By Carol
Schaal '91M.A.
The
near south side of South Bend once smelled of sweat and security.
Workers poured in and out of the giant Studebaker factories there,
making cars, making healthy paychecks. The monstrous brick buildings
denoted a vibrant community living off the profits of heavy manufacturing.
When Jessica Chalmers arrived as an assistant professor at Notre
Dame in 1999, the Manhattan resident had never been to the Midwest.
Driving around her new community, she soon learned why northern
Indiana is considered part of the Rust Belt.
"I became intrigued by those buildings downtown -- how haunting
they were," she says. "The town was co-habitating with its ghosts."
Those stark, brooding reminders of the 1963 closing of the automotive
manufacturer still hover over the town. For the playwright Chalmers,
that eerie feel channeled her creative energy. "The idea of a
ghost story came to me," she says.
And so was born Avanti: A Postindustrial Ghost Story.
The multimedia theater production is set to premier in South Bend
in September. Plans are being made to stage the performance piece
in other cities, including Chicago and New York.
In 2000, Chalmers won an Obie, Off-Broadway's highest honor,
for her script of Jet Lag, a project that combined live
performances with multimedia. Avanti, named after the
futuristic car that Studebaker pinned its dying financial hopes
on, will be on that same cutting edge, with actors, videos and
3-D imaging all contributing to the theatrical production. Avanti
is being co-produced by Notre Dame and The Builders Association,
a New York City experimental theater company that specializes
in fact-based fiction.
The narrative begins when a demolition crew discovers the Ghost
of Studebaker in a storage tank at an abandoned Studebaker factory.
One of the workers is sucked into the final days of Studebaker,
where he witnesses the closing that brought the city of South
Bend to the brink of economic ruin. Throughout the production,
the shadowy figure of the pension-loser, a symbol of the workers
who faced personal ruin when their jobs and, for some, their pensions
disappeared, haunts the stage. "There were suicides at the time,"
Chalmers says.
The scriptwriter wants the production to speak on three different
levels: The first is the Studebaker story itself, the story of
an independent company that started making horse-drawn wagons
and carriages and, as time went on, cars and military trucks.
The automaker became South Bend's largest employer, and the city's
fortunes mimicked the company's boom and bust cycles.
In a more general way, she says, the story also points to "the
shifting economic and labor conditions in America," as the country
moves from a manufacturing to a service economy.
Finally, there is the global effect. "I see it as a comment
on outsourcing," Chalmers says.
Before she began writing the ghost story, Chalmers interviewed
former Studebaker employees and dug through available archives.
She was allowed to tour one of the abandoned factories. During
that visit, she saw some giant pits filled with liquid. "These
are dangerous places -- toxic," she says. A perfect place for
a ghost to materialize, it seems.
The perfect place for the production, it also seems, will be
a small industrial portion of Union Station in downtown South
Bend. "It's site-specific theater," says Robin Slutsky, producer
of Avanti.
Chalmers says she originally wanted to have the show at one
of the former Studebaker plants, which would have offered "a theatricality
that's built into the place itself." The presence of toxic materials
in the factory put an end to that hope.
In mid-May, Chalmers was still working on the script. "I come
out of the avant-garde, where the process of making something
is as important as the product," she says.
For Avanti, that process involves the entire community.
This summer South Bend Regional Museum of Art is showcasing the
working process of the production, including photos of the industrial
decay. "Even the wreckage is fascinating," says Slutsky. The Northern
Indiana Center for History will highlight images from the industrial
period. Lectures, art projects by school children and area museum
displays also are planned. A website listing dates of performance
and other information is at www.nd.edu/~avanti.
"It's more than a South Bend story," says Slutsky, "but at its
core, its heart is here."
Carol Schaal is managing editor of this magazine.
(July 2004)
