How I Spent My Summer (2025)

Bridal Falls, Goat Island, NY

Three months. Summer has been ending earlier and earlier, this year it began earlier, too.

To celebrate our eldest’s graduation from college, we planned an international journey, a vacation in Spain. We hadn’t taken our children on a transatlantic expedition since they were very, very young, not since I brought I Hate This to the UK. They don’t even remember that trip, only in photos.

First, however, a snag. I thought I had a valid passport, and I did, but it was due to expire. We noted this days before our departure. Renewal necessitated an urgent drive to Buffalo, which was in its way a not unpleasant prelude to the season, which included a fine cocktail in the hotel bar, and a rainy day stroll in Niagara Falls State Park, waiting for my ID to be processed.

Fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes in the presence of Bridal Falls. I live for moments like this.

Bilbao, Spain

When folks ask what my favorite part of our Spanish vacation was, you will forgive me for saying it was the opportunity to spend ten, responsibility-free days in the company of the three people I love most in the world. Social anxiety issues aside, our kids are excellent travelers. They are not only open to interesting, sometimes unplanned experiences, unusual spaces and food, they are also very good communicators and check in when they need a break. I am also better at this than I was as a young person, and that is thanks to them.

Our eldest’s achievements inspired this excursion, so the emphasis was on art. We saw the Prado, and the Reina Sophia. We attended the Guggenheim Bilbao, and finally the Segrada Familia. However, we also took in a little jazz with the boy, happening upon a barside trio outside the Guggenheim, and the David Pastor Quintet in Barcelona. I tagged the bandleader on my socials; a brief interaction revealed the connection between him and the head of the boy’s department at UC. Small world, indeed.

Great Lakes Theater Camp

I am always seeking new and better ways to lead, instruct and create. This is as true at our annual summer arts camp as in any other arena, and not only did the team put on some pretty amazing performances, I was developing new ideas as how to best curate an all too brief playwriting workshop, and how best to showcase the work.

We had about a half hour, every day (which is to say, for only six or seven days) for a small cohort of middle school aged campers to write short plays, which then received staged readings by high school aged campers. Everyone agreed the work was good, and I have some powerful thoughts about how to make the experience more exciting for all involved next year.

Peter Voinovich
"Churchill at War"
Actors Summit Productions

The eldest and I turned out for the No Kings protest where I spotted Fred Armisen casually walking past om his way to the opening of the SNL exhibit at the Rock Hall. By his gaze he seemed either impressed or bewildered by the Free Stamp.

We’ve also been attending a lot of Guardians games. It’s been a season of ups and downs, for the time being I’m withholding judgment. I have also had the chance to meet up with old college friends (emphasis on old) including seeing my roommate Peter onstage for the first time since, well, college, playing Churchill in a solo performance in Akron.

Much of my mental energy has been focused on The Right Room, of course, and my physical energy as well. While rehearsals were taking place I was acting as de facto sound designer and also curating and even creating props for the production.

Zach Palumbo, Nicole Coury
"The Right Room"
In Rehearsal

The BorderLight Festival was remarkable. I posted about our performances last month, it was all up and over on the same day. The next day, a Saturday, I saw a half dozen shows. 

Highlights include Impact Award Winner Sincerely, (The Diary Play) by Bryanna Lee, She Was a Conquistawhore by Rachel O'Hanlon-Rodriguez, performed in The Snug at Parnell’s (where Give Me Your Keys produced my play Step Nine two years ago) and Eric Coble’s The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus, masterfully performed by Tia Shearer Bassett.

Then we got the heck out of town.

Zach Palumbo, Nicole Coury
"The Right Room"
BorderLight Theater Festival
Photo: Daren Stahl

I try not to look forward to our annual journey to Maine. It will come, as it (almost) always does, but once it’s gone, so is the summer. This year, however, we were joined not only by the children but also their partners. It was a joyful and relaxing celebration of family and fellowship, replete with day trips and afternoons on the rock just reading, great food and drink and conversation.

Our last night on the road, stopping in Little Falls, New York, I had another chance to indulge in falling waters, writ small.

Now we’re back and home and at work and August has barely begun. But this weekend we’re going to Cedar Point.

The Right Room | In Performance

Charles & Mathilda
(Zach Palumbo & Nicole Coury)
Photo: BorderLight Theater Festival

The BorderLight Theater Festival is closed for 2025, and with that, so too our run of The Right Room in the Presidential Suite at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Playhouse Square. For those in the room, and for our young company, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The audience only saw the bedroom; the bed, a couch, a few armchairs. They, the audience, were asked to sit in one of eight, ordinary, cushioned chairs. They were also asked not to relocate those chairs, and to make sure their personal items were stashed underneath. They were also advised that though this play would be intimate, it would not be interactive; do not touch or speak to the actors, and they will not touch or speak to you.

