Ten Creative Projects from 2021

"The Children Who Played at Slaughtering"
(Art: Chris Gleason)

I’m not horribly prolific, but considering it took forty years before I decided it was time to call myself a playwright (as opposed to an actor or a director) I am at least gratified to create one play a year. Sometimes they even get produced. 

Last year I wrote Forget About Me (The Breakfast Club Play) and over the course of one year had submitted that one to forty-five different places; theaters, competitions, and festivals. Beginning January 1, I expect to receive a number of rejections and also a lot of silence.

No matter. As the man said, “Move on.” I have already begun submitting my new play, No One Wants To Work Anymore. I have a job. I have my family and my health. The work continues, and move on.

These are ten artistic projects I have been involved with in some capacity during 2021.

Mrittika Chatterjee
"What Happened"
(Chennai Art Theatre)

Savory Taṇhā (sixteen short plays performed by a rotating ensemble)

The year began with fully-realized Zoom performances of this piece, produced by Cleveland Public Theatre and presented over three weekends with the company performing different roles for four different iterations of the script. If it was possible to have a live theatrical event during the shutdown, this was it.

What Happened produced by Chennai Art Theatre 

As things began to open up in other parts of the world, a postponed performance of I Hate This, re-titled What Happened for Indian audiences, opened in Chennai. For the first time, this monodrama was divided between two actors. Chennai Art Theatre remounted the work in Pondicherry in October!

All-Ohio Thespian Show: Time Capsule 

This year the All-Ohio Thespian Show was an online collection of short films called Time Capsule, chronicling the year 2020, season by season. It was all-original, written and produced by the students themselves, directed by Chennelle Bryant-Harris. I was tapped as dramaturge and New York-based artist SMJ was the movement coach.

The Children Who Played at Slaughtering

The NEOMFA Playwrights Festival went virtual in 2021, short films were adapted from short play scripts. My piece was an animation from my take on the Grimm’s Folk Tale, The Children Who Played at Slaughtering, directed by Dan Riordan, animation by Chris Gleason. It’s a seriously bent piece of work and I fear that if it is ever posted online it may ruin my career as the writer of children’s plays.

The Negative Zone (comic book)

My final project for a course in Comics Studies and Queer Theory was a book adapted from a short play scripts about comic book shops from the early 1980s. Every Saturday for ten weeks I spent the entire day (or longer) creating one page. I’m pretty pleased with the result, which you can read as a digital comic for only $1.99.

I Hate This produced by Playhouse Square

Last spring we recorded an amazing filmed version of our story, performed by James Rankin, and also directed by Chennelle. Ananias Dixon as videographer also played a major role in the shape the work has taken. We are still trying to decide the best way to present this piece, but I am grateful that it is done. It’s something I have fantasized about for over fifteen years.

"Sherlock Holmes Meets the
Bully of Baker Street"
(Jupiter Christian School)

The Great Lakes Theater School Residency Program

For (over) twenty years I have been working with actors to bring the residency program into area schools. This year is different, for too many reasons. But the people are so good.

Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street

Last Spring I was delighted to learn that not only was my Holmesian pastiche to be published by Pioneer Drama Service, but that the script had received the Shubert Fendrich Memorial Playwriting Award! 

Schools in the United States and Canada are now taking up their own productions of Sherlock and Vicky running down missing paintings and the bully of Baker Street (see photo from the Jupiter Christian School production, right). 

It is madness to think that only two years ago we were creating the original production for live performance in area schools.

School Residency Program
(Great Lakes Theater)

10 Minutes to Midnight: 9 Quirky Plays for the Holidays

There was a time when a major part of my creative output was shepherding writers to create short plays on a single theme, and I was very gratified to be one writer in such a project curated by someone else. Directed by Caitlin Lewins with Ananias, for Cleveland Public Theatre, this was a delightful way to end the year. 

NEOMFA Playwrights Festival 2022

The world is shutting down, again. Don’t act surprised. Last week there was a small gathering to read through those plays which (maybe, hopefully) will be presented at the NEOMFA Playwrights Festival at convergence-continuum in early 2022. I have a ten minute play which is (currently) titled The Ocean Breathes Salty. What’s crazy is that two of the four actors in this ten-minute piece attended Camp Theater! in years past.

However the new year shapes up, we will create. It's what we do, right?

Ten Most Visited Posts from 2021

Since beginning this blog in 2010, I have used it as a repositority for research, to report on works-in-progress, to flog productions and publications, promote the work of others, file book reports, to keep track of my progress pursuing my MFA, and to opine about matters pertaining to the world of theater.

Some posts go viral, most do not. I have a dedicated following of about two dozen folks (hello.) Every now and then something catches everyody's attention, and that's nice.

For some odd reason, the most popular posts of the year were written in the past couple months. You'd think I would have accumulated more views for stuff from the beginning of the year. I think I have had a lot to say this season. Might have something to do with going the fuck outside. 

Here now, my most visited posts from the year 2021.

10. On Execution

You move just a finger,
Say the slightest word,
Something’s bound to linger.
Be heard.

