NYC EOY 2025 (part two)

My experience with LES theaters is limited to my several summers either witnessing or participating in the (former) New York International Fringe Festival. The last time I set foot in Under St. Marks Theater was in August 2001, to witness a solo performance, the coming out story for a queer individual of native ancestry. There was no air conditioning, it was a forty seat hotbox.

Nearly a quarter century later and in deepest December, it was a bit chilly in that space, which was only appropriate as we were attending a 5:00 pm performance of the RadioTheatreNYC production of The 15th Annual Edgar Allen Poe Festival, under the banner of Frigid NY. Directed by Dan Bianchi, the event was a live radio drama (with prerecorded music and sound effects) performed with creepy gusto by Frank Zilinyi and R. Patrick Alberty.

The selections performed included The Tell-Tale Heart, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, The Masque of the Red Death, Berenice, and The Cask of Amontillado. Given the format, the words took center stage and while the performers did not disappoint, listening to the stories spoken aloud in this way allowed both of us to become more critical of Mr. Poe than reading him off of the page.

The Masque of the Red Death was the weakest of the set, as it describes a selfish millionaire who shuts himself away from a world ravaged by plague. When he throws a lavish party for his monied friends, the personification of pestilence arrives and murders everyone. Even in its telling, it’s not particularly suspenseful or scary, you know exactly what’s going to happen from practically the first word.

No, it was the one with which I was least familiar, The Case of M. Valdemar, that had me on the edge of my seat. A first person account (it was first printed without any indication the tale was fiction, creating something of a stir) the narrator claims that he mesmerized a man at the moment of death, essentially trapping the man’s consciousness inside a dead body.

What we fear is what touches us closest, and for me that is not dying, nor illness, nor ageing, not for me personally. No, it is the fear of caring for someone else who is dying, and doing it wrong. That we – I – cannot accept the death of someone we love when that death is inevitable, and necessary. And we prolong their suffering as a result.

After we had dinner and cocktails at Schmuck (yes) which was stylish yet unpretentious (yes) the kind of place where they pour your half-finished martini into a newly frosted glass. Without even asking. I’ve never experienced such a thing before.

We walked briskly back to our hotel – we’d spent an entire day without need for a cab or bus or train – exhausted and happy and feeling like it must be nearly midnight. Checking my phone I laughed out loud that it was only eight. All’s well, we had an early night.

To be continued.

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?

Indie Theater Guy (book)

So I wrote a play. In 1997, The Vampyres was produced at Dobama’s Night Kitchen and I thought I was on my way to becoming a serious playwright. I printed one hundred bound copies of the script, got a copy of the Dramatists Sourcebook, and sent it to every theater in America whose submission policy seemed open to such a work.

And I waited and nothing happened and I didn’t write another play for five years.

It wasn’t until a chance visit to NYC and an invitation to see some shows at the fledgling New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC) that I became aware not only of the vast amount of great (and not-so-great) independent theater, but that there was a movement afoot to share and raise the profile of such work.

Around the same time, a New Jersey accountant named Martin Denton decided it wasn’t enough to experience and enjoy new works by Downtown theater artists, he needed to participate, and he has told his story, and the story of early 21st century “fringe” theater in his new book Indie Theater Guy.

He could have called it Internet Theater Guy, because it was Martin who first chose the fledgling internet as his venue for promoting and celebrating experimental work. Gatekeeping media like the New York Times or Time Out New York may, by necessity as well as design, could or would only review a few shows a week. Martin started nytheatre.com which (among other things) was dedicated to reviewing every single show at FringeNYC, every single year.

Think about it. Let’s say you were an out of town act, maybe from Cleveland. You spent time and money and effort to get a show to New York, it may or may not have received any attention. But at the very least, you were guaranteed one New York City review, at least one, and you found it at nytheatre.com.

Martin Denton

Martin himself came to see And Then You Die at the 2009 Fringe, and he viewed it with a critical eye, questioning whether or not I had stuck the landing with my solo performance about marathon running. I was just flattered that, out of two hundred shows to choose from and with a staff scurrying around lower Manhattan to see and report on all of them, Mr. Indie Theater himself chose mine.

Here’s the thing: While Martin’s efforts were concentrated on what was happening exclusively in New York City, the impact of his work in the first two decades of this century had a wide-ranging impact, on me in Cleveland, and for so many others. And he used the internet to make it happen.

When podcasts were first becoming a thing, Martin produced the nytheatrecast which featured independent theater professionals interviewed by empresario Trav S.D. I was a dedicated listener.

Then there was the Indie Theater Now project, an online database of play scripts. For only $1.29 you could buy a script! And playwrights across the country were encouraged to do so. I did. And people read them.

All of these efforts have served their purpose, and they have come and they have gone. But their effects are lasting. Would New Play Exchange be a thing if Martin hadn’t first proved that playwrights were not only willing but eager to get their work out there for people to read in such great quantity? Who knows?

Martin’s organizational work within NYC has also paid great dividends, and you can learn about them in his brief memoir. But this playwright is grateful for the way he used new technologies to greatly expand access to and awareness of modern theater writing for artists far and wide, and diffusing New York as the epicenter of American drama.

Last year I submitted many plays to well over one hundred theaters, without printing a page, sealing an envelope, or spending a dime. And unlike in 1997, my efforts have been successful. Can Martin Denton take credit for that? Yes. Yes, he can.

"Indie Theater Guy" is available in paperback or ebook at Amazon.