Once they were settled, the characters entered through the same room the audience had. Throughout the performance they accessed the bathroom (lines delivered when folks were offstage in the bathroom were amusingly louder than those delivered in the room itself) and occasionally dipped into a closet – but it wasn’t an actual closet. It was a door into the adjoining suite, blocked by a curtain.

The suite (or living room area) was our green room, it was larger than the bedroom. The east end of the Crowne Plaza is rounded, with a view overlooking East 14th and Euclid, the Chandelier. The audience could see this as they entered, but most sat with their backs to the windows for the show. If you can imagine, the entire suite wrapped around the end of the hallway. The door to the suite faced the door to the bedroom itself.

Just as the actors were lining up for entrances at the top of the first performance, facing the suite door, ready to cross the hallway to the bedroom door, I was standing off to one side behind them. Suddenly, the actors playing Fanny and Mason both turned their heads to look at me. And in that moment I saw my biological grandparents, people I never had the chance to meet or even know about, young and attractive and with their whole lives ahead of them. I wasn't expecting that.

Their real names, by the way, were George and Martha. Truth is stronger than fiction.  

BorderLight show pages included the opportunity for audience members to rate and review the productions, and we received many wonderful comments. Here are just a few:

“Each character was incredibly human; in turns flawed, lonely, searching, funny, sad, excited, passionate, confused, and affected by people and a past they only partly understood.” - Amelia B.

“The staging was deft and I was never at a loss of where to look or what story was being told. A truly immersive theater experience that has to be seen to be believed.” - Philip F.

“Jasmine Renee’s direction was outstanding. Pulling off clear storytelling in such an intimate space is no small challenge, and she nailed it. Serenity Grace Tate’s costumes were spot on, and I was comforted to see that Julia Fisher was engaged as Intimacy Director... I hope his play has a life beyond the wonderful Borderlight Festival. We all need to find ourselves in the right room.” - Daniel H.

On a related note: Today is my birthday, and by tradition, I am on vacation. In the office, birthdays are celebrated with cake and ice cream, and about ten years ago they began celebrating mine in my absence. 

It started with a photo of the staff having ice cream at a place on the square, the gag becoming sillier with each passing year. One year they were all crammed into my office … with ice cream. During the quarantine, a picture of an empty breakroom with hats and noisemakers on the large table.

This year? A staff picture in a room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel with a note reading, "We're finally in the Right Room!"

In case you were wondering, I truly love where I work.

The Right Room | Final Dress Rehearsal

Bradley Hughes & Kayce Kvacek
as Leif & Lucille Larsen

Last night an invited audience witnessed the final dress rehearsal for The Right Room. Today everyone is taking a well-deserved rest — or scurrying about taking care of last-minute details — before tomorrow's ticketed performances at the Crowne Plaza Playhouse Square, presented as part of the BorderLight Theatre Festival.

I cannot adequately express how happy I have been with this experience. The acting company is ideal, the members of production working in tandem, attending to every detail, calmly addressing every challenge, and it all came together so lovingly last night as the show progressed without a dropped moment.

When first proposed, the script ran about 75 minutes. As BorderLight conditions called for an hour max, it was necessary for me to lose a not insignificant number of pages. The result is a tight, streamlined piece which nonetheless lost none of those moment I most treasured. It's a better script. If I were to later expand it to, say, an eighty minute piece, I'm not sure I'd just put everything I've cut back in.

Having eight audience members in the room with us last night, it became apparent just how intimate this piece will be; how close the audience is to the actors, and they to the audience. This may sound obvious, but these audience members are right there in the room with the characters, just as the characters — those who cannot see each other — are with each other. It's such a fascinating dance!

Rachel Gold & Cole Tarantowski
as Fanny & Mason

The post-rehearsal response was positive and generous, and none more supportive than my spouse, my favorite critic (no, really, she's an actual critic) who provided me with some welcome and much appreciated perspective. The company should be confident they are doing great work, she let me know it's a great play.

And here we are. The festival is open, and tomorrow this wildly talented team of artists is going to present this play that I wrote, The Right Room, three times in the same evening, in an actual hotel room. And I have to remind myself this is also the story of a story, a story I have spent the greatest part of my long life believing would never told, that I never knew could exist, let alone that I could actually tell. And to tell it like this.

I don't actually wish my parents could see it. But I kind of wish they could see it.

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025

The Right Room | Production Biographies

Jasmine Renee (Director) 

Directing work in Cleveland includes Measure for Measure with Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, Alice in Wonderland Jr. for Fairmount Center for the Arts, and Shrek the Musical at Fairmount Center for the Arts. Jasmine served as an Actor-Teacher for Great Lakes Theater and is a Teaching Artist with Fairmount Center for the Arts.

