Twelfth Night: The Final

Orsino
Photo: Catherine Young

The Great Lakes Theater touring production of Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) in celebration of the First Folio has concluded, the set and costumes packed away until such time as they are required again.

There were high school teacher colleagues in attendance these past two weeks expressing interest in having the show visit their school. Why not? The duration (less than forty-five minutes) fits neatly into most school periods. If all four of our actors weren’t already booked as members of the residency program, that would work out quite easily. If the show is wanted, we’ll make it happen.

Transporting the play to sites on the near east side last week, to Shaker Heights and to Tremont were great fun, each a different experience in how the performance conformed to the space. Best of all, however, was when we produced a three day stand in Brett Hall this past weekend in the main branch of the Cleveland Public Library.

This has as much to do with time as place. You may have heard there’s lotsa stuff happening in Cleveland this week. That was part of the reason the Folger Library chose to send us the First Folio in July, for maximum visibility and impact, the arrival of the Republican National Convention.

What the RNC has also provided, however, has been an opportunity for the city to engage in the kind of public works which might otherwise be shouted down as a waste of money or a diversion from issues that might better be addressed. I do not agree with these opinions, they are the kind of argument people are always using to prevent progress.

To take one example, the redesign of Public Square was completed a few weeks ago and the park (I keep referring to it as a park, is that all right?) has opened to the people. It’s beautiful, and folks are coming and they are enjoying it.

Olivia
Photo: Catherine Young

For most of my life, Public Square has not been a destination for anyone. There was no there there, it was a site for demonstrations and for people to congregate who had little else to do. Yes, there was always the Soldier and Sailors Monument, and following its renovation in 2010 has itself been a glorious and historic site to visit.

I remember this thing that happened once. For a fee our high school marching band was part of a parade to gain a certain radio station broadcast rights to the Cleveland Browns. The station's plan was to start at Public Square and march down to Municipal Stadium and harass Art Model as he met with the interested parties at the stadium.

The entire event felt sketchy to me, our marching band for rent like this. I recall observing the dozens of people who had gathered downtown for the parade. It was the early 1980s. “It’s cool to see so many people out here,” I said, out loud. I was a sophomore. One of the seniors told me, “Hansen, don’t be an dupe. Look at them. None of these losers have a job.”

Just this past Saturday I sat with my kids on the steps at the large field watching guys plays Frisbee, my daughter sat in the shade of a tree and drew in her sketchbook.

Public Square

Earlier, we sat with my mother at a table at the recently opened Rebol, a cafe located right there on the Square, having lunch. My mother has lived on the West Side her entire life, primarily in Lakewood. She remembers the golden days when families walked Euclid Avenue for shopping, my father worked for Cleveland Trust, working in the tower which is now The 9. She knows downtown. But Public Square?

Mom looked up from her dish, on this cloudless summer’s day, kids a few yards away splashing in the fountain, the boy and I playing ping-pong at their outdoor table, and mused, “I never pictured myself eating lunch right here.”

She had just attended the final performance of our Twelfth Night. She took a bus downtown, saw a play at the library, met us on the corner and walked to the park for lunch, like you do, downtown in any major city.

Mom was one of three company mothers at the play on Saturday. Chelsea’s mom was also there, and Shaun’s folks. Each of Chennelle’s and Luke’s parents were at Shaker last Saturday. It was an exciting close, to be presenting the play so close to the actual book, the reason the production had been commissioned.

It was great fun to create this particular production, inspired not only by the John Hughes teen comedies and dramas of the mid-1980s, but also, for example, Just One of the Guys -- which is itself based on the plot of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Orsino & Viola
Photo: Catherine Young

During the pre-show speech I claimed that despite the abridgment, every word is from Shakespeare … well, most, uh, almost every word is from Shakespeare. There were also references to and song cues from Robert Palmer, Dream Academy, The Hooters, The Cure, Level 42, The Smiths, Duran Duran (two songs), Bronski Beat, Prefab Sprout, Whitney Houston, Spandau Ballet and Prince.

Why so 80s? Do you know that often as a warm-up, introductory exercise our actor-teachers wil ask, “What is your first name and what era from all of world history would you choose to live in if you could?” And when they do, a startling number of today’s high school students say they wished they lived in the 1980s.

I know, right?

