The Toothpaste Millionaire (production)

Kierstan Conway & Quincy Brame as
Kate & Rufus in "The Toothpaste Millionaire"
(Talespinner Children's Theatre, 2024)
Photo by Steve Wagner

Adolescence doesn’t need to be the worst time in a person’s life, but what a person goes through at that stage of development is exacerbated by our systems of education, which (often, though not always) sequesters kids who are eleven, twelve and thirteen years old on their own and all together. It was horrible for me, and it was horrible for my kids, in spite of our best efforts.

However, when working as an arts educator, whether it be in schools or extracurricular programming like summer theater camp, I like working with middle school aged students best. They respond to the work so powerfully, and it is because, as I see it, they are knowledgeable enough to delve deep into complicated concepts, but still young enough to want to play.

At the start of Jean Merrill’s book The Toothpaste Millionaire, the main characters, Rufus and Kate, are both entering sixth grade. My wife had asked why, if the play adaptation of the book that I was writing was intended for an elementary school audience, that the characters should be in middle school? And my answer was, because it is meant to be aspirational.

As Merrill said in a 2006 interview, “I hope (the book) inspires them to imagine themselves doing things like that. Just because they are kids, it doesn’t mean they can’t have good ideas.”

And after all, the audience for all those High School Musical movies and shows aren’t really high school students, right? Those are watched by the middle school students.

The first time I attended a run-through for the Talespinner Children’s Theatre production of my stage adaptation of The Toothpaste Millionaire, I was delighted by the sense of play that Ananias Dixon (Director) and Diwe Augustin-Glave (Assistant Director) brought to the proceedings. The kids, as written, are witty, and aware, but as performed, are excited and enthusiastic, and not jaded or snarky (as many TV tween characters can be). And so very playful! Which is the point, after all.

Quincy Brame as Rufus Mayflower
(Talespinner Children's Theatre, 2024)
Photo by Steve Wagner

When it came to adapting the book into a script, one of the things that really helped me was creating a calendar of events. The book was published in 1972, and needed to be set at that time. You could update Merrill's story to the 21st century, I suppose, but the world has changed so much in the past fifty years, media, technology, economics, the law, it would really be an entirely different story, and I wanted to tell this one.

Merrill’s plot is uncomplicated by personality conflicts, the kids – and their adult mentors – work together to make Rufus’s dream a reality. They set a goal, achieve it, and then set another, bigger goal, all within the span of two years, which in this version takes us from 1970 to 1972 not exactly an inconsequential period in American history, but what period is. And some of that history, which Merrill did not include – because to her, it was just the present – seep in around the edges of the play (see: references), but only to the extent that an adolescent might be aware of them.

I'm really happy with the design for this premiere production, featuring delightful period costumes by  Jaclyn Vogel (which includes Rufus's iconic blue sweater, mentioned on the very first page of the book), and a functional and colorful set designed by Ren Twardzik with projections by Josh Smith.   

Next Saturday, July 27 at 3:00 PM, The Toothpaste Millionaire will be performed as part of Family Day at the BorderLight Theater Festival in Playhouse Square. Last year I had a short, site-specific play produced at BorderLight, and it was so exciting to see all of the vibrant creativity going on in and around Playhouse Square for that long, summer weekend. This year BorderLight is featuring over fifty shows, and workshops, and the Family Day concept is a new addition. If you’ve got kids, come downtown to join in the fun!

The BorderLight Theatre Festival will take place July 24 – 27, 2024 in downtown Cleveland.

Nelia Rose Holley, Kierstan Kathleen Conway, Julia Boudiab
(Talespinner Children's Theatre, 2024)
Photo by Steve Wagner

Source: "The Toothpaste Millionaire, 35th Anniversary Edition" (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) 

Dobama '96 Trading Cards

Twenty-five years ago I was working as the public relations director at Dobama Theatre. This was an accident. That summer I had been tapped to create the Night Kitchen, a series of late night theater programs for “the kids.” It wasn’t a salaried position, so when the recently-hired p.r. director suddenly quit, the artistic director looked to me and asked if I wanted a job.

I have been into marketing my entire life. When I was a kid I made greeting cards, and designed boxes of cereal. During the Guerrilla years I was responsible for contacting the media and read up to learn how to properly create a press release, where to find contact information for the papers and stations, who to call and when and what to say and how to say it.

My first big assignment was the holiday ask. You know how every non-profit contacts you around this time of year to hit you up for the annual fund. It’s a time of giving, it’s all the last month you can get those tax-deductible donations in.

"City of Terror" Trading Cards
Mark Beyer
(Raw #2 1980)

This year, my first in this new position, I had a brilliant idea -- brilliant in that I stole it from Françoise Mouly, Art Spiegeman and the crew at RAW Magazine. An alternative comics anthology from the 1980s, in one edition they included “City of Terror” baseball-type trading cards, complete with bubble gum. Each copy of the magazine included only one card, artist Mark Beyer had only created eight different cards but they were numbered as high as #76 to give the impression there were many more.