Julia Fisher (Intimacy Director) 

Julia (she/her) is an intimacy director and playwright whose work has been seen in professional theatres throughout Northeast Ohio. She is a Certified Intimacy Director through Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, where she worked for two years as a Teaching Artist and Curriculum Developer. She currently serves as Dobama Theatre's Resident Intimacy Director, and she has intimacy directed over 40 productions across Ohio. This is Julia's fifth year creating art for BorderLight, where she and her collaborators won the Near West Theatre Emerging Artist Award in 2022 and the Producer's Choice Award in 2021. www.juliachristinefisher.com

Lindy Warren (Stage Manager) 

Lindy is grateful to assist with this unique production. Production management work includes The 39 Steps at Idaho Shakespeare Festival and Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Great Lakes Theater. For six years, she has also served as director of the youth musical program at Lakewood Congregational Church. She spent two years as an actor-teacher with Great Lakes Theater, bringing Shakespeare to schools across Northeast Ohio. Lindy thanks you for supporting the arts and live theater!

Serenity Grace Tate (Costumes) 

Serenity Grace (they/them) is a Costume technician and designer with a BFA in theatrical costume technology from Kent State University. They have worked as a craftsperson and First hand for Great Lakes Theater since spring 2022 as well as filling various roles for Playhouse Square and touring productions throughout Northeast Ohio.

Bradley Wyner (Music) 

Bradley has worked as a music director at Cain Park (Rent and School of Rock), Blank Canvas (Hedwig, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, One Man Two Guvnors, many others), plus Cleveland Public Theater, Dobama, Kalliope Stage, Cleveland Play House. Proud of his many years as a teaching artist (Case Western Reserve, Cleveland School of the Arts, and more); students have gone on to careers as teachers, non-profit leaders, journalists, artists, musicians, and actors on stages from Broadway to Cleveland. Bradley also works as the Director of Education at Milestones Autism Resources.

David Hansen (Playwright) 

David (he/him) has participated in Cleveland’s theater renaissance as a founder of Guerrilla Theater Company and artistic director for Dobama’s Night Kitchen and Bad Epitaph Theater, as well as an actor and director at theaters across Northeast Ohio. BorderLight Festival audiences may have seen his plays Step Nine (2023) and The Toothpaste Millionaire (2024). He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Cleveland State University. David is Education Outreach Associate for Great Lakes Theater and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. www.davidhansen.org

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. 

The Right Room | Cut Dialogue

We are deep into rehearsals for The Right Room, which opens (and, as it happens, closes) on Friday, July 18 as part of the BorderLight Theater Festival in Playhouse Square.

This is a new work, and because of that and also because it needs to fit neatly within a one hour timeframe, there need be editing. That is good. I like editing. The work is not done. Even when it is done, it is not done.

It is not surprising to me that dialogue between the two characters from the 1990s might have be a bit too ... trivial? Let's say dry. Or ironic, don't you think? And possibly unnecessary.

For time, and also comprehension, we cut the following exchange about infidelity.

Characters:

Steve (M, 26)

Aubrey (F, 24)

Time: Fall 1994

Place: A hotel room, Independence, OH

STEVEN

I do worry I am what they call a serial monogamist.

AUBREY

I don’t like that term. It sounds pathological.

STEVEN

Like serial killer.

AUBREY

Serial anything, like a radio drama.

STEVEN

A serial.

AUBREY

Yeah.

STEVEN

I’ve been eating a lot of cereal.

AUBREY

We’re the generation that can eat cereal for dinner.

STEVEN

Who waits for dinner?

AUBREY

I don’t worry about it, I think that’s a natural state for man to be in.

STEVEN

Serial monogamy.

AUBREY

Yeah.

STEVEN

I like the way you say yeah.

AUBREY

Yeah.

STEVEN

Yeah.

[Waving their hands:]

STEVEN & AUBREY

Yeah!!!

STEVEN

I could deal with the monogamy, it’s the cheating I can’t abide.

AUBREY

Don’t cheat, then.

STEVEN

The first time I heard the song “Tempted” I thought, oh! Cheating is a thing you can do.

AUBREY

I mean, there’s “The Piña Colada Song.”

STEVEN

Yeah! Or “Careless Whisper.”

AUBREY

Tipper Gore was right.

# # #

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. 

The Right Room | Actor Biographies

Nicole Coury (Mathilda)

 Performance credits include I’m Alive … and Always Will Be (Lang) with Nightbloom Theatre Company, Aida (ensemble/fight captain) at Karamu House, Language Archive (Emma) and Ada and the Engine (Ada Byron) at Clague Playhouse, Bedroom Culture (Mia) at Cleveland Public Theater, Acts of Clay (various) at Wizbang Theater and Executing Eve at Convergence Continuum.

