Elvis at the Arena

November 23, 1956, Elvis played the Arena. One of these days I will document the Moondog Coronation Ball (1952) in some detail ... or at least spread more specious rumors. Regardless, the Arena was an all-purpose venue, the site where boxing legend Sugar Ray Robinson murdered Jimmy Doyle in the sixth (literally, as it turned out) and the Cleveland Barons played hockey.

On Halloween night, 1956, the Cleveland Newspaper Guild went on strike, bringing to an abrupt halt the publication of all three Cleveland papers -- the Press, News and Plain Dealer. At the top of his game, Elvis Presley storms into town. His first movie, Love Me Tender had opened a week earlier, and the theme song was on top of the charts. No. 2 that week was Don't Be Cruel.

There wasn't a single Cleveland paper covering the concert.

Well, there was one paper covering the event. The Black and Gold sent its star photographer, seventeen year-old Lew Allen to cover the concert. Yes, that's right -- the Heights High School newspaper.

The show did not begin punctually at 8 PM that night as advertised. Excited fans were left waiting for fifteen minutes before Elvis took the stage. Legend has it he was receiving a phone call from a very ill and disappointed, ticket-holding girl who was in the hospital, and he just chatted with her for a while to try and make her feel better. Believe it or not, that's the story Lew Allen himself told, and has a picture of Elvis backstage on the phone as proof.

Allen went on to study photography at the Rochester Institute of Art, and went on a rock and roll tour in 1958, take great photographs of Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Frankie Avalon, Duane Eddy, Bobby Darin, the Hollywood Flames and others.

The Cleveland Arena and Elvis Presley were demolished in 1977.

Hockey stick.

Sources: Elvis Australia
ScottyMoore.net

See also: Elvis Presley at Brooklyn High (1955)

1. Trying to sneak across an international border. I was supposed to hand over the I.D. of a colleague, was supposed to claim she is my wife. The crossing guard began asking questions, first off all, what her birthday was. I said, "I don't know," and started laughing nervously to myself. I was entirely unprepared for this and was going to be arrested.

2. A vicious house cat -- that talked. Everyone was terrified of it. There was this sweet old tabby that was going to reason with it. They were climbing a rope together. I could not get to either of them, they both went down the rope and the innocent, old cat began to scream horribly, the other cat had gotten into its face and was doing something unthinkable to him.

3. A large, volcanic eruption in the water just off the shore of a major city. We ran, terrified, as one of our party described exactly the fate that awaited us, in grotesque detail, if we were subsumed by the lava. We got into an office building however, and jumped a futuristic escalator to safety. I did have friends on a day-cruise ship just at sea. I could only imagine their fate.

Flash Gordon (1936 serial)

Warhol, Ming ... and R2-D2.

A couple weeks back, Talespinner Children's Theatre held its 2012 Glam Rock Benefit. Recently the kids and I took in Queen's Flash Gordon Theme music video, and I made a connections between Freddie Mercury's high-pitched "ah-ahs!" and the sheer unadulterated magnificent awesomeness of Max Von Sydow to cobble together some kind of Ming the Merciless get-up, replete with skullcap, dyed beard and eyebrows and green eyeshadow.

DEATH TO MING

Tim reminded me afterwards that the character is another grotesque Asian stereotype, so I feel a little bad about that. But I did win for best male costume. So I got that going for me.

Buck Rogers, a World War I veteran exposed to radioactive gas and hidden in a collapsed mine shaft only to be reanimated five hundred years later, was created in 1928. The success of this popular comic strip character inspired the creation of Flash Gordon in 1934. A dashing young polo player (*snigger*) Flash and his girl Dale Arden are kidnapped by Dr. Hans Zarkov, who is obsessed with finding the origin of great firey meteors that are striking the Earth. They arrive at the planet Mongo, ruled by aforementioned grotesque racial stereotype Ming the Merciless.

The strip more or less follows the adventures of Dale being continually rescued from capture by Ming, and trips to all manner of surrounding planets, defined as all planets are in science fiction by a single weather pattern or dominant animal-inspired lifeform with one, primary emotion (see: Star Trek, Star Wars, and so on.) Sharkman, Hawkman, Lionman, Treeman. You get it.