9. “Hadestown” at the Walter Kerr Theatre

Having the opportunity to take my sixteen year-old to New York to attend a Broadway show was a highlight of the year. My own excitement to be back in the city was leavened by how much I learned about him during our brief stay.

Brian Pedaci
"Savory Taṇhā"

8. On Clichés

When does it become all right not to tell the entire fable, but just to reference it? You know what story I’m talking about. It’s in your nature.

7. “Savory Taṇhā” at Cleveland Public Theatre

As the shutdown lifted (for better or for worse) and live, in-performance resumed, I realized I was not as overwhelmed by the experience of re-engaging in theatrical performance as so many others, and much of this is due to the opportunity afforded my by Cleveland Public Theatre, presenting Savory Taṇhā live via Zoom, first as a weekend of workshops in summer 2020, and then as a full three-week run early this year.

Sylka Edmondson
Katie Wells
"10 Minutes to Midnight"

6. 10 Minutes to Midnight: 9 Quirky Plays for the Holidays

This is still playing and you should see it!

5. 2021 Shubert Fendrich Memorial Playwriting Award

This was a delightful surprise, receiving this award, and since the announcement, Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street has been licensed for production in schools in the United States and Canada.

4. On Trigger Warnings

Things have changed. Things have absolutely changed, and the world is divided into those who have the agency to say we must do things differently and those who say no, I want to do things the same way we always have. I find that those who oppose content warnings do not present compelling arguments for why they shouldn’t exist. 

3. Juke Box Hero

Part of my rock and roll fantasy (I mean – it’s all part of my rock and roll fantasy) has been to be able to play drums successfully with a band, and one night this fall I had my shot and I took it.

2. The “I Hate This” Series

• I Hate This: Twenty Years On
• I Hate This: Westfield Rehearsal Period
• I Hate This: Recording
• The Future: Twenty Years On

When our video recording of I Hate This (performed by James Rankin) is released some time in the new year it will have been worth the wait. Several posts documenting the process of creating this work would individually take several places on this list, so in the interest of variety I added them up to represent one single entry. I am grateful this story has attracted so much attention.

James Alexander Rankin
"I Hate This"
Photo by Cody York

1. Philip Johnson (Revisited)

Upon the announcement that the Cleveland Clinic plans to bulldoze the edifice which former housed the Cleveland Play House (which should have come as a surprise to absolutely no one) there were a few days of outrage express not only by those who have strong memories of their time in the space, but also many who have no personal interest in Cleveland theater history but felt it necessary to malign the Clinic on principle.

Many argued that the space should be kept and maintained as an arts facility (though none would volunteer to shepherd such a project) and were unimpressed when I suggested that if the largest performing arts organization in the region found the place financially untenable, Lord knows some coalition of small arts organizations would also.

Ten Minutes to Midnight: 9 Quirky Plays for the Holidays

My first Christmas Pageant in elementary school (this would have been in 1973, surely they called it a "Christmas" pageant) was both a time of wonder and discovery. It was a wonder to be in our school after dark, a time when you should be at home and had never given a thought to what night time inside of a school might look like.

Also, one of our teachers had a “crystal ball” which was a gift from Santa. It glowed green and when you spoke into it, Santa could hear you! He didn’t speak back, that would have been asking too much. But just the idea of a one-way mystical communication device was enough to send the imagination on a whirl.

During the show we were gathered in one of the classrooms, waiting for our turn to take our place on the risers in the cafeteria. I was wandering the hall, probably headed to the bathroom or something, when I saw something in that teacher’s darkened room. It was the crystal ball. I went into the room, and took a closer look. It wasn’t glowing. It was plastic. It had an electrical cord coming from the back. It was just a light.

Was I disappointed to learn the truth? Maybe a little. I don’t remember ever having been a "believer" anyhow. But now I knew a secret, something that my classmates did not know. And I didn’t tell them about it, because it was mine.

Each holiday season I want to be involved. It’s not enough to indulge in the holidays (which I do, you know me). I want to participate. I want to provide the entertainment that provides joy during the holiday season, especially for those people who might only see one play a year, and it’s this one.

I have written before describing why I am goofy for the holidays. It’s about warmth and love, introspection and also gratitude. But though I have treasured, bittersweet memories of private, cloistered companionship (and even solitude) the sheer mania of the impending winter season makes me want to get out and be with the masses, to see the lights, to hear the music, to tell the stories.

Here’s my holly-jolly resume, dating back thirty years. Follow the links for further details!

Also: Joy of Christmas
(WEWS, 1978)

1991: Stealing Christmas at Karamu House (actor)
1992: 12 Bands of Christmas Sing! At Cleveland Public Theatre (Guerrilla Theater Co., comic interludes)
1999: The Santaland Diaries at the Brick Alley Theatre (Bad Epitaph, producer)
2000: The Santaland Diaries at Cleveland Public Theatre (Bad Epitaph, producer)
2000: The Wayward Angel at Old Stone Church (Bad Epitaph, producer)
2002: The Santaland Diaries at Beck Center (director)
2003: Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge at Cleveland Public Theatre (actor)
2013: Adventures In Slumberland at Talespinner Children’s Theatre (playwright)
2017: The Santaland Diaries at Playhouse Square (Cleveland Public Theatre, actor)
2021: 10 Minutes to Midnight at Cleveland Public Theatre (contributing playwright)

See that last one? Yes! Theater cheer this holiday season at CPT! Playwrights from Cleveland and beyond have created nine short plays, and having attended the first reading last week I am very glad to be in such company. They’re engaging, touching, and very amusing scripts about the season of light.