Rachel Gold (Fanny)

Rachel is a Cleveland-based actor, director, fight choreographer, and educator. Acting credits include The Body Play (CPT), Grand Concourse (Seat of the Pants), Little Women (Dobama), and multiple roles with Great Lakes Theater and Cleveland Shakespeare Festival (CSF). She serves as Artistic Director of CSF, where she directed King Lear, and has also directed The Tempest (Beck Center) and radio plays with Radio on the Lake Theater. This fall, she will guest direct at her alma mater, Baldwin Wallace University. Rachel’s work spans classical and contemporary theatre, with a focus on dynamic physical storytelling.

Bradley Hughes (Leif)

Bradley is currently a BFA Acting Major at Baldwin Wallace University. His recent credits include: Twelfth Night and King Lear at the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival; Three Sisters, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, Measure for Measure, and The Dining Room at Baldwin Wallace University; and The Rescue of John Price (workshop) at The Oberlin Wellington Rescue Theatre Project.

Evan Joslyn (Steven)

Evan was most recently seen as Malvolio in Cleveland Shakespeare Festival’s production of Twelfth Night. He spent the past school year as an Actor-Teacher with Great Lakes Theater, and will spend the next with Montana Shakespeare in the Parks as part of their educational outreach tour of Richard III. As an immersive playwright, Evan’s second collaboration with Columbus Children’s Theatre, In the Land of Oz, will be produced this fall. He received a degree in theatre from Denison University and furthered his training at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey and Gaiety School of Acting. 

Kayce Kvacek (Lucille)

Kayce is a Cleveland based actress and playwright. She received her BFA from Boston University and has trained at The Academy for the Performing Arts and LAMDA (London). Some of her favorite roles have included Viola in Twelfth Night, May in Fool for Love and Camille in Horse Girls. Her first one act play, Ships in the Night, was accepted to the Boston Playwrights 24 Hour Play Marathon and has since been published & performed across the country.

Zach Palumbo (Charles)

Zach is a Cleveland-based performer whose favorite roles include Eugene in Broadway Bound (Beck Center), Feste in Twelfth Night and the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz (Ohio Shakespeare Festival), Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors, and SpongeBob in The SpongeBob Musical (Blank Canvas Theatre). He’s premiered works at Cleveland Public Theatre, including Savory Taṇhā and Experts in a Dying Field, and performed with Karamu House, none too fragile, and others. He’s also a music director with credits at Clague Playhouse and CWRU. His rock opera Future Perfect, co-written by David L. Munnell, premiered at BorderLight Festival in 2024.

Dani Schmaltz (Aubrey)

New to Cleveland, Dani is an Actor-Teacher at Great Lakes Theater. Previous acting credits include: The 39 Steps at The Appalachian Center for the Arts, Energy Game Changers educational tour with The National Theatre for Children, world premiere musical The Suffragist at Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and The Nerd at St. Croix Festival Theatre, and Dry Land at Rising Fire Theatre.

Cole Tarantowski (Mason)

Acting work in Cleveland includes A Midsummer's Night Dream with Cleveland Shakespeare Festival where he played Demetrius, Acts of Clay at Wizbang Theater, and he played a role in Karfuffle in Parmadoro 2 as part of the 2024 Micro Theatre festival. Cole also has begun his journey as a playwright, with his first full length play, Handlebar Brakes being recently presented as a staged reading at Cleveland Public Theater as part of their Test Flight theater festival.

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. 

The Right Room | Character Biographies

Fanny was born in 1910, in Vermillion, Minnesota, the fifth of eight children. Her mother, a school teacher, passed away when Fanny was fourteen years old. A home-girl (in the former meaning of that term) she had two sons – the first she had placed for adoption when she was 25 – before marrying at the age of 36, to a man with whom she had a third son. She died in 1979, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, at the age of 69, and was buried in her hometown. She was never reunited with her first child.

Mason was born in 1913, in Hastings, Minnesota. He fathered a child that was born in 1935 before marrying another woman the following year, and together they had three children. A career in the Minnesota state house was brought short by his alcoholism, and he pursued a life in teaching and high school administration. He died in 1999, in Bellingham, Washington, at the age of 86. There is no evidence to suggest he was ever aware of the existence of his first child.

Lucille was born in 1904, in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1932, at the age of 28, she married Leif. They suffered two miscarriages and a stillbirth before adopting sons from the Willows Maternity Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri in 1935, and again in 1938. A registered nurse, she was employed by the Maternal Health Association, the forerunner of today’s Planned Parenthood of Greater Cleveland. She died in 1982, in Bay Village, Ohio, at the age of 78.

