Skydive unfolds in the 30 seconds of freefall of an adventure gone horribly wrong. In the stretched out perception of time that occurs in a crisis, the story travels back in time to the events that led up to the moment of the disastrous jump. Morgan, a gregarious front man for an '80s cover band, decides to help his reclusive agoraphobic brother, Daniel, escape his spiraling descent into fear-bound paralysis by introducing his newly invented (and perhaps ill-conceived) therapy technique that involves jumping from an airplane in order to face one's fears. But while coaching Daniel in the practice of 'Lucid Dreaming' as a means of building his confidence for the jump, he unexpectedly opens a Pandora?s Box of childhood memories both comic and traumatic, which begin to reveal clues to their falling-out as adults, and perhaps the opportunity to finally close the widening gap between them. Skydive is a unique performance that is staged with the two performers soaring above the stage floor for the entire ninety-minute play. With breath-taking aerial choreography, cinematic action sequences, and a soundtrack of '80s pop, Skydive is a celebration of the power of the imagination in the pursuit of the universal dream to fly and a story of finding one's strength in the face of fear and loss.
Commissioned by Realwheels, a Vancouver-based theatre company that aims to increase audiences’ understanding of the disability experience, Skydive was created to be performed by one able-bodied, and one differently-abled actor. Using the technology of Sven Johansson’s ES Dance Instruments (a seventeen-foot, counterweighted lever that allows a performer to fly in all directions as well as cartwheel and somersault through space), the show is written to be staged almost entirely in the air, intricately choreographed and performed in a tightly orchestrated dance between the actors and the four operators who control the instruments. These instruments, both liberating and restrictive, equalize the bodies of the performers allowing not only for images of flight and freefall, but also for the physical metaphor of the power of dreams, imagination and human connection that lifts us above our individual physicalities.
Year Printed: 2015
Acts: 1
Male Cast: 2
Total Cast: 2