Actor Troian Butler & Assoc. Director Ananias Dixon

And this is special. It is as though holiday entertainments must either be childlike and sentimental, or intentionally the opposite – outrageous, cynical, or obscene. The plays on this roster are intended for an adult audience, but they’re about family, anxiety, romance; my own pieces (yes, I have more than one, because they are short) are about tradition, death, legacy, and one kick-ass patisserie.

The production is shepherded by Caitlin Lewins, with whom I had a marvelous experience creating Savory Taṇhā for CPT during the lockdown, and Ananias Dixon who was videographer for I Hate This for Playhouse Square (coming soon, I promise).

Playwrights include Dayshawnda Ash, Melissa Crum, Emma Dahl, John Dayo-Aliya, Maya Malan-Gonzalez, and me. The acting company features Tania Benites, Dar’Jon Bentley, Troian Butler, Nickol Calhoun, Sylka Edmondson, Brooke Myers, Drew Pope, Andrew Valdez and Katie Wells.

This ensemble is incredible. I think this show is going to be incredible. I’m very excited about it!

Cleveland Public Theatre presents "Ten Minutes to Midnight: 9 Quirky Plays for the Holidays" directed by Cailtin Lewins, opens Friday, December 3, 2021.

On Virtual Performance

Last Spring, KrisP. Production, a professional company and actors studio based in Hong Kong, put out a call for original plays written specifically for digital performance, never intended to be produced on a stage, for a short series they call LIMITATIONS.

As it happened, I had just completed a short work as a class assignment that had the same stipulation, and so I submitted that. And it has been selected for production!

The Runner was written to be performed as a continuous live stream; cinéma vérité executed on a platform like Facebook Live. Inspired by the John Cheever short story The Swimmer it is about ageing, regret, masculine toxicity and includes certain supernatural elements.

I am very excited and intrigued to discover how they realize the material. I had played with the idea of producing the script myself this summer, but we have all, fortunately, been very busy. Will they produce it live? The call for submissions encouraged some kind of audience participation, which it has. And a “sensory” experience, which it does.

Hong Kong is a twelve hours difference from Cleveland. I’d love to watch some live, experimental short play performed over breakfast!

Timing "The Runner"

In spite of the Delta variant making its way across the U.S., many here (including, it must be said, me and my family, who are all vaccinated) have been behaving as though the pandemic is over. This is never so apparent as in the theater community, as Broadway has plans to open shows in a little over a month, and all our local theaters are now announcing their 2021-22 seasons.

With the great reopening of American theater has also come the great dismissal of so-called “virtual” theater. Some speak as though they would be happy never to see a play on a screen again. Or more to the point, that unless it is performed live in front of you, it is not even theater.

I find this distressing. Not only because I wrote and produced live performances during the recent shutdown. Not only because this thing really isn’t over yet, and anyone who thinks they may never again have to spend a year (or more) indoors again may be in for a world of disappointment. But also because as an audience member, the performances I saw, live and recorded, as well as though I participated in, gave me life and brought me hope. 

And as much as I have enjoyed the live, in-person performances I have already taken in during the past month, I am not so ready to dismiss the virtual performances that carried me through.

"Savory Taṇhā" (aflame/afloat)

Hillary Wheelock

“Taṇhā is the price you pay for being a person,” said Arthur on Friday night, at the post-show for Savory Taṇhā. He was also in attendance on Thursday night. Regarding the final scene, about the person who creates art from those things left on the curb, those cast-off, he added, “It wouldn’t be a complete life if you didn’t have these things. The loss is what makes it important.”

We have completed one cycle of these four different performances. One audience member, Patricia, joined us on the second night, then through Friday and Saturday and returned last night, to enjoy all four. After the show Saturday she admitted that upon a second viewing she felt she was spending too much of her attention comparing the performances, but by the third night she was simply taking in the stories as they were, with fresh, new eyes.

The names we have given the four differently cast performances are not some random affectation. The first, the one we are performed again last night, is Aloft. This one tracks most closely to what I was thinking when I wrote them, in gender orientation, in the age of the characters. As a result, there is a youthful quality to them, as younger performers like Zach and Zyrece take the fore, the older performers supporting them in their journey.

Zach Palumbo

Aground has a masculine edge, as Brian's presence dominates the proceedings, Brian who is my own personal stand-in in all things theater related. Hillary’s kinetic energy takes precedence in Aflame.

The fourth version, Afloat, is the one which subverts expectation. Anne is most present, expressing the doubt and fear of failure which we usually attribute younger people. After you get to a certain age, these feelings can be too shameful to express. Also, we get the middle-age sex action.