Then there’s me. I graduated from high school thirty years ago, in 1986. It seemed auspicious to set the play a neat thirty years ago. It wasn’t a great year by the standards of popular culture. Science recently determined 1986 to be the worst year in the history of pop music, by which they mean that never before or since have so many songs in the Top 40 sounded so alike, or relied so entirely on electric keyboards.

That was also the summer the movie Howard The Duck was released. I saw it in the theater, twice, because I wanted to like it (see also: Lea Thompson.)

Whatever, okay? Just bogus. Time periods make me focus, and when I focus I can tell a coherent story. Fortunately, as I had intended, a great deal of our audience was in my age cohort -- or teenagers, and would you believe the kids today totally know the song Notorious and who Madonna was.

Interestingly enough, fall 1986 - my first semester in college, mind, I was not longer a high school student myself - was right when fashion turned to a darker palette, when those artists who were wearing white in 1984 were suddenly wearing black.

Malvolio & Olivia
Photo: Catherine Young

I was so excited when I saw this reflected in Zack’s costume design. A hipster like our Malvolio may have been wearing colors a few years earlier, but here he is almost monochromatic. The “yellow stockings” would not have been as out of character in 1983.

And poor Shaun. Zack crafted the perfect early-mid-late eighties ensemble for him, with pleated pants and a sweater vest festooned with geometric shapes. I, too, had a sweater vest then. Teenagers in sweater vests, like we were all about to have breakfast at Denny’s with our senior discount. That would be perfectly ironic today but we didn’t know what irony was.

Most enjoyable, I believe, was the opportunity, the challenge to take a play as richly complex and funny as Twelfth Night, to edit it without losing the color of the language, to streamline the story without losing the emotional impact, to be able to eliminate certain beloved characters without feeling you were really missing them, and most of all, to create a romantic comedy that made people both laugh and applaud the efforts of all four protagonists.

In adapting the piece to a playful, high school setting, we could make the emotions high while keeping the stakes relatively low. In the end, four paired off into two, and it was at once surprising and also made complete sense. Everyone has a date for Homecoming!

Like Joe Barnes said, I am such a fucking romantic.

First Folio - The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare is in residence at the Main Branch of the Cleveland Public Library through July 30, 2016.

Twelfth Night: On Tour

Martin Luther King, Jr. Branch Performance

We tour! Yesterday and today we celebrated the wit, wonder and words of William Shakespeare with some wonderful audiences, and look forward to more performances this next week.

On Friday, Great Lakes Theater opened it’s mini-tour of Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Branch of the Cleveland Public Library. The MLK Branch is on Stokes Blvd., adjacent to University Circle and the Cleveland Clinic, and yet I was curious as to just how many would choose or decide to enjoy Shakespeare at 1:00 PM on a weekday.

The company with the ArtWorks Team

Well. Word got out and while we were surprised and delighted to see many familiar friends and supporters in attendance, it was also delightful to see the library staff not only chose to bring their squad from day-care, which composed half a dozen or so kids in the Kindergarten age-range, but had prepared them all week by talking about stories from Shakespeare!

Also, I had the good fortune of running into Ray McNiece that morning at the art museum, as he was leading teenage members of Young Audiences’ ArtWorks art-based job training program, and suggest they join us, and they did - some dozen or so students, several of whom were already familiar with members of our cast from GLT’s School Residency Program.

Our set.

We also had at least one audience member who walked over from their office at the Cleveland Clinic on their lunch break.

I had great fun editing Twelfth Night, shaving the work down to the central love triangle of Orsino, Olivia and Viola, and also working to incorporate the Malvolio storyline without adding additional characters. I pulled speeches from the First Folio to further illuminate the (personal) emotions of Olivia and Malvolio and also to give them more stage time -- my first cutting was merely thirty minutes long and most of it was Orsino and Viola.

Today we followed up with an afternoon performance at the Shaker Heights Public Library, and even though it was a gorgeous summer day, we still had a large turnout of folks who came indoors for a little bit to enjoy our program.

Unlike the MLK Branch performance, which was in their second floor gallery space, or even the reading last month in Brett Hall (where we will return for regular performances at the end of this week) the gig at the Shaker Heights Library best represents my original concept for this production of Twelfth Night.

Don't You (Forget About Me)

Once it was decided that the tour would be Twelfth Night, and that it would be presented in libraries, I began thinking of it as a romantic comedy which takes place in a library. The library itself would be the set. And what is the best-known story which takes place almost exclusively in a library? Well, that would be The Breakfast Club.

