August 4-14

12:10 pm

(1hr15)

Tickets

£7.50-£9.50

Cvenue34

Adam House

Chamber Street

Box office

0845 260 1234 www.CtheFestival.com

Fringe box office

0131 226 0000 www.edfringe.com

The Fastest Woman Alive chronicles the rise of famed pilot Jackie Cochran from humble beginnings to the first woman to break the sound barrier. Founder of the Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) she held that women were just as capable of flying military aircraft as men. Millionaires, famous aviators and presidents helped her fund the medical research that proved women were capable of space flight. At age 83, she held more speed flying records than anyone in the world.

Karen Sunde’s play moves at breakneck speed through Jackie’s childhood, first flying lessons, and her close relationships with Amelia Earhart, Chuck Yeager and millionaire Floyd Odlum, and into the heartbreak of her own despair. Relationships with General Hap Arnold, Lyndon B Johnson and Ike Eisenhower were pivotal to her quest for power in the male dominated world of aviation. Sunde delves into the triumphs as well as the difficult and obstinate psyche of one of the most famous female pilots of the twentieth century.

Underscored by marching songs of the WASP and the original compositions of Tyler Kimmel, this fast-paced and poignant look at one of the fastest women in the world honors the memory of all women who have served in times of conflict.

Karen Sunde has been awarded a McKnight Fellowship, an NDEA Fellowship, the Aide de la Creation award in France, and the Bob Hope Award. Composer Tyler Kimmel’s work includes Hymn to 9/11, and most recently Prestuplenie i Nakazanie, an opera in Russian based on Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

“The time-honored belief that Army flying is for men only has gone into the ash can”

Life Magazine, 19 July 1943