We asked Patricia for some immediate reaction having seen all four, and she remarked upon the hospital scene, that it is that one which changes the most. The three relationships represented in the scene.

And I realized, that’s right. There are not two relationships in that scene, but three. But then, to me, that third, unseen character never changes.

See: Cleveland Public Theatre Savory Taṇhā Program

Cleveland Public Theatre presents the Zoom Premiere of "Savory Taṇhā (sixteen short plays performed by a rotating ensemble)" directed by Caitlin Lewins and featuring Anne McEvoy Zyrece Montgomery,  Zach Palumbo, Brian Pedaci & Hillary Wheelock, now through March 6, 2021.

"Savory Taṇhā" (aloft/aground)

Anne McEvoy

We have so far presented two live performances of Savory Taṇhā, the versions we call “aloft” and “aground”. One of our audience members called Wednesday night’s performance “effective, funny, sad, wistful.” 

The audience member's commentary, her very presence in the house that night was significant to me, because she is my ex-wife. It has been well over twenty-five years since she has seen any of my work. It meant a lot to me for her to be there. 

So much of the text, this text, is about awareness and understanding. Not apologies or explanations, but a frank presentation of what is, or at least what is how I see it.

Last night a number of the students we are working with to create this year’s All-Ohio Thespian show were in attendance, high school students from around the state. One of them introduced me to a new word, sonder. It is literally a new word, it was coined by the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows in 2013.

sonder (n.) the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Zyrece Montgomery

Chennelle noted the universality of the pieces, which is part of the reason these were chosen, as opposed to others which might necessarily cleave to a particular gender, age, religion, race or ability, and also why we chose to change up how the roles are distributed among the performers each night.

Caitlin, our director, proposed we make it clear each evening is distinct by providing a name to each version; tonight we’re doing the “such-and-such version.” As each performance came together, we worked to divine a common theme, or vibe. 

And so, aloft, aground, aflame, and afloat. Whatever that means to you.

The common refrain is one of connection. One audience member said these plays made them feel “something I was always connected to, brought to life.”

We are making connections, in real time, with performance, through our screens. These are also moments we will never forget. 

See: Cleveland Public Theatre Savory Taṇhā Program

Cleveland Public Theatre presents the Zoom Premiere of "Savory Taṇhā (sixteen short plays performed by a rotating ensemble)" directed by Caitlin Lewins and featuring Anne McEvoy Zyrece Montgomery,  Zach Palumbo, Brian Pedaci & Hillary Wheelock, now through March 6, 2021.

"Savory Taṇhā" at Cleveland Public Theatre

Brian Pedaci

There is currently a NYC-based theater artist named Cheryl Bear who is tearing through all of my short plays on New Play Exchange in reverse alphabetical order. I am stunned and delighted. 

I don’t even know who this person is. You can register as a playwright on NPX and post your work, and read and recommend the work of others. 

You can also register as a reader, which is less expensive (neither is expensive, not for the motherlode of material that is available to you) and Bear is one of those.

While I had already noticed she had been reading and recommending an awful lot of material written by others recently, this is something different. I have no idea why she is doing this, but I can only imagine it speaks well for my work, right?

As of today, she has read all my short plays from W (I haven’t yet written short plays that begin with Z, Y, or X) to M. That's almost 100 scripts! That also means she has already read and recommended several scripts that are included in Savory Taṇhā, which opens this Wednesday at Cleveland Public Theatre.

Some of Bear's comments:

• SKETCH Things are more than surface level as we learn there may be more behind the faces and the artist drawing them in this intriguing encounter.  
• STEPS The intoxicating secret moments of risky intimacy vividly portrayed with anticipation.
• SKINNY DIP The apprehension to just live in the moment and be free perfectly captured.
  

Zyrece Montgomery

She’s also reminding me of plays I wrote and posted and then haven’t thought about since, and it’s breaking my heart. Little pieces of me, strewn into the great ocean of the internet. And now someone is recovering them, one moment at a time.

I can’t under-state what she’s doing by reading and commenting on all of these, it’s truly affecting.

Savory Taṇhā is a truly beautiful undertaking, one made possible by the current circumstance. Listen to this, this is what I would do, if I could. I’d have a stack of my short, two-person plays. A company of actors would read them, and become familiar with them. They wouldn’t need to memorize them.

A stage manager would have them in a stack, set a timer for one hour, and call actors out to perform them, entirely at random. And go, they would perform them, script in hand, for the audience. When the hour was up, the show would be over.

The culmination of my life’s experience creating original, non-traditional theater. Short honest plays. And all of these scripts are from my soul, they’re who I am. They’re what I think. They are me. 

It's also like a Guerrilla Theater or Dobama's Night Kitchen show, made up entirely of my own writing. Which is also an entirely appropriate thing to have happen.

Hillary Wheelock

Anyway, that was the original idea. But we’re in a pandemic. So, instead, we have a company of five actors, my favorite actors, folks I have known from thirty years to twelve months. And they’ve been turning these plays back and forth, each of them performing in most of the plays, in most of the roles, interpreting each with their own life experience.