My First Fringe Festival

"Happy Happy Bunny Visits Sad Sad Owl"
(not actually) by Samuel Beckett, age 7
from "The Complete Lost Works of ..."

The last millennium, as any obnoxious numerology will tell you, ended at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 2000, because we count from one to ten, and not zero to nine.

Anyone with a social life or a personality or friends will tell you oh hell no, I was there and the new millennium began on January 1, 2000 baby, whoop whoop, that was awesome.

Which just goes to show that numbers are only symbols and the majority wins in the marketplace of popular imagination.

The year 2000 was, for me, an ending and not, as it seemed to me at the time, the continuation of a journey upon a determined path. I was newly wed, I had started a popular theater company, I was 32 years of age, and we had plans to start a family. And yet, there was a new me that was about to be born. My first life was about to end, for better or worse, and I was unaware.

Philip Bosco, Michael Cumpsty,
and Blair Brown
"Copenhagen" (Broadway, 2000)

The summer of 2000, my wife had left a job at a weekly newspaper to begin grad school, rehearsals were about to commence -- for both of us. Bad Epitaph was producing Cloud 9, and Dobama’s Night Kitchen her new play Angst:84. Late August, twenty years ago, and it was the perfect time to plan a weekend in New York City, to see old friends and even catch a show. We took the train. Time was expansive. We had no kids.

We had even gotten tickets to see Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen at the Royale. Science plays were all the rage, don’t you know. David Auburn’s Proof was transferring to Broadway that fall, Caryl Churchill's 2002 play A Number and Stoppard's Arcadia nine years earlier. Three actors walked in circles around a bare stage ("like particles in an experiment") talking about physics. It was a hit! We used to be smart.

It was a dare, taking a train and buying tickets for a show, and we just made it, too. Heading straight from the station to the theater, we shoved our backpacks under our seats, no time even to pee.

We were staying with her old boyfriend Harris in an apartment on the east side in the 60s. As the three of us made plans for the weekend, he suggested we see a show at the New York International Fringe Festival. I did not know what that was.

That night, my wife was having dinner with an old friend from Sarah Lawrence and so Harris and I had disco sushi at Avenue A and went to see a festival offering, FrankenClown, ostensibly an evil clown show, even promising “several slayings and raucous laughter” but turned out to be a pretty straightforward retelling of Shelley’s classic in clown make-up.

Home of disco sushi.

But. My God! Looking through the festival guide, there were over one hundred shows going on across the L.E.S. A happening was happening! I felt vengeful and jealous. Also old.

I thought of the past five years of my life, the several shows we had created in the Night Kitchen, original plays and ensemble-written pieces and long-form improvs, any one of them could have been submitted to this festival -- except it didn’t exist yet. The New York fringe began in 1997, and I left Dobama soon after. Alas.

After the show we caught up with the others and bar-hopped until about four a.m.

CJ does the thing.

The next morning my head and tummy were a little tender and so we lay low for the early afternoon. One of them said something about “CJ doing the thing” and I was the only one in the room who had not yet started watching The West Wing, they had to explain it to me. Harris downloaded “The Jackal” using LimeWire because we could not yet just dial up something from YouTube, so I could hear the song. It was peak Y2K.

That night we had more success with the fringe, joining a packed house at Surf Reality in the East Village to see The Complete Lost Works of Samuel Beckett as Found in an Envelope (partially burned) in a Dustbin in Paris Labeled "Never to be performed. Never. Ever. EVER! Or I'll Sue! I'LL SUE FROM THE GRAVE!!! It was created and performed by Theater Oobleck members Ben Schnieder and Danny Thompson, and Neo-Futurist founder Greg Allen and included elements of each companies’ work, particularly their high-brow loopiness.

By now I was in the zone and I desperately wanted to see one more show before we left. Sunday afternoon we packed our backpacks and headed back downtown for one more show. We saw the play Merrick's Gallery at the Present Company Theatorium on Stanton Street, headquarters for the entire festival. During intermission I nosed around, trying to gladhand one of the administrators.

I was bitten. This was the next step. Bringing a show to New York to participate in a festival like this was definitely on the agenda for the future. And the opportunity presented itself sooner than I imagined, though not with one of my shows. The Night Kitchen took my wife’s play, Angst:84, to the Fringe the next year, produced right there at the Present Company Theatorium. I ran sound for that production, and during my copious spare time took in sixteen other shows at FringeNYC 2001.

This experience did not start my new life, but in hindsight it was a piece of it. For the better part of ten years I had endeavored to create new works in northeast Ohio, to be a participant in making Cleveland into the theater city I knew it might be. And it's not like I hadn't attending storefront theater before in Chicago, the Twin Cities, New York, London, and elsewhere.

But to be confronted with the sheer massive scope of current theatrical productions, all in one place at one time, was to be more suddenly and deeply engaged in the national and global theater community. There was an element of FOMO to it, to be sure. I wanted in.

"Angst:84" company at the Present Company Theatorium (FringeNYC 2001)

I brought three of my own shows to fringe festivals, in New York and elsewhere. Did it make an impact on my career? Maybe. Was it fun? Sure. Did I learn anything? A lot. But it feels like a long time ago. And now I have, at last, started grad school.

Amy Salloway, who I met at the Minnesota Fringe in 2003, she said, "Fringe festivals are summer camp for theater people." For me, however, summer is over.

