Top Ten Moments of 2018

Harlequinade 2018, Talespinner Children's Theatre (Photo By Steve Wagner)

This year has not been easy, for anyone, and it concludes with as much or more difficulty as it began. Moments accumulate, though, good moments, for me and for my family, and taking the time to acknowledge them is an attempt to keep them bright just a little longer.

2018 was my fiftieth year, which began with an impromptu visit to Orlando (see here), and included a beautiful weekend of performances of my play The Way I Danced With You at Blank Canvas Theatre, and catching the national tour of Hamilton at the State Theatre.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles
(Chattanooga Theatre Centre)

My son played drums in several awesome sets with the School of Rock, and I ran the Cleveland Half Marathon with Fornadel. Then there was the election, the beginning of a slow crawl out of a dark pit. There was a lot to experience, and to celebrate.

Here are ten moments, in chronological order, which stand out to me at this time.

1. “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” at Chattanooga Theatre Centre

Since its premiere six years ago, and subsequent publication, my adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles has become my most produced play. I am not yet widely produced, but a couple times a year a high school or community theater chooses this work, and I am grateful for that.

The year began with a rather stylish, intimate production at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre, and by all accounts it was a splendid evening.

The boy will bash.

To be entirely honest, I have a complicated relationship with this text. It’s Agatha Christie’s story, not mine. I have only adapted it for the stage. But I am glad that folks produce it. So I welcomed the way this company, as overheard on promotional interviews, appreciated the adaptation itself, and what I was able to bring to the novel.

2. “Noises Off” at Heights High

My daughter does enough for me to be proud of, apart from the sheer magic of her existence. She paints, she plays violin, she excels in the classroom. I have never asked her to consider the stage.

But, as her father did before her, she performed in her first full-length play as a freshman in high school. Following an enjoyable turn during the winter one-acts, she auditioned for and had a part in the spring play, Michael Frayn’s Noises Off.

Mom, a friend, and me.
(Cleveland Museum of Art)

3. Jesus Christ Superstar Live on NBC

Yeah, I like this musical. And having the opportunity to share it with my wife and children for the first time in an outstanding television production was really only part of it. We all gathered around the TV (WHO DOES THAT) at my mother’s house, where we got to view and then chat during the commercials.

At this stage in life I think of myself as the lucky one, one of the three brothers, the one who lives in the same city at mom. I get to see her a lot. Maybe not as much as I should, But we do visit a lot, go places, see things. She invited me to join her to see the Infinity Mirrors exhibit at the art museum, that was another high-point of the year.

Which is to say, I have loved spending so much time with my mother, getting to know her so much better. My father has been gone for close to three years. And while I am a little ashamed to admit it, I have had more conversation with in the past 34 months than I did in the previous forty-eight years. But that’s a good thing to know.

4. "Troilus & Cressida" for Cleveland Shakespeare Festival

Young actors on my deck.
(Troilus & Cressida cast party)

So I directed a little-performed Shakespearean problem play for the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival. That was nothing new. What was unique was working with a company of performers with whom I was not experienced, at that they were all so young.

And so I was inspired, for perhaps the first time in twenty years, to hold an opening night cast party. I mean, that’s not a big deal, in the larger sense, but it is for me. “Come over to my house.” It used to be a common refrain. With this crew, I even wondered if they would want to come. I worried I wasn’t cool enough. Isn’t that silly?

It was a great show, followed by a lovely evening. On the deck. Around the fire bowl. We were up rather late. It was a very nice time, and it is nice to have those.

5. Visiting Monticello

The wife and I love road trips, but with our schedules, and the increasingly crowded schedules of our children, most summers we speed to our location of choice (North Carolina, Maine) to begin maximum relaxation as soon as possible. I wasn’t having it this year, and suggested a stop on our way back from Topsail Beach.

Visiting Charlottesville and Monticello in 2018 was an eye-opening experience. You can read an account of our journey here. In summary, for better or worse, the whitewash is being stripped from our complicated American story, and the kids are ready to learn from it.