Directed by Caitlin Lewins, with original music (performed live!) by Molly Andrew-Hinders and animations by Emma Chu Wolpert, this is a fully-realized production. I am so excited to be presenting a new work for audiences to enjoy.

I should invite Cheryl Bear to see it.

Cleveland Public Theatre presents the Zoom Premiere of "Savory Taṇhā (sixteen short plays performed by a rotating ensemble)" featuring Anne McEvoy Zyrece Montgomery,  Zach Palumbo, Brian Pedaci & Hillary Wheelock, February 17 - March 6, 2021.

Process XVI

"If it were done when tis done,
Then 'twere well it were done quickly."
Macbeth, I.vii

This week we have been teaching Macbeth to students at Chardon High School. Remotely, of course. This is the first "Murder Arc" I have performed in who knows how long. Ten years? Maybe more.

I recut the Porter Scene to include “knock knock” jokes, an education in comic relief and also adaptation.

Why are we all talking about Macbeth this week?

Rising to teach, and teaching for four or five hours a day, takes a lot out of me. True, I do not need to wake at 5:00 AM, and dash out of the house to drive an hour to teach in Geauga County. Little blessings.

But trying to reach through the screen to engage masked students, while worthwhile, is its own kind of stress.

I sat at my computer every day this week, more or less constantly, from 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM.

This next week I will not be teaching. Once Savory Taṇhā opens on Wednesday, I will be able to retire earlier in the evening. And read Christie. Or do homework.

President’s Day affords me a day off, from everything. Which, of course, means I have more time for the homework. I spent pretty much all day last weekend reading. This weekend I will be reading, and also writing.

And drawing cartoons. And isn’t that amazing?

Process XIV

Zyrece & Brian
("Savory Taṇhā" rehearsal)

Last summer, Savory Taṇhā began with a short play about playwriting. It was a little snarky, like I was taking the piss out of the kind of writing I was in my early years, but also men who write a certain kind of play in general. It was a fun way to open, but in discussion with our director, Caitlin, I felt we needed so start with something a bit more sincere. 

The play ends so well with a monologue (Monument) that I thought perhaps we should begin with one. There was a monologue I wrote last summer, during the BLM uprising, about a teacher finding a slur written on the whiteboard in their class.

This week Chennelle and I were team-teaching live classes on Romeo and Juliet for students in Chardon, which caused a great deal of stress in the middle of the week. It is exhausting conducting this work via Zoom, even worse over Google Meet, because Google Meet sucks.

Then, however, I caught Brian James Polak’s The Subtext podcast. Last March he invited playwrights to record their immediate reaction to the shutdown, and I participated in that. He extended another invitation last month for those same playwrights to check in once again, and I heard my own voice. 

At that time, in mid-December, as we were starting up these live residencies, I recounted how grateful I was to have the opportunity to resume bringing the classics to students, live, even at a distance. It was a very helpful reality check.

Meanwhile, I have been taking melatonin gummies to help me sleep. Isn’t everyone? It has been very helpful, but my dreams are deep and vivid. This week in craft and theory we read work by Adrienne Kennedy, and imagery of the dead loved one haunted me. I had a dream this week of the death of a loved one. I also received a very nice anniversary card from hospice. 

And today is our daughter's eighteenth birthday. And I need to redraft a ten-minute screenplay before tomorrow evening. It's all a bit confounding.

Finally, if I say that Foucault makes my eyes water, does that make me a bad student? 

The Subtext: Pandemic Playwriting, Part 2

Process XIII

proc·ess /ˈpräˌses,ˈprōˌses/ n. 1. a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.

Yes, that is what we are doing. Classes resumed this week, a new administration has begun, and the holidays are well and truly over. I do miss the Christmas tree, the decorations. But there is work to do. So, so very much work. Good work. But a lot of it.

There are times in my life in which I have so very much work to do that it can make me even more intensely focused and productive than ever before. I recently described a semester in which I failed incredibly. This was followed by a period of tremendous production.

I was in three plays at once spring quarter my junior year; acting on the mainstage, also as part of third year performance class, and I had written and was directing my first one act. The entire department faculty called me into a staff meeting to question whether I thought this was a good idea. I told them I believed it was. I got straight A’s that quarter. I even surprised myself.

I must read two plays over the weekend, and have another sixty pages of reading on queer theory. I am working with a team to produce the Thespian All-State show, and collaborating with Caitlin Lewins who is directing the Zoom premiere of Savory Taṇhā at Cleveland Public Theatre. These are all things that are happening.

Already, I am projecting my imagination ahead into the semester, and how to best maximize previous effort into future work.

Today we meet to discuss the NEOMFA New Works Festival, which will take a creative turn this year in light of blah blah blah. At work we are putting the finishing touches on a new residency podcast. And who knows, I may be producing a comix zine.

Will I retain my grade point average? That remains to be seen. Wish me luck!

Twenty Twenty-One

Eight years ago I began a tradition of writing a post of my expectations for the coming year. The first time I did this, I knew I had two productions and one workshop in my future. Some years are not nearly so fertile, but I have been posting them, anyway.

