Assessment

Where are we now?
Where are we now?
The moment you know
You know you know.- David Bowie, Where Are We Now

The year 2014 was a highly productive one for me. In my previous assessment, almost a year and a half ago, I reported my intent to do two very important things; read before sleep, and to write upon waking. And this I did, every single day. And there were dividends.

I wrote a play. I wrote another play. I wrote a few more things which may or may become things we might call plays. This became a ritual, and a very healthy one. My wife brought me coffee and I wrote for a half-hour, every morning. At the least.

Then, just after Thanksgiving I injured my back. To alleviate the pain, I was prescribed stretches. These took a half-hour every night, and again every morning. I lost my time. I spent far too much time online, and none writing. None, or rarely any.

But I was also directing my own play, and I had another in production. The Great Globe Itself was a success, a performance which received many positive comments:

I brought my 14 yr old daughter and she loved it. This is exactly the best kind of
outreach to bring theater/Shakespeare to the young.
- Audience member at Cleveland Heights-University Heights Main Library

Cool beans! Kudos to the writer! this play must have taken lots of research and
time. It was grand.
- Audience member at Lakewood Public Library

As someone who only partially enjoys Shakespeare, I found this play to be a delight.
- Audience member at University of Akron

Also, this.

However, directing the work was very stressful for me. I do not enjoy directing my own work, you will notice I do not attempt that very often. Directing is a skill I admire in others. Especially when that person is Alison Garrigan, who directed Rosalynde & The Falcon at Talespinner, which closed yesterday.

Rosalynde & Rusty

Sitting in the audience for this one was such a joy, listening to children and their parents and grandparents all laughing at different things, and also at the same things. I have been blessed to have had many wonderful productions of my writing, but I don't think I have seen a show from one of my scripts that so successfully incorporated a unity of movement and music, costumes and masks, and the set painting and structures, with a company working so hard and fluidly for such an extended period. It was just everything, and I could not make note of a single weak note.

Last week was crowned by a special announcement, that I have had a second play published. YouthPLAYS is an online distributor of play scripts intended either to be performed by young performers, or by adult actors for young audiences. I am delighted to announce that they will be managing the rights for Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick).

Beatrice & Benedick

This makes me happy for a number of reasons. All the plays are special, but this one is more special than others. The response we received was very emotional, it goes places I have rarely gone in my work. The idea of a high school Thespian troupe performing this work is thrilling to me.

 Also, in spite of its being inspired by a preexisting work (and one by Shakespeare, at that) it is original, it tells a unique story, I wrote it in verse, it is mine. The also-published Agatha Christie piece is also certainly mine, but I have to admit I feel validated for having something truly original in my name in print, and available for production.

And suddenly, without really noticing it happened, my back is noticeably free of pain. I stopped doing the exercises about a week ago, a little over a week ago, and just forgot to do them. Because nothing was reminding me to do so. At the same time, I had renewed my resolve to read and to write, every day. Next week I have a reading of something at unit. Can't really say what it is yet. Awful folk tales. And by horrible, I mean terrible.

But there it is. Writing. Something I still do.

On Direction

We close, we do not end.

Our final two performance of The Great Globe Itself were not public performances, they were held at Elyria High School and Firestone High in Akron. Each crowd was very enjoyable for our men to perform for and the post-show discussions were some of the best we'd had the entire tour.

The discussions themselves are always a challenge for these tours, at least at the beginning. We have a list of potential questions, but we never know how an audience will respond. Some public audiences don't want to be asked questions following the performance, and as moderator I have to take care not to be too pedantic. I mean, I have to be a little pedantic. I am a pedant.

Me and Ted.

Several weeks ago - feels like months - my high school drama coach, Ted Siller, attended a performance in Oberlin. That was a complete surprise, and a happy one. He did this once before, when I was performing I Hate This at Dobama Theatre in advance of the Minnesota Fringe Festival. That was in 2003. 

Ted turns me into Death.

It's hard to reacquaint yourself with the mentors of your youth, you start sounding like a teenager. Regardless, he had very supportive comments following the show, this show I have directed, and it got me thinking of my journey as a director and what I have and have not learned.

