Cappies Review: Airness High School Edition At McLean High School

McLean VA

31 January, 2022

2:26 PM

Description

By Jaeden Kunkel of Centreville High School Fingers flew across fretboards, the heavy pound of the bassline shook the risers, lights and smoke engulfed the audience into the music. This may sound like something straight out of Madison Square Garden, except that those guitars are made of air, and those risers are in the black box theater of McLean High School, not NYC! Airness, written by Chelsea Marcantel, first debuted on stage in 2017, but went into something of a "hibernation" when the pandemic hit in late 2019. Now, Airness is back for one of its first stages in years, live at MHS. Airness follows the story of Nina, a young woman who learns about the art of air guitar (and quite a bit more) through an eccentric group of friends as they compete to become the next air guitar champions. Airness is described as having a minimal set, but the way that the MHS set crew executed their production's set design proved that �minimal' doesn't have to mean ordinary. Throughout most of the production, the audience watched the cast interact in a series of bars, all represented by the same set. Despite the lack of frequent set changes, however, it never became dull to look at. The detail put into the set and props (done by Keira Murphy, Kylee Majkowski, and Jackie Stoll) made it look straight from a real bar, right down to a functional beer kegerator, engineered by JT Fulkerson, Megan Wright, and Ethan Jones. The immersive experience that McLean's unique environment created was one of, if not the most thrilling part of the show. The McLean sound team (JT Fulkerson, Emma Springer, Ethan Jones, Matthias Zahinser-Renteria, Megan Wright, Dillon Prestidge) amped the volume of the classic rock songs that played throughout the show to a perfect level. They were just loud enough for the audience to feel the bass, and get pulled right into the world of Airness, but not loud enough to be overwhelming, or to drown out any important moments in the show. As they clapped and stomped to the beat, cheered for the heroes, and booed for the villains, the audience became not just onlookers at a play, but adoring fans at a real air guitar competition. The tech was not the only thing that pulled the audience in, however. While the loud music, colorful lights, and smoke machines had the audience making as much noise as a real concert, the emotional scenes had them gasping and jumping in shock, and at times, going completely silent. The antagonist of the show, D Vicious (played by Kate Fontaine), argued with two of the main characters in two separate scenes, once with Nina (played by Jackie Stoll), and once with Cannibal Queen (played by Idil Erdogan). Both of these arguments created a potent, personal tension throughout the black box, as though the audience had walked in on a real argument and was wondering, "Am I even supposed to be witnessing this?" The argument scenes had noticeable buildup, going from a tense discussion to a full-on verbal brawl, table slamming and all. In Fontaine's later appearances as Vicious, the audience loudly booed her character, a true sign of a villain done right. There is so much to talk about with McLean's Airness: the characterful, spunky hair, makeup, and costumes, the clean and oftentimes hilarious blocking, the list goes on, but to detail every brilliant part of this production would take at least five more essays, and one can only do a production like this so much justice in written form. All in all, McLean's Airness was highly immersive, incredibly realistic, and overall, pure rock and roll!