My expectations for 2020 were modest; a production, a workshop, and the commencement of grad school. And here we are, and no one can be blamed for their lack of clairvoyance. We had no idea what was going to hit us next.

The next year will be even more a mystery. There’s a vaccine! There are a couple of them! What will happen next? Will we be protected, are we safe, if not now, then soon? What will happen? 

I mean. My daughter will graduate from high school. That is something I am pretty sure of.

We will continue to work and protect and care and create. That is for certain. I wrote a new script, and I will be slinging that to anyone who will read it. The publication of one of my scripts is in the works, more on that when it is announced.

Also, great news -- Savory Taṇhā will receive a remount at Cleveland Public Theatre!

And the schoolwork will continue. I did very well this semester. I hope to maintain my GPA.

The year 2021 marks an auspicious anniversary in our family, the twenty year birth anniversary of our first child, born on March 20, 2001. I have no idea where we will be in three months time, or how we will celebrating this birthday. If it’s anything like last year, our family will be out of doors together, experiencing whatever the world has to offer.

But there’s also a new production of I Hate This (a play without the baby) in the works, and this time we will be able to share it with everyone.

Ten Recommended Posts from 2020

Joshua McElroy, Khaki Hermann
"Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street"
(Great Lakes Theater, 2020)

Ten years on, what is this blog? It is a journal. It is a promotional tool. It is self-aggrandizing but also keeps me honest. It is a record of my progress as a playwright. And it is also an opportunity to research and record past events and tie them to the current moment.

These ten blog posts from 2020 may not have attracted as much attention, But hey, I took the time to research and write them and I recommend another look because they're pretty good.

On Procrastination

Accepting the opportunity to moderate a playwright’s panel at CPT while you are fresh in grief and trying to comprehend your mother’s eulogy is just another thing that has to get done.

The Bully of Baker Street: Week Three

Reflections on a tour in progress, and how gratifying it is to learn that adults find your educational play for elementary school children progressive and a challenge to their political beliefs.

The Short Play Project: Humiliation Series

There are about a dozen short play “collection” blog posts, but this one is my favorite. Three short play videos that beg the question: AITA?

"Residency On Demand"
(Great Lakes Theater, 2020)

Documenting Cleveland, Tuesday, May 12, 2020

We all think of ourselves as Samuel Pepys, diarists of extraordinary times. But the records of the Pandemic of 2020-21(?) are so grossly extensive. What have you, on May 12, Literary Cleveland in conjunction with Scene Magazine produced an exhaustive document of the city from one end to the other, and I was glad to be a participant.

Our Midwest Journey (1995)

Our first road trip was a test of our relationship, and in a way defined our future together. A rumination on our mutual love of the highway, tourist traps, and funky theater. 

Savory Taṇhā in Performance (Thursday)

Thoughts on opening night of a live, Zoom theater event, as part of a nationwide discussion on not merely the value, but the very validity of virtual theater.

The Mirror and the Light (book)

The third part of Hilary Mantel’s “Thomas Cromwell” trilogy was surprisingly affecting, and so politically timely. Back then when you fell out of favor, the monarch had you literally killed.

Our Midwest Journey (1995)

My First Fringe Festival

I had always wanted to dive into my first fringe festival (as audience member) experience, as it so deeply informed my next decade. I was amazed to find as much source material online as I did.

Three Hundred Sixty-Five Days of Practice

Would you like to see exactly what it looks like to write three pages every morning for an entire see?

Dobama ‘96 Trading Cards

I have always loved and been fascinated by package design and marketing. But this is the story of a gig that almost destroyed me.

Ten Theater Projects in 2020

"High (short play)"
(Center for Arts Inspired Learning)

2020: The Big Cancel.

Last week WaPo theater critic Peter Marks made the argument for a cabinet level position for the arts, a Secretary of Arts and Culture, if you will. And were not living in a nation which has always been and remains a reactionary, Puritanical society I might hold out hope for such a move, a champion for the millions of arts workers and the hundreds billions of dollars a year that are tied up in the arts.

As things stand, the performing arts are either on hold or online. Even with a vaccine on the horizon, current estimates suggest it will be another year before we are safely congregating in large numbers.

Like so many writers, I had projects in development which were canceled, or postponed. But I was also one of the fortunate creators whose work either went online, turned into something else, or whole new works were developed as a result of the pandemic.

In chronological order:

"The Witches"
Jailyn Sherell Harris, Adrionna Powell Lawrence

Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street (Great Lakes Theater)

We began rehearsals for this year’s outreach touring play a few days after my mother died. Three weeks of rehearsal and fifty performances later, the show closed on March 8. At the end of that week, the office downtown was closed, and it remains so to this day. 

The Witches (Cleveland Public Theatre) 

We had our first read-through of this new play script in late February. It was to be workshopped at Cleveland Public Theatre over one weekend in April. We had to replace one of our actors, and had a single rehearsal with the new team on Tuesday, March 10. 