Sources:
Playbill, "Copenhagen" (Royale Theatre, 2000)
Dog Days Sizzle for Theater's Off-Offbeat Pups by Jesse McKinley The New York Times (8/18/2000)

The former Present Company Theatorium space was demolished to make way for luxury apartments in the late 00s.

UPDATE: BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. Help support our production by dropping a donation on our GoFundMe campaign! 

Play a Day: And Then You Die

Portrait by Amy Arbus (2010)

Ten years ago, my monodrama And Then You Die (How I Ran a Marathon in 26.2 Years) workshopped at Cleveland Public Theatre before receiving its world premiere at the Robert Moss Theatre in New York City as part of the New York Fringe Festival.

Training for my first marathon in 2006 was a life-changing experience, the culmination of a quarter century of trying and failing to be a consistent runner. As with my previous solo performance, I Hate This (a play without the baby) I relied heavily on the journaling I did tell the story of the preparing for the race itself, adding stories from my adolescence and early adulthood which described my struggles with health and exercise.

Response was positive in New York, getting laughs where expected and eliciting a strong response at the conclusion. I paid special attention to the critics, however, who were generous but also offered some helpful reflection.

“David Hansen’s autobiographical one-man show, about his lifelong obsession with long-distance running, is a simple and tragic yet reaffirming tale, told earnestly and with minimal poetics ... how refreshing to be touched by something real.” - Michael Freidson, Time Out New York

“We meet a lot of people that have crossed or influenced Hansen's life, but you will have a hard time understanding why they are important ...His father who used to run when he was just a child, his first inspiration, was he around to see him run the Marathon? … We needed more of these pivotal influences.” - Antoni Minino, Fab Marquee

"Segments about how he trained for the race, especially his final preparatory run, from his own home on one side of greater Cleveland, to his parents house across town, are similarly fascinating … What I wanted was to understand why running is so fundamentally important ... But this show never really gets us to that place.” - Martin Denton, nytheatre.com

Also, this comment left on my blog from audience member (now my friend) Cris Dopher:

“I was impressed with your clarity, organization of thought, and bold maneuvers on stage … If there was anything I was confused about, it was the family timeline and your relationship with your daughter ... you concentrate on your boy(s) so much throughout the show, and then at the end - it's all about your little girl. I wasn't sure why the switch.”

And Then You Die
(How I Ran a Marathon in 26.2 Years)

Good question.

When I had the chance to remount the show at CPT in 2011, paired with I Hate This as a single evening, I was took the opportunity to cut the show down to an hour (previously it ran about 75 minutes) which was a welcome change for everyone involved, but this piece suffered in comparison to the very weighty first act.

Writing for the Plain Dealer, Christine Howey said I Hate This “borders on brilliant,” but that ”the second play just can't measure up to the first. However transformative the process of completing a 26-mile run might be, it pales to insignificance after the cataclysmic event so tellingly presented earlier.”

So, I’ve left this piece alone for a while. But it’s one I have lately been coming back to. I want to respond the criticism, to rewrite the entire thing. Because there is a story there, one I enjoy telling, about running, about why we run, and about maturity, and having a goal and trying to reach it. About becoming a whole person, one who is happy with themselves. Or at the very least, has a capacity for happiness.

This is my goal for the rest of the spring, to rewrite And Then You Die, aiming for a performance some time in early fall. The decision to tackle this now isn’t arbitrary, either. This fall I will be running the Chicago Marathon, raising funds for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation.

Please check out my Team Challenge campaign page, read why raising funds for this organization is important to me, and make a contribution. Any amount with be greatly appreciated.

The Seagull (2001)

Natalie Portman & Philip Seymour Hoffman
(The Public Theatre)

August, 2001. We were in New York City. My wife’s play Angst:84, following a rousing premiere at Dobama’s Night Kitchen, was being presented at the fifth annual New York International Fringe Festival.

Angst:84 is a satirical adaptation of Orwell’s classic 1984, reimagined to take place in an oppressive suburban high school in the actual year 1984. Requiring a company of fourteen, most of the cast were actual teenagers, or in their early 20s. A skeleton crew of techies (myself included, running sound) brought the entire team to around twenty.

Remounting and presenting the show (which included a bank of actual lockers, schlepped all the way from Ohio) was a labor-intensive event. Just raising funds before we left and rehearsing the show in the Dobama space took up a great deal of time during the summer, which was a welcome distraction for my wife and I, who were only just beginning to recover from losing our first child that March.

Once the production was under way in the Present Company space on Stanton Street on the Lower East Side (since demolished, now high-end apartments) we had time to unwind, and roam the city. I passed on an invitation to see the Twin Towers, a decision I have come to regret.

The "Angst:84" company in front of the Present Company.

Some hit TKTS for Broadway shows. I saw sixteen different fringe performances, sometimes entirely on my own. My wife and I wanted to try and get seats for The Seagull, produced by the Public Theatre in Central Park. We had exactly and only two days, back-to-back in which we had no performances, and we would need them in order to see this show.

Normally, as we had that June when we had seen Billy Crudup and Joe Morton in Measure for Measure at the Delacorte, you might need to show up before breakfast to wait in line for the free tickets they handed out around lunch.

But the line for The Seagull started the afternoon before, as soon as that day’s tickets were gone. Because every single artist in the production was a headliner. It didn’t just star Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, though that would have been enough. It was directed by Mike Nichols, working with a new translation by Tom Stoppard, and also featured Christopher Walken, John Goodman, Natalie Portman, Marcia Gay Harden, Stephen Spinella, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Konstantin. This was to be a legendary production. And the tickets were free.