6. Music From the Big Love

After my wife and I had been dating for three years (not yet married) I did that thing that Gen Xers used to do for the people we were hot for -- I made a mixtape. Not just any mixtape, however. It was a chronological account of our time together to date, from 1994 to 1997.

I made her another in 2000. That was also novel. The one I created in 2003 was a bit challenging however, as something I had established as a music account of road trips, concerts and other good times needed to include not only stillbirth and 9/11 but also the birth of our first living child.

It’s a pretty amazing tape.

Since then, I have moved from cassettes to CDs to playlists, always a forty-five to fifty minute collection of songs chronicling our time together. This summer I talked it over with my thirteen year-old before presenting it to Toni. I asked him to remember what had happened the past three years.

David Byrne ft. Cleveland
(Jacobs Pavilion)

“The worst years of my life,” he said. And he was correct. The worst years of our lives. And I made a playlist out of it. We listened to it on the first leg of our drive to Maine this summer, and it went over very well. Because this is our life, and we love each other and we love music.

(Unavailable on Spotify: Hallelujah performed by Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton and COH-CAINE from "Oh, Hello on Broadway.")

7. David Byrne at Jacobs Pavilion

I’m not a live music person the way others are, but I do live a good show. My brother tipped me off that everyone at work was talking about how amazing the David Byrne tour was, and that I should catch it if possible. Even better, the tickets were a surprise from the wife!

I cannot remember the last time I was at Nautica (Jacobs Pavilion) it may have been BNL on July 4, 1995. For reals.

Me and Chennelle ... and Khaki.
(Parnell's Irish Pub)

You know, I had been a server at Fridays in the Flats in 1991, as they were putting the finishing touches on the (now) KeyBank Building. I had forgotten that the backdrop for Nautica is full Cleveland. The skyline. “Our two buildings,” as Mike Polk would say. It’s beautiful, and with the barges passing back and forth, like quiet, sliding office blocks, it’s really quite something.

Byrne and his Millennial-aged ensemble, each of whom carried their instruments, even the percussionists, constantly moving about the stage, kinetic and frenetic. The closing number was Hell You Talmbout by Janelle Monáe, which was momentous and astounding, and seemed to leave most of the largely white Gen X audience speechless, in more ways than one. But we said their names.

8. My Fiftieth Birthday Party

Toni and Chennelle threw me a joyful celebration at Parnell’s one August evening, which I have to admit was a bit of a blur. I am not at ease at parties, especially being the center of attention at one, but I wanted this. When I turned forty I was not in a good place and asked for something simple and small. We had a lovely picnic.

Oh, she said it.

This time we had a big people party which was lively and stylish and had a surprising number of young people, which is always preferable. The theme was "Dave's Decades," people were encouraged to dress in fashion from one of the past five decades. I dressed like me.

9. That Time My Wife Said "Fuck Mitch McConnell" Live on C-SPAN

10. "A Christmas Carol" Writing Contest

The year concludes, as it traditionally does, with Great Lakes Theater “A Christmas Carol” Writing Contest, which is open to middle school aged students in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

This year was a particular joy, as we celebrated not only the award-winning work of six young writers (see video) but also the thirtieth year of the program. We connect three of the original six winners from the year 1989 with the folks at WCPN to talk the impact the contest had on their lives.


We are currently relaxing with family in Southeast Ohio. Once Christmas Day has past, the wife and I will be spending time at some local coffee shop or other, writing. Oh! To have enough leisure time to do more work.

Many thanks to all whose path I have crossed this year, you made my life the richer for it. Have a lovely holiday, if you can, and best wishes for a peaceful productive new year.

Calling All Ears (radio drama)

Fall quarter my sophomore year at Ohio University, our acting professor reached out to my buddies and I about a special project. A class in the RTV building was studying radio drama and they had a special guest, David Ossman.

Most recently Ossman was a producer for various programs on NPR, and PBS voice-over work. We knew him, however, as a member of The Firesign Theatre, that satirical radio comedy troupe of the late 60s-early 70s. We were very excited to get to work with him, and even went to the local record store to pick up copies of their work to bone up before meeting him.