My first production was in Kindergarten. Seriously, I told my teacher I wanted to do a play and she asked me what I wanted to do and what I described to her was Stan Freberg's Little Blue Riding Hood. The rest of the afternoon was spent casting the play and my providing lines for everyone and ... I'm not making this up, this really happened.

But my first real attempt at directing was part of an evening of one acts my sophomore year. Sobczak and I performed Woody Allen's Death Knocks. I didn't think much about it during our "process" which at this point consisted mostly of memorization and not much blocking. The day of the first performance, when people had made "wallies" for us for people to sign in the main hall, and everyone was talking up the event, I was struck by a sudden, urgent philosophical quandary:

Who said I was allowed to do this?

It was the first of many times I would be struck by my own completely blind arrogance. For I was not merely director in this case, I was also kind of the producer - I made this happen. You act in a play, and it blows, you can blame everyone, the director, the playwright, the other actors. You direct it, you own it, baby.

At school, there were as many opportunities to direct as act or do anything else. I took a course in Directing 101 (I am sure it was not called that) which was remarkable only in that it further emphasized my ability at that time to do as little serious work as humanly possible. The course was further complicated by the fact that the grad student conducting the course was also herself directing me in her thesis production and I was falling short there as well.

Later that same year I directed my own script, Breaking Point, based on the daily comic strip I had published in the college paper. As a result of that experience - directing my own play - I have entirely avoided directing my own work for over twenty-five years.

It is easy for me to judge myself harshly (and it's on video so I can confirm this) it is neither a very good script nor particularly inspired directing. At that point in the game I would have been much more richly served by doing one or the other. There was little opportunity to edit, though I am glad I took time to rewrite the entire ending, due to the kind, persuasive advice of my stage manager. If I could have sat back and watched, I would have rewritten quite a bit more.

It was several years before I would write another full-length script to be produced - The Vampyres - and at that time I took great delight in editing. Delight is the wrong word, what I mean is it was like having someone reach down my throat and yank at my stomach, but having been told, "This opening monologue doesn't work, rewrite it" at least I was able to concentrate on doing that and it was better. Even better when the piece was a remounted several years later, I cut the monologues altogether and that was much better.


The first time directing Shakespeare was a precarious moment in Guerrilla Theater Co. history and I had to do some convincing and spent a lot of cigarette time bringing people into my camp, into believing that a production of Romeo and Juliet was something I really should do. Once it was agreed upon, I was struck by a sudden, urgent philosophical quandary:

Who said I was allowed to do this?

There was no reason to believe I could DIRECT SHAKESPEARE, it was pure arrogance on my part which is really the only way to attempt anything. Jumping off the high dive is arrogance, submersion is antithetical to being a mammal, who do you think you are?

This production marked my directing phase, as I moved from Guerrilla to Night Kitchen to Bad Epitaph, in ten years time I directed around a dozen productions, without guidance, without mentorship, no one said I was allowed to do this. Some of it worked, some didn't, who cares. My attentions moved to arts education and writing. I found it much more satisfying and a lot less stressful.


I think what I could never enjoy was thinking of directing as a gig. Since 2004 my directing jobs have been by choice, and not assignment. Directing Henry VIII for CleveShakes in 2012 was a gas because there were no expectations, none at all.

This is the thing - I have had to make up everything as I go along. I have learned from directors I have worked with as an actor, but not as an assistant to a director, nor as a stage manager. When the time came to edit Romeo and Juliet, I started with the cutting from a production I had performed in in college - adding bits back I missed and removing others that did not interest me.

When I directed Hamlet in 1999, I started by watching a video of Richard Burton's Broadway production from 1964, making cuts based upon that before then deciding upon my own. It felt like cheating each time, as though I were some Shakespeare fraud, that I didn't really know what I was doing.

What I was really afraid of was removing something someone else would think were important. That in my ignorance I would excise the most important piece from the show, and that it would be apparent to all.

By the time Henry VIII came along, I wasn't afraid any more. I just cut what did not interest me, that didn't tell the story the way I wanted to tell it, end stop.

... I'll come in again.

The Great Globe Itself was the first play I have directed for the outreach tour.  I found it an intense experience, working for three hours (with one short break) with three guys - two of whom I'd never worked with before - to tackle a dense but ridiculous script, telling a somewhat oblique story that spanned four centuries and played fast and loose with true history.