Reading in line.

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Konstantin. Philip Seymour Hoffman was Konstantin.

The wife and I put out the call that we intended to wait in line, all night, for these tickets. We thought perhaps a few would join us, but seriously, that might sound a little ominous, spending the night in Central Park. Or possibly tedious. But these were teenagers, young adults. The entire company showed up, around 4 PM on a Wednesday, to wait for tickets to see a show on Thursday night.

There were already about a hundred people in line at 4 PM. We’d brought blankets, pillows, folding chairs, and picnic dinners. There were more than twenty of us, as several had New York area friends join in.

Central Park after dark.

We took turns, sitting and wandering the park. Sun began to set as that evening’s performance began. A group of us walked by Belvedere Castle and the lower reservoir which provides the backdrop for the performance, behind the stage for the Delacorte, and watched the performance from there. We walked the Ramble, and visited Strawberry Fields after dusk.

We exited the park, picked up a small bag of groceries, and reentered the park around West 81st Street. The play had ended, crowds were streaming out. As we approached the theater, a gaunt, six-foot man with a beard, sixtyish, wearing a tight black T-shirt and jeans strode past us with great purpose (and a briefcase.) Just as he passed, I realized it was Christopher Walken.

In the gutter on CPW.

It was a perfect summer evening. In the past they used to hand out the tickets a couple hours before curtain, instead of at noon, and in 1990 some of us waited to see Denzel Washington in Richard III. It was a hot day, bright with sun, but between five and eight the clouds rolled in and the show was rained out. This night was balmy and warm -- it was a hot fringe festival that year -- cooling off only slightly as the sun went down.

Once upon a time, waiting in line all night would have been uneventful. But Rudy Giuliani was mayor, and park hours were strictly enforced. We knew this going in, but weren’t sure exactly how that would work. As we understood it, the entire line would be made to relocate to Central Park West for the hours of 1 AM to 6 AM, when the park was closed to the public.

For better or for worse, there was a team of line enforcers, NYC theater patrons who were particularly enthusiastic about catching and shaming line-jumpers. A few hours before midnight, they went down the line creating a list of everyone on line. They were fierce, announcing that though they had no association with the park, the theater or the city, once the line returned to the park they would use this list to check for line-jumpers.

This also happened.

Whatever. Sure enough at 1 AM the NYPD politely (yes) told the line we had to leave the park. We did our best to maintain our relative place in line, those of us who had actually fallen asleep groggily staggering out to the cobblestones of CPW. I actually did try to fall asleep there, for a few moments, lying on the sidewalk, around West 82nd Street, the streetlights creating something like sun. But mostly we sat up and talked and played card games. Some even played guitar.

Settling back into the park after dawn, the line patrol came through with their list. There were a few altercations but nothing serious, not where we were sitting. The wait from then until noon may have been the most tedious, excitable teenagers (and me) finally succumbing to exhaustion and getting a few winks in, beneath the trees. There were also bagels. We finally got our tickets and went our separate ways for the afternoon, many of us to get some real sleep.

What can I say about the performance? There are indelible moments, pictures in my mind which I will never forget. There was a second or two, deep into the first act … Kevin Kline (as the famous author Trigorin) had been on stage for perhaps twenty minutes, and I was momentarily, mentally pulled out of the performance, thinking how I had seen this man in numerous movies, but that I had never before seen him exist in real space and time, not without close-ups or edits. He was just there.

Breakfast en plein air.

That moment Trigorin (Kline) and the actress Arkadina (Meryl Streep) share a passionate kiss on the floor, which he deftly breaks, fluidly rolling over, pulling a notebook and pencil from his vest to make a note. The then-twenty year-old Natalie Portman as the aspiring actress Nina, upon securing a promise from the famous, older writer, executing a neat, bubbly pirouette, like a bird-hop, unable to contain her excitement. Meryl Streep did a cartwheel.

And Hoffman as Konstantin, a man doomed as a writer and a lover, who in this production controversially shot himself on-stage (rather than, as indicated by the Chekhov’s stage directions, off) facing upstage, toward the reservoir, seated in a high-backed chair, the stain bleeding through during the play’s final moments.

That ending, so startling and disorienting, it was hard to believe the play was over. The applause was grand but strange.

Playwright in sunglasses (center).

And so, our adventure concluded, we exited the house. Some wanted to try and catch some stars -- the very location of the theater makes it impossible for actors to jump in a car and speed away, like Walken the night before, they had to leave on foot. Or, in the case of Marcia Gay Harden, wearing a bicycle helmet. She was very generous with her time, talking to several admirers. My wife and I held back from our crowd; I try to leave people I don’t actually know alone unless I really have something I want to ask or tell them.

A small number of us were decided where we would go next, to decompress, hopefully with dessert. John Goodman (who is, in fact, very large) walked past, and one of our team, Brian (he said I can tell this story) was overcome with excitement and took off down the path to have words with the famous actor.

We watched from a distance as our colleague said a few enthusiastic words to Goodman. Goodman gave our friend a strange smirk before turning away abruptly and walking into the dark. Brian returned, shaking his head. “That was weird,” our friend said. “I told him how great the show was and he just kind of blew me off.”

Meryl Streep & Kevin Kline
(The Public Theatre)

Oh, well, we said. Actors. Half a dozen or so of us decided to head a few blocks west to Cafe Lalo. I hadn’t been there in over five years, I had fond memories of hanging out there for hours, writing, while my wife (we had only just started dating in the mid-90s) worked her shift at Shakespeare & Co. Two sites for two Meg Ryan movies. Weird.