Seriously. We went to the local record store and bought vinyl copies of Don’t Crush That Dwarf Hand Me The Pliers, Everything You Know Is Wrong, I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus, Wait For The Electrician (Or Someone Like Him) and How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All. They were all right there, waiting for us, in the store. Athens!

I was a little bummed out because at the moment my voice was almost destroyed. That quarter part of theater practicum was clearing out the attic space in Kantner Hall decades worth of props and smaller set pieces which had been stored there and largely forgotten about. The entire room had a thick layer of dust and I was surprised to learn the deep gray cement floor was, when vacuumed, actually a pristine white.

The end result of having inhaled so much dust, however, was that I could barely speak. However, one of the scripts we worked on in the radio production class featured an elderly gentleman, and I was able to push through a rather convincing impression of the character of the decrepit manservant Catherwood from The Future Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye, originally performed by (yes, indeed) David Ossman.

David Ossman, left

The technicians learned a lot but we actors did, too, about microphone placement, Foley effects, pacing, the use of music, etc., etc. In one all-too-brief session I learned lessons that we would apply through our time at school, creating radio dramas that Guerrilla Theater would broadcast on WRUW, and that we would employ much later creating radio drama for WCPN.

That was the first time I met David Ossman. The second was when he produced Calling All Ears for WCPN 90.3, which broadcast the night before Thanksgiving, November 27, 1991. Produced in collaboration with Cleveland Public Theatre, the event was held at the Metro Campus of Cuyahoga Community College.

An evening of “live radio theater” the show was to include three winners of a writing competition, though apparently one of them was for some forgotten reason unusable (inappropriate? too complicated?) and so the third piece was one from Ossman’s bag of tricks, Max Morgan: Crime Cabbie. As he explained it, by the 1950s radio drama was on the wane, with every conceivable detective show angle played out, and this was a satire of one of those.

It was thrilling and unnerving was when I discovered I was cast as the bartender Fergus, opposite Ossman himself as Max Morgan! Unfortunately, my twenty-three year-old self worked a little too hard to impress, and as a result I spent much of the performance trying to out-dick the dick, playing a smarmy variation on Nick Danger instead of the role I had been cast as, the easily-impressed sounding board for the actual hero of the story.

Most memorable for me was the large acting company, where I met for the first numerous players who would have a profound effect on my life. Freshly out of school and only recently settled into a daily Cleveland existence, this process introduced me to a large Cleveland theater community -- and we were all so young then, too.


Brian Pedaci, Peggy Sullivan, David Thonnings, Jenny Litt, Lee T. Wilson, Shruti Amin; there were all folks I would play with in the following years. I also made the acquaintance of Dave Caban from WRUW, Karen Schaefer from WCPN, and broadcast project director Jordan Davis.

My favorite piece of the evening was penned by the late Cleveland playwright Aubrey Wertheim. Originally titled Make Way for Dyke-lings, the more radio-friendly Along Party Lines is totally early 90s. Imagine if you will, a pair of suburban teenage girls waiting in the food court at Tower City to meet and see a movie with a pair of strange guys one of them met over a “party line.”

A "party line." Look that up, Millennials. I’ll wait.

The whole thing is crammed with Foley and recorded effects, a vast company of colorful characters, and a surprisingly progressive take on young adult relationships. It also includes my favorite tagline for Tremont, one which I find amusing even today.


The early 90s were a difficult time for Cleveland, the city center continue to be hollowed out, Tower City and the Galleria were already going into decline, the entire nation was in economic doldrums, there was no clear end to our woes. But it was a joyful moment, as a young artist, to meet and collaborate with so many exciting people.

Even so, the attendance that evening was all right, perhaps a hundred people were in the audience for this live event, enough to generate an audible audience response but not a very strong one. Getting people to come downtown, to do absolutely anything, was a difficult challenge at that time.

