Playwrights are thrilled to see their creations take shape and come to life on stage in front of an audience, and delighted when one of their creations strikes a chord with the crowd and becomes a success.
And sometimes a work is so resonant, it finds an audience halfway around the world. That’s what happened with Liv Cummins’ “Vanishing Point,” a musical she wrote with composer Rob Hartmann, a New York University faculty member, that explores the lives of three iconic early 20th-century women: mystery novelist Agatha Christie, aviator Amelia Earhart and evangelist “Sister” Aimee Semple McPherson. Each of the women were as well known for their high-profile disappearances as they were for their careers and accomplishments.
"Sister" Aimee Semple McPherson is overcome.
From the production of "Punto de Fuga."
The musical took the stage this past fall in Madrid. The foray into Spain marks the first time Cummins, an associate professor of drama and creative writing in Lesley’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, had a work produced overseas and in a foreign language. According to Cummins, the Spanish stage actress and theater producer Isabel Fonseca had successfully produced another Hartmann musical in 2013.
“Fonseca approached him and said, ‘What else do you have?’ and he suggested ‘Vanishing Point,’” says Cummins, whose more recent musical “The Bridge,” about the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, was workshopped in 2014 in New York City as part of a Brooklyn Historical Society celebration.
“In several of her pieces, Liv explores the lives of complex women who strain to fly beyond their social and emotional strictures,” says Dr. Christine Evans, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “’Wild Blue’ uses the metaphor of flight for the situation of a young girl who hopes to escape the gravity of circumstance; ‘The Bridge’ gives full due to Emily Warren Roebling, the woman who took over responsibility for the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge after the death of her husband, John, the project’s engineer.
Fonseca read and listened to “Vanishing Point” and immediately wanted to bring it to Spain, Cummins explains, as the producer believed Spanish audiences would connect with the three strong, complicated women characters, who were each 1920s and 1930s legends with startling tales of disappearance:
Agatha Christie, the renowned detective novelist and creator of the beloved mystery protagonists Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, disappeared for 10 days amid a period of personal tumult, not the least of which was her husband’s long-term infidelity. The writer never addressed her disappearance publicly, and omitted the episode from her autobiography.
Amelia Earhart, a pioneer in aviation as the first woman pilot to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean, has historically been characterized as having been a tomboy as a child, exhibiting athleticism, a yen for exploration and a penchant for collecting insects and other small critters. After a turbulent childhood with an alcoholic father, she entered Columbia to pursue medical studies, but quit a year later. She learned to fly and, while living in Medford, became a member of Boston’s Aeronautical Society chapter and became more involved with aviation. That avocation, however, would lead to her disappearance in 1937 during her attempt to fly around the world.
Aimee Semple McPherson, the showbiz-savvy Jazz Age evangelist and lifelong rebel, in spring of 1926 was presumed drowned after she didn’t turn up for Sunday services at the Angelus Temple she founded outside Los Angeles. A month later, she reappeared in a small Mexican town near the Arizona border, with a wild (and disputed) tale of having been kidnapped. The following year, she was set to be charged with conspiracy and obstruction of justice in perpetrating a hoax. Later, though, the Los Angeles district attorney dropped the prosecution because of unreliable witnesses.
Cummins adds that Fonseca was particularly enticed by the challenge of playing the role of “Sister Aimee,” and resolved to rework the piece in Spanish as “Punta de Fuga,” and produce it herself in Madrid’s Teatro Tribuene, a flexible black-box theater. With support from a Lesley Faculty Life and Development grant, Cummins was able to travel to Spain last fall and see the production.
Witnessing audiences in Madrid react to her work, and hearing her lyrics and libretto translated into Spanish was exciting for Cummins.
“Ultimately, it reminded me that theater is itself a universal language,” Cummins reflects. “When you have a fascinating story to tell about ambitious, conflicted people striving for greatness — in essence, a human story — people everywhere respond.”
Check out photos and video from the show and learn more about Cummins’s musical theater work locally and around the country.