Anyway, pastry and coffee and conversation when all of a sudden Brian, he who accosted John Goodman, shook his head, dazed and gasped, “Oh, my GOD!

“I said to John Goodman, ‘I just saw the show -- tell Kevin Kline he was amazing!’”

"Angst:84" by Toni K. Thayer is available from Heartland Plays, Inc.

"The Seagull" a new film adaptation starring Annette Bening and Saoirse Ronan, directed by Michael Mayer, with a screenplay by Stephen Karam, opens June 15, 2018.

Many thanks to Heather Stout Nebeker for the Central Park photos!

Urinetown: The Musical @ Blank Canvas Theatre

Daryl Kelly as Bobby Strong (Blank Canvas, 2017)

It is a well-known fact that the ground-breaking musical Urinetown: The Musical was set to open on Thursday, September 13, 2001. As events played out that week, it is no small feat that they only need to postpone the opening for one week, and opened instead on September 20.

What is less-reported is that I already had a ticket to see it two weeks later, on Saturday, October 6. Not only a ticket to the show, but also a plane ticket for LaGuardia. The emotional trauma of witnessing the events of September 11, even just on television, endowed the idea of flying with a newly realized dread, one which continues to this day.

Earlier that summer my wife and I took a transatlantic flight, international terrorism was furthest from my mind.

I had several reasons I really wanted to attend this new production, however. I knew some people who were deeply invested in it, and I had long been a fan of Greg Kotis from when he was a member of the Neo-Futurists.

My first impression of his work was a Too Much Light play called “Documentation” from 1991. Kotis stepped out onto the empty stage with a Polaroid camera and asked, "Will all the Jews in the audience stand up, please?"

People stood, the guy I came with stood. I’m not Jewish, I didn’t stand. Kotis took a photo of the audience, looked at the photo until the image was clear. He said, "Thank you." Curtain.

Simply told, haunting and cautionary. Our imitative company in Cleveland were always trying to reach the elegant impact of plays like that one. The idea that someone whose experimental work I had seen in a rented theater in Chicago ten years earlier had written the book for a Broadway musical was inspiring and I just wanted to see it.

My wife had written a play which was produced at that year’s New York Fringe at the old resent Company space, a mere two years since Urinetown had made its mark in the same venue. The Broadway producers of that musical were about, drumming interest and selling copies of original cast album, which I purchased.

So, I knew what the show was about, and frankly I was a bit concerned how it would be received. We were still, supposedly in an era of “post-irony,” SNL producer Lorne Michaels had only the weekend before my arrival asked Mayor Giuliani on the show if it was okay to be funny again. (The mayor’s response; “Why start now?”)

John Cullum as Caldwell B. Cladwell (Broadway, 2001)

Even Urinetown’s most experienced and lauded performer, John Cullum, didn’t get the show or think it was funny. In Backstage earlier that year he said he thought the show was “strange and crude and by the end of the first act I was angry and offended.” Later, I heard Cullum in an interview admit that it was his wife who read the script, thought it was hilarious, and encouraged him to take the role.

My first night in Manhattan I met and drinks with some friends. We were well uptown, far from Ground Zero. I had already seen it, however, from the sky. We arrived at dusk, the sky was dark, but the site of the former World Trade Center was lit as bright as day, crews working around the clock, the pit still actively smoldering. Everyone in the plane was looking out the window. Many literally gasped. The guy sitting next to me had a tourist guide, he was visiting his son at college, and good for him.

I asked my friends, should I go? Should I go downtown and see it? Was that the right thing to do? The wrong thing to do? These were early days. I didn’t want to be a ghoul.

They said, yes! You must! And so I was absolved. And I went. And what I saw there is a story for another time. It is enough to say at this time that all of this was hanging in the air the night I first saw Urinetown: The Musical at the Henry Miller Theatre.

Was the audience apprehensive? Perhaps they were. Maybe it was just me. And maybe it was just me, but the company seemed apprehensive. They were totally on, the show was funny, and it music popped. And we were appreciative. But even from the beginning, I felt as though some previous audience had mistreated them, and that they weren’t sure we were going to like them. And I wasn’t sure if we were either.

It wasn’t until "Run, Freedom, Run!" -- in the middle of the second act -- that the audience was, at last, entirely on their side, and it brought down the house. We liked the show. We liked it a lot.

The following spring, I returned to NYC with my wife. It had been less than a year. Driving into the city we were struck by the absence of the Twin Towers. We met our friends, we had a beautiful weekend in New York. And I took her to see Urinetown.

By this point, it’s success was apparent. The theater was buzzing with excitement which hadn’t been present the previous fall. This guy sitting near us said this was his third time. It was a hit. And maybe it was just me, but I could see it in the cast. They were relaxed, confident, hilariously confident. John Cullum, who seemed a bit above it all my first time, was now rolling in the production. He got the joke.

Dayshawnda Ash as Little Sally (Blank Canvas, 2017)

I was thrilled when Kotis won a Tony Award for Best Book, and disappointed when the show lost out on Best Musical to the more traditional Thoroughly Modern Millie. But a play as acidic as this one had never been bestowed that honor before … though such arch material soon would be. This is what I meant by “ground-breaking.”

This weekend, the entire family went to see Urinetown at Blank Canvas Theatre. Other parents take their children to Wicked, we take them to Urinetown. They were not unfamiliar with the show, the by has heard the about the girl saw a production at Shaker Heights High last year.

