Theater camp has closed for 2026. An action packed eight days, full of theater games, stage combat, prop and set piece construction, costume design, more theater games, song and choreography, and a lot of playwriting.
We added the writing component after Covid, or rather, I did. I enjoyed leading a writing session for a different camp we were affiliated with in 2008 – the goal was poetry then, not plays, I had no idea what I was doing (I usually didn’t in those days, I was only forty after all) but the campers who responded to it went at it hard. Some kids love to write.
Some, however, would rather kick themselves in the face than write, and I respect that. And so, for our camp (collective our) I have insisted it be optional, presented opposite some other activity.
Most choose the other activity, which is fine. It’s preferable. This year it was at the same time as craft, and I had a dedicated crew of between four and eight for each one hour session – that was also different this season, an entire hour! And there was one period for high school aged campers, and another for middle school aged campers.
I had prepared prompt cards. We would create ten minutes of prompt-inspired free writing. Sometimes that would be followed by a debrief, or take another ten minutes to create dialogue inspired by the prompt. This was the challenge for the middle school aged campers, several of whom wanted to compose narrative. Creating action through dialogue was new to them.
As the days progressed, I would still offer prompts, but change up the assignment slightly – write a new short play based on your prompt-based free writing, or continue something you have already been working on.
They would ask, but can’t I write about -x- instead? And I would say yes. Can I work on something I was already working on outside of camp? And I would say yes. I had to remind them that this wasn’t school, I wouldn’t be collecting their notebooks, I wouldn’t ever be looking in their notebooks. They could write whatever they like. But I would continue encouraging them to write plays.
To that end I provided professional templates to follow, and we spent time talking about plays they had seen. I gave a brief description of the Aristotelian unities.
The last day, Thursday, we held an informal reading of their new works, with all of their peers as the audience. There were six or seven* short scripts, from the silly to sinister, and took volunteers from the entire assembly to stand and read and perform them to great appreciation and generous laughter.
Given the opportunity, I will expand on the material. It is challenging to develop a curriculum requiring this kind of deep focus when they are all sorts of variables that can be thrown at you. It’s a seven day workshop (six this year, really – we needed to catch up on props and sets on Wednesday) which has at times been forty-five minutes, then thirty minutes, and now an hour. Campers are asked to write for ten minutes then stop when some really want to keep going while others write for two minutes, get bored and start distracting their friends.
So, that’s a goal for next year, a more flexible lesson plan. But who wants to think about next year? Summer has only begun!
Three months. Summer has been ending earlier and earlier, this year it began earlier, too.
To celebrate our eldest’s graduation from college, we planned an international journey, a vacation in Spain. We hadn’t taken our children on a transatlantic expedition since they were very, very young, not since I brought I Hate This to the UK. They don’t even remember that trip, only in photos.
First, however, a snag. I thought I had a valid passport, and I did, but it was due to expire. We noted this days before our departure. Renewal necessitated an urgent drive to Buffalo, which was in its way a not unpleasant prelude to the season, which included a fine cocktail in the hotel bar, and a rainy day stroll in Niagara Falls State Park, waiting for my ID to be processed.
Fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes in the presence of Bridal Falls. I live for moments like this.
Bilbao, Spain
When folks ask what my favorite part of our Spanish vacation was, you will forgive me for saying it was the opportunity to spend ten, responsibility-free days in the company of the three people I love most in the world. Social anxiety issues aside, our kids are excellent travelers. They are not only open to interesting, sometimes unplanned experiences, unusual spaces and food, they are also very good communicators and check in when they need a break. I am also better at this than I was as a young person, and that is thanks to them.
Our eldest’s achievements inspired this excursion, so the emphasis was on art. We saw the Prado, and the Reina Sophia. We attended the Guggenheim Bilbao, and finally the Segrada Familia. However, we also took in a little jazz with the boy, happening upon a barside trio outside the Guggenheim, and the David Pastor Quintet in Barcelona. I tagged the bandleader on my socials; a brief interaction revealed the connection between him and the head of the boy’s department at UC. Small world, indeed.