It's what I do.

My script, my direction. At least this time I was able to step back, at least somewhat, to perform some judicious cutting at the outset, once I heard it repeated a small number of times. There were even more cuts after we had opened, one or two lines which offended. With their absence, those complaints stopped. It is a process, and better to make adjustments than to say "it opened, it's out of my hands."

Living Together

Which brings me back to Mr. Siller. He was always extremely accommodating to those who wanted to produce special projects - like an improv show or an evening of one acts. My brother was super involved in Thespians, acting, participating in competition, even directing Alan Ayckbourn's Table Manners (one part of the Norman Conquests trilogy) his senior year, a full-length production between the fall comedy and the spring musical.

When I was a senior, I decided I wanted to attempt everything he had, if I could even going so far as to direct another play in Ayckbourn's trilogy, Living Together - because I do not have the capacity for original thought or ideas.

This wasn't for a grade or extra credit, it was for bragging rights more than anything else, but Siller did request I create a rehearsal journal, which, much like my journal for Directing 101 a few years later, was largely perfunctory. It was the basis for my application to Macalester where I pretty much said, I did this thing and therefore I am qualified. You will notice I do not have a degree from Macalester.

The Great Globe Itself

Learning to direct has by and large been a process of learning how to work with other people. To make plans in collaboration with others, but also to have big ideas and to be excited about bringing them to fruition. For me it has always been a matter of wanting to see something on stage and then doing everything I can to make that happen.

Working with Arthur, James and Rod on The Great Globe Itself was a unique experience, and I will miss the time we spent collaborating on this production. They were each of them focused on their performances, and I am incredibly grateful for the talent and intelligence they each brought to this new work, helping me make it into the production I wanted to see. Collaboration in effect.

Rosalynde & the Falcon: On Copyright

Julius (Charles Hargrave), Leo (Tim Keo) & Rusty (Valerie C. Kilmer)
Talespinner Childern's Theatre (2015)
Steve Wagner Photography

But do not think we stole these tales
For that would make us thieves.
- from "Rosalynde & The Falcon"

There has been a lot of talk lately about copyright, following the Blurred Lines decision … actually, whenever the subject of the Blurred Lines decision comes up, the conversation is generally high-jacked by people who just want to keep emphasizing what a terrible song Blurred Lines is.

The fact is, copyright is a bizarre legal concept when it comes to art, imitation and appropriation. The Blurred Lines verdict is bad, because it imposed a penalty based on a mood or feeling - a groove, if you will - and not on any specifically defined melody.

Rosalynde (Rose Leisner) & Roland (Ryan Hardge)
Culver City Public Theatre (2019)

Likewise, Sam Smith didn’t even bother to fight a potential copyright challenge from Tom Petty et alia when it was brought to his attention that the chorus of his Stay With Me has the same seven notes in the same order as part of the chorus of Petty's Won’t Back Down. Whether or not you think this is a fair decision depends a lot on whether you are over or under the age of 40.

In Rosalynde & The Falcon which opened this weekend at Talespinner Children’s Theatre, there is a running gag about copyright violation (I know, right?) in which one character, after mentioning a familiar song title, begins to sing that song but gets interrupted with the warning “Copyright!” before reaching the legally-punishable third note.

In the spirit of full disclosure, the text of Rosalynde & The Falcon includes samples from or allusions to the following works and artists. See if you can find all of them:

• Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge
• Gamelyn by Geoffrey Chaucer
• William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, Macbeth and King Lear
• Sneewittchen AKA Snowdrop AKA Snow White
• Goldilocks
• Robin Hood
• Little Red Riding Hood
• Lewis Carroll
• Simon & Garfunkel
• Woody Allen
• Cole Porter
• Jack Kerouac
• MC Hammer
• Battlestar Galactica*
• The Firesign Theatre 

... and, of course, The Marx Brothers.  

"You may want to sneak back to see it again ... just to make sure you caught all the jokes." - Christine Howey, Cleveland Scene 

*Further update: We had actually cut the "Battlestar Galactica" joke before the show premiered in 2015. You be the judge: 

RUSTY: President Rosalynde!
LEO: (aside) "All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again."
JULIUS: (aside) Mister J.M. Barrie.