This past weekend I returned, with my family, to that same venue, the auditorium at the Tri-C Metro Campus, to see my kid perform their first concert with the Contemporary Youth Orchestra, a unique and exceptionally talented ensemble under the direction of Liza Grossman. The place was packed, the room buzzing with excitement. It got me all excited for the holidays.

Get out into the world this season. Enjoy Cleveland. And Happy Thanksgiving!

Recording A Christmas Carol Writing Contest

During the Great Education Department Realignment of 2013, one responsibility that I had earned was to shepherd the quarter-century established "A Christmas Carol" Writing Contest. Middle school aged city of Cleveland school kids are invited to write poems, stories and essays, inspired by themes present in Charles Dickens' classic work.

Great Lakes Theater collaborates with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District to provide all participating students free tickets and transportation to attend a matinee performance of A Christmas Carol, and students whose work was singled out by their teachers are called on stage, by name, receive commemorative T-shirts, get to meet actors from the company, and receive applause and the supportive cheers of their classmates.

It is a pretty sweet event. And it means that beginning in August, I have already started thinking of the holidays, contacting every single CMSD middle school English language arts teacher to encourage their participation in the event.

In case you are wondering, that is almost seventy schools. I have a pretty decent system going now, making phone calls, sending PDFs by email, and more often than not, communicating by fax. Yes, I know.

There are also six grand prize winners, who receive special gifts, a booklet including their work, and a special evening for they, their parents and teachers to attend an evening performance. These students' work is chosen from all of the school winners from a panel of judges composed of members of the GLT education staff, and close supporters of the company.

Laura Welsh Berg

Last year, we added a new component to the contest. In collaboration with Great Lakes, WCPN 90.3 FM ideastream produced a special holiday broadcast of Sound of Applause, one in which host Dee Perry interviews the students and actors from the A Christmas Carol company read their stories.

Now, some of the stories these kids write are really very good, and last year I was loath to edit them for time. This was a mistake, as recording the stories took several recording sessions spread out over a couple afternoons. Our actors just came off two solid weeks of rehearsal and the last thing I wanted to do was tax them on their first week after opening the show.

Having said that, they were incredible generous and excited about this new program, and the reaction from the students, hearing these talented performs interpret their work, was that of complete delight.

This year I was a bit more aggressive in editing. This was not an easy thing to do, as these middle school writers' creative, original and expressive use of language is a large part of what makes the work so exciting to read. But a booklet of their unabridged works will be available to read on the Great Lakes Theater website soon, and I do feel I was able to cut the work without sacrificing each student's unique voice.

We recorded one story two weeks ago. Today we recorded the other five in about an hour, total. Many deeply felt thanks to Aled, Betsy, Jodi, Laura, Lynn, M.A. and Sara for their time and great talent. The broadcast will be next Monday at 2 pm and 10 pm on WCPN 90.3 FM. Check back for links and more info.

The Machine Stops (radio drama)

Senior year in high school, Mr. Knapp assigned E.M. Forster's short story The Machine Stops. What seemed charmingly prescient in 1986 has become alarmingly so in the almost thirty years that have passed.

In brief. two hundred years into the future (the year 2109, according to Forster, best known for novels like Howard's End, A Room With a View and Passage to India) humanity will have destroyed the surface of the planet, and created a self-exiled under the surface of the planet where every individual human lives their existence in single room where all necessities are provided by The Machine.

No one desires to come into direct contact with anyone else, all communication is conducted through The Machine. They spend all leisure time (which is to say, all non-resting or feeding time) staring into the screen, through which they communicate and receive thoughts, messages and "ideas".

To my teenage mind, this was a remarkable turn-of-the-century concept of television. I had no idea of how computers and what we would later call the Internet would occupy our potential for expression or communication, and the similarity between Forster's world and this is much more accurate than that of Wells or even Bradbury.

However, let us return to 1986. Mr. Knapp asked what contemporary event came to mind when reading this story. A recent (two weeks ago) return to my alma mater reminded me of how reticent my contemporaries are to volunteering responses. So I do not believe my memory is too inaccurate when I suggest that a fat second or two went by, no one answered, and I finally put my hand up to suggest, "Chernobyl?"

