Kirk Lynn gets his show off the ground
Do you remember the first time you had the idea to make a show about the Wright Brothers?
I have a play about punk rock, The Cold Record. A friend of mine saw it and said “Make me one like that, but about science.”
That sounds boring.
I know! I told him, I don’t think much about that, but I do teach play. And two things about early flight got me interested. 1. paper airplanes–they date back more than 2000 years. Toys flew long before machines. And at first, the way the Wright Brothers flew was sort of like a sled you lie down in. Their mother would build these machines.
No! Really?
She was the engineer in the family. She was good at math and measurements and she saved all the stuff her sons built. 2. I got interested in flipping coins, randomness and resilience. And the question of why randomness is a substitute for fairness–like if there’s a tie, you flip a coin to break it? That that seems fair?
Anyway, I was researching famous coin flips and I learned that the Wright Brothers flipped a coin because only one of them could be the first to fly.
Wait–their plane was only big enough for one Wright Brother?
Yes. So the Younger brother [Orville] loses. His first attempt ends in a little crash. So the loser [Wilbur] ends up getting to be the first to fly. Resilience over randomness! After that I just fell in love with their collaboration.