Great Lakes Theater Camp
I am always seeking new and better ways to lead, instruct and create. This is as true at our annual summer arts camp as in any other arena, and not only did the team put on some pretty amazing performances, I was developing new ideas as how to best curate an all too brief playwriting workshop, and how best to showcase the work.
We had about a half hour, every day (which is to say, for only six or seven days) for a small cohort of middle school aged campers to write short plays, which then received staged readings by high school aged campers. Everyone agreed the work was good, and I have some powerful thoughts about how to make the experience more exciting for all involved next year.
Peter Voinovich "Churchill at War" Actors Summit Productions
The eldest and I turned out for the No Kings protest where I spotted Fred Armisen casually walking past om his way to the opening of the SNL exhibit at the Rock Hall. By his gaze he seemed either impressed or bewildered by the Free Stamp.
We’ve also been attending a lot of Guardians games. It’s been a season of ups and downs, for the time being I’m withholding judgment. I have also had the chance to meet up with old college friends (emphasis on old) including seeing my roommate Peter onstage for the first time since, well, college, playing Churchill in a solo performance in Akron.
Much of my mental energy has been focused on The Right Room, of course, and my physical energy as well. While rehearsals were taking place I was acting as de facto sound designer and also curating and even creating props for the production.
Zach Palumbo, Nicole Coury "The Right Room" In Rehearsal
The BorderLight Festival was remarkable. I posted about our performances last month, it was all up and over on the same day. The next day, a Saturday, I saw a half dozen shows.
Highlights include Impact Award Winner Sincerely, (The Diary Play) by Bryanna Lee, She Was a Conquistawhore by Rachel O'Hanlon-Rodriguez, performed in The Snug at Parnell’s (where Give Me Your Keys produced my play Step Nine two years ago) and Eric Coble’s The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus, masterfully performed by Tia Shearer Bassett.
Then we got the heck out of town.
Zach Palumbo, Nicole Coury "The Right Room" BorderLight Theater Festival Photo: Daren Stahl
I try not to look forward to our annual journey to Maine. It will come, as it (almost) always does, but once it’s gone, so is the summer. This year, however, we were joined not only by the children but also their partners. It was a joyful and relaxing celebration of family and fellowship, replete with day trips and afternoons on the rock just reading, great food and drink and conversation.
Our last night on the road, stopping in Little Falls, New York, I had another chance to indulge in falling waters, writ small.
Now we’re back and home and at work and August has barely begun. But this weekend we’re going to Cedar Point.
What have I been doing this summer? I’ll tell you what I have not been doing, writing blog posts.
You may have noticed a considerable decline in posts since I received my degree well over a year ago. There is a very good reason for this, I have been writing other things. I’ve just changed; when I think of an idea for a post, I am suddenly struck with an urge to do something, anything else.
So?
This weekend, Labor Day Weekend, the official close of the season, we are lounging in A-Town with the out-laws, staying cool, sampling the scorpion pepper roasted garlic sauce the younger whipped up just before we drove him back to school a few weeks ago (it’s really hot and it’s really good).
After a year away, it was really nice having him home for the summer, getting to spend time with him and with his boyfriend. In late July we all went to Maine where I think I have finally embraced my destiny as the Old Man on the Porch. We were there for two weeks this year, longer than I have stayed in decades, playing host to my brother and his family from England, our friend Sarah and – oh my – a dog!
We came to home to find that one of our cats was ailing; the cats are both fourteen years old, and Puffball has had a variety of difficulties, with his kidneys, with his thyroid. But now it was much more serious, a blood cancer, and we said goodbye to him last week.
Fifteen years ago I lost a dear pet, the eighteen year old Rosencrantz. We met when I was twenty-three, living in an apartment off Coventry, he died when I was forty, with a house and two living children. Losing him was losing my young adulthood. We got Puffy when the kids were five and seven, now they are both away at school. So it goes.