The first film serial of Flash Gordon debuted in that most-amazing year of 1936. Olympic athlete Buster Crabbe assumed the role of Flash for 13 episodes, and another two serialized series in 1938 and 1940. The video above includes the arrival of Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov on planet Mongo, and the introduction of Ming the Merciless. Ming looks pretty stylish for 1936 ... and then he opens his mouth.

Anyone familiar with the 1980 film -- starring not only film legend Von Sydow but also Broadway star Topol, and classically trained British actors Timothy Dalton and BRIAN BLESSED -- might reconsider the "cheesiness" of the costumes and special effects, and appreciate instead the extent to which they created a faithful, cheery modern adaptation of the original short films.

FLASH GORDON:JOURNEY TO GREATNESS BY FLASH GORDON (DVD)

The Actors' Gym

1993

Guerrilla Theater Company lasted two years, in two locations along Professor Street in Tremont. We had disagreements with our first-year landlord, and were happy to move into a location just a block away which had more space in which to perform, including something like a lobby.

Unfortunately, what we named The Actors' Gym was rather plain or ugly from the outside. Unlike The Professor Street Theater there were no ground floor windows, nor even a nearby lamp post. We jerry-rigged an exterior light and that was it. At night -- when we did all of our work -- the facade was rather foreboding and I know for certain of at least one person who was in high school at the time, deciding to "slum it" by checking out some cutting-edge comedy in the g-e-t-o, took one look at the place and decided it wasn't worth it.

Prior to our occupancy, the space had been an actual gym. There was shag carpeting in the main space, gang showers upstairs and down, and even a sauna. The landlord allowed us to work off some rent through sweat equity, ripping up layers of carpeting, thick plywood, all-weather carpeting, and linoleum, before reaching the original oak flooring.

The lobby was rather bizarre, with a nautical theme ... wood and ropes and salty-dog wallpaper. The coved ceiling was stuccoed.  To the left of the front door there was a counter with a display case built in and a wall behind and to the side with cubbyholes, which we used as a box office.  To the right, another display case, and two small alcoves that could act as a coat check or a tiny office.  And directly in front, a raised platform with railings around it, a kind of display area.  We left the lobby as it was, didn't change a thing.

 

Beach Party Night (1994) 

The other day, after supervising some of our actor-teachers and giving notes and running lines over lunch at Grumpy's, I decided to give one of our newest members, raised in Chicago, a brief driving tour of this most interesting neighborhood, which had only started its gentrification twenty years ago.

2012

Approaching the former Actors' Gym I hollered, gaped, and pulled over. I couldn't even believe my eyes. Guerrilla wasn't my last experience with this space. Since then Bad Epitaph produced two shows there, when it was the art gallery called INSIDE and later *. In early 2001, my wife, very pregnant with our first child, performed in a show for J.P. Morgan's short-lived Radical Evil Drama company. But the facade was always the same, ugly paneling and no windows.

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake scene from Bad Epitaph Theater Company production of SIN by Wendy MacLeod at INSIDE, Cleveland, OH. September 1999. The performance space was tiny, the audience was limited to 40.

To create a realistic earthquake, the seating risers were cantilevered, one bank resting slightly on the one beneath, with large bass speaker cabinets lying on the floor beneath the audience, directed up. Actors on the still, hardwood floor throw themselves about as the set comes apart, but the audience was literally shaken by the sound, as in an amusement park ride.

What had never occurred to me was that the lobby was once an alcove. But of course it was! Stripped away, losing all of the crappy display boxes and adding high windows, the space is now an attractive show place.

 

You can ask Andrew. I was practically crying, it's so beautiful.

Superhero Night (1994)

Peeking into the space, there has not yet been any renovation inside the space. Just those hardwood floors I participated in discovering nineteen years ago. Signage indicates that the new owner is now in the public phase of attracting backers for a New Orleans themed restaurant.

Driving my young associate around the neighborhood, and describing what it was like two decades ago, I became excited for the city all over again. Tides rise, they ebb. But I still feel that we are moving forward.

See also: Romeo & Juliet (1994)

 

 

* No, seriously. An art gallery called "*".

Promoting an upcoming project, I am one of my fellow artists were on a local radio program. We were being interviewed. One of the questions pertained to someone I knew a long time ago, a very good friend. I was asked to say a few things about them, I can't remember how this related to the subject of the interview, but I did my best to say positive, cheery things about their personality and about their work. The person being interviewed with me and the host threw in a few comments of their own which, for the purposes of humor, were even more cheeky.

