On the Dark Side of Twilight: Lakewood Public Library

Ten years ago, Great Lakes Theater produced my first outreach tour "On the Dark Side of Twilight."

Monday, March 8, 2010

Three more performances? Really, that's it?

Very nice night night, full house at the Lakewood Public Library, and lots of new and old friends, familiar faces and downright strangers on hand. Several actor-teachers, from today and years past, GLTF company members, Playhouse Square representatives, roommates, teachers from some of the high schools we work with, bringing their students. It was a lovely turnout.

This evening has been filling me with anxiety since I saw how the set worked, and how deep it needed to be. Thank you, Daniel, for ordering that extra pole for the drapes, it has come in very handy. I do not know how we could have managed this without it.

Using the drapes as masking - and angling them downstage - we had much more room to the sides and did not have any of our "business" showing when the doors were open.

I borrowed several key lines in the play from last fall's residency program rehearsal process, and as this was the night half of them were able to make the performance, these "private jokes" got some serious play, most notably, "Girl's gotta eat."

I pressed several of our comrades into service to get everyone out by 9 o'clock, and dang if that wasn't the fastest load-out we've ever had. You people are pros and have my endless gratitude. Thanks to Lakewood Public Library, they always do an amazing job of promoting the outreach tour, and I think we finally have the knack for handling their space.

The Secret Adversary: In Review

Cleveland Sight Center

Yes, it has been over a month since my last entry. These things happen. However, for years I have posted updates about the outreach tour and how it is progressing. Unfortunately, I attended only two performances of this year’s play, my adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary, before the sudden death of my father.

Family business and my own sense of disorientation and mourning kept me from the show for a week. Lisa and I were going to host and moderate the performances equally, and thankfully she was able to take all of them instead, in my absence.

Lakewood Public Library

As it happened, the afternoon performance at the Cleveland Sight Center occurred just when each of my brothers were in town, and the day before my father’s memorial service. We all attended together. My brothers have never before been in the audience together, and with me, for something I have written.

Not surprisingly, The Secret Adversary has been very well attended. The name “Agatha Christie” remains popular. Christie’s works are the third best-selling in the world after the Bible and Shakespeare.

We had to turn numerous people away at Clague Playhouse when all seats were taken, though a dozen or so stayed to watch the large video screen in the lobby that showed the performance. It was standing room only in Lakewood, but no one was required to leave.

Those turned away are no doubt disappointed, and post-show evaluations give certain audience members the opportunity to complain about crowded conditions or having to sit in the back. (Did I mention it’s free?) However, the overwhelming reaction to the production is very high.

"Your actors are amazing! Possibly better than what I've seen on touring Broadway casts."
- Student, Elyria Catholic High School

"The script was outstanding - this was a great adaptation!"
- Kendal at Oberlin audience member

“I really, really, really loved this play. I very much enjoyed the actors and actresses, the theme, the dialogue, and the ending scene was just beautiful.”
- Student, Hudson Middle School

Friday afternoon we performed in the new Cleveland School of the Arts building, in their “Black Box” space. Over 150 students in attendance, and they were wonderful, leaning forward, hanging on every word, getting every jokes, gasping at each revelation. After the show, their questions were all processed-based, about character, accents, physicality, even about the writing, adapting a novel into a play.

There will be a performance this afternoon in Cleveland Heights, which is home base for me. There are only three more public performances before we close, in Oberlin, Akron and Lorain.

The Secret Adversary opened on February 16, my mother's birthday. She and my father were in attendance, he was always a great reader and very fond of mystery novels and he provided and suggested numerous books that I used for research. And basically made me a person who would want to adapt a novel by Agatha Christie into a play. He enjoyed the show.

The Great Blizzard of 1978

Late January 1978, the Great Blizzard. Children, sit down. Let me tell you a story.

Seventy mile-per-hour winds, heavy snow and temperatures close to zero brought the Great Lakes region to a standstill for several days.