But these are endings. We began the season with a celebration of our twenty-five years married, and also our thirty years as a couple. The wife surprised me with a couple extra events, tickets to see the Guardians, an excessive dinner at the Marble Room.
We’ve probably attended (and also watched, and listened to) more Guardians games this summer than any time previous. I’ve also seen a couple of films at the Cinematheque. Usually I might see one a year, now I am a member. I saw The People’s Joker in July, last weekend we saw the recently reedited (?) Caligula. I’ve put their calendar on the wall in the kitchen, there’s a lot of funky things to check out this fall.
Golden Girls - The Laughs Continue
I have also spent a lot more time at the Cedar-Lee, our local independent theatre. Two of the several movies I caught this summer were Ghostlight and Sing Sing, which are moving, each in their own way, and they are part of a genre without a name, a story through which someone who has never acted before is drawn into an amateur theatrical and it transforms their life.
But! Speaking of the kitchen, ever since I bought this place (thirty-one years next month) I have wanted to redo the floor of the kitchen. Something else always came first – including getting new counters and cabinets and ceiling for the kitchen over fifteen years ago. We finally had the floor leveled, guys put in Marmoleum and I finished by painting the baseboards and trim around the doors. Another life goal accomplished!
Meet the floor.
What I’d like to be able to share is some great summer theater news, but there’s nothing to report, not really. Not much. I had the chance to take in a rehearsal of the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival production of King Lear before we left town. We also took in some high-camp hilarity at the Hanna with a performance of Golden Girls - The Laughs Continue.
The Toothpaste Millionaire revival at BorderLight went over well, though I was out of town for the festival this year. I had a reading for a new script I’m working on back in May, and that is something I have plans to rework through the rest of the year.
And that's really the thing, you know? Work. Happy Labor Day. Get back to work.
We received an invitation to our friends’ annual Labor Day party and it sent me into an existential spiral. I’ve been doing all right so far, but the empty nest thing is real. We drive our son to university this week, and then, well. It will be the two of us, for the most part, from here on out.
Wow. That’s it? Twenty years, really? Okay, uh. Now what? And the idea of attending the Labor Day party, thrown by friends we only know because of our children, without our children. It kind of brought it all home to me.
Parade the Circle
We’ve been summering like hell in an overcompensation for years of sequestering ourselves, with our children, due to quarantine. Let’s get out and do all the shit. What I have failed to do is have people over very much, not since the end-of-year part of the residency program which sucks because the backyard looks awesome.
Angélique Kidjo
The summer kicked off attending commencement for our youngest, at the Wolstein Center, where I had also received my Master Degree two weeks earlier, followed by a flurry of grad parties, one for himself and more for his friends.
My wife and I have attended three Guardians games (so far) this season, with a variety of friends or on our own. I also had the chance to attend the first Parade the Circle that has been celebrated since 2019. The parade was shorter than usual, which was to be expected, I guess.
Go Guardians!
Theater camp was a big hit, I think we got that one mostly right. I was most delighted that we were able to incorporate a writing component into the camp, and I had several acolytes who were happy to join that rather than do craft.
The Tri-C Jazz Fest was another great public event, where not only did our son perform at one of the outdoor bandstands on East 14th Street, but we also saw Angélique Kidjo, Herbie Hancock and Trombone Shorty. Members of the Jazz Academy went nuts for that last show, almost bringing down the balcony of the Connor Palace.
Video: Jazz ensemble "floor3" at Larchmere PorchFest
Drinks at the Grand Pavilion
We also brought the boy to Cincinnati for orientation – this was all before the end of June.
Last summer I became enamored of the Hotel Breakers at Cedar Point. Not that the place is terribly fancy, it’s not. It’s basic and I like that, and also that it’s right there on the beach. I knew nothing about the Breakers growing up, often my folks would take us to the Point only for the twilight, discount hours.
Young people in Maine.