After the interview I received a phone call from this person, hurt, they said, but also apparently angered by the description. This person laid out in detail all the recent work they had done (which I guess I knew about -- they had made a short film?? -- but I wasn't sure) and took particular umbrage that I had said that they had once done work as a clown.

Twenty-Thirteen

Last night we attended the second annual Talespinner Children's Theatre benefit at Mahall's in Lakewood. Theme for the evening was "Glam Rock" which for some reason the kids today confuse with Hair Metal ... my wife almost cried when we had to explain to one of our party exactly who David Bowie is.

Regardless, it was a tremendous evening. My favorite moment of the night was before we'd even left my parents' house, watching the girl spraying my wife with glitter in the driveway. Precious moments. I knew I wasn't going to swing any kind of Lou Reed look, I can't fit into those pants right now. But a headpiece in the education department rehearsal space gave me an idea, and so I cobbled together an ensemble inspired by Ming the Merciless. I am glad to say there were several on hand who didn't even recognize me at first glance.

Followers of this blog may notice a certain slacking off since Styles closed last March. Henry VIII inspired numerous entries about production, and there were the occasional events which warranted mention in a Cleveland-writing blog. But there's not much research going on, not much to share Just my day-job, and my home-life. This will all change very shortly.

Next year will be busy indeed. I have three productions in 2013, one of which was announced at the benefit last night and I am now free to discuss all of them.

"DOUBLE HEART (THE COURTSHIP OF BEATRICE AND BENEDICK)"

Every year, Great Lakes Theater offers a free play which tours 21 locations in Cuyahoga, Summit and Lorain Counties that is tied to themes represented in one of its mainstage productions. This March they will present Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Several years ago I saw a production and a certain exchange jumped out at me:

Don Pedro: Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick.
Beatrice: Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for a single one.

And their history as lovers, or one potential history, was revealed to me. I was elated when Daniel gave me the green light ... on one condition.

He asked, "Can you write it in verse?"

Uh. Sure! And that's what I have done. One hour tragic romance told in verse, including humor both high and low, a sword fight, and dancing! For those who can't get enough of me, I will be playing four different roles in this one. Sigh.

"THESE ARE THE TIMES"

Yes. At long last, the so-called "Cleveland Centennial" which inspired this blog will come to a stage near you. You have three chances, March 7, 8 & 9 to experience this fictional panorama of Cleveland during its heyday at Cleveland Public Theatre.

Ten years ago, CPT started its popular Big Box series, giving local artists the opportunity to showcase new works. That year -- 2003 -- I had the unique chance to share my first solo production, I Hate This (a play without the baby). I can't express how excited an apprehensive I am about having the chance to get a reaction to this new piece from a Cleveland audience.

"ADVENTURES IN SLUMBERLAND"

For the 2013 Holiday Season, Talespinner Children's Theatre will present this world premiere adaptation, based upon characters created by Winsor McCay for his groundbreaking comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland. For Pandemonium I developed a five-minute treatment. It was a delightful experience, and made me feel confident that I could expand it into an hour-long piece for kids.

We decided not to use the name of the main character in the title, because everyone would think it was about a fish.

Last night at the benefit I won for Best Costume: Male. It's going to be quite a year.

You Have the Right to Remain Silent! (1992)

NSFW

This is what happened.

10:30 PM on Friday October 23, 1992. The Guerrillas were all prepared, we were all in the “auditorium” -- except Jelly Jam, who was off by himself somewhere in the house.

The Wheel was up and ready, with a laminated picture of each of our faces on it and one of the Guerrilla Gorilla. The Guerrilla Gorilla himself was seated in a chair on-stage, wearing a helmet and a GTC T-shirt.

A prize from Big Fun was hung behind Door #2, a free-standing door with a big, rainbow-colored, happy number two painted on it. All the props were laid out with care on a long, narrow table, made out of one by eight and some cinder blocks.