Leif was born in 1904 in Fevik, Norway, immigrating to the United States in 1927, and receiving American citizenship in 1931. He married Lucille in 1932 in Lakewood, Ohio and they adopted two sons. As a younger man he was a merchant seaman, later a member of the IBM Division of Cleveland Trust Bank. He died in 2005, in St. Petersburg, Florida, at the age of 101.

Mathilda was born in 1935, and brought up in Lakewood, Ohio. She married Charles in 1959, with whom she raised three boys in Bay Village, engaged in a traditional, suburban lifestyle as housewife and mother, supporting school organizations and a local food pantry. Following the death of her husband, she resumed a relationship with Archie, her high school sweetheart. Archie was holding her hand when she died in 2020, at the age of 84.

Charles was born at the Willows Maternity Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri in 1935. His adoptive parents raised him (largely) in Lakewood, Ohio. Graduating from Miami University, he was employed by Cleveland Trust/Ameritrust before forced retirement at the age of 53. He married Mathilda in 1959, and they raised three sons in Bay Village, Ohio. He died in 2016 in Lakewood at the age of 80, never having shown any outward interest in his biological heritage.

Aubrey was born in 1970 in Athens, Ohio, to a teenage mother, who raised her as a single mom after Aubrey’s biological father left when she was four, before her mother remarried in 1980. She graduated from high school a year early, moving first to Atlanta, and then to New York City before she turned 18. She moved to Cleveland in 1995, where she established herself as a writer and editor, a high school teacher and bookseller. With Steven she bore three children, the first stillborn.

Steven was born in 1968, in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in the suburb of Bay Village. Shortly after graduating from college he entered into a brief, two-year marriage. He married Aubrey in 1999, with whom he had three children, the first stillborn. He has been an underground theater artist, an arts educator, marketing director, actor, director and playwright. Since 1991 he has lived in Cleveland Heights, the city of great writers.

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. 

The Right Room | Playwright's Note

The Willows Maternity Sanitarium

Once upon a time, the birth of my father was a tightly held secret; held by his biological mother, by the Willows Maternity Hospital, by the state of Missouri, and by the man himself, for he did not want to know.

Shortly following the death of my dad, through science and fortune, we learned the identity of his biological mother. And through recent investigations of my own, we also know the identity of his biological father. This came as something of a breathtaking revelation.

My mother once suggested I write a play inspired by the letters dad’s adoptive parents wrote to each other when my grandfather was a merchant seaman. And in part, I have finally done what she asked, and much more.

The Right Room is inspired by this lineage and these discoveries; how a child was conceived, adopted, chose a mate and how I came to be.

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025

On Site-Specific Theater

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025

Let us define our terms.

Dr. Suzy Woltmann defines immersive theatre as “a performance art movement that aims to transform audience members from passive recipients to active participants.” Furthermore, she highlighted features of immersive performance which may include:

• Blurring the line between audience and performer
• Leaving the stage behind
• Including sensory experiences
• Shifting between the personal and the collective

An immersive experience can often be described as site-specific theatre, though those terms are not necessarily mutually inclusive. The folks at the Australian Performing Arts Conservatory states that site-specific theatre “breaks free from the confines of a traditional theatre where actors perform on stage. The performances take place in unexpected locations, from bustling city streets and historical sites to warehouses and parks.” Site-specific performance can:

• Create a more immersive experience
• Add a layer of authenticity and depth to the performance
• Allow creative teams to innovate and experiment with storytelling techniques

Site-specific performance is not, of course, a recent thing. By any basic definition, we may assume theater originated any place people were, and only later did everyone decide it needed to happen primarily in what we call a “theater.”

Sleep No More (2011)

But it is because of this codification of theatrical traditions that producing a play in a non-traditional space became something of a novelty. In early years of this century, for example, Charenton Theatre Co. produced a string of site-specific performances across the city of Cleveland, staging Albee’s Zoo Story on a park bench, Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology on a tour of cemeteries, and James McLure’s Lone Star in a number of local drinking establishments.

Site-specific and immersive cross over when they engage the audience in some unique, sensory way. Perhaps the most famous recent example of this was Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, which was set in a vast warehouse made to resemble a stately and crumbling hotel through which a masked audience was welcome to freely wander, handling sets and props and even on occasion, the actors – this last was not specifically encouraged, but it happened. A lot.

Inspired by this, a team of us created the Love In Pieces project in 2014, in which we produced Sarah Morton’s play of that name inside an actual house. Due to space limitations, an evening’s audience was between sixteen and twenty people, and they were split into four groups, each group of four or five experiencing one of the four, ten-minute scenes, before being escorted to the next one.