When my family first visited the hotel last summer, and as my wife was checking us in, I was looking around, walked straight through the lobby and out the other side to find … the lake! The beach! It’s right there! I had no idea!
Location, location, location.
So we took the boy and his boyfriend for an overnight and while the younger pair of us went off to ride rides, we did something I had never had the chance to, namely: watch the shows. You know, all those shows, performed several times a day, every day, by college students and other young performers. And you know what? They were good!
Four votes against Issue 1
The middle of July, time seemed to slow down a little bit. I had pulled a muscle in my ribs on a ride at the park and my days were full of work business, and other theater-related matters. The last week of July we packed up for Maine, the journey I had missed last year due to retinal detachment surgery. This was also my first time back since we distributed mom’s ashes into the sea. The week was not without strong feelings.
We arrived home in time for the BorderLight Fringe Festival, and this past week the boy played his final gig as a student with School of Rock, the Super Seniors Show at the Mercury Music Lounge in Lakewood. Each of the artists got to choose a song for the ensemble to perform, and he chose Soul Coughing’s “Screenwriter’s Blues.” (see video below)
To round out this list, we attended the opening performance of Fun Home last night at Cain Park.* The production is really, really excellent. The boy said it’s the best production of a musical he’s ever seen. A poignant close to a manic summer, don't you think?
"Fun Home" (Cain Park, 2023) Photo: Every Angle Photography
This past weekend we visited Athens, Ohio. To celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday. Also, to drop our eldest back at school. A second-year. A sophomore. There is much I could say about my sophomore year at Ohio University. It is enough to say I never accomplished as much as they have their first year, and I lazed away my first summer break from college while they worked and worked and worked. They are my inspiration and my motivation.
I have continued to recuperate from my eye surgery. There are good days and bad. Sleeping remains a challenge. And writing. And reading. I spend a great deal of time on social media, because that is easy. But even my relationship to social media has changed this summer.
July: Deck Time
Last month, someone contacted me via Twitter to let me know they have been made aware that something they had posted on that social media site I have reposted onto my professional Facebook page.
I post all manner of things on my Facebook page, related to playwriting, to spur conversation, sure. But also to generate attention.
However, I don’t know this person. Another playwright, yes. But they are not a famous person. What right did I have to repost their thoughts somewhere else for my own purposes? None at all. It was a mistake. I was wrong. I took down the post and I apologized.
This exchange occurred just as my family was leaving on vacation without me the day before I would undergo surgery on my left eye was extremely helpful. It meant that instead of spending the day feeling sorry for myself, I could spend the day hating myself.
July: Zoom Reading
Feeling sorry for myself means something beyond my control happened to me, that I am a victim of circumstance. And as far my eye is concerned, perhaps that is true.
But I do shit like this all the time. Social media has only enabled me to cast a wider net of people to hurt. Hating oneself, at least, places blame squarely where it belongs.
The ten days I spent on my own I had the chance to do a lot of viewing. I watched Under the Banner of Heaven, completed BoJack Horseman, a friend came over and we watched The Moderns, another joined me to watch Magnolia. Each and every one of these stories are about men who plow thoughtlessly through their lives, only tangentially aware of their own sense of entitlement. Viewing or reviewing them, I was acutely aware of my own failings.
July: College Visit
I have both thoughtlessly and also with intention damaged personal items that were meaningful to my ex-wife. I have ended friendships with one carefully chosen sentence. I have complicated relationships by saying things I should not have said.
I have transgressed. I have been inappropriate. I have failed to return that call. I have pretended to be asleep.
Early in the social media era, long before the #MeToo era, this guy I know posted something on Facebook along the lines of, “If you are a woman I have hurt, I want to apologize.” That was it. I was incredulous. I’m sure I wasn’t alone. No one responded. Because cringe?
August: Birthday Reunion
But, you know, I understood the impulse. We know we have done bad things. We want people to believe we are good. But we’re really not. I wasn’t when I was a sophomore at Ohio University. And also last month. When will I hurt someone next?