We had fifty folding chairs, on loan for the weekend from Our Lady of Mercy, in four rows -- a big block of seats in the center, and two smaller sections to the right and left, which were angled slightly to better face the stage. The stage was a runway about five feet deep and thirty feet long -- one side of the room. The bathroom was clean. The coffee was brewing. There was a platter of fruit, cheese and crackers sitting on a stool in the center of the playing space, a few feet from the first row. That was for our audience. 

Geddy was our Technical Support and Sound Guy. He was in the booth, an actual little sound booth that had been built and then left behind by a previous tenant, situated at the far end of the stage, and he started the pre-show tape. We opened the door.

And a couple of friends were waiting to come in.

Upon entering, people were directed to the ticket booth, where they would be asked if they had prepared for The Theme of the Weekend. Those who were got in for five dollars, those who hadn’t, for seven.

Theme for the First Weekend was “Theatre.” Most of us simply wore T-shirts advertising other theaters (I was wearing my Karamu House shirt) and those few audience members who really understood what the whole “theme” concept was about either did the same or some of them brought scripts or ticket stubs, programs from other theaters, which were fine. Our family members and close friends sported the new Guerrilla Shirts we had extorted them to buy.

Some tried to use the word “theatre” as a password, they were not given the discount. I was appalled at all of the people who made a fuss about having to pay two extra, stinking dollars at the door. Our explanation that seven dollars was the admission, and preparing for the Theme was a discount did little to mollify their tiny, withered souls.

Wee-Bear’s husband was one of them. He was dismayed he had to pay at all. On the way past the box office he noticed a sign we had made and stuck to a wall in an obscure place, a sign we hoped we might need to put out on the door sometime soon.

It read “SOLD OUT. Please come back next week!”

“Heh,” he said, spying the sign and pointing it out to Beemer, “wishful thinking, eh?”

Around 11:15 PM we had roughly thirty people in the house, mostly friends and family. When we decided we couldn’t hold the house any longer, the Guerrillas moved through the space, turning the four bare bulbs in the ceiling off one by one. The stage lights (four flood lights, directed at the stage area, their bases screwed to the tin ceiling) were dimmed for effect.

Geddy hit the Theme Music, and we all burst onto the stage from left and right.

“Good evening!” I said, “and welcome to You Have the Right to Remain Silent! Cleveland’s own live action game show! Fraught with radical political thinking, dangerous social expression, and FABULOUS PRIZES!”

Cheers and applause.

“Thank you all for hanging on there, we wanted to wait until we had an audience. NOW --”

Chuckles.

“-- I’d like to explain the rules of the game. If you will open up your program, in the center, you will find something called a Hit List --”

I was talking very, very fast.

“What we’ll be doing for you this evening are a bunch of plays, ranging from five seconds to two minutes, that we call HITS. We’ll be doing them in a Hit and Run format, you’ll know a piece has begun because we will yell the title of the Hit, and then the word, HIT, we’ll perform the HIT, then yell the word RUN and we’ll go onto the next one.”

Oh boy, did this need to be rehearsed.

“We’ll choose the order, we, all of us, uh, of the Hits, by playing games. We’ll be playing games with you, the audience, and we’ll be picking certain members of you to decide what we will be seeing next. All right?”

No response. 

“Now we only have 27 Hits, you’ll see that there are 24 titles listed there, and that’s because three of them are what we call ‘Misses’.”

“Twenty-one,” Beemer mumbled.

“Twenty-seven Hits?” Torque asked.

“Did I say twenty-seven?” I asked. “No, we have twenty-one Hits, there are twenty-three names in the program, three of them are Misses --”

Okay, by now the audience was completely confused, and the Guerrillas were laughing at me.

“-- which are titles without any plays attached to them. If you stand up and pick a MISS, Geddy will play the theme song, and we’ll bring you up here to spin --”

Jelly Jam spun the Wheel. Click, click, click, click, click!

“-- our own Wheel of Misfortune.”

Big laugh.

“Which this weekend is sponsored by Heart of the South Side,” and I pointed out the large, round ad for that establishment that was taped to the center of the Wheel.

“Now. If it lands on, say, Torque, you get to do a piece with him. We’ll give you a script and you’ll get to perform with him, for everyone. If it lands on the Gorilla, you get the shirt off the Gorilla’s back --” gesturing at the Guerrilla Gorilla “-- OR what’s behind DOOR #2!” And Jelly Jam pulled a Vanna next to The Door.