And yet, even today, even following the success of arch-satiric musicals that actually won a Tony for Best Musical like Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon, watching it again I was struck by how “strange and crude” the play still is, to its credit. If anything, its themes of greed, want and unsustainability are far more relevant now than they were sixteen years ago.

My daughter goes to Heights High, and she already knows who Thomas Malthus is, which is more than I could say when I first saw the show. Watching the corporate masters of the show's “Urine Good Company” raise fees on public amenities the same day our Senate passed their version of Trump’s tax plan was entirely not lost on our audience.

Or maybe that was just me.

Blank Canvas Theatre presents "Urinetown: The Musical" through December 17, 2017.

Sources:
John Cullum: A Real Pisser in "Urinetown: The Musical" by Simi Horwitz, Backstage.com (5/9/2001)
Weekend Edition, NPR (12/1/2001)

Love In Pieces (play)

Love In Pieces is a short play, written by Sarah Morton. When Cleveland Public Theatre had a new plays festival, it won the top prize, the Chilcote Award, in 1997. With this honor came a full production the following season, and premiered at Cleveland Public Theatre in February, 1998. I was an actor in the company.

This 40-minute work consists of four scenes, depicting famous couples from mythology and literature: Antony & Cleopatra, Laertes & Ophelia, Orpheus & Eurydice and Cupid & Psyche. Each scene departs from its traditional narrative to paint original portraits of love in crisis.

The playwright makes clear in her stage directions that these are not four separate plays. For example, the set should remain simple, each scene resembling the other, to create what she calls a "dreamlike fluidity." Also, though she concedes the play could be performed by eight actors, or "two very versatile ones," she believes the play works best with four actors playing each of the younger and older roles.

So it was in 1998, where I and Triste Crawford played the first and third scenes, and Doug Rossi and Michelle Pristash the second and fourth scenes. Cleveland Public Theatre promoted the work as an (odd) choice with which to celebrate Valentine's Day. Our costumes and Oliver Sohngen's set were largely white, with red accents, the set like a wedding cake, or more like a bisected cheese wheel.

Doug Rossi (Laetres) & Michelle Pristash (Ophelia)

Critical response to Sarah's work was strong, the Free Times calling the show "both post-modern and old fashioned" and "smart and sweet." The Plain Dealer praised her for having "a gift for using both the visual and verbal elements of theater to create complex, striking work."

Scene Magazine spared little restraint, and with this work sincerely called Sarah Morton, "a nascent playwriting genius."

Each performer received uniformly positive notices ... with one interesting exception. Plain Dealer critic Marianne Evett noted that "David Hansen does not have enough presence and command as the old warrior Antony." Cleveland Public Theater made the mistake in 1995, when I was not yet twenty-seven, to cast me (in a different production) as a fifty year-old former Marine. Only twenty-nine, I agree that I made a young and scrawny Antony. More on that later.

Suffice it to say, the show was successfully produced, and I was very happy to be part of that.

Poster, CPT (1998)

As for Love In Pieces, it was produced one more time, produced by a third party for the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival. The best that can be said about this version is that nytheatre.com recognized strength in Morton's writing, but that there were serious issues with the director who cast herself in all four female roles, acting against a single male partner. These actors had apparently little chemistry and the performance included breathtakingly long scene breaks.

Shooting bull in the rehearsal hall last fall (continuing yesterday's post) I remembered this play. Four scenes, two set in bedrooms, one in a bathroom, the fourth one the road out of the Underworld. The CPT production was presented in the cavernous former ballroom that is the Levin Theatre. True, it was in the round, which was exciting, but hardly intimate.

Each scene a two-hander, three couples and one set of siblings. Impotence, abuse, disappointment, doubt. You can make these feelings span the distance between character and witness, but what if you closed that gap, made the audience need to lean in, to listen carefully, or make them truly feel they are walking in on something they shouldn't be seeing?

These are the personal moments we all feel in every relationship, that we desperately work to keep secret. Set them in their natural habitat ... what would that be like?

Except for the road out of Hell. That would take some imagination.

Anyway, that was my proposal. I offered it to the company. You want to put on a show, this is the show I am offering, because then I would believe in it. And they all jumped on board.

Tomorrow: Love In Pieces (execution)

Summer of 2004

Any given year can be packed with exciting events, personal and professional. The right song can send me spiraling into memory of summers where nothing significant happened at all.

However, the summer of 2004 went from strength to strength, each successive event more startling than the last.  

Grandfathers

Late spring, we visited my grandfather Henrik in Florida, for his 100th birthday. He'd made it, mind intact. Counting down, he had previously announced he was five! (when he was 95.) He was two! (when he was 98.) Now he was zero. As the man said, second childishness. But not oblivion. Not yet. Never oblivion. He also had all his teeth.

At around the same time, we lost Toni's grandfather Calvin, our first child's namesake. Diagnosed with cancer, he was gearing up to fight it, but that fight never came. Awaiting chemo, a blood clot lodged in his heart and he was gone.

We had prepared for a long good-bye, and were stunned by no good-bye at all. We were grateful he had the chance to meet our child, who delighted him. No funeral, not a religious man, a memorial was planned for the end of the summer.

Spencer Tunick in Cleveland

This was also the summer experimental artist Spencer Tunick came to Cleveland and encouraged us all to get naked in public. Having tried and failed to find an indoor site for  a January shoot, they bumped the date to late June after securing the assistance of the city of Cleveland to stage what was (at that time) the largest mass-nude photo shoot in North America.

