Mark Hein, writer, producer and director of AMELIA’S GOING DOWN, and co-founder of the Actaeon Players, answered some quick questions for @SeeItOrSkipItLA!
1. It says that your show takes place in modern day and in 1937. What’s the connection between the two?
A: In AMELIA’S GOING DOWN, six modern-day artists come together at a public radio station to broadcast a play. The story they tell begins on July 2, 1937, as Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, run out of fuel and begin plunging toward the Pacific.
2. What do you think happened to Amelia Earhart and her plane?
A: In 2003, I dreamed of Earhart and Noonan landing safely on a deserted atoll, and wrote the play in the following weeks. Almost 10 years later, an expedition found fragments of what was probably their plane, along with some of her cosmetics, on Nikumaroro, an atoll near where they were flying. I imagine they walked away from the landing, and then had to come to terms with how to live the rest of their lives.
3. What about your show makes it perfect for the Fringe?
A: I put this play on the Fringe because it’s brief and light, though it touches on some heavy matters. And it’s experimental — I wrote the “radio show” frame story, and developed it with the actors, to pay full attention to the artists creating the broadcast, and how the story they’re telling affects them.
4. What do you hope the audience walks away with after your show?
A: I hope the audience leaves feeling more connected to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan. I also hope they gain a deeper sense of how both chance and our own decisions shape our lives.
5. What show, other than yours, are you most excited to see at the Fringe?
A: I’m especially excited to see the Porters’ Breaking Bard mashup, the Others’ Smile Baby, the musical Adam And Eve And Steve, the Good People’s Marry Me A Little, Theatre Unleashed’s Inside The Mind Of Me and Sleeping Around, Matt DeNoto’s La Lllorona, the Murder Blood Bear Story, The Blacks, Fuck You Jason, My Sister, and The Women Of The Hat. And I’d like to get a ride in the Hamlet-Mobile.
Intrigued? You can see Amelia’s Going Down on these days:
Elephant Space, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd
June 13 (5:30)
June 20 (7:00)
June 23 (10:00)
June 27 (4:00)
Okay fine, you can have a discount too!
“30/30” discount: Anyone who dresses in 1930s style will receive a 30% discount at the door, or can claim it online with the code “30s style.”
Fringe playmakers get a 50% discount.
For ticketing click here.
*As a special thank-you to all Fringers following my coverage, please enjoy 15% off purchases at In Heels Productions throughout the month of June. Use code HFF15 at checkout!