In 2023, the Give Me Your Keys company presented my play Step Nine as part of the BorderLight Fringe. Director James Rankin had asked for a play for two men to be performed in an actual bar, and I provided him one. Thirty or more crammed into the Snug at Parnell’s in Playhouse Square as two actors spoke at normal, human volume, forcing the crowd to lean in, as if eavesdropping on a private conversation.

I had not planned to apply for BorderLight myself this year, until I read the application and found this note about submitting a site-specific adaptation.

Site-specific Adaptation
Are you willing to adapt your performance to a site-specific location? For example, an alley, a hotel room, a park, a car, a loading dock, or a public street. Artists are also encouraged to suggest a site-specific adaptation/production. (emphasis mine)

Nicholas Chokan, Jason Leupold
Step Nine (2023)
BorderLight Theatre Festival

A hotel room? I have spent the past year writing a script that takes place in a hotel room! I took it as a challenge – a challenge to them. If they could really find a hotel room in which to produce my new play, then by God, I would present my play there.

And so, I am happy to announce that my new play, The Right Room, will be performed as part of the BorderLight Theater Festival 2025 this summer, and produced in a room at the Crowne Plaza Cleveland in Playhouse Square. One single hotel room will represent four different hotel rooms, in four different cities, in four different eras, to tell one very epic narrative. Epic – but intimate.

Source: 

“What Is Immersive Theatre?” by Suzy Woltmann, Backstage, May 8, 2023
“The Role of Site-Specific Theatre in Contemporary Performance Art,” Australian Performing Arts Conservatory, September 19, 2024

The Right Room | BorderLight Festival (trailer)

Pengo's 2024 Summer Book Club

Griffin, Mark, Carrie & Howard

Over the summer I did more reading than I had in a long time, or even since, which is a pity because there is much more time in which to do it in.

A two week vacation afforded me the opportunity to read two books with a third bringing me home; no small coincidence they all had to do with the performing arts.

The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War by James Shapiro is a rather company history of the Federal Theatre Project, and how that three year government works project led, in its way, to the establishment of the House Committee on Un-American Activities which stretched from that time in the mid-1930s into the 1970s.

He’s not just documenting history, however, his main agenda is to illustrate how the lust for power and influence, rather than any particular belief or sense of duty, drives certain individuals to frighten the public with manufactured bogeymen, and to destroy those who are earnestly working in the best interests of the society as a whole in pursuit of their own hollow desires. This is as true today as it was in 1938.

While I was in Maine, I was not participating in the BorderLight Theatre Festival in Cleveland.* This is a pity, as in 2023 I was able to indulge in the festival and was thrilled by all the local artists working in and around downtown Cleveland that weekend.

This year, one of BorderLight’s international artists was Paterson Joseph, a British actor of TV and film and a veteran of the RSC. I remembered him from the absurd BBC hospital drama parody Green Wing, and, as it happens, I had also seen him play Oswald in King Lear at Stratford-Upon-Avon in 1990, when we were both much younger men.

In Cleveland this summer, he performed his monodrama Sancho & Me: One Night Only, based on the life of Charles Ignatius Sancho, a British composer (among numerous other talents and vocations) who was able, in spite of having been born on a slave ship, to rise and prosper in society. He was even the second person of African descent to vote in England.

While I was unable to see this performance, I did take advantage of an online lecture, The Art and Craft of Historical Fiction Writing, for which Joseph, speaking to us live from London (it was midnight where he was, bless him) described the process of taking a figure like Sancho, who left a scant historical record of his personal life, and building it into a fully formed character.

He referred to his own novel, The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho, and when the time arrived for questions I asked about his process, adapting his novel into his script. He explained that it was, in fact, the other way around – he has performed this play for some time, and during the Covid-19 quarantine he took the opportunity to expand the work into a novel, his first.

By the time the seminar had concluded, I had already texted my wife to order a copy of the book from Loganberry Books, and they already had it in stock – because of course they did!

I was mostly through Playbook when we arrived in Friendship, but dropped it for Secret Diaries because I was in a fictional mood. It is fiction, in that there is so little known about Sancho, but it sings with truth, truth observed in it by the deep historical research conducted by the author.

Finally, I picked up a birthday gift, The Friday Afternoon Club, a memoir by Griffin Dunne. I have long appreciated the dry hipster wit of Dunne, as represented in his performances in films like An American Werewolf in London and After Hours, and have sympathized in him the life of one who strived but always feels out of place wherever he is.

The book is neatly divided in half; the first a collection of tales about privileged slackers, the second in which we take a harrowing turn into the death of his sister, and the ensuing trial of her murderer.