The photograph itself is almost beside the point, Tunick was at that time bringing with him a lot of attention, often raising interesting social questions simply by arranging these unusual events. The experience itself was an artistic event, with euphoric highs and irritating lows. Listen to this audio diary my wife and I created with the folks at WCPN, documenting the event for Around Noon, and you will understand what I mean.

This event fell neatly on our fifth wedding anniversary, June 26th.

Radio K

There are moments in time when I become suddenly very interested in new music. Obsessed, really. This year two things came into play which made it urgent to discover the hot new dance music. 1) This is the year I became a fanatically dedicated runner because of 2) The iPod.

Receiving an iPod for my birthday meant successfully being able to take music with me on runs, without requiring a cassette player, which is like running holding a brick that is tethered to your hand.

My brother introduced me to the University of Minnesota’s Radio K back in 1999, but using the “radio” feature on iTunes I was able to play it in my house all the time, and with the music store could spontaneously purchase whatever it was I heard that I never knew I lived without. Music by The Streets, Felix da Housecat, and of course, I Am The World Trade Center.


In a good and decent universe, this is the number one pop song of all time.

Mr. Shakespeare

This summer, and for only two seasons, my employer experimented with resuming a summer season (as opposed to fall-through-spring). One effort in raising awareness was imagined by Andrew May, who was impressed by a serendipitous promotional event that occurred when he was a young man in Chicago.

A performer on break from a Shakespeare festival downtown was reading a newspaper on a park bench in his compete, Elizabethan costume. A photographer happened to catch a passerby in the very second of an expressive double-take, and the picture made the front page of the Trib.

This is how I came to be Mr. Shakespeare, he wanted to recreate that moment but in Cleveland, and my job was to be seen all summer, at a variety of arts festivals and public events. The Rib Burn-Off, a Cleveland baseball game, the Cain Park Arts Festival -- I wasn’t handing out advertisements, I wasn’t putting on an act, I was just this guy who claimed to be William Shakespeare.

One day in early summer (and unfortunately before our costume shop had finished tailoring my beautiful, GLT-branded “plum” outfit) Andrew took me around Cleveland for a few preliminary, promotional shots.

The American Revolution

During its final year, Bad Epitaph Theater presented and I directed the Midwestern premiere of Kirk Wood Bromley’s The American Revolution.

Written entirely in verse, Mr. B. cast the story of the War for American Independence in the style of a Shakespearean tragedy along the lines of Henry V or Othello.

George Washington, traditionally depicted as an unknowable American god, is here a troubled and sympathetic general, finding his footing as general and becoming the man who would be First President. However, it is Benedict Arnold and his wife Peggy Shippen who provided an intimate dramatic tension, like Macbeth and Lady M., full of jealousy and scheming.

Our production was presented out-of-doors, on Wade Oval in University Circle, with bright costumes taking the place of any kind of set. Challenges included creating interesting stage combat with rifles and bayonets rather than swords, but interesting they were with swirling flags and the dramatic (though not frightening) sound of heavy wooden sticks beat against plastic garbage cans, which sound enough like guns and cannons without alarming the police.

Bromley’s clowns, the Rebel Mess (led by Ray McNiece as Appalachian beatnik Johnny Freeman) sang songs and hid from battle and lost limbs. It was awesome. Unfortunately, it was a very cool June that year which kept crowds low until the end of the run … and our final performance on Independence Day was washed out due to a sudden flash flood minutes after call time.

Highlight of the run was when the playwright and members of Inverse Theatre, who originated the work, made a trip to enjoy the performance. We feted them in grand Cleveland style at Nick’s place in Tremont.

As if we were not busy enough, there was a road trip to Maine.

I Hate This @ FringeNYC

That August was the first time I went solo at the New York International Fringe Festival, performing I Hate This (a play without the baby) in a 40-seat walkdown way out on Eighth Avenue.

While it was thrilling to share this work on a national stage, I learned some hard truths on that journey. I do not know how to handle being alone. Also, that a glowing review in The New York Times won’t do a thing for box office when no one wants to see a show about stillbirth.

However, it was that review which led a number of health and/or bereavement organizations across the Midwest to contact me and created the opportunity to carry Calvin's story far and wide and eventually across the Atlantic.

AIDSWALK/RUN

This year I became a runner. I had been an itinerant runner since I was an adolescent. Sometimes I would make a serious effort to maintain some kind of regimen -- ten years earlier, in 1994, I kept it up for several months.

But with one technological advance, I became a committed runner and have never stopped. As previously stated, that device would be The iPod.

For the first time, AIDSWALK included a 5K run, starting at Edgewater Beach. Running a race using the iPod (which I no longer do) gave me some kind of superhuman burst of energy and I broke twenty minutes for the first and possibly last time ever. That included that hill, by the way.

The kid was only a year and half, this was their first race. At first they were excited by all of the runners, starting all at the same time. But when we just kept going, running, running away and not coming back, and me with them, they started crying.

However, in 19 minutes and so many seconds I was back and when they saw me they smiled and shouted, DADDY RUNS FAST!

Summer's End

This epic summer closed with Calvin G.'s memorial, a glorious event where the extended family came together for a beautiful celebration of memory and music ... and someone ripped off our diaper bag, and with it two pair prescription sunglasses, my camera and her wallet. Instead of enjoying the celebration, I was choking down anger, on the phone with the Athens Police Department.

