SIZZLE SIZZLE FLY by
Poppy Northcutt sits her mini-skirted self down in a regulation NASA swivel chair, swings her impeccable long blonde hair, and becomes the first woman to slip on the black headset: a Mission Control engineer. It’s December 1968, Apollo 8 has gone behind the moon, and as Poppy holds her breath the world changes faster than the trajectories she calculates can splash those astronaut dudes back down.
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Poppy Northcutt sits her mini-skirted self down in a regulation NASA swivel chair, swings her impeccable long blonde hair, and becomes the first woman to slip on the black headset: a Mission Control engineer. It’s December 1968, Apollo 8 has gone behind the moon, and as Poppy holds her breath the world changes faster than the trajectories she calculates can splash those astronaut dudes back down.
From the EST blog: "It’s a very visual play. It started with an image, it repeats that image and builds in more. I see just a few iconic items on stage, and I’ve tried to activate them: the swivel chairs, for example, produce a kind of dance. In addition to establishing the world, for me these items are a clue to the theatricality, it’s a memory play and a non-naturalistic play, and picking a few iconic items and images lets me pull ideas into focus. At some point I started inserting pictures of objects into the text on the page: “it looks like this.” Having them right there inspired me, once I could see the chair or the lamp I could inhabit what was happening around it. Then I decided I wanted EVERY reader to see them. It put me right in it, wouldn’t it be the same for others? I had such a great time writing this play, I felt freer than I ever had before, so I just figured, why not, and I loved how it made my page come alive."
From the EST blog: "It’s a very visual play. It started with an image, it repeats that image and builds in more. I see just a few iconic items on stage, and I’ve tried to activate them: the swivel chairs, for example, produce a kind of dance. In addition to establishing the world, for me these items are a clue to the theatricality, it’s a memory play and a non-naturalistic play, and picking a few iconic items and images lets me pull ideas into focus. At some point I started inserting pictures of objects into the text on the page: “it looks like this.” Having them right there inspired me, once I could see the chair or the lamp I could inhabit what was happening around it. Then I decided I wanted EVERY reader to see them. It put me right in it, wouldn’t it be the same for others? I had such a great time writing this play, I felt freer than I ever had before, so I just figured, why not, and I loved how it made my page come alive."