This is not really an account of how I spent my summer, except to say that I have been going through some things. Convalescing has provided an awful lot of time to go through them. My final year of grad school begins next week, and I wonder what I will be writing.
We emerge from quarantine, if not from pandemic. Since 2010 Great Lakes Theater has held a two-week summer arts camp at Berea-Midpark High School (formerly Camp Theater!) for kids from kindergarten to high school. I am happy to say there were campers who returned year after year.
Scenes from Club Improv (2019)
Two years ago, when the inevitable decision to cancel camp was made, we offered a virtual version for a week in June 2020. It was simply part of the general contribution of goodwill provided during that season of disappointment and uncertainty. We got to see the familiar faces of kids we would not be meeting in person for some time, if ever again.
Last year we didn’t have any kind of camp at all.
This is a year of change, as the camp will be hosted in a new location, and incorporate music and dance into our lesson plans. This year I am working closely with Kelly Elliott, as we team-teach middle and high school aged campers in stage combat and improvisation.
Also? A trio of interns, Ally, Connor and Sylvia, all former campers, who either graduated from high school this or last year. We have instructed them since they were kids, now they will work alongside us.
Good Lord, I could cry. I'm really looking forward to this.
Last year I made a good decision which seemed a little stupid at the time; I took a summer class. It didn’t occur to me that sixteen weeks of instruction would be condensed into six, and what that would mean. Thank goodness we did not have a theater camp, or journeys planned, or what was merely very challenging would have been impossible.
As a result, however, I do not need to take any classes this summer. I need two more classes, which I will take next fall. Then my thesis, then I am done. That is a year from now, and yet. I mean, wow.
Now, can I turn my focus outward for a little while. There is housework to be done, some projects that have waited for more time and good weather. Physical and mental health. I do not have any plays scheduled for development or production any time in the near future. That can be a downer.
How is the summer over? I mean, I know how. I was aware its speed while it was happening. And I wasn’t even doing much … only I was doing a lot, as compared to last year.
The summer began, for me, with an outdoor orchestra performance in front of the high school. The only live musical performance of the school year, and the last for our eldest. It was a perfect evening, and the conclusion to a terrible year, as we sat out on blankets and chairs and enjoyed their work. After there was a lot of cautious meeting and greeting between friends and family who hadn’t spent any time in each other’s company for over a year.
The boy had a gig at the Beachland Ballroom with the School of Rock, the “Relativity” show featuring acts that included siblings and other family members. All were asked to arrive masked, and we were escorted to tables and asked not to mingle. Plexiglass separated the tables. But it was a live, indoor performance and I was reminded of the Mike Doughty gig my son and I had attended in late 2019. That was the last time I had been in that room.
He was the drummer as they played Champagne Supernova by Oasis and if I say I hated myself for crying, it’s only because Noel Gallagher is such a dick.
The kids have been very busy all summer, our eldest, they, have a job serving at a local restaurant, while our youngest, he, has been assisting a landscaper. Speaking of landscaping, we finally had the patio put in in the backyard, something we had hoped to do last summer. There have been a few gatherings and firebowls and it’s so nice to have people over.
"In the Heights"
While live, outdoor theater has resumed I haven’t been able to attend too much of it. I took the boy to see Panther Women under a huge tent at Cleveland Public Theatre. Every seat was taken. Our first live theatrical performance, for so many of us, it was a powerful evening in more ways than one.
But David, what about your professional life? How is the writing going? Good questions, all, and not much to report. Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street has been published by Pioneer Drama, and I have already started to hear from interested schools! Vivid Stage in Summit, NJ (formerly Dreamcatcher Rep) presented an outdoor, staged reading of I Hate This, interpreted by Jason Szamreta. And the writing ... happened. It's cool. We'll get there.
A friend wanted to unload some of the Cleveland baseball tickets, so we bought them. Four dates at Progressive Field. They hadn’t announced the new name when we attended in July, at our first game everyone was handed a free, commemorative Bob Feller jersey. It doesn’t say Feller, but it has a number “19” on the back and CLEVELAND on the front. And I like it that way.