Then I finished The Playbook. Non-fiction, historical fiction, memoir. And since last summer, I’ve been working on my own historical fiction, which is its own kind of memoir of striving, and my own search for acceptance and meaning. 

The book by Joseph and the one by Dunne were inspirational, each in their insistence on honesty and emotional accuracy. The Shapiro book reminds me I have unfinished writing business, on a work which remains relevant and in the new year may become even more so.

*This is not entirely accurate. Talespinner Children’s Theatre remounted my stage adaptation of "The Toothpaste Millionaire" on July 27.

On Criticism

Too hot to wear the sweater.

Twenty years ago today, I woke up to find I Hate This (a play without the baby) had been reviewed in the New York Times.

We were presenting the piece in a walkdown apartment on West 11th at Greenwich that had been converted into a forty seat black box (the stage even featured a fireplace) as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. I’d had maybe a dozen audience members for that first performance, including several critics, and two days later I received a very nice write-up, front page of the Thursday arts section, below the fold.

Did this high-profile review alter my fortunes at the fringe? It did not. Audiences remained tiny, it was August, no one wants to see a show about stillbirth, etc. etc. However, many took note, and I was contacted by hospitals and bereavement centers around the nation, inquiring as to whether I might bring the show to them. Jason Zinoman’s review documented that this show existed, and gave it legs. I performed the piece, on and off, for the next several years.

Alan Barth said, “Journalism is the first rough draft of history,” but a theater review is the only draft of the history of a particular production. Decades from now, when I am dead and gone and all my social media posts have been deleted or wiped, that review will remain in the archives of the “Gray Lady”, the paper of record.

Last month, Cleveland theater critic Christine Howey attended several shows at the BorderLight Festival, and provided daily, online accounts of the proceedings for clevescene.com. That she attended and then turned around next-day capsule reviews for nearly a dozen shows was a feat, and provided a record of what was to be expected from the festival, as it was happening.

As a result, several artists received reviews, reviews which they may not even have been expecting! Reviews they can brag about for, who knows, maybe twenty years?

The Toothpaste Millionaire (production)

Kierstan Conway & Quincy Brame as
Kate & Rufus in "The Toothpaste Millionaire"
(Talespinner Children's Theatre, 2024)
Photo by Steve Wagner

Adolescence doesn’t need to be the worst time in a person’s life, but what a person goes through at that stage of development is exacerbated by our systems of education, which (often, though not always) sequesters kids who are eleven, twelve and thirteen years old on their own and all together. It was horrible for me, and it was horrible for my kids, in spite of our best efforts.

However, when working as an arts educator, whether it be in schools or extracurricular programming like summer theater camp, I like working with middle school aged students best. They respond to the work so powerfully, and it is because, as I see it, they are knowledgeable enough to delve deep into complicated concepts, but still young enough to want to play.

At the start of Jean Merrill’s book The Toothpaste Millionaire, the main characters, Rufus and Kate, are both entering sixth grade. My wife had asked why, if the play adaptation of the book that I was writing was intended for an elementary school audience, that the characters should be in middle school? And my answer was, because it is meant to be aspirational.

As Merrill said in a 2006 interview, “I hope (the book) inspires them to imagine themselves doing things like that. Just because they are kids, it doesn’t mean they can’t have good ideas.”

And after all, the audience for all those High School Musical movies and shows aren’t really high school students, right? Those are watched by the middle school students.

The first time I attended a run-through for the Talespinner Children’s Theatre production of my stage adaptation of The Toothpaste Millionaire, I was delighted by the sense of play that Ananias Dixon (Director) and Diwe Augustin-Glave (Assistant Director) brought to the proceedings. The kids, as written, are witty, and aware, but as performed, are excited and enthusiastic, and not jaded or snarky (as many TV tween characters can be). And so very playful! Which is the point, after all.

Quincy Brame as Rufus Mayflower
(Talespinner Children's Theatre, 2024)
Photo by Steve Wagner

When it came to adapting the book into a script, one of the things that really helped me was creating a calendar of events. The book was published in 1972, and needed to be set at that time. You could update Merrill's story to the 21st century, I suppose, but the world has changed so much in the past fifty years, media, technology, economics, the law, it would really be an entirely different story, and I wanted to tell this one.

Merrill’s plot is uncomplicated by personality conflicts, the kids – and their adult mentors – work together to make Rufus’s dream a reality. They set a goal, achieve it, and then set another, bigger goal, all within the span of two years, which in this version takes us from 1970 to 1972 not exactly an inconsequential period in American history, but what period is. And some of that history, which Merrill did not include – because to her, it was just the present – seep in around the edges of the play (see: references), but only to the extent that an adolescent might be aware of them.

