FLY: A play about the Tuskegee Airmen

I saw the play FLY, about the Tuskegee Airmen at the Ford Theater* on October 9 with my brothers. It was a gift from our mother, who had already seen the play. The play follows 4 aspiring pilots as they through the rigorous training, helmed by their racist instructor. Each of the four men come from different backgrounds: someone from the Islands, a zoot-suited ne’er do well from Chicago, a Garveyite “race” man, and the narrator, a wet-behind-the-ears kid from Long Island. The fight scenes were carried out using projected screens of aerial photography, a light show (to show the bombing) and miming. The whole play was framed/augmented by a “Tap Griot,” an actor who performed percussive dances and occasionally narrated certain scenes, much like a Greek chorus. The acting was strong and the staging innovative, as it illuminated a page from African-American history.

*Yes, that Ford Theater; the box where Lincoln was murdered stands empty and draped with an American flag