Mara Neimanis
The Snow Queen is a sixty minute aerial and mask performance that incorporates a mixed hearing and deaf cast. Set in a context of ground and air in telling this famous Hans Christian Andersen dark tale about love, friendship, and courage, both speech and sign are used interchangeably so both audiences follow the story.

The Snow Queen premiered in January 2008 as a result of a five-month process of daily aerial training and ensemble development. Using a mixed ability cast facilitated a way of devising a common stage language based on the partnership with gravity and the interpretation of topography both on and off the ground. This, in turn allowed for an audience that is hearing and non-hearing to come together in a shared experience where no translation is necessary. In this process, the ensemble created a narrative derived from a common physical experience that is athletically rigorous, based in collective risk taking, and channeled through fully embodied acting choices. Our work has been fueled by respect for Andersen’s story and the children that he wrote for. In The Snow Queen, the fact that Monique Holt is deaf is not an exception. The cast, the story, and the audience are bonded in the fact that communication literally happens in and on various levels. The Snow Queen attempts to illustrate characters that go beyond “normal limits”. It is an example of theatre that contains real and imagined risk and puts an individual who has a “supposed” disability into a place of empowerment.

Snow Queen Technical Requirements:
Attachment height 18- 20 feet capable of bearing 1,400 lbs of dynamic moveable weight. Three rigging points are used with a floor mount for a pulley suspension system. Open precenium or large black box space with tension wire grid, beams, or pipes can be used. Hall size and rigging details to be discussed.

Contact In-Flight Theater to discuss costs and details

Written and performed by Mara Neimanis, directed by Bryce Butler

Out of The Blue is a sixty- minute trapeze and mask performance about illness, healing and transformation. Based on an autobiographical experience of a journey into brain surgery, Out Of The Blue is a humorous, poetic and metaphoric take on the precarious flight into health, self, and balancing the unknown.

Out Of The Blue Technical Requirements:
Out Of The Blue uses four rigging points for 3 different trapezes. Attachment height 18-20 feet capable of bearing 1,400 lbs of dynamic moveable weight. Hall size to be discussed.

Contact In-Flight Theater to discuss costs and details

photo by Elliott