I mean, really. What other story takes place entirely in a library?

So I conceived of a version of this play which was modeled after a 1980s John Hughes movie ... though it's really more like Just One of The Guys, which was itself inspired by Twelfth Night. And today's performance, with a backdrop of actual books and bookshelves, was just what I'd imagined.

Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) will next be performed at the Tremont Farmer's Market on Tuesday, July 12 at 6:15 PM.

Complete calendar of  events presented by Great Lakes Theater in partnership with Cleveland Public Library for First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's First Folio Preview Night

"Sneck up."

Friday night the company of Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) presented a script-in-hand performance to an audience of donors and trustees for Cleveland Public Library and the several organizations partnering to present Shakespeare's First Folio in Cleveland.

'Twas a splendid evening, which also included a lecture and book signing with Andrea Mays, author of a The Millionaire and the Bard -- a history of Henry Folger and how he developed his obsession with the First Folio and became its greatest single collector -- as well as refreshments and chat.

The production doesn't officially open until July 8, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Branch of the CPL. The original plan was to just read my adaptation, with music stands and reading stage directions out loud. But at the this stage of the game, it made more sense to wear the costumes, use the few sound cues we have so far and play it.

I did have a certain trepidation about presenting this abridged version, as it strays from the complete Twelfth Night in several significant ways -- and I'm not talk about the 1980s teen romantic comedy vibe. The only characters are Malvolio, Viola, Olivia, and Orsino. There are no twins, for example. No Toby Belch, no Feste.

Great Lakes Theater Costume Display
Foreground: Othello
Background: Macbeth
Brett Hall, Cleveland Public Library

Having said that, there is still the letter prank, the central love triangle, and the best parts of Shakespeare's tremendous comedic wordplay. Add to that the fact that I took the liberty of incorporating some very popular passages from other plays to complete the emotional arc for both Olivia and Malvolio, ruminations on love and death, including text from As You Like It, Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost, Measure for Measure, and Richard III, all verses which can be found in the First Folio.

By setting it during one day in high school. we are able to focus on these small sets of interconnected relationships. It's all a neat, swift forty-five minute celebration of one of the Bard's most beloved comedies, and it's even quite affecting. It's free, and the company consists of some of my favorite young actors.

We performed in the newly restored Brett Hall, where they have a lovely platform stage and somewhat challenging acoustics. We'll figure that out before the three lunchtime performances that will be presented there on July 14, 15 & 16. Sitting behind most of the audience, fiddling with my iPod for the sound and trying to keep an eye on my script. I was delighted to hear many great laughs. I hope we can attract a nice crowd to our neighborhood performances.

You can find a complete calendar of sites and times for Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) here.

The star of the event, of course, is the book itself, Shakespeare's First Folio, which can be seen now on the third floor of the main building in the Special Collections section. It's actually smaller than I had imagined, because the facsimiles I own are actually larger. Imagine one volume of the Oxford English Dictionary. It will remain on display in Cleveland in until July 30, so don't wait.

Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio)

Malvolio
Costume design by Zachary Hikle

Yes, we are almost one-third through the new year. And hasn’t it been remarkable? At the end of Twenty-Fifteen I blithely remarked, “Surprises are welcome.” Really, they’re not. No more surprises, please.

At the same time, I made note of dreams I had had about new works. In one I was receiving a staged reading of a play I had not yet written that went extremely well. This was several months before I received an invitation to go to Last Frontier. So that was not even a surprise, then, it was foretold.

Today is William Shakespeare’s birthday. He would be 452 today, which is far too old to be, so it is just as well he also died on this date 400 years ago, in 1616.

Olivia
Costume design by Zachary Hickle

When Shakespeare's First Folio comes to the Cleveland Public Library, we will be ready. Great Lakes Theater will be presenting Twelfth Night (as told by Malvolio) the first two weekends of July, in the newly renovated Brett Hall, just off the main entrance.

In this 45-minute retelling, we are creating a 1980s teen comedy love triangle between Viola, Orsino and Olivia, set in the (fictional) Elyria High School.

The text is entirely Shakespeare, and will also include passages from other of his works, like As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew and even and Hamlet, as well as some verses from the Sonnets. And it's free.

We’re having great fun with the adaptation, it’s fun to treat the 80’s as some bizarre, bygone era, which of course it is. My entire cast was born around 1990 ... so just as you might find in an 80’s teen sex comedy, all the teenagers are played by people in their mid-20s.

Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) opens at Cleveland Public Library Thursday, July 7.

Twenty-Fourteen

This time last year I posted about all of the exciting developments on tap for the coming year. Three works in the works -- Double Heart, These Are The Times and Adventures In Slumberland were happening. Even then I was in dread -- good fortune and good works only last so long, for then, what next?

What next, indeed.

Let me begin by stating what now. Slumberland began rehearsals last week. We met the company. We read the script. I am ecstatic! I have to respect the process, and will probably not have much to say in the coming weeks about how it is progressing.

Suffice to say, I had an agenda when I wrote this piece. I know what I wanted it to be. Not just what I did not want it to be, but I wanted it to be a different kind of children’s production, and one which reflects the spirit and style of the comic strip upon which it is based.

Having written said script, I have handed it off to Talespinner Children's Theatre Artistic Director Alison Garrigan, with complete confidence and trust that magic will happen. I do not believe I have ever had as little input into the world premiere of anything I have ever written, and never been so happy to have it so.

The acting company consists of people I have (with one exception) worked with before, most quite recently -- Double Heart, These Are The Times and before that Henry VIII. The designers have made their presentations, or at least announced their intentions, and it is all gonna be one big candy-colored, dreamlike, comic strip, holiday festival!

Meanwhile, the first draft has finally come together for the 2014 Great Lakes Theater outreach touring production, Seven Ages. Nine years ago, when GLT last produced Shakespeare’s As You Like It, seven area playwrights were invited to write a ten-minute play inspired by one of the “seven ages of man” as described by the melancholy Jacques (AYLI II.vii) That play was also titled Seven Ages.

This year seven different area playwrights -- Nina Domingue, Christine Howey, Mike Geither, Anne McEvoy, Michael Oatman, Toni K. Thayer and myself -- were given the prompt to create a brief tale inspired by each of these “seven ages” to be told by one of four characters from AYLI; Jacques, the fool Touchstone, the lady Rosalind (disguised as a man) or her cousin Celia.

The end result is a swift, playful night of storytelling. Each playwright has been wonderfully engaged in not only writing these origial tales, but also helping knit them together into a seamless narrative. After the hectic summer I have just had, I can’t tell you how happy I am to have this draft in my hands, and ready to share with our incredible artists and designers.

Finally, and most unusual, I was contacted by a British touring company, Freerange Theatre. They were searching for productions for their 2013-14 season. Their mission states that they produce classic and also new writing, but what caught my attention was their claim that their company is “fuelled by the belief that theatre can, and should, make a difference.”

This past year they found success producing Lee Hall’s Spoonface Steinberg, a solo performance dealing with issues related to autism and cancer in children. Searching for a new kind of solo work, one which speaks to different troubling medical issues. And thanks to the modern miracle of Google, they reached around the globe and found I Hate This.

Had I ever considered letting another actor perform my most personal solo work? If you had asked me ten years ago (and some did) the answer would have been no. I couldn’t imagine it, that would have seemed … odd. Maybe even wrong. Because it is my story to tell.

But I have told it. Two years ago CPT gave me the opportunity to tell it once more, and I said at that time that I was done with it. I had been working with it for seven years, I had no plans to make it a business, taking it to hospitals and community centers and theaters for years and years. I am in my mid-40s. It is the story of a younger man. And if a different, younger man wants to tell it, then why shouldn’t he?

And much as with Slumberland, I have confidence that this company will produce it in a manner which will make me happy. How could they not? Here is the audition notice:

DAVID - mid 20's - Late 30's. Angry yet funny, vulnerable yet strong, and a great observer. A man living in the aftermath of the stillbirth of his first child.

This requires an actor of great sensitivity, capable of holding a stage on his own. Only 'honest' and natural actors need apply. you must be able to tell a story 'without acting'. That said, your story will be interspersed by portrayals of  a range different characters so good physicality is essential.

My work is in good hands. They represent the age and gender, and that is all the story requires. Does it matter what race the man is? Not at all. Does it matter whether he employs an American accent? Now that I think of it, no it does not. The only suggestion I made upon agreeing to enter into this arrangement is that the show is supposed to be only an hour long.

Whatever happens, whoever they cast, wherever they go, I would dearly like to make the journey to see it.

What next?

How I Spent My Summer Hiatus

This is the problem with me. My obsessive compulsive disorder. I have to put things in boxes in order to be able to concentrate, to look at them and to understand them. This is fine when it comes to things that can be put into boxes, like paper or cats. It does not work well for me when it comes to things like time.