Very big laugh. And thank God for it.

“The prize behind Door #2 is brought to you by Big Fun on Coventry. But you will have to sacrifice the T-shirt to find out what it is. You don’t get to find out what is behind Door #2 without trading the shirt for it.”

Wow, that took a long time.

“Have I left anything out?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Torque said, wild-eyed.

“There will be three rounds, the first will be The Quotation Round, you all filled out cards when you came in, sharing your thoughts and your name, we’ll bring two Guerrillas up here, they’ll read the quotes and whichever gets the loudest audience response gets to pick the first Hit. Easy enough?”

No response.

“Let’s begin!”

The Guerrillas ran to me, standing center. I pulled two quotes blindly out of my Fanny Pack, handed one to Torque and one to Beemer.

“Torque!” I said, asking Torque to read the quote I given him.

Quotations. There would be over 700 quotes read during the first season, and maybe 2000 read during the second season.

Torque read the very first quote ever read in a Guerrilla show.

“Fuck off!” he said.

And off we went.

It was all very rough, but everyone, including, thank goodness, the audience, was up for it.

These were some of the other quotations that night:

• “They say no man is an island, who are they, anyway?” 
• “The half-life of a cheeseburger in red pumps.”
• “I wuv you.”
• “Fuck me like fried-potatoes on the most beautiful, hungry morning of my goddamn life.”
• “While the juices of society flow gently into mediocrity.” 
• “Happiness.” 
• “It started out as a wart on my ass.” 
• “Left turn on red.” 
• “Bugs!”

But my, we flew through the Hits. The first two happened to carry strong feminist messages from Torque, which inspired some self-conscious giggling.

Then we got to Retro’s first piece, Short Term Memory, in which Torque and Retro beat the hell out of themselves trying to remember the name of Joyce DeWitt. Now that got applause. 

We sent up Hamlet. We made fun of Ross Perot, and the Cleveland Play House. We slammed Deadbeat Dads and Catholicism. Retro shared creepy stories from work and Mammy revealed how sexist the names of cocktails are. And of course, "Disaster Movie Theater".

By the end of the show ... well, the most important thing that night was, we reached the end of the show.

“Thanks for coming!” I called, over the applause and music, “We will continue to do this show every Friday and Saturday night at 11 PM from now until the end of time! So tell your friends, and remember --”

“You Have the Right to Remain Silent!” yelled all the Guerrillas, and we all did the Dating Game Kiss -- MMMMMWHAH!

We danced to the music and let that carry us into the audience where we shook hands, hugged our friends, and talked to as many people as we could.

As the last few people filed out, and we were cleaning up, Torque came up to me and we gave each other a big hug.

“We did it,” he said, overwhelmed. “I can’t believe we’ve actually done it.”

“Yeah, we did,” I said, laughing. “I gotta tell you, I was expecting the police or the Fire Marshall to show up any minute and shut us down. I guess they don’t care.”

“Yeah. Hope that lasts,” he said. “What I can’t figure out is ... why doesn’t everybody do this?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, this was easy,” he said. “Everybody talks about doing a show, everyone talks and talks about starting their own company, their own theater, and we just did it. It doesn’t make sense.”

“This wasn’t easy,” I said, finally. “We spent all summer doing this.

“All of this,” I said, and waved my hand at our space, “we put a lot of long hours into this place. The three of us have been having meetings, being serious about it, putting the time in. Nothing easy about it.”

He said, “Hmn."

Wee-Bear had tallied the box office receipts.

“Hey, everybody!” she announced to all the Guerrillas after the front door was closed and locked, “Guerrilla Theater Company made over $150 tonight!”

A hundred and fifty dollars, in admission and donations! In one night! That was truly stunning. There were cheers all around.

She went on to proclaim happily, “I think the first round at Edison’s is on Guerrilla Theater Company tonight!”

“Yee-ah!” Retro howled.

“I don’t think we should spend our profit on beer,” Torque said.

“Oh come on,” she said. “It’s Opening Night! I mean ... I mean -- come on!”

“I’ve got the first round,” I said. “We’ll let the company hang onto that money until we decide what to do with it.”

And we went to Edison’s, and I got the first round. I may have gotten the sixth as well, but by then I had stopped counting.

On Monday I handed in my two-weeks notice at Karamu.