I Hate This: First Rehearsal

"You are fucking cool as shit all of the time."

cool. adj., 1. moderately cold, 2. marked by calm self-control, 3. marked by indifference, disdain, 4. composed

The company.

We had our first rehearsal yesterday. This is the big question, how much storytelling? How much acting? The text is so familiar and the truth is I have lost the truth. I believed that in my "near-dispassionate" telling I was providing the facts without torturing the audience. And I was praised for it.

In our first two hours I was astonished at how many things I had forgotten. I mean, since the very beginning. Chennelle made observations which prompted stories which revealed truths I had misplaced.

It's in the text. I woke early, alone, our first night back. But I didn't just wake up. I heard my wife in the nursery, crying. That is what woke me up, that is the manner in which I woke up. I didn't need to "find" her, I followed the sound of her. It's right there in the words.

Then there's the other thing. The face I am entirely unaware I have. It's not something I am necessarily comfortable being made aware of. But there it is. Mr. Cool-As-Shit. Dad. That guy. I thought he was in the mix, but I even when I am accepting blame, I am making excuses. It is very, very hard not to.

What is inside has to come out. And what is outside has to be hard.

I Hate This (A play without the baby) will be performed one night only, May 7, 2016. Click here to make your reservation.

Hamilton (musical)

Civics lesson from a slaver

Ken Howard died last month. A proud union actor and leader, he is remembered by most from the 1970s dramatic TV program The White Shadow. To many of us, he has always been the face we picture when we think of Thomas Jefferson.

I turned eight in 1976, the American Bicentennial. We visited Williamsburg, our class portraits included Betsy Ross’s flag, and I personally have a strong and intimate association with seeing the film adaptation of the musical 1776 on Broadcast television.

The musical was originally produced on Broadway in 1969, when the U.S. was deep into Vietnam, the film version in 1972. For years, before cable anyway, it was rebroadcast around the Independence Day holiday. My family had the cast album, which we loved playing.

This story, depicting the signers of the Declaration of Independence as witty, flawed, somewhat crabby, but above all hopeful public servants was a helpful antidote to the general malaise of actually being American at that time.

It was much later that I learned, much to my disillusionment, that musical’s book compels the character of Jefferson to tell one whopper of a lie, in an obvious effort to leave the tall, awkward, Blythe Danner-loving redhead untarnished.

When debating the inclusion of language which would have publicly condemned the practice of enslavement, a South Carolina congressman reminds Thomas Jefferson of Virginia that he is also a slaver.

Jefferson states quietly, “I have already resolved to release my slaves.”

Actions speak louder. In reality Thomas Jefferson never released any slaves, with the exception of those he fathered, whom he conveniently allowed to “escape.” In fact, there was a practice at that time for slavers to put into their wills to grant freedom to those they held in slavery upon the slaver’s death. George Washington, for example, did this. Thomas Jefferson did not, passing possession of two hundred or so souls onto his heirs.

The worst sins of the historical characters in 1776 is that they are a bit laconic and playfully lascivious.

Enter Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cultural juggernaut that is Hamilton. Inspired by biography and history, Miranda has single-handedly retrieved the least-known or least-understood of the “founding fathers” from obscurity by creating a vast and complex narrative which begs repeated listening. Most of us cannot hope to attend the production at the Richard Rogers Theatre, and have spent the past several months listening to the soundtrack, which weaves rap, hip-hop and R&B into traditional but staggeringly effective modern showtunes.

Part of the appeal of Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton is how unapologetic the character is. In fact, he is the diametric opposite of apologetic, he refuses to apologize for anything.

What is a legacy?

Recently I purchased the cast recording to In The Heights. Without question it is a very well-written show, fun to listen to, and inspiring. It is important that Latinx voices are being heard, on Broadway, that musical styles never before presented were in the mix, the faces, the accents, the names. It deserved to and received the Tony Award for Best Musical that it received.

Miranda wrote the music and lyrics for In The Heights. He also wrote the music, lyrics and book for Hamilton.

Hamilton is a monster.