Yes, that is exactly what he was suggesting. The Chernobyl disaster occurred on April 26. (Side note, at Prom that year we were served Chicken Kiev, which made for a number of tasteless jokes.) Since that time, the threat of and benign disinterest in global climate change suggests that it will not take any specific "accident" to drive us underground.

Also, too ... in reference to our capacity for viewing as a solitary intellectual endeavor, our English teacher inquired about any or all solitary activities, and whether they were not in and of themselves, selfish activities, even if they were arguably healthful. He was and is a marathon runner. Hours and hours on the road, away from his growing children, wasn't that inherently self-involved, even if it didn't render him on of Forster's pale, formless blobs of humanity?

This was an element I made reference to in my solo performance And Then You Die (How I Ran A Marathon in 26.2 Years). Since that time I have questioned my pursuit of running and how much time it takes from my family. I have since reconciled that fact that every minute I spent exercising gives back two that may be lost to a sedentary lifestyle.

In any event, this was one of the formative works of my youth. In my 30s, I thought occasionally of adapting a play from this material. Fortunately for me, Eric Coble did it first.

Commissioned by the Hiram College Center for Literature, Medicine and the Biomedical Humanities, Eric wrote a one-act stage play, which was presented at a symposium at Hiram and later at the Ingenuity Festival in Cleveland in 2005. I missed those productions, but asked Eric if I could read it. Centering as it does on two protagonists, Vashti and her son Kuno, with a dozen or more voices coming through The Machine, I felt it would make an excellent radio drama.

Following the success of our radio version of I Hate This in late 2005, WCPN producer Dave DeOreo asked, and now, what next? I suggested The Machine Stops. Then I asked Eric.

Creating this show was a particular delight, involving as it did some of my favorite voice talents (Jazmin Corona, Tim Keo, Nick Koesters, RaSheryl McCreary, Dawn Youngs) and giving Dennis Yurich the chance to create some truly delicious themes and sound effects. In particular, the subtle, throbbing humming of The Machine was unsettling in the extreme.

Also, we employed a number of Foley effects, executed by Kelly Elliott, inspired by the works of Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and Terry Gilliam (Brazil), among others.

Be sure to listen to the Q&A with playwright Eric Coble at the end of the broadcast. The reference to MySpace may startle you.

Around Noon

Dee Perry and I producing the radio drama
adaptation of"I Hate This" for Around Noon (2005)

This Friday, June 28, 2013 will be the final broadcast of WCPN 90.3 FM's award-winning, northeast Ohio arts and entertainment program, Around Noon. The good news is that Dee Perry and her crew are moving to the 2 PM time slot, Monday through Thursday, with a new program called The Sound of Applause.

I guess this is a thematic melding of WCPN and the PBS station WVIZ and that station's long-running arts show Applause, which has been hosted by Dee since the two stations merged into Ideastream in 2001.

Change can be good. And people can complain. I remember when WCPN made the radical switch from largely jazz programming to mostly news and talk in the mid-1990s, and what a fuss people made at that time. It was forward-thinking, however, and as much as I am sick of talk radio, the NPR programs broadcast on WCPN and locally produced shows like The Sound of Ideas do provide for moderation and common sense discourse which is unavailable elsewhere.

And then there was Around Noon. I remember when I was public relations director at Dobama Theatre, and were were first contacted by the program in early 1997. I mean, they contacted us, looking for stories and interviews, because this was going to be a daily, hour-long radio program about arts and culture in the region. Usually it was me, begging attention from the print media, which even then, with two weekly papers and a full-functioning daily, appeared to regard arts coverage as some kind of charity work.

Cleveland Historian John Vacha and I chat with Dee about "It Can't Happen Here"
October 24, 2011

This was unique, this dedicated arts reporting, and it still is. It is a shame that in order to accommodate the new schedule they must drop their Friday shows (and for Ira Flatow of all people, I can't even listen to him) especially as they fall right before the weekend. But it's a gift, and in today's media climate, the people of greater Cleveland are lucky to have it.

