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June 7, 2019 · 8:08 am

Blacktip Island Summer Musical To Honor Jacques Cousteau

A coral-encrusted motor scooter serves as the wreck of the Imperial Japanese Navy ship Fujikawa Maru on Blacktip Island’s Heritage House stage during Thursday night’s dress rehearsal of “Death Lagoon,” the Blacktip Island Community Players’ 2019 Summer Musical. (photo courtesy of Aquaimages)

The Blacktip Island Community Players will kick off their 2019 Summer Musical season Saturday evening with the first performance of ‘Death Lagoon,’ a punk rock-themed homage to scuba diving pioneer Jacques Cousteau. The play will be performed Saturday evenings June 8 – July 6 at the Caribbean island’s Heritage House.

“People are making musicals about every other damn-fool thing, so why not a punked-up Cousteau?” said BICP artistic director Doris Blenny. “We’re recreating his most famous episode, ‘Lagoon of Lost Ships,’ where he and his team explored the Imperial Japanese Navy warships sunk in Truk Lagoon during World War Two.

“Blacktip would be a backwater nothing without scuba tourism, and Cousteau was the first to popularize recreational diving,” Blenny said. “It’s an homage, really, showing our collective respect and appreciation for Cousteau and his team. And Payne Hanover’s been on a Stooges jag lately, so it all came together quite naturally.”

The musical features Alison Diesel and Jacques Cousteau, Payne Hanover as Philippe Cousteau, and Lee Helm, Elena Havens and Jessie Catahoula as Calypso crew members.

The staging proved challenging for the BICP props team.

“Creating a realistic underwater scene was tough, but we have some incredibly inventive stage hands,” props master Marina DeLow said. “We scrounged a half-dozen trashed scooters from the dump to use as sunken warships, and we built a suspended fly system to make the actors and fish look like they’re swimming.

“We tried just hanging people from the rafters with dock lines, but it looked way too cheesy,” DeLow said. “It was fun watching Lee Helm swing back and forth, though, yelling for us to cut him down. Which we did. After lunch.”

Original songs include:

Sink and Run
Yamato and Musashi Buggered Off
I’m So Bored With the IJN
Hailstone Riot
Up Your Fujikawa Maru

The performance will conclude with a Sex Pistols-inspired version of John Denver’s ‘Calypso,’ celebrating Cousteau’s famous ship, Blenny said.

“The finale brings a tear to everyone’s eyes every time we rehearse it,” she said. “When those 15, 20 people in the audience hear it, there won’t be enough Kleenex on the island.”

Theater-goers are reminded of the BICP’s standing no-alcohol policy in the Heritage House, instituted after the infamous ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ incident of 2013. Purses, backpacks and pant legs will be checked at the door.

Proceeds from the performances will go to Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Blacktip Island.

Blacktip Island Players To Perform “Waiting For Cousteau”

Divemaster Alison Diesel rests recumbent as the Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser Aikoku Maru during the dress rehearsal for Doris Blenny’s absurdist scuba drama, “Waiting For Cousteau.” (Photo courtesy of Woodym555)

Absurdist scuba drama comes to Blacktip Island’s underwater theater Saturday with the Blacktip Community Players’ Fall Extravaganza “Waiting For Cousteau,” commemorating marine explorer Jacques Cousteau’s famous 1971 expedition to Truk Lagoon.

The play, written by B.C.P. artistic director Doris Blenny, blends ‘The Lagoon of Lost Ships’ episode of “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau,” which documented the exploration of the World War II-era Imperial Japanese fleet sunk at the South Pacific atoll, with Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting For Godot.”

“That show hooked a generation of scuba divers,” Blenny said. “Beckett hooked a generation of theater-goers. Combined, the two speak to a certain je ne sais quoi of time and place that is Blacktip Island.”

In Blenny’s play, the crew of Calypso waits in Truk Lagoon for Jacques Cousteau to arrive. A succession of messengers tells them Cousteau is coming, but he never does. Crewmembers pass the time studying fish, debating whether they’re seeing the same fish or merely similar fish, and whether they’ve had that conversation before.

“It’s art copying life for most of Blacktip’s residents,” Blenny said. “And, frankly, some of the guests.”

The play will be staged in 20 feet of water off Diddley’s Landing public pier in a model of Cousteau’s famous exploration ship, Calypso. Local divemasters will play Cousteau’s crew as well as the Japanese wrecks.

“It’s an awesome acting exercise,” said divemaster Alison Diesel, who plays the sunken auxiliary cruiser Aikoku Maru. “Any schmuck can lay there and say she’s a shipwreck, but for this, you have to tell a destroyer from a minesweeper just by the set of the actor’s shoulders. In full scuba gear, mind you.”

“The depth of talent on display here is stunning,” Blenny said. “Gage Hoase does the narration in an absolutely spot-on Rod Serling. And his prologue in Cousteau’s voice is uncanny.”

“Aft-air many days in the lagoon the Crew of Calypso became very lonely,” Hoase said as Cousteau. “Some even grew quite friendly with the booby birds populating the island.”

“Of course, on Blacktip the guests usually become friendly with the dive staff,” Hoase added, dropping out of character. “But it amounts to the same thing.”

All performers will use Aqua Lung regulators in honor of Cousteau’s invention.

The performance will be streamed live to televisions in the Sand Spit bar as well as on the B.C.P. website.

The Sand Spit will feature specials on rum-and-bourbon Shipwreck cocktails, French wine and Japanese sake. Red knit watch caps will be available for purchase before and after the calypso dance contest.