My children listen to it, all the time, it is on before school and whenever we get into the car. My thirteen year-old daughter listens to it when she’s doing her homework, every single day. My ten year-old son is working very hard to memorize every single word -- especially the cabinet meetings, the boy loves the cabinet meetings.

Several of the girl's friends are on board, and my wife sees her students sharing earbuds to listen between classes. I walk into the office of one of my work colleagues to drop off paperwork, she's listening to Hamilton. I keep seeing friends and colleagues surprise me on Instagram with their selfies at the Richard Rogers.

What is the difference between these two Miranda shows, or in fact between Hamilton and virtually any other Broadway show that has created a kind of widespread, “crossover” appeal that hasn’t been seen since perhaps the original production of Hair?

I think it's all the history.

Doctoral theses will be written, have been, are being as we speak, to be sure. My question is this; what is it about history which at once lends drama instant gravitas, but also compels great writers to reach deeper, go farther - and provides us the freedom to move along wherever it will take us?

The best example I can think of is The Crucible. Not a critically well-received drama when it was first produced, though it did win awards. But with that one play Miller reached far outside of himself to find the humanity in an arcane historical event and created the piece which I believe will stand the test of time, greater than All My Sons, greater than Death of a Salesman.

In one thousand years, Salesman may seem as obscure as The Women of Trāchis. But we will still be performing The Crucible, and it will play as fresh as it did in 1953, or as it remains today. Who is John Proctor? Who is Alexander Hamilton?

Well, he’s me, isn’t he? And who are you? Who are you? Who are you?

… Not Yet

There was a recent bit of unpleasantness regarding the open call audition for the national touring production of Hamilton. They were looking for “Non-White Actors” and said so, causing scores of melanin-deprived individuals to get the vapors. “Colorblind” casting is one thing, but to show blatant preference against a single race? This feeling of being treated unfairly just because of my skin?

White people cannot comprehend the idea of not being allowed to have something they want.

The fallout was that, in spite of several prominent examples of AEA productions which called specifically for “white actors” the call for actors for the tour was changed to a more inclusive, “performers of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.” In that way they are free to do what casting directors have done for centuries, and simply disregard any performer they feel does not suit the production.

At long last, white American actors will know what it feels like to "Audition While Black."

The non-white make-up of the original cast of Hamilton is, of course, part of what makes it unique. Miranda has said as much, that this is America today, representing America as it began.

It is that opportunity for creative representation which makes theater unique. The boy and I watched the movie Gettysburg last month, and while it strives for historical accuracy, the beards are a little difficult to take. Historical film wants to be accurate. The stage is all about the suspension of disbelief.

Recently I recounted an incident in which I debated with stranger about a production of The Crucible at the Cleveland Play House which featured a mixed-race cast. Watching an African-American actor perform John Proctor apparently disturbed this man a great deal, which I simply do not get. He saw a black man, I saw John Proctor.

Theater has always been a representation of reality and not an exact replica the thing itself. Anyone can play anything, if they play it well enough. Is appreciating this a generational thing? My children love the actors, singers and rappers who perform Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Hercules Mulligan (EVERYONE loves Hercules Mulligan) each of them portrayed in Hamilton by non-white performers. My children are not stupid, and they are not confused by these performances, they are aware that actual men they represent were racially European-Americans. They just love the music, the words, the voices, the personalities.

The performance of their characters by those who are not white may have confused or confounded or even offended the men they represent. But would an eighteenth century man be any less surprised or scandalized or even offended by the music and lyrics of Sherman “1776” Stone? I do not believe so.

History has its eyes on you.

Much has been written about the historical accuracy of Hamilton, Miranda is pretty up front about that. Yesterday there was a piece in the Times about the accuracy of the politics of the piece, and how it positions Hamilton as a visionary hero and Jefferson as a villain.

Who cares. Really. This is a play. You are worried the kids are going to get their opinions on history from a Broadway musical? Sister, please, turn on the so-called news and listen to the outright lies being offered by real people. This is art and should be judged as art.