"Rosalynde & the Falcon" is now available from Next Stage Press.

The Great Globe Itself: Middle School

Three Globes (Hudson Middle School)

We pushed the tour schedule back a few weeks this year, from a mid-February start to one at the beginning of March. Afforded an additional week of performances, we searched for additional high schools and soon discovered March is a terrible, terrible time to add special events to a high school calendar. It's all testing, all the time, or preparation for same.

So we turned to middle schools. Most of our tours are suitable for all audiences. Double Heart was a romance, and spoke frankly about some very personal issues (see Time Out review for details) so it stands out as an example that may have been inappropriate for adolescents. However, some material may not interest a vast audience of 11-to-13 year olds. Our Agatha Christie tour was very popular, but would it have held their attention for an hour?

We will never get to find out. But the decision was made months ago to bring two middle schools, in Cleveland Heights and in Hudson, onto the tour schedule. It just so happened they followed one day after another this week.

Monticello Middle School

Monday afternoon's performance at my own daughter's school, Monticello Middle School was very lively. The entire school was invited - over five hundred kids - and when the characters of Clement (2005) and Sam (1936) made their entrance through the house, it was as though every kid popped out of their seat. In their post-show comments, numerous students remarked on how funny they found the play, and many asked us to return some time in the future.

Hudson Middle School

The entire eighth grade at Hudson Middle School joined us on Tuesday, and our contact teacher there, Mrs. Lawler, had used our Teacher Preparation Guide to bring her kids up to speed on the history and issues related to The Great Globe Itself. After the performance, she gave me a tour of her classroom and all the different projects they had created, related to the production.

Romeo & Juliet Globe (Hudson Middle School)

Students have been very generous with their praise in their written evaluations:

"I liked the mixture of humor and seriousness."
"The actors were very good!"
"Overall I enjoyed this play and I would totally come to another play."
"This play was fun to see instead of being in class."

 Our performance at Monticello concluded just as the school day concluded, so there was no opportunity for a a Q&A, except for  few students who didn't need to catch a us and stayed behind to chat with us.

Hudson Middle School

At Hudson we had the opportunity for a nice long talkback. I asked a few warm-up questions related to the production before letting the students as whatever they want from me and from the acting company. One questions I asked on Tuesday was, "If you had to describe this play to someone who has not seen it, what would you tell them?"

There was an awkward silence, with a few giggles, before a student in the balcony raised his hand. He spoke in a thoughtful, cultured, if put-on voice ...

"The play ... (he took a considered pause, more giggling from the audience) ... was about the magnificent Globe Theatre ... (another measured pause, more outright laughter from the audience) ... a place where men ... dance together ..."

And then we all just lost it.

Rosalynde & The Falcon: Stumble-Through

"Rosalynde" company with Movement coach Stephanie Wilbert

It has been a long winter. On February 10 I attended the first read-through of Rosalynde & The Falcon. The next day I began rehearsals for The Great Globe Itself, which has been on the road for two weeks. This afternoon I had my first opportunity to return to Rosalynde, and to sit in on a rehearsal.

Rosalynde is based loosely on Shakespeare’s As You Like It, or maybe something close to a parody of same. After all, the basic storyline had been well-worn before Shags got to it. A young woman fears for her life and escapes to the forest, disguised as a man. There she meets a band of outcasts and has an adventure.

In the folk tale Snow White she falls in love with a prince. In my story, she becomes one.

When we were discussing the season, Ali asked to add a parenthetic title, and suggested A Topsy-Turvy Tale of England. All the plays this year are denoted by parentheticals as to their origins. The Silent Princess (A Turkish Folktale) or Prince Ivan & The Firebird (A Russian Tale of Magic).

At first I was confused, and also afraid. I was afraid audiences would think this play is, well … English. No doubt this is because my heritage is mostly English, and I don’t go around trumpeting that fact because it’s like saying your favorite flavor is vanilla or your favorite color is white.

But that’s ridiculous. The play is based on the work of the greatest playwright ever, who was English. There’s also a lot of Robin Hood in it, he was certainly English. We all saw the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics, right? A tiny island nation faced the world and said, you like culture? We made that.

