The Thayer-Hansen 2025 Holiday Cartoon

The Santaland Diaries (revisited)

Recently I have been going through a lot of junk in my home, and came across photos from days long past that I must have taken and immediately stashed away. Among these were pre- and post-show photos for a few Bad Epitaph Theater Company productions.

This photo was taken from the booth at the (former) Brick Alley space at East 40th and St. Clair, opening night of The SantaLand Diaries by David Sedaris, starring Curtis D. Proctor and directed by Thomas W. Cullinan.

That was twenty-four years ago this weekend, in late 1999. What an adorable cabaret space. So rough, so Cleveland! See the photo at right for the view from the house (and look carefully at this first photo and you might even see where I am seated.)

Since we started having live children, the holidays have been the absolute last time I want to be involved in a production. I was needed at home nights, and that's just where I wanted to be.

And yet, looking at that picture, I am reminded once again how enjoyable to be on the Great Holiday Show Calendar. To be out and among the people, and to be the one providing them their festive and much-desired entertainment. Best wishes and many grateful thanks to my friends and colleagues who are all opening shows tonight.

This production is still currently available on YouTube. The video is a bit shaky, but the audio is surprisingly good.

10 Minutes to Midnight (In Performance)

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord

Opening night of 10 Minutes to Midnight at Cleveland Public Theatre was sold out. I was stunned. And so pleased. Given the wide selection of holiday offerings, either already playing or opening this weekend, why attend a new show, one that’s description is vague enough to suggest it could be absolutely anything:

This holiday season, CPT shares humor, heart, and a party-like celebration, wrapped in a montage of short holiday (or non-holiday) plays. Part variety show, part cabaret, and part 10-minute play festival, "10 Minutes to Midnight" celebrates the breadth of holiday happenings (or non-happenings) in this seasonal extravaganza dosed with live music, fun-sized scenes, hilarity, and humanity.

There’s a lot of promises in there. Is it a party? I believe it is, from the jump there was a lot of enthusiastic answering back from the crowd. It’s certainly a 10-minute play festival, running the gamut from a fictional 90s sitcom Christmas episode, Millennials discussing the perils of possible procreation, and one particularly inspiring piece about the greatest love of all (and no, it’s not that.)

The great thing about a short play festival is that if you’re not into one piece, it won’t last long and then you get something else, brand new! Taken together, however, these scenes do communicate a shared humanity, and also a shared anxiety, but ultimately a communal joy.

I was reminded, somewhat, of the “vaudevilles” the company would present back in their early years, some thirty years ago. This show isn’t the same as those, the vaudevilles were like an open mic night for theater, and the content could be wide-ranging in its theme and polish. But the democracy of the CPT stage is something which continues. It is a very inclusive show, which is to say we are all included.

"Bakery"
Andrew Aaron Valdez & Troian Butler

I sat in the back, in the middle, watching the house fill to capacity around me, chatting with a surprise old friend, like me unencumbered this particular evening by either a partner or child. How to describe the feeling, the mood among the assembled, recognizable supporters of CPT, coming together, in this space, for the first time in nearly two years.

After the show, many people came up to me to tell me how much they enjoyed my play. I was never sure which one they meant. I have this strange, internal conflict regarding opening night post-show events. Seeing as how I work for a theater company I need to attend several of these a year and while I love to meet and greet and catch up with the folks involved in the production, those who have no time to socialize at all for the previous month or so, I also have a degree of social anxiety that makes me just want to ghost.

And yet, I felt this warm compulsion to reach out to as many members of the ensemble and creative team as I could to thank them for their work. As I was leaving, I said to a colleague. “Okay, I have to ghost,” which was a stupid thing to say because announcing you are ghosting is antithetical to doing it. Also, most of the crowd had already gone, which meant it was time for us all to go, anyway.

Cleveland Public Theatre presents "Ten Minutes to Midnight: 9 Quirky Plays for the Holidays" directed by Cailtin Lewins, continues through Sunday, December 18, 2021.

Process XLVIII

Joseph Beuys

Technology was not my friend this week. Not only for my Thursday night in-class presentation on Joseph Beuys, but also my Friday morning Styles seminar for seniors. Just to remember, never incorporate YouTube into my PowerPoint, it creates a variety of confusion.

It’s not that I was reliant on the app, but how long do you try to figure it out before flying without it? It’s frustrating. It makes me look unprofessional, and I hate that.

We were to choose an artist to present and our professor had presented us with a list but I was stuck. Choose someone I was already familiar with? That didn’t seem like learning, so I asked him to suggest someone, and he chose Beuys.

I’m not going to recap what I learned here, suffice to say there is a world of art out there with which I am shockingly ignorant. How could someone be so enigmatic and significant and yet I had never heard of him?

Last night 10 Minutes to Midnight: 9 Quirky Plays for the Holidays opened at Cleveland Public Theatre to a sold out house. I think my experience deserves its own post, for now I just wish to point up the program’s content warning on the website:

Content Warning: 10 Minutes to Midnight includes adult language, and themes of domestic violence, religion, sickness, and drug use.

My two, two-minute plays alone include adult language, sickness and (egads) religion.

Holidays and holiday shows can be fraught. The Mysterious Affair at Styles is Christie’s “World War One” story, and so to close my session with the seniors at Vitalia yesterday morning, I shared the animated short "December 25, 1914" from Simple Gifts. It brought women my mother’s age to tears. But they said it was beautiful.

Random Thoughts at the Commencement of the Season

This rock. The hardness. The completeness. The firmness. The ancientness. The water, in constant motion, all water the same water, always different water, the illusion of stillness, of the cessation of time. The trees beyond, evergeen, the uninterrupted vastness of the sky, from end to end, reaching high above, all the colors one can see.

How we fought. How she fought. I was stoic. I did not cry. I did not complain. I did not lose control. I kept it in. I remembered the past. I hoped for peace. And I wanted to be there. And I was. To help her cross over, to stop fighting.

How do we cease to be? How do we move from who we are to nothing at all? How can we live in the knowledge that all that lives must die, including ourselves?

By loving. By connecting. By enjoying everything and everyone. By making each moment the moment. The only moment. It is not about importance. It is not about significance. It is only about being. It is only is.

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.