Today is my wife and my fourteenth wedding anniversary (ivory, sweetheart, we'll skip the presents) but on our fifth anniversary (June 26, 2004) we joined 2,700 of our friends in getting naked in the shadow of the Steamship Mather for photo installation artist Spencer Tunick, and we worked with the folks at Around Noon to make an audio diary of the entire event. How cool is that?

Spencer Tunick: The Naked Truth
Best wishes to Dee and to the producers of The Sound of Applause, for many, many more years of excellence in arts reporting.

I Hate This (radio drama)

Me with Dorothy and Reuben Silver at the old WCPN studios.
The Velocity of Autumn is not the first opportunity I have had to work with Dorothy Silver. It's not even the first time we have performed a mother-son relationship. That would have been for the radio drama adaptation of my solo performance about my first-born, stillborn child, I Hate This (A Play Without the Baby).

The boy was born eleven years ago today, on the frigid first day of spring back in 2001. When I say that is a lifetime ago, I am not merely being hyperbolic. For my living children, it is more than a lifetime ago, and they have come to define so much of who I am. The next boy, the one who lived, was a couple months old when we began recording this show, in August 2005.

The first draft of I Hate This had emerged by August 2002, and was produced at CPT the following winter. I had already taken it to Minnesota and New York, and elsewhere, before I approached Dave DeOreo and the folks at WCPN Ideastream about making it an hour-long broadcast.

As a matter of fact, it was the other way around ... in 2004 Dave had worked with my wife and I to create an audio diary of the Spencer Tunick installation which was ridiculous. The event was on a Saturday morning, and we worked around the clock to have it done by Monday's broadcast of Around Noon. Still delirious from lack of sleep, the show in the can (as they say) Dave turned to me and asked, "What do we do next?" I already had a good idea.

Tom Weaver & Nick Koesters
In its original, natural form, I Hate This is a solo production, where I tell not only the experience of discovering that the child we were expecting was dead, and his birth, but also the year that followed and how we and the people in our life failed or succeeded to communicate. In telling the story, I play all the characters. For this production, it was decided to get actors to play all the other people. And I chose some of my favorite people to contribute, including Dorothy and her husband Reuben, Brian Pedaci, Nick Koesters, Nina Domingue, Ali Garrigan, Thomas Weaver, Magdalyn Donnelly, Scott Plate, Betsy Hogg, Sadie Grossman, and a cameo by Around Noon host Dee Perry.

The radio drama includes the original music created for the stage production by Dennis Yurich. DeOreo, Al Dahlhausen and I went around creating original ambient sound and sound effects for the show that weren't already part of Dennis' sound design, including right outside the old WCPN studios on Chester, and even in the Old Stone Church to create the right echo for "The Cloisters" scene.

The show was originally broadcast on Friday, November 25, 2005 -- the day after Thanksgiving -- on Around Noon. Here is a sample of the online feedback:

"Thanks to David for sharing his story, thanks for the many local talents whose voices brought it to life, and thanks to WCPN for bringing it to us."

"I'm just blown away. It's like the most powerful piece of radio I've heard in a long time. I'm just stunned."

"It really captured me - so brutally honest, so heartbreaking, so well done. I was in tears by the end, and I certainly will not forget it."

"This topic is often lost in the abortion rights cacophony. It is refreshing to hear the first-hand perspective instead of the polished up political rhetoric."

"Broadcasting it the day after Thanksgiving was significant; it made me think about the births of my own children and how easy it is to take things for granted."

"An encore presentation, please, and when?"

One unintended result of the radio drama was that it actually helped to heal a misunderstanding in my own family. I wrote the play when I was still pretty raw in my grief, and as a result some of the representations of character are merely those I was feeling about certain people at that time. My brother in England (played here by Scott Plate) receives about three lines of dialogue, and when my brother first read his part in it, in the script, he just couldn't finish it without the rest being colored by his reaction to those three lines.

One of my lines in Velocity is "Is that what you think of me?" I can dig it.