The fact is, the artistry is brilliant. The words, as blogger Tim Sniffen put it; "The words caressed my brain and flowed over my face like hot, relevant syrup." (Read the whole thing, rarely have I read professional jealousy so lovingly and hilariously expressed.) It is not a cop-out to remind everyone that art has a responsibility to reveal the TRUTH, and not to let facts get in the way.

What is exciting to me, personally, is that this is the first time my little family – wife, daughter and son – have discovered and been overwhelmingly excited by the same cultural object all at the same time. It is as new to me as it is to them, none of us are better educated than anyone else on this. I know my history, but my kids are closer to the pop culture and they are teaching me the memes the fandom, the inside jokes, the appearances on Jimmy Fallon, and everything else that comes with it in Twenty-Sixteen.

And after all, may I remind you; “I have already resolved to release my slaves"? Srsly? Don't talk to me about facts.

The Orphanage

We purchased the original cast recording in early February, less than two weeks before my father died. I remember this because he and my mother had visited one day during a snowstorm and we had a long afternoon talking. That’s what my father and I did, we talked. I was telling him about this exciting musical I was listening to, and how much I thought he would like it, because it is about American history, only I wasn’t sure he would like it because he couldn’t understand rap music. It’s not that he didn’t like rap music, it’s that he couldn’t understand the words going by so fast, and he found that frustrating.

The following Friday morning, I had just gotten out of the shower and received a call that he had suffered a massive heart attack, and that it looked bad and that I should get to the hospital as soon as possible. I learned later that it was far too late, but I dressed as fast as I could and drove across town and found myself suddenly, quietly blurt out, “stay alive …” and almost immediately wishing I hadn’t.

The days and weeks that followed we listened to the cast album, and I mean a lot. There have been and there continue to be a lot of drives between Cleveland Heights and Lakewood, and each time the kids ask if we can listen to Hamilton. I mean, my butt hasn't even hit the driver's seat and my daughter says, "Hamilton."

So, to this guy, the sense of emotional emergency, and its aftermath, are all tied up in that period. Like my association between 1776 and the Bicentennial, I will always remember the events surrounding my father's death and discovering these songs.

And it is because of my father that I cannot make it through the closing song (Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story) without breaking into tears. After two hours of listening to his enemies - and even he, himself - describe Hamilton as an orphan, and also bastard and whoreson, the poignancy of his wife Eliza’s greatest gift, the Orphan Asylum Society of the City of New York (today Graham Windham) resonates deeply.

Because, you see, my father was also given up by his birth mother. My father was an orphan. And I can’t help it. In this song, I see him. I see him every time.

I Hate This: Fifteen Years On

Don't you think I'm looking older?

As the new year began, I was struck by all the unique milestones, personal and public, that lay in our way in 2016. My daughter was to become a teenager. Shakespeare’s First Folio would be visiting Cleveland (and all those Republicans.) We would elect a new president.

I was also aware that our first child, stillborn in 2001, would turn fifteen. On the tenth anniversary of the events described in my solo performance, I Hate This, that play and a companion piece were produced at Cleveland Public Theatre. It was rewarding to expand upon the play in that way, and have the opportunity to widen the scope of what stories I could tell in a single evening.

For this birthday, however, I wanted to reconnect with I Hate This on its own. But how best to proceed? I considered intimate, private performances, maybe even hosted in my own house, or someone else’s house. Maybe a string of them, a series of appearances for an audience of ten at a time. Perhaps one day I will still attempt that.

I was actually about the abandon the idea. We were putting together The Secret Adversary tour, and soon I would need to begin rehearsals for a forty-minute abridgment of Twelfth Night we will be presenting as part of the First Folio proceedings. It just wasn’t the right time, you know? You can always tell yourself it isn’t the right time.

Then two things happened. First, my father died, and life itself took on a startling new dimension for me. Preparing a memorial service, physical contact with a deceased and beloved family member, making decisions you never imagined you would be called upon to make ... so much that had been buried into the past returned to the surface.

And shortly following that, I was accepted into the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, which I greatly wished to attend, but scarcely had the money to pay for. It made perfect sense to accomplish two goals at once, raise funds in exchange for which I would offer an entirely relevant premium -- my work. I would remount this play, with purposeful intent.