I love this woman.
There were also summer movies -- at a movie theater! I took one of the kids to see In the Heights, then a few days later I took the other one. And the wife and I saw Summer of Soul, which you can see on Hulu but it's so much better on the big screen.
July was very busy with work, for everyone, concluding with our annual journey to Flood’s Cove, Maine. The four of us made the journey, in one car. The first night of our drive there we stayed in a hotel and took advantage of the pool. The only people in there that night, the family played Marco Polo. It was like they were small again.
As our eldest makes their way to college this coming weekend, I wonder how many more journeys we all have together. As the Delta variant does its damage, I also wonder whether this summer has only been a brief reprieve and if the worst is yet to come.
And so this brief summer semester draws to a close. I did my best with what I have. I read the responses from other students and found them both poetic and prosaic, in some cases intentionally academic. I thought, is that how I am to be writing? But I am a creative writer, and that is not why I am here. I research but also ruminate. I am content. I exist, as the man says, as I am.
The season has been seasonal. It becomes torrid and we shut the doors and crank the a/c and I am unhappy to live like that. I would prefer the doors open, the heat and humidity to bathe me in sticky sweat. The rains, too, bring the clouds of steam into the place and that pleases me well. It is cool and damp. It is hot and humid. Either way, I love summer. I love summer a lot.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For the past several years I have taken a moment before the school year begins to reflect upon the fleeting days of summer. What does "summer vacation" mean to adults? Well, we do have school age children, and are each professionally tethered to the academic clock. We work, but we also play, and enable play.
The opportunities during warm weather months are great, and we endeavor to take advantage of them. This year my wife and I celebrated twenty years married, my daughter and I watched all of Stranger Things 3 over the course of two days, the boy and I went fishing. And there was so much more.
Beck Center for the Arts
KING LEAR
Feels like a million years ago now, but the summer began with a five weekend run of King Lear at the Beck Center, directed by Eric Schmiedl. Performances were only three a week (Fri, Sat eve & Sun mat) and there was something about that schedule which made performance much less of a struggle than a traditional, non-professional four show a weekend schedule. Just that much more manageable.
And yet, the focus I needed to exhibit, the hyper self-awareness, to conduct myself as this stoic, wound-up character. At times it was maddening, walking out in the lead, having the first line for this three-hour ordeal. One night, I cannot even comprehend how this happened, my tongue lost control and I stuttered my first line, in its entirety. It was through a supreme effort of will not to lose all confidence right then and there. I do not know how I was able to remember the rest of my lines.
Contemporary Youth Orchestra
JASON MRAZ
Working as an actor in a play (as opposed to writing or directing one) is that you are compelled to attend every performance. This is one of the reasons I don’t like acting, but only one of them.
As a result of this selfish commitment, I missed out on the opportunity to see my daughter perform with Jason Mraz. As a violin player with the Contemporary Youth Orchestra, she had been working on his catalog all spring, taking three days of rehearsal with this incredibly charming pop star culminating in two sold out performances at Severance Hall.
I was welcomed to one of the rehearsals, which was a delightful consolation prize.
Great Lakes Theater
CAMP THEATER!
Teaching middle school students to improv can be very challenging, and for a very good reason. Young people can be emotionally abused for making themselves look silly.
A: Help me to milk this water buffalo! B: Uh, no.
The basic tenet of improv is YES, AND which is to say, agree to what is being offered and then add something to it. This year during Camp Theater! we had a camper who was not only very good at this, he raised acceptance to a new level. Shaun and I noticed that whenever someone made him a suggestion, he would not only agree, he would say, “Excellent!”
A: I have created for you a new dress made entirely out of termites! B: Excellent, they will go so well with my new maggot boots.
It was the introduction to an inspiring summer of discovery.