And so that hurt, and he let me know, and I respected that but I wouldn't apologize for it. And my brother was over there and I was over here, and he never had a chance to see the show.

However, he could listen. He may not have been able to do that, except his daughter, my niece, who was six during the events of the play, plays a special role in the production, and she wanted to hear it. So they listened, together. Hearing the entire story, from beginning to end (thank you, Internet) my brother finally understood what I was trying to say, and maybe even his place in it. And it was soon after the broadcast that we began to make arrangements for me to be able to perform the show, the way it was intended, for my brother and his family in London.


Appearance on 'Applause' (WVIZ)
This is part of the interview Ideastream produced to promote the March 20, 2006 re-broadcast, celebrating my son's fifth birthday and shortly before our first trip to England to present the show as a benefit for a prenatal bereavement organization in Battersea.

And so here we are, the first day of Spring, again. There will be a birthday celebration today, these days it's a lot less quiet than it used to be, with growing children, and activities and cake. It's an important family holiday here. Last night I had a great conversation with the kids, telling them stories about the days all three of them were born. Someday I am sure we will share this this recording with them, which might be easier for them than having to watch me perform the whole thing for them in the living room. But I'd do that, if they wanted me to. I would.

Awards

• Ohio Society of Professional Journalists Awards (2006)
  Best Documentary - First Place: “I Hate This,” Dave DeOreo
•  WBEZ Third Coast International Audio Festival (Finalist, 2007)

Firesign Theatre

I do not hate Monty Python. I hate people who love Monty Python. And by that I mean, I hate people who love Monty Python but don't get Monty Python. There is a generation of twits who believe Monty Python is hilarious because it is absurd. "The Ministry of Funny Walks" is indeed hilarious. But not because it is the Ministry of Funny Walks.

It's the Ministry of Funny Walks. Do you see?

Whatever, what do you know from funny.

So, while Monty Python was skewering British society, The Firesign Theatre was smoking a lot of pot. Oh, and skewering American society.

Formed in the late 1960s, the Firesign Theatre (Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman and Philip Proctor) created surrealist tableaux of funny, often taking both sides of one LP to tell an extended, dream-like story. When I was a kid, I did not know the extent of their narratives, because the only album we had in the house was a compilation record, Forward Into The Past (released in 1976) which included selections from their previous nine albums, plus difficult to locate comedy singles.

In 1972 they released Dear Friends, a collection of their live radio broadcasts on KPFK in San Francisco. Whereas their produced work is tightly scripted, this program allowed for a certain amount of spontaneity, which on two occasions, got them fired.

Perusing the TV Guide:
BERGMAN: I like to watch that program with my girl.
PROCTOR: You have a girl?
BERGMAN: We'll go into that later.
(nervous laughter)
PROCTOR: You'll go into her later.
(big nervous laughter)

Just in time for the holidays:
"Toad Away"
Recorded December 9, 1970 on KPFK
Fan video by me.
Twenty years ago today, on Wednesday, November 27, 1991 WCPN 90.3 FM presented Calling All Ears, an evening of Live Radio Theater directed by Firesign Theatre alum David Ossman. The event was recorded at the Cuyahoga County College Main Stage Theater on the Metro Campus, and featured original works by Mr. Ossman as well as local playwrights William Borden and Aubrey Wertheim.

David Ossman and ... what the hell am I wearing?
Participating in this program was thrilling; Ossman cast me to play Fergus the bartender against his Maxwell Morgan, Crime Cabby. Unfortunately, it is a little embarrassing to listen to now, as I am trying too hard to match him, tough guy to tough guy, when my job was to be the squirrely sounding-board character. I mean, I was the bartender.

It's like Tom Hanks told me, you don't want to meet your heroes.


Before broadcast, Ossman warms-up the audience with the Firesign classic, "Bozo's Big Bang."
Having graduated from college that spring, this was my first big professional-grade theatrical project in Cleveland. The best thing to come out of Calling All Ears, however, were all the great connections I made with fellow travelers like David Caban, Brian Pedaci, Peggy Sullivan, David Thonnings, and Lee T. Wilson.