We have put together a production team, with Josh Brown adapting the multimedia he created for the CPT production (2011) and we will be including Dennis Yurich’s original score from 2003, which is now appropriately period.

Most significantly, I have asked Chennelle Bryant-Harris to re-stage the work. She has worked three seasons as an actor-teacher in the residency program, and we collaborated as co-directors for the Love In Pieces project two years ago. She is a talented, young director who will bring a fresh perspective to the work. Significantly, I suggest, for at least one important reason - unlike my previous collaborators, she wasn’t there. She did not know me then. Her experience is based entirely by what I set on the page, and so my words have to do much more work.

During the past two years I have watched with fascination as two other men have taken on the role, John Dayton and Brian Cook. Their interpretations gave me an opportunity to think of the text in new ways, have liberated me from thinking there was one way to perform this show. It’s my show, to be sure, but I was locked into a delivery, a certain cadence and choreography, which was established almost from the first reading in August, 2002.

When I polled friends on Facebook as to whether anyone would care to see either this play or And Then You Die (How I Ran a Marathon in 26.2 Years) again, Brian P. commented, “I'd be more interested to see how time and the vicissitudes of life has affected your approach to (I Hate This).”

So would I, Brian. So would I.

Click here to visit my GoFundMe page and make a donation and reserve your seat to see "I Hate This" on May 7!

Nineteen Eighty-Nine

Part two in an ongoing examination of the best year in musical history.

See Nineteen Eighty-Nine Part One.

Oranges & Lemons - XTC Some guy writing for Rolling Stone suggested that if Skylarking was XTC's Sergeant Pepper's, the Oranges and Lemons certainly follows as their White Album. Skylarking may have been the epitome of XTC's work, completing the transition from the somewhat clumsy after-punks of White Music (which features some great songs in which frontman Andy Partridge sounds unhappily uncomfortable) to the Beatles tribute band they had always desired to be.

The friends who had originally turned me on to XTC weren't thrilled with Oranges & Lemons, and it does have some unlistenable tracks, notably the heavy-handed President Kill Again and the not very clever Pink Thing which is, I shit you not, a poppy love song to a penis.

However, these are two false notes in an otherwise brilliant collection of tunes which landed just as spring was breaking for this young man about to turn twenty. And the thing actually had singles! Singles which charted, somewhat!

Speaking of spring break, I spent mine driving solo to Panama Beach and back, smoking cigarettes, chugging Diet Pepsi, driving well over the speed limit through the Deep South, and listening to this cassette over and over (which is what you did with cassettes) enjoying the metaphysically sexy punch of The Garden of Earthly Delights and The Mayor of Simpleton, the angry young manly introspection and doubt of One of the Millions and Miniature Sun, or the outright screamingly arrogant and cynical rage of Scarecrow People and Across This Antheap.

Oranges & Lemons is a fine thinking man's whine.

3 Feet High and Rising - De La Soul For white kids from the suburbs, we got into hip-hop pretty early. We had memorized Rapper's Delight before Blondie's Rapture had even been released, and not the other way around. Ditto, La Di Da Di. By the time the Beastie Boys emerged, we were keen enough to appreciate that License To Ill was meant as parody.

Rap had already been through many phases by the end of its first decade, from block party to the message to the frat party and on through my introduction to the biography of Malcolm X via the works of Chuck D, rap music had for the most part been an education, a look into a world in which I was entirely unschooled.

De La Soul was the, what, fifth wave of hip-hop? Sixth? Nerdy Tribal Retro Academic. Sampling as trippy modern art, lifting not merely funk and soul but 60s psychedelia and children's records. I was yet too callow to "get" it, but every track was an education. Every track still is.

Which reminds me, I need to go back and watch School Daze.

The gateway drug to Native Tongues, thank you Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers, Q-Tip will never age. Phife Dawg, rest in peace. Also, lyrics. Also, too, comedy. I wish my cousin Nag was here, he knows these things, no, I'm sorry I don't.