This year is my “Fellowship Year,” when I have been given a special responsibility by the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture to develop my career as a playwright. I have been able to manage this in many ways, including packing and delivering previous work to rights distributors, to apply for awards, to interest theater companies in producing my work. I have actually been successful at two of these three pursuits, so far, and you know what they say about two out of three things.

My relationship with my employer allowed me the opportunity to take time off to pursue a special project, the CENTENNIAL project. Four weeks to do, well, whatever. To do those things I cannot do working a nine-to-five.

Others have traveled around the country, or the world, to conduct research, to work with mentors, the get the lay of whatever land they wanted to write or create about. Silly me, I told everyone I wanted to write a play about Cleveland. That meant staying in Cleveland. Oops.

Seriously, however. For years I have wanted to spend time in the Cleveland Public Library, reading newspapers, or discover the library at the Western Reserve Historical Society. I have done these things. What I have not done - yet - is write. Anything.

I am trying not to feel bad about that.

What I have logged into this blog is only a small part of what I have learned, just by reading. And that is most of what I have been up to this month. Reading. Reading a single year’s worth of newspapers, and books, and plays. And in doing so I have retrained myself to read. I have always had poor reading habits, and have not read the smallest part of what most people who know me assume I have.

The number of plays I have ever read is shameful. I am still playing catch-up after blowing off Dr. Condee’s theater history class my sophomore year. To put it another way - I am still playing catch-up from blowing off all of my sophomore year.

The good news is I have successfully spent four weeks reading, and a lot. And I have connections to the time I have spent this month that will stay with me especially into the long Cleveland winter. Sitting crouched on a marble slab near the fountain in front of the 1916 wing of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Feeling the back of my neck bake at 9 in the morning on a bench further away from the museum, by the lagoon. Taking in the Ness family memorial, and walking over to Wade Lagoon to read there. The reading garden outside the Cleveland Public Library, where I first got the news about Pekar. The impossibly chilly microfilm rooms in the library, and at the Western Reserve Historical Society.

And where it all started, in late June, in the New York Public Library Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center. It took over an hour - seriously - to get situated, knowing which room to go to, who to hand reference slips to, finding out I needed to get a temporary library card, waiting for the materials to come. I think I actually looked over materials for ninety minutes.

But what a valuable ninety minutes. I found an article in Variety magazine about The Living Newspaper in Cleveland, which led me to the names of the authors of that plays, which led me to articles they had written, which pointed my research in an entirely new direction. I wasn’t aware of it yet, but those ninety minutes set me on the course for the entire hiatus, ninety minutes which gave this fragmented mind focus.

The other day I took a walk with someone from work down Euclid Avenue to Fourth Street for lunch. I have walked that stretch many, many times. It makes me sad, wistful, to think of this street, Main Street Cleveland, as it used to be. The recent restorations are promising, there is a lot of rehab going on, we have have hit bottom and are on the way back up. But seriously, it will never be the way it was, not in my lifetime.

Reading the daily newspapers - the Plain Dealer, the Press, the News - and the Call & Post, and the Gazette and Citizen, is to read about a large, teeming metropolitan city. Many were poor, struggling to get by, but they were together, there, in a city which no longer exists. I occupy the same space, but the earth has turned so many times since then and so much has changed. I would like to recapture some of that for the stage, to latch onto a story to tell, about real people in a real place, and make it feel like what I have felt reliving it for these four weeks.

When I draw, I remind myself to make my hand create my eye sees. Now in order to write this, I need to make my hand create what my heart feels.

The City in 1833

The Cleveland Main Public Library on Superior at 3rd Street opened in 1925. The great first floor reading room, Brett Hall, is named for William Brett, librarian for the CPL from 1884 until 1918. It is a grand room, a real old-school research hall with desk lamps, long wooden tables and stylish, curved chairs.

In 1934 the Public Works of Art project (WPA) unveiled a mural over the North Door by the sixty-six year-old William, Sommer, The City in 1933, depicting the Public Square of 100 years earlier. Of the buildings presented (The Court House, the Hotel) the one that remains today is the Old Stone Church. The lake is visible in the background, and indications of Cleveland as a (former) agrarian society, and (at that time) an industrial one.

Other murals were due to join it presently, but no new works were successfully commissioned until the 1970s.