I proposed we include Dobama Trading Cards with the annual fund request. I would design a sheet of nine cards (“Collect all 60! Trade with your friends!”) each would feature one production photo from the theater’s history on the front, with data about that production on the back, even including a small note about what was featured on the next card, a card which did not actually exist.

Clever me, I even made one of the cards an ad for our upcoming show in the Night Kitchen, the improvised Realistic World.

This was my first big mailing job, and the most intricate use of Photoshop I had attempted to date (that’s PhotoShop 2.0) Our technology was very basic in those days, we only had PCs in the office, so I was designing this on my Mac at home, then driving to the Kinko’s in University Circle to use their laser printers. When I messed something up I would have to go home to edit it, then drive back out to Kinko’s to see if I had gotten it right. 

These things weren't even in color. It was a nightmare. I had a nervous breakdown. Joyce was extremely supportive. She also had to press me to complete the job on time because it was only the single most important mailing of the year. And we did, we got it out. 

I never proposed anything as irresponsibly clever for the rest of my tenure.

The Bully of Baker Street: Costume Design

Design by Zack Hickle

One month ago, a week prior to the first rehearsal of Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street, I wrote a post about revision. One of the major, last-minute changes to the script involved changing Miss Barnaby from a glowering headmistress, someone along the line of Mathilda’s Miss Trunchbull, into the young Miss Barnaby, left the run the orphanage while the headmaster is off “on holiday.”

Still aggressive and domineering, making the main “bully” of the tale a peer of the protagonist Vicky (hopefully) makes the conflict more accessible to young audiences. But, it also meant that our costume designer, Zack Hickle, needed to come up with a quick fix.

As you can see from his original rendering (right) Miss Barnaby looks quite severe in her red work smock, and her big poofy shoulders. But it wouldn’t exactly be appropriate for a “head girl,” an underling who has been put in charge of her peers.

So Zack removed the sleeves and skirting from her jacket, still providing Miss Barnaby with a smart, blood red vest, and Khaki, the actress, has been provided with a fine red wig instead of a gray one. Her exposed, white shirtsleeves still feature the big shoulders of the original design.

Nick Chokan, Annie
& Khaki Hermann

Pictured right, Miss Barnaby menaces little Annie. Zack also designed the dress and built the puppet (voiced and operated by Nick Chokan.)

This is why I do theater. The collaborative process, the give and take. The openness of one artist to accommodate a suggested change in direction from another artist. I reimagined a character based on suggestion, a designer reimagined a design to accommodate that.

Today we open, this morning for a crowd of fifth graders in Elyria, this evening for a public audience comprised, I imagine, largely of adults. There is a lot of audience interaction in this one, and I am very excited to see how the actors work with the audience!

You should join us.

To be continued.

UPDATE: "Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street" is now available from Pioneer Drama Service

Troilus & Cressida (rehearsal)

Cressida & Troilus
(Hannah Woodside & Brinden Harvey)

Tonight we ran through the first seven scenes of the play. There are eighteen scenes in this production, but even that’s arbitrary, the final four scenes all run into each other, battle scenes, scenes of chaos and death.

These first seven scenes constitute the first half, setting up the conflict which will end tragically in the second. I’d call it a farce, except for all of the sorrow, unhappiness and death. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, however, which is front-ended with dancing and fighting, followed by two hours of self-pitying wailing, this show holds the best violence for the second half, and at the end, and there’s dance all over the place. There will also be singing.

So, to the point. Here we are, a month from opening, and we have roughly staged the first half! I hope to have the entire thing blocked by Memorial Day.

I love this process, and we have a great team. It’s challenging to co-parent and direct in the evening, that’s really why I don’t do it that often. It is the end of the school year, which means concert and other special, end-of-year events. On those evenings, Cat and Leilani choreograph dance, or Kelly and Josh the fighting.

Troilus & Cressida takes place during the Trojan War. Through necessity and for creative reasons, this adaptation will be contemporary, or nearly so. Dressing everyone in armor, providing all swords, staging grand, one-on-one battle scenes. These things are prohibitive.

Also, we have an opportunity, devising a ninety-minute abridgment of what could easily be a four-hour play, to draw focus to the universal realities of conflict and war, to literally display how yesterday is not that different from today.

Meeting with our costume designer Jenniver, we have selected a palate of uniform and other pieces which reflect the American conflicts of the past decade. Just tonight I met with Lisa, our sound designer, to discuss brief sound and music possibilities, also culled from the early 2000s (see: Spotify playlist, right.)

As I had described earlier, much of the mythology has been stripped from the next. We are focusing on the men and women who are caught up in the fight, and how decisions made affect the lives and relationships of those people.

That also makes for some pacing issues; eliminated scenes make for certain characters exiting then entering again, almost immediately. This was apparently in editing the script, last night I got to see this in action. Or inaction. We’ll fix it.

We have a month!

Join us for PLAY ON! a benefit for the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival in the Speakeasy at Bier Markt in Ohio City, May 20, 2018.