A couple months later I returned to that space, mask on, disinfectant at the ready, to use for an entirely different project, and the rehearsal table was still there, with additional copies of the rehearsal calendar lying around, one of the actors had left their script. It was all just waiting there for an acting company that never returned, a project abruptly abandoned.

"50 Hamlets"
Chennelle Bryant-Harris
(Great Lakes Theater)

The Short Play Project

What began as a feverish writing project took on a life of its own after the shutdown began, as I put out a call for folks to use my two-to-three page scripts and make short videos out of them, staying within CDC distance guidelines. And they did, over seventy individual, short films, created by artists from all over the county (and even overseas) with imagination and heart. Watch them all here.

50 Hamlets (Great Lakes Theater)

As we were striving to continue offering educational programming to the schools which have come to depend upon it, we were also learning ways we could take advantage of the opportunities presented through modern technology to bridge time and space. Arts educators who have proudly called themselves “actor-teachers” reaching back forty years collaborated to create this unique artifact from the beginning of the shutdown.

The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (Brave Spirits Theatre)

As we were all learning how best to navigate Zoom recordings, I accepted a role in this live performance produced by Brave Spirits Theatre in Staunton, VA. They had plans to stage a slate of history plays, pre-Shakespearean works, many of which the Bard used as template for his own, more famous plays. They moved production online, and I learned an awful lot about the limitations of the medium, and also its tricks. Brave Spirits announced their dissolution on November 21, another financial casualty of the pandemic.

"Savory Taṇhā"
Hillary Wheelock, Zyrece Montgomery
(Cleveland Public Theatre)

The Way I Danced With You (Culver City Public Theatre)

As we were all learning how best to navigate Zoom recordings, my friends at Culver City Public Theatre were presenting bi-weekly new play readings through the summer, and this romantic two-hander was part of that line-up. 

Savory Taṇhā (Cleveland Public Theatre)

What began as a feverish writing project took on a life of its own when I was asked to curate a selection of short plays to be produced live via Zoom. We were all trying to figure out how best to share the experience of live theater utilizing available technology

Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street (Culver City Public Theatre)

Plans were made for the folks in Culver City to present another one of my works as their annual, free summer offering for families. Instead, they created a lovely, recorded adaptation of the play which started my year.

"Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street"
Richard R. Rosales
(Culver City Public Theatre)

Residency On Demand (Great Lakes Theater)

Like many arts organizations we have been trying to figure out how to reach our students. They are either still working from home, or those schools that are open are not permitting visitors. We rethought our lesson plans and created a makeshift TV studio in our rehearsal space, and have started piloting live classes. I can’t tell you how good it feels to get back into schools, even at a distance.

Untitled Pandemic Play Script (NEOMFA)

All of my doubts and anxieties have been distilled into a play script for two women actors and one set. The comment I am perhaps most grateful for from the workshop reading was, “I am surprised I get into this play so much.” Now it just needs a proper title. I mean, it has one. But I think I have to change it.

Thinking about calling it “Goatfucker.” What do you think?

Source: The culture is ailing. It’s time for a Dr. Fauci for the arts by Peter Marks, Washington Post (12/2/2020)

How I Spent My Summer (2020)

Rich & Dave (1991)

When I was in college, I used to make a mixtape every summer. I referred to it (to myself) as a “junk tape.” It was intended to be a document of the season, because I love summer so much, even when I hate it.

If there was a song I was listening to a lot, I’d add it to the tape. A movie I discovered at the video store, I put a snatch of great dialogue or music on the tape. Or moaning. You get what I’m saying.

Bumpers from Sunday Progressions, maybe I would record myself reading one sentence from a novel or a comic book. I still have them somewhere, from 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990 …

The 1991 mixtape was the absolute best. It was a complicated summer, the tape begins from when I left Los Angeles, and chronicles my being single in my new apartment, trying to rekindle a relationship, meeting people on Coventry, getting kittens, waiting tables, having troublesome one-night stands.

I remember it included Whispers & Moans, So Like Candy, the theme from Northern Exposure, Satisfied, Mama Said Knock You Out (Unplugged), Who, Where, Why? (Video Mix), There She Goes, and on and on. It was the very best mixtape ever made.

The following summer I was partway through creating my Summer 1992 mixtape when it, the 1991 tape, and my car, were stolen in New York City. I made summer tapes for a couple years to follow, but it was always with a sense of sadness for their lost brethren.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern (1991)

The summer of 1991 still exists, of course, in my memory. Not many photographs, not much documentation, but I was there. Out there, on the street. Performing at open mics in the yard, handing change to addicts, listening to my roommate have sex, meeting characters. Laying the groundwork for my adulthood. But there is still an emotional gap, and it is recorded onto that lost cassette.

Now, unlike then, I have documentation. Gigabytes of documentation. But will this summer be absent in other ways? Because of everything that did not happen, or happened at a technological remove.

Will we hold memories of good times when our senses are not entirely engaged? All the cocktail parties, trivia nights, play readings and performances, did they actually happen if the people we interacted with were not in three dimensions? Have no odor? No observable feet?