I am reminded of the 1996 Doctor Who movie, which takes place in San Francisco. Introducing The Doctor to someone, his American companion explains his demeanor to a friend by referring to him as English. The Doctor thinks for a moment and says, “Yes. I suppose I am.”

So, yes. I suppose it is. Rosalynde is an English tale!

There have been many suggested edits to my original script since rehearsals began, and I have agreed to all of them. What I wrote is a comedy, somewhat broad in nature, borrowing from many familiar comic tropes. True to form, the artists at Talespinner have built the work with great music, dance and movement. What works, what is funny, stays. What is only funny to David gets cut.

Settling in for the beginning of today’s first-ever “stumble-through” of all scenes performed together, in order, is\\they began with an old English “whistling song” and I couldn’t help be reminded of the opening of Disney’s animated Robin Hood. And that was a very good sign.


Performance rights for "Rosalynde & the Falcon" are available from Next Stage Press.

The Great Globe Itself: Week Two

Full house at University of Akron!

The first, full six-day week of performances is almost at an end. Our gentlemen have performed The Globe across all counties, from Oberlin to Cah-hoga Falls, with stops at libraries and retirement communities, for one audience of nine earlier this week to a packed room at the University of Akron Student Union Thursday afternoon.

Every couple of years Great Lakes has had the opportunity to present the outreach tour as part of the university's annual Shakespeare In The Spring programming, and were all delighted to learn there would be cake.

During the performance, one of our hosts was inspired to create an impromptu sign, reassuring students that the meatballs were harmless:

Get it? If not, you haven't seen the show yet.

We had a great discussion afterwards, debating whether the show does or does not include ghosts, and James contributed to the eternal humiliation of John Fletcher. 

Down at The Globe.

Response to this new work has been very positive, and there were dudes at the show yesterday who were virtually crying during the dance scenes. Here are some random comments from the U of A:

Q: What did you enjoy most about today's performance:
"The entire performance was outstanding."
"The actors are just funny guys."
"The jokes about (Cardinal) Wolsey."

The Wolsey bits? They're the best part of the show!

Many thanks to Dr. Hillary Nunn who coordinated our tour stop, and all those who organized the event, it was a beautiful Spring-like day in so many ways. The van is loaded up, and today we wrap up this second week of the tour at the Cleveland Sight Center at 1 PM. Join us!

Say cheese.

The Great Globe Itself continues through March 31.

The Great Globe Itself: Talking Heads

Inspiration comes from many places. Last Wednesday night, at Workshop Players, it became a bit of a running joke during the discussion, exactly what the inspiration for this play had been?

Because I had originally been inspired by my mentor Bill Condee and his emphasis on theater architecture, coupled with my own undergraduate experience performing largely on the university’s thrust stage.

Only my original inspiration had actually been inspired by John Vacha’s account of young Sam Wanamaker, and how his work in Cleveland in 1936 had inspired a lifelong dream of creating a new Globe Theatre.

Except I was really actually originally inspired by the idea of Mark Rylance’s three-man Tempest, and my desire to see three men perform a warm-up dance call to BAD II’s single The Globe.


Every one of these things are true, inspiration comes from everywhere. However, each individual scene did not begin to properly take shape until I gave each of them a title from a song by Talking Heads.


Arthur was the first to catch this, as each scene has a heading in the script – Burning Down the House, Once In a Lifetime and This Must Be the Place. Each of these phrases are spoken during the play, as part of the dialogue, so audiences aren’t even supposed to notice it.


What’s the point? None, really. I like Talking Heads. I am particularly fond of This Must Be the Place. Only recently did I search David Byrne’s description of what the song means, it’s one of the few love songs the band ever created, and it is composed entirely of non sequitrs, unrelated phrases people in love might say to each other, entirely out of context.


But once I knew that the first scene would be about (spoiler alert) the original Globe Theatre burning to the ground, I noticed two other of their singles were could be said to describe the action of the following two scenes. This made writing them easier, gave the action of each of specific focus. The titles were a touchstone, the scenes aren't actually about the songs.

We had a great performance at Beachwood Public Library this afternoon, the audience was very generous and responsive. I live the libraries, there’s such a diverse age range in the audience. Tomorrow we travel to Kendal at Oberlin, performance at 7:15 pm. Please join us.