Pretty Hate Machine - Nine Inch Nails No, I am not that cool. I did not purchase Trent Reznor's first album when it was released in fall of 1989. I cannot claim to have seen him perform at the Phantasy in Cleveland, I was at school. But this is another example of how the last year of that decade was the greatest in music history.

My introduction was in 1991 on KROQ in Los Angeles and picked up a copy at Tower Records. This first album (ticky ticky ticky thump) came at just the right moment, clearly articulating a sense of self-loathing and unhappiness with something edgy enough to feel dirty but in reality much like disco.

You should hear the Purest Feeling demos. Some of it sounds like Madonna.

To be continued.

Last Frontier Theatre Conference

Because in those days I had a yearning to go to Alaska.
- Willy Loman, "Death of a Salesman"

Founded in 1993, the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, presented in partnership with Prince William Sound College, is a weeklong event which features performances, staged readings and workshops, providing emerging playwrights the opportunity to receive valuable feedback from professional and often prestigious playwrights, directors, producers, academics and critics.

In Valdez, Alaska. The LFTC takes place in Valdez, Alaska, in June. And I’m going.

Notable playwrights who have been honored or have attended have included many whose last names alone are recognizable, like Miller, Albee, Kushner, and Wilson (both.)

Me, I wrote something I had been thinking about for years, it spilled out maybe two years ago, I have had a couple of readings and wanted to try it out. Among several of its offerings, LFTC has a “Play Lab” in which you will have one rehearsal and then a staged reading which will be attended by a trio of special guests who will comment on your work. I chose to submit my new play to LFTC in August 2015, and almost immediately received an email from director Dawson Moore. Not an acceptance email, but one he no doubt sends to every applicant who does not live in the great Northwest.

The gist was, “Really?” As in, so you've applied to our theater conference via email. Did you notice that we are in Alaska?

My response was not as ridiculous as it seems. “Hey man, I’ve been to Alaska.” I’ve even been to Valdez, though admittedly, it was part of a cruise the wife and I took for our Honeymoon in 1999. But I can fathom the vast distances, the miles, the expense. Yeah, if accepted, sure.

See? I been to Valdez.

Last month, shortly after my father died (I mean, just ten days after my father died) I got the message. “Congratulations, David.” It read. “Your play The Way I Danced With You has been accepted for inclusion in the Play Lab at the 24th Annual Last Frontier Theatre Conference.

“I hope you will be able to join us.”

Indeed. I hoped so, too.

It took a little time. Summer is busy, but work and family have been extremely supportive, and I am definitely going. The folks on the Facebook page have been very helpful and informative. I can expect a bit of roughing it - not exactly camping, but I may be lying on the floor of a college dorm in a sleeping bag in a room with at least two other people. Theater people.

I will also be attending others’ readings, produced productions, workshop and seminars, dinners with complete strangers, perhaps a glacier cruise (included!) and generally hobnobbing with a gang of writers and other theater people, none of whom I have ever met before in my life. It's thrilling, It's intimidating.

First things first, this will take some cash and I intend to do a bit of fundraising. However, to that end I am working to provide a very special premium - a performance of I Hate This.

It was my intention to perform the show again this year, as the events in question occurred fifteen years ago. I haven’t presented I Hate This in five years, but have been inspired by subsequent productions by others in Manchester and Oneonta. After father died, it suddenly seemed even more important. Then I got the call, and now it also seems practical.

Here’s the thing. Soon I will create crowdsourced fundraiser. There will be one premium; a ticket to the show, which will occur in early May. Details to come. I hope I see you there.

The Book of William (How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World)

Following a performance of The Secret Adversary at a local school, one of the students remarked that she, “enjoyed that it was easy to follow ... and was not Shakespeare related.”

Indeed. Working backwards through the previous three years we have presented original works about the Globe Theatre (The Great Globe Itself), inspired by a speech in As You Like It (Seven Ages) and a prequel to Much Ado About Nothing (Double Heart.)

My work as a theater artist has been inextricably tied up in the works of Shakespeare. Apparently this is not the case for American theater artists, generally. This is made painfully obvious to me every time we hold auditions. College graduates stick the landing with their contemporary monologues, their verse is often not even memorized.