CAMP THEATER

Trying the think back even two months is taxing. Each Friday I think, again? And yet, I will retain fond memories of this year's virtual Camp Theater!

However, though we all have made fascinating and in some cases groundbreaking discoveries in online and distanced performance, nothing compares to the energy of young people brought together to play and work, to act, dance, sing and combat, to dress up and stage work together, and I hope we never have to do it this way again.

Chase Kneuven & Alexis Long (Culver City Public Theatre)

THE WAY I DANCED WITH YOU

Our friends at the Culver City Public Theatre were forced to suspend their spring production of Romeo & Juliet -- and also their free, summer production of About a Ghoul, my children’s play adapted from Moroccan folk tales.

In lieu of these events they have hosted a series of virtual play readings, and I was very happy to witness their reading of my play The Way I Danced With You, directed by Lauren Bruniges and performed by Alex Long and Chase Kneuven.

Even better, they are currently in the process of creating a full, virtual production of Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street, which will be presented on select dates next month.

Topsail Island, North Carolina

NORTH CAROLINA

Okay, I don’t want to get defensive about this but, okay? We went on vacation, and not just anywhere, but we went to the beach. I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, “what the fuck were you thinking?”

Look, it’s not like we went to Florida. I wasn’t soaking in a hot tub with two hundred strangers, I wasn’t soaking in coronavirus soup. My mother-in-law had rented a beach house before it all came down and we weighed our options and thought, well. We know this place. The beach is not crowded, we will social distance, be together as a family. No hugs, no handshakes. We’ll dine-in and enjoy the sun and try to create some sense of sanity.

And you know, that's just what we did.

SAVORY TAṆHĀ

Anything I might say about Savory Taṇhā (sixteen short plays performed by a rotating ensemble), I believe I have already said. In the midst of this time of artistic uncertainty, it was such a release to work with actors, even via Zoom, to create a live performance.

I am reminded of freshman year at school. First years were not permitted to do acting work. As an extracurricular I volunteered to be a DJ for the green radio station, and one of my classmates mused that I had found a way to still be vocal and creative, even if I couldn’t do so onstage. It felt like that, almost like getting away with something.

Brian Pedaci & Zyrece Montgomery
(Cleveland Public Theatre)

The fact that I conducted the final rehearsals and all of the performances from a beach house felt even more transgressive. This is how I get my kicks, I guess.

HAMILTON

Everybody watched Hamilton.

MAINE

We had barely been home before driving off again, this time to Flood’s Cove. Heading out, I thought it was an unwise decision, and not for the obvious reasons. I have never arrived at the Barnstable without my mother there waiting for me. Stepping into that empty, unprepared cabin, was a challenge but I held it together. We closed the door to the first floor room she used to share with father, and just last year with Jacques.

My wife, my son, and I (the girl has a job and stayed at home) only this trio dined each night at the table which was traditionally full of Hansens and Bakers, Thayers, Kosboths and Tanskis. I wondered why I was there, was I there for me, or was I merely holding a place?

But as the week progressed, I felt my own place. The boy and I would fish, or he would fish and I would read and we went out on the water and I began to feel my own sense of ownership. And I knew I would return.

Many grateful thanks.

ESTATE SALE

Settling my mother’s estate has been a multi-level process, one which should have been resolved months ago but for the virus. Every time I go there I feel as though it will be my last, first to assess the estate sale team, bringing everything she has ever owned (she has owned, but also what he parents owned, eight decades of belongings) to be sorted, priced, and sold.

It was overwhelming. This is why you pay people to do things you don’t have the heart to do.

The sale was successful, ask me for a reference. I was out of town for the weekend itself, I was glad to be literally removed from town. But I still needed to return to haul out the garbage, the useless leftovers, the junk. The unwanted artifacts.

Waiting for the guys to come, the junk men. Lying on the floor of the dining room, the same space mom occupied in her hospice bed as she died. I hoped it would be poignant, that there might be some epiphany but mostly I just looked at my phone and dozed.

CENTER FOR ARTS-INSPIRED LEARNING

As the summer was drawing to a close, I was contacted by Giorgiana Lascu at the Center for Arts-Inspired Learning (formerly Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio) to provide some short play scripts for her teenage interns as part of their end-of-season program of events. We spent a crazy morning pitching out scripts and her charges were very excited about getting to work on them.



In the past five months, folks have created nearly seventy-five short films from these scripts. I have actually backed away from writing as many, recently I have been playing with dialogue between a mother and daughter and I am not sure where that is going to go yet, but it is an exciting new journey.

Meantime, it does my heart glad to look back over the summer, to see it book-ended by Camp Theater, and by this project, enjoying the work of hopeful young people.

THE DECK

Five years ago we had our deck rebuilt and since that time I have taken loving care of it. We have expanded the furniture to include shelves and a small table, found on someone’s curb.

Houseplants and candles and twinkle lights and now it is as though we have added an entire new room to our modest abode. And we write and we read and we drink (we’ve recently cut the drinking) and relax and create and do our best to enjoy what we have and to make our way through.

I am anxious about the time we all have to go back indoors.

Thank you for listening to my Summer 2020 junk tape.