Peter van Heesen
1000 Airplanes on the Roof (1988) is a melodrama with music by Philip Glass and a libretto by David Henry Hwang. It is a treat to see the work performed in its entirety, as typically only excerpts are performed or recorded. The most recognizable excerpt, “The Encounter,” was recently featured as the opening track on Anthony Roth Costanzo’s 2018 album ARC and continues to be performed by Costanzo in concert. With a single lyric, “Ah,” Glass’ hypotonic encounter is the only promotional material needed for the monodrama, inherently drawing audiences into the otherworldly soundscape of glimmering stars and rumbling gaseous planets.
1000 Airplanes follows a woman, simply named M, who is trying to understand her memories of having been abducted by aliens. Director Paige Eakin Young and performer Mara Snip transport the plot from 1980s New York City to modern day Berlin, drawing on their lived experiences as trans women to color the narrative. Young and Snip shared that they wanted to create “a horny space opera about love, care, being vulnerable, being seen, and T4T,” creating an intergalactic space of mutual understanding within Neuköllner Oper’s Saal. The minimal set allows the audience to supplement M’s surroundings, imagining the décor of her apartment apart from the lime green ruffled peignoir on the clothing rack.
As M, played by Snip, opens the work by harmonizing with the five-piece orchestra, she guides us through Neukölln, inviting the audience to grab coffee at Café Engels and rushing us onto the U-Bahn. M soon replays her extraterrestrial encounter, causing the audience to question her sanity, akin to how one feels while watching Cocteau’s La Voix humaine. Is M just another mad soprano?
Soon, however, in comes our coloratura alien, sung by burlesque and drag performer Sarah Bodle. The alien embraces M, weaving her voice through the synthesized orchestral texture as she corroborates M’s tall tale. The climactic encounter between M and the alien provided musical and sensual release, their slow-motion caresses paired with driving musical power. Bodle’s pingy timbre was perfect for the role, able to create moments of nuance amid exhausting repetition.
Plot-wise, that is the entirety of the hour-long monodrama, providing only a glimpse into extraterrestrial existence. With an all FLINTA+ team, Neuköllner Oper produced an imagined intergalactic reality that aspires to be manifested here on earth; a reality where trans goddesses are not only embraced and believed but protected. Of this notion, Director Paige Eakin Young shares, “we always joke about the play being an intergalactic lesbian space opera. But there’s also truth in that. There’s a lot of power in being desired. In being accepted.”