Coupled with a different theft in NYC a month earlier, I fell into a prolonged period of anxiety and fear. How can I care for a little person when I cannot look after myself?

Notes on Fringe (Day Ten)

Double Heart, final FringeNYC performance at the Connelly Theater.

Double Heart FringeNYC Company
Stage Manager Diana, David, Annie, Emily, James
Venue Director Kimille, Director Lisa

Setting costumes backstage.

Diana in the Connelly balcony.

James sets the curtains.

Annie onstage, moments before we open house.

Emily and James, minutes before curtain.

Connelly Theater detail.

After, Daniel and I went out for Indian food.

Notes on Fringe (Day Nine)

Witches.

Another bright, beautiful day in New York City. For reals, we got rain dumped upon us on the drive into Manhattan last Thursday. Tuesday morning was cold and rainy and I did my laundry ... and then the skies were bright and clear and stayed that way.

Also, it has been warm, but not hot. I mean, the weather has been ideal. This morning James and I headed out to pass out palm cards at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. It's Friday, so I assumed the line for this evening's performance of Love's Labour's Lost would be long, but I had no idea. I mean, there were at least a hundred people in line who couldn't possibly have gotten tickets.

But still, morning in the park. Good times.

James and I passed out at least four hundred cards. No kidding. We ordered five thousand cards for this trip, they came in 20 boxes of 250. We have one more show, and we are down to two boxes, that is some good distribution work for six people. James and I emptied the better part of two just on the trip this morning.

I am always delighted when people ask questions about the show, that's a good sign, where, exactly, and when and what, who wrote it? James says it's in verse and someone asks, what kind of verse and I poke him and say, "Do Messina." He fills the air with:

Messina! Fair Sicilian burgh, at last! 
From northern climes I’ve soldiered, twice enlisted 
To defend this federated kingdom, Italy.
But leaving Padua I’ve never yet encountered sun so bright, 
Air so fresh and salty from the sea, 
The sight and scent of citrus, hanging low. 
If I must rest and recreate abroad, 
Why then, Messina is the place for me!

There was applause and smiles all around, because that's what you get for having a good voice in Central Park.

Shakespeare & Co. FringeNYC literature display.

How do you get people to come to your FringeNYC show, when you are not a New York company, have no local following? We have spent cash on advertising, well-placed advertising, but not an absurd amount of advertising. Mostly online, at various sites.

We hired a p.r. firm to bundle our materials with the rest of the FringeNYC press releases, which may or may not stand out, with so many others vying for attention. But Robert Muller's production photographs are solid, attractive, just what a blog or paper or magazine wants to see. Colorful, with costumes, a set, from a performance, not posed, lively. Interesting.

For these efforts we had advance notice in The New York Times, and Backstage.com. This is exactly what you want, what you need, to get noticed before the festival begins. And we met people on line at the Delacorte who said they'd seen it! In The Times!

And there are reviews, and those have been good. I get the impression that some people do not find my performances to their liking. They love our lovers, however -- and praise my writing, which is more important to me, anyway.

... and our attendance has ranged from 25 to 40. So, okay. Better than some. I was hoping for more. Asked prior to the Fringe, I said I wanted 50. Fifty per show. But what do I know from attendance, I have done solo shows at FringeNYC twice before, and each time I didn't come near what we have seen this year.

... and we're not done yet! One more show tomorrow. A Saturday at noon, not exactly when I'm out seeing theater, but pre-sale is as good or better than previous performances, so we have have a good showing. Or, you know. The same. Lots of friends are coming ... the question is whether people we met on line in Central Park will be joining them.

Today we all ventured back into the audience. Diana and her family went to see Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. Annie and her NYC friends went to see a cabaret -- it was later I was surprised and delighted to find they were seeing the majestic Ute Lemper!

Annie, Diana, her aunt and I all went to see a FringeNYC production -- Jen Bosworth's Why Not Me this afternoon at Subculture. We had been hoping to see her entire routine since both her show nd ours were featured in three promo events last weekend. Frankly, it was worth the price of admission just listening to her accompanist, Briar Rabbit, play and sing.

By the way, that's just a brilliant idea, ask a talented, young guitarist to vamp while you perform your solo work. It's like beat poetry. Solid. So glad to meet her and see her, she tells great stories, tells them well, she's hilarious, sincere and just really cool.

Tonight, however, James, Emily and I went to see Sleep No More. An immersive theatrical experience, SNM tells a 1930s version of Macbeth in an abandoned hotel, audience members are free to wander the entire space, taking in hours of dialogue-free movement events on three different floors.

I have been interested in seeing this for some time. Developed by a British theater company called Punchdrunk, it was supposed to run two months and has already run two years. I was curious as to how the concept might fare in a long-running circumstance, when it has moved from hip-and-hard-to-get-in-to, to move of a "hey, this looks weird, and there's naked chicks in it, wanna check it?" kind of event.

Regardless, the masks help. The audience members all wear masks, rendering themselves mostly anonymous, cargo shorts notwithstanding. Once engaged, I was taken by the performances, but also anxious that I was missing something on a different floor or in a different room ... until I was singled out by one of the witches, taken by the hand, and led into her room for a one-on-one event.

No, I won't tell you what happened. Or I might, in person, but not here.

Yes, I am very glad I went, and not just for the special attention. Also very glad to share it with James and Emily, who were ecstatic about their experience. Sometimes you get just what you expect, and maybe a little bit more, and that can be a very good thing.