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?

Process XXVI

"The Children Who Played at Slaughtering"
Directed by Dan Riordan
Animation by Chris Gleason

My Saturday routine has been to draw all day, and especially in the evening. I have been slavishly dedicated to the all-request show Radio Free Current, where Sean McPherson refers to me as “David from Cleveland.” He’d call me that anyway, but it provides me a distinction from “David from Las Vegas.” We are both dedicated listeners. 

Perhaps it would have been worth it to bring the drawing table out of storage, but there is literally nowhere we could have put it without it being in the way for the entire semester.

This week, as I was drafting the text for the final page, I began to get depressed. Already! Completion depression, and I am not even close to finished! It needs to be turned in by May 11. I am in the zone, though. Last week I was behind, and I spent the entire weekend catching up.

But last night I was not drawing. Because I was done! I did the whole page on Friday. I mean, I’m not done-done, I need to go back and clean things up, add some backgrounds. However, the big work is complete.

Click on for detail.

I also need to write a radio drama. This is also a thing I have done. I have been repurposing a lot of my work this semester, which I am entirely justified in doing (he said somewhat defensively) because it’s about form, not originality. I adapted a comic book from a short play, there are other unproduced works that might make for good radio drama.

Speaking of which, tonight is the 2021 NEOMFA Playwriting Festival. Five short films will be presented at the Tremont Taphouse, including an adaptation of The Children Who Played at Slaughtering. It’s an eight minute film, directed by Dan Riordan, animated by Chris Gleason, with all the voices performed by Jo Roueiheb.

I’ve seen a preview. The team improved on the text, by which I mean, they changed text and for the better. It has a better ending line than the one I wrote. Also, because it is animation, they were able to add a lot of business that isn't in the text, but comments on the text, on the horrible world the kids see around them, and I love that. It’s a real collaborative effort.

Process XXIII

Next Wednesday, I will receive the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. I will endeavor to pound water and orange juice all day prior to the shot, as is recommended by people I don’t know on the internet in an attempt to prevent serious feelings of illness the next day. And yet, I have a lot of stuff scheduled for the coming week.

There will be rehearsals in the evening - live, in-person rehearsals downtown - as well as an online reading for a writers group on Thursday. The cartooning must continue, and I have fiction to write, as well as, you know, the jobs.

Why am I sharing what is coming, instead of reporting on what the past week was like? Maybe because I am full of anxiety and the past week didn’t really feel like much. We are nesting in Athens for an extended holiday weekend, which should be relaxing but I mean come on. It’s just a more relaxing place to do the work.

Meanwhile, the short animated film adapted from my play script The Children Who Played at Slaughtering is in development. And that’s all I need to say about that! Entirely out of my hands. One voice artist is playing all of the kids, I’m just excited to know it’s happening.

Now that it's April, I have also started reading a play a day. That is a thing I have done for a few years. People suggest plays for me to read, I can’t possibly read them all before the end of the month but I do log them in my NPX “library” to read soon. Just today someone read one of my plays and posted a recommendation, for The Negative Zone, the script I am adapting, one page at a time, for my comics studies class. 

"Everyone needs a safe space. It can be your room, your study, the garage, the kitchen, or even an erstwhile comic book store in someone's basement." - Philip Middleton Williams

That’s a piece I would like to see on stage some day.