That was my fourth grade year. I was the age my son is today, about nine and a half. The previous year was the first I came into awareness of the wider world. Prior to that I did not really know much about pop culture or politics. 1977 was Three Mile Island, the New York City Blackout, the space shuttle Enterprise and Star Wars. Groucho Marx, Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley and Charlie Chaplin died that year, and I already knew who they all were.

That was also the year I started listening to pop radio, pretty much non-stop. January, dark evening after dark evening, and for many snow days, listening to G98. The top charting hits of that month, they may make you think of many other things, but they make me think of unending snow, and bone-penetrating cold; We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions, Come Sail Away, The Name of the Game, Just the Way You Are, and the aptly-named Slip Slidin’ Away.

We all stayed in our houses during the blizzard itself, but the after-effects lasted for weeks. Fortunately, my best friends lived two short blocks away, there was indoor play, but with so many days off, much of the time was spent at home, on my own, watching TV, drawing cartoons … and driving my mother crazy.


Mother was a home maintenance expert, or what we used to call a housewife. And she had her own life, one which my houseboundness encroached upon. I have no idea what my brothers, aged 13 and 16, were up to or where they were. The middle and high schools were also closed, but they were independent enough to have conspired to get away with the assistance of friends and older friends.

Mom had art appreciation classes at CMA, and asked if I wanted to wander around the art museum while she was there. Can you imagine that? Nine year-old kid, wandering around an art museum entirely unattended. In the 1970s, that was a great premise for a YA novel. Today we’d be the lead story on FOX 8.

Gets better – I didn’t want to investigate the art museum, I was more interested in the Natural History Museum. So I wandered around that place unattended, for several hours. Taxidermy is the aroma of my childhood.

There used to be an exhibit documenting the effects of pollution, located near the entrance to the building. It was very upsetting, a replica toxic waste site, a dump with oil covered gulls and all manner of household product containers wrapped in discarded plastic bags, choking a freshwater pond. Thank goodness that exhibit isn’t there anymore to trouble my thoughts.

Other days, mom would have classes at the Lakewood Public Library, and I would haunt the microfilm desk, taking out spools and spools of the New Yorker, just to look at the cartoons. Not just any New Yorkers, mind you. I started in 1925.

Of course, it wasn't all about keeping me preoccupied when she had other things to do. We'd sometimes go to the Rocky River Rec Center, and hold hands and ice skate while they played Bob Seger's Night Moves album on the loudspeakers.

My mother turns 80 next month, and it makes me think of things like this.

Source:
Remember Blizzard of Jan 26, 1978? Weather Historians Recall Blizzard of Legend

Dorothy Dandridge

In 1954, Dorothy Jean Dandridge (November 9, 1922 – September 8, 1965) became the first African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film Carmen Jones. She was also the first black woman to be featured on the cover of LIFE.

Dandridge was born in Cleveland. Her father, Cyril, was a minister, and her mother, Ruby has been referred to as an "aspiring performer". Their relationship was tumultuous, father was abusive and in contradiction with contemporary mores, Ruby didn't put up with it. She left the house when five months pregnant with Dorothy, moving into her own home and making the acquaintance of a women who helped raise the girls. Dorothy lived at one time on 103rd Street, later on Central Avenue. Her childhood in Cleveland was brief, however. Following her parents' legal separation Ruby took she and her older sister Vivian on the road as an act called The Wonder Children, later The Dandridge Sisters.

Early film roles include an uncredited appearance in the Our Gang Short Teacher's Beau and as a singer in the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races. Her career was marked by highs and lows, where she would make up for a dearth of decent film roles with nightclub work. Ironically, for the role which defined the pinnacle of her career, her historic success in Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones, her singing was dubbed by another performer. The next film role offered her was as a slave in The King and I, which she declined.

Sources:
Wikipedia
Lakewood Public Library
National Association of Scientific Materials Managers (?)
Dorothy Dandridge (book) by Donald Bogle