Culver City Public Theatre
ROSALYNDE & THE FALCON
While I have had a number of my published plays produced in other cities, this was a first -- one of the works I wrote for Talespinner Children’s Theatre was being revived, and on the west coast, too! Culver City Public Theatre produced Rosalynde & the Falcon. Not only that, but it was an outdoor performance, offered for free to area families! And you know I love free.
ROAD TRIPS
July was an odd month, in that I shared a bed with my wife for perhaps one out of every three days. This is no sign of marital tension or anything like that, we were simply not in each other’s presence. She spent a week on silent retreat in Kentucky, we traveled separately to and from Maine, and I took my daughter on an extended weekend to New York City.
We visited potential schools on that journey, something we also accomplished driving home together from our Maine vacation by way of Providence, RI. My son and I drove there the week before, enjoying authentic Buffalo, NY buffalo wings and spying fancy cars.
Come From Away
COME FROM AWAY
For three years we have been subscribers to the KeyBank Broadway Series at Playhouse Square, and in all that time I was never so unprepared to be completely delighted and moved by a musical like Come From Away.
Come From Away is a magical illusion, with songs that still echo in my head, a small company, their everyday wear belying the speed and specificity with which they assume dozens of characters, to tell a story of tragedy without leaning into the tragedy (we all know the tragedy) instead focusing on what the best people do for each other no matter who the other people are.
One of our dates for the evening pointed out how refreshing it was to see a cast of characters who were entirely adults, and I have to admit I hadn’t noticed. Was that it? I polled my friends on Facebook, wondering if younger audiences preferred, for example, the teen-directed Dear Evan Hansen, but I received almost universal praise from all ages for this special Canadian musical … which did not win the 2017 Tony Award for Best Musical, whereas that other play did.
Story Board
WRITING "HOLMES"
Just the other day, Missy asked me about my writing process, and I have had a number of different processes, which is only correct. I am a creature of habit, but breaking them is as significant as adhering to them.
To complete the new touring script, I spent just one working week away from the office. I gathered all the notes I had made, then went into the attic to find an old cork board so I had a place to post them. I used drawing paper to create a “story cloud,” connecting one plot point to the next and filling in all of the details in between, with lists of actors and characters and who would be available to do what when.
It was all mapped out before I had created a single word of dialogue. The entire thing was drafted in three days, completed just before heading out of town for two weeks.
Barnstable
FRIENDSHIP, MAINE
Actually, I spent only seven days in Flood’s Cove this year. Sometimes that happens, but it felt even shorter as my wife and daughter (and mother-in-law) were flying in on a Monday, only to have their flight cancelled at LaGuardia. They did not arrive until Tuesday evening, and their travel drama troubled me for the better part of those two days.
There was an interesting collection of folks, so much coming and going, and the weather was hot. I missed cool weather, mornings by the fire, a slow pace, and perhaps most of all my father. His absence has been felt the past several years, this time he was just absent.
Hofbräuhaus Half Marathon
SEVERE ALLERGIC REACTION
Last week I ate something which tried to kill me, or rather my body tried to kill me for something I ate. I’ve never had an allergic reaction, to anything. And yet, something in that sushi made my heart race, and my skin turn beet red.
I’m fine, but it was scary in a manner in which I am not used to being scared. The week that followed was one of dragging my ass from place to place as I coped with the side effects of medication meant to ensure that whatever was in my system had run its course.
That also meant not exercising for the better part of a week, so ironic following my time running the Hofbräuhaus Half Marathon just the day before my attack.
TRAINING FOR THE CHICAGO MARATHON
Which is where I am left today. Hotter days of summer are behind us, the days already noticeably shorter. I am currently training for the Chicago Marathon, October 13. Have been all summer, and raising money for the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation.
Preparing for New York in 2006, and for the Twin Cities four years ago, August is when the training is supposed to be ramping up, pushing further across the city in preparation for the big day. Instead, I have had to take the better part of a week off, and it is discouraging.
But then, has it ever been easy? And isn't that the point.
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