The Great Globe Itself: Quick Changes

This is freaking awesome.

Rehearsals keeping moving forward, and as we add layer upon layer of business, our three gentlemen just soak it up and grow and grow. 

Bizarre accents? Sure, no problem. By the end of the 1613 scene you will wonder why Shakespeare isn't always spoken like this.

Big dance number? No problem. They can do that, too.

Right now we are incorporating the numerous costume changes into the production. Esther has made herself available to witness and assist, as decisions are made as to what is and is not possible in, say, a six-second costume change.

How about a little tune to cover your costume change?

Tomorrow sound designer Richard Ingraham will begin to incorporate sound cues. I LOVE sound design! It's all becoming one rich tapestry of music and noise and history and humor.

We open in six days.

The Great Globe Itself: Design Meetings

Suggested Poster Mock-Up

When I was a kid, more than anything, I wanted to sell things. This is not because I wanted to make money, my career choices should make that perfectly apparent. It is because I love packaging. I made posters and greeting cards and designed my own original cereal boxes and candy wrappers.

I did not have any concept of content, I looked up recipes for candy, and made a few, but the outside was much more important than what went in. While I have finally discovered what it is I truly want to sell, there is that part of me which is much more interested in making you want to buy.

I have written, directed and acted in plays, and even created a few sound designs. But as a stunted graphic artist, I have truly missed out on creating the visual components of theater. I took scenic, costume and lighting design in my freshman and sophomore years at school, and I was terrible at them. I wasn't particularly good at making posters either, and that really disappointed me.

However, that was a long time ago. And practical application of my abilities and the humility to stand and appreciate admire and the work of those who have made design their life has brought me into some very successful collaborations. We have employed the same team of designers for the past several years for the outreach tour (including Terry as scenic designer and Esther as costume designer) and I am consistently impressed, and delighted with the work, and grateful to get to work with them and it.

Wednesday we had our second production meeting for The Great Globe Itself. It is a new situation, acting as director and playwright, having shared the story and then being asked to weigh in on the creative decisions of others in its realization. This is where collaboration is such a relief, as we bat ideas around to discover how the costume design concept will play against the backdrop of the scenic design, how the colors will play, and can the set work with the limitations of three actors playing eighteen characters in forty-five minutes.

This is why it doesn't pay to walk in the room and say, boom. Here's what you get, take it or leave it. This is a manner in which theater is unique among the arts. This is why it never pays to scream at people.

Anyway, it was a very successful meeting and it made me smile. That afternoon, Todd and I had a different meeting, with the folks at TRG to discuss the promotional graphic for the brochure and the poster.

The first image I had, while composing the play (because, as I said, I am always thinking of packaging) was that of the character of Sam, facing the viewer, holding out a globe - a Globe Theatre - shimmering, floating just above his outstretched hand. In the background, the classic Cleveland skyline of the mid-20th century. One skyscraper, the Terminal Tower.

As the script took shape, with each age defined by its main character - Burbage, Sam, Clement - I saw each man, standing, laughing, collaborating, moving the Globe forward. Cleveland in the background is abstract, but present.

I created a mock-up using stock photos (see above) using the copy machine, scissors and tape, because I am old school and that I how I roll. This is what I shared with Todd, our marketing director, and the designers at TRG.

So far, all are supportive of the image. It is too much? We talked about these men being in a place, rather than in an abstract space, but where? Cleveland? Or Cleveland and London - and which London, 1613 or 2005? Or both? Will the final work come out like this, or something mind-blowingly different?

Photo shoot in two weeks.

Design

"We are 'dump us at the cock' ... I mean, Compass at the Dock."
Severn Darden
Okay you hipsters, would you go and see this show? Is this flyer intended for people who are already familiar with "The Compass" and what they do, or would it draw someone in who is looking for a new thrill? Or would you be there simply for the conga stylings of Ella & Roxie?

What about the "compass" graphic, as if to say, we are called The Compass and this is a small picture of a compass. Because we are a nautical troupe of performers ... with our compass ... down at The Dock.

All smartassery aside, I love this. Because I have made flyers in my time, lots of them. And I appreciate the fact that this is either made of individual letter stickers, or from a sheet of rub-off transfer letters. No corrections, sorry, you forget a letter you have to peel off the ones in its way or scrape of the transfer, which really sucks, let me tell you.

I respect the BOLDNESS of the performing arts troupe (whatever it is they do; Much Ado About Anything? Is that Shakespeare?) following by the "yeah, whatever" vibe communicated by the folk singer legend and the names of the musicians all in lower case.


Guerrilla Theater Company opening night, 1992
But then, what's so special about technology? This is a complete mess, designed on an Apple Macintosh in the early 1990s. Difficult to read, too many fonts, the dotted frame is constricting ... ecch. Anyway, my point is, nobody's perfect. Give me the simple, handmade flyer any day.

Sources:
The Compass (Janet Coleman)
Studio 207