I'm really happy with the design for this premiere production, featuring delightful period costumes by  Jaclyn Vogel (which includes Rufus's iconic blue sweater, mentioned on the very first page of the book), and a functional and colorful set designed by Ren Twardzik with projections by Josh Smith.   

Next Saturday, July 27 at 3:00 PM, The Toothpaste Millionaire will be performed as part of Family Day at the BorderLight Theater Festival in Playhouse Square. Last year I had a short, site-specific play produced at BorderLight, and it was so exciting to see all of the vibrant creativity going on in and around Playhouse Square for that long, summer weekend. This year BorderLight is featuring over fifty shows, and workshops, and the Family Day concept is a new addition. If you’ve got kids, come downtown to join in the fun!

The BorderLight Theatre Festival will take place July 24 – 27, 2024 in downtown Cleveland.

Nelia Rose Holley, Kierstan Kathleen Conway, Julia Boudiab
(Talespinner Children's Theatre, 2024)
Photo by Steve Wagner

Source: "The Toothpaste Millionaire, 35th Anniversary Edition" (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) 

How I Spent My Summer (2023)

Heights High Graduation

We received an invitation to our friends’ annual Labor Day party and it sent me into an existential spiral. I’ve been doing all right so far, but the empty nest thing is real. We drive our son to university this week, and then, well. It will be the two of us, for the most part, from here on out.

Wow. That’s it? Twenty years, really? Okay, uh. Now what? And the idea of attending the Labor Day party, thrown by friends we only know because of our children, without our children. It kind of brought it all home to me.

Parade the Circle

We’ve been summering like hell in an overcompensation for years of sequestering ourselves, with our children, due to quarantine. Let’s get out and do all the shit. What I have failed to do is have people over very much, not since the end-of-year part of the residency program which sucks because the backyard looks awesome.

Angélique Kidjo

The summer kicked off attending commencement for our youngest, at the Wolstein Center, where I had also received my Master Degree two weeks earlier, followed by a flurry of grad parties, one for himself and more for his friends.

My wife and I have attended three Guardians games (so far) this season, with a variety of friends or on our own. I also had the chance to attend the first Parade the Circle that has been celebrated since 2019. The parade was shorter than usual, which was to be expected, I guess.

Go Guardians!

Theater camp was a big hit, I think we got that one mostly right. I was most delighted that we were able to incorporate a writing component into the camp, and I had several acolytes who were happy to join that rather than do craft.

The Tri-C Jazz Fest was another great public event, where not only did our son perform at one of the outdoor bandstands on East 14th Street, but we also saw Angélique Kidjo, Herbie Hancock and Trombone Shorty. Members of the Jazz Academy went nuts for that last show, almost bringing down the balcony of the Connor Palace.


Video: Jazz ensemble "floor3" at Larchmere PorchFest

Drinks at the Grand Pavilion

We also brought the boy to Cincinnati for orientation – this was all before the end of June.

Last summer I became enamored of the Hotel Breakers at Cedar Point. Not that the place is terribly fancy, it’s not. It’s basic and I like that, and also that it’s right there on the beach. I knew nothing about the Breakers growing up, often my folks would take us to the Point only for the twilight, discount hours. 

Young people in Maine.

When my family first visited the hotel last summer, and as my wife was checking us in, I was looking around, walked straight through the lobby and out the other side to find … the lake! The beach! It’s right there! I had no idea!

Location, location, location.

So we took the boy and his boyfriend for an overnight and while the younger pair of us went off to ride rides, we did something I had never had the chance to, namely: watch the shows. You know, all those shows, performed several times a day, every day, by college students and other young performers. And you know what? They were good!

Four votes against Issue 1

The middle of July, time seemed to slow down a little bit. I had pulled a muscle in my ribs on a ride at the park and my days were full of work business, and other theater-related matters. The last week of July we packed up for Maine, the journey I had missed last year due to retinal detachment surgery. This was also my first time back since we distributed mom’s ashes into the sea. The week was not without strong feelings.

We arrived home in time for the BorderLight Fringe Festival, and this past week the boy played his final gig as a student with School of Rock, the Super Seniors Show at the Mercury Music Lounge in Lakewood. Each of the artists got to choose a song for the ensemble to perform, and he chose Soul Coughing’s “Screenwriter’s Blues.” (see video below)

To round out this list, we attended the opening performance of Fun Home last night at Cain Park.* The production is really, really excellent. The boy said it’s the best production of a musical he’s ever seen. A poignant close to a manic summer, don't you think?

"Fun Home"
(Cain Park, 2023)
Photo: Every Angle Photography

Cain Park presents “Fun Home” directed by Joanna May Cullinan in the Alma Theatre through Sunday, August 27, 2023.

*Did I mention we saw Rufus Wainwright at Cain Park in June? We also saw Rufus Wainwright.