How did I become one of those Shakespeare people? In eighth grade Mrs. Carson assigned Macbeth which I really enjoyed reading. We read it, we did not watch a video.

(Side note: My father had recommended at that time that I also read James Thurber’s "The Macbeth Murder Mystery." It’s a hilarious short story which is funny only if you’ve read the play, which made me feel once again too damn clever for middle school.)

My high school at that time was passing out of a golden age when they actually had quarter classes in specialized subjects. Now you might take a year long course called Honors English Lit or something. I had the opportunity to take Death Perspectives and Journalism, there was a course on The Bible as Literature, and both Shakespearean Comedy and Shakespearean Tragedy.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Great Lakes Theater, 1984

Chuck Millheim taught those last two my senior year. I took both. By that time I had already been introduced to Shakespeare on stage; my parents took me to see The Tempest in the new Bolton Theatre at Cleveland Play House, soon after the high school attended a student matinee of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Great Lakes Theater.

Those plays were covered in Millheim’s courses, and also The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear and Hamlet. For Hamlet we were treated to the audio version of Richard Burton’s portrayal. Picture if you will, a room of high school seniors listening to an audiobook version of Shakespeare. It’s awful, right? Heads on desks all over the room. Me, I loved it. Burton was my first Hamlet, and it is because of him I know the manner in which Hamlet is funny.

(Side note: We were required to memorize “To be or not to be.” This was no big deal for me, because I am an actor. I scheduled my time to meet with Millheim before classes, and rattled off the soliloquy in short order, and watched as he gave me an A for my recitation in his grade book. I also noticed he gave one of the football players an A+. When I pressed him for how that guy got extra credit, Millheim said bluntly, “He performed it. Very well.”)

When it was announced that Romeo and Juliet would be a mainstage production my junior year in college, we were suddenly learning Shakespeare. Verse and how to interpret and speak it. We had not received any such instruction until then, and suddenly it was all Shakespeare, all the time. Senior year came the Stratford trip, with master classes from RSC members and numerous performances (including a King Lear featuring then-unknown to American audiences Ralph Fiennes as Edmond and Alex Kingston as Cordelia) and “suddenly” I was one of those guys for whom everything comes back to William Shakespeare.

The elephant is in the room.

This summer something monumental is coming to Cleveland, and by that I am referring to a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, and not that other thing that is happening, though they are not merely coincident, as I will explain.

To celebrate the Stratford Man’s 400th death anniversary (which is not that odd, we celebrate Elvis Presley’s death, too; also, Jesus) the Folger Library in Washington created First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare, a yearlong celebration in which they will loan a copy of the First Folio to every state in the Union in 2016. The Folger owns 82 copies, so it is possible for numerous sites to display them at once.

Great Lakes Theater in partnership with the Cleveland Public Library won the privilege of hosting the Ohio stop on this tour, and so it will be on display in Cleveland from June 20 - July 30 at the main branch of the Cleveland Public Library. It was the Folger Library who chose when we would receive the book, and they felt it was important for it to be here during the Republican National Convention.

(Side note: If there were ever a political convention in which those in attendance might set fire to a library, this would be it, but the Folger didn’t know that when choosing the date.)

We haven’t yet announced Great Lakes Theater’s contributions to these events, but we do have several exciting projects in the works and you will want to participate in them.

So, long story short (too late.) For the time being I will be selecting books to read from my father’s library. It’s not some new thing, I have been doing that for years. We both like history and nonfiction. I daresay he is the reason I like history and nonfiction.

Last week I spied his copy of The Book of William (How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World) by Paul Collins in his office and took it with me. In brief (it’s not a long book, either) Collins describes the origins of Shakespeare’s First Folio (also the Second, Third and Fourth) which is to say not only how it came to be printed but how it was printed, how the First managed to survive its first hundred years (for example, the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed almost every copy that hadn’t been bought and taken out of central London) and its estimable journey from yesterday’s news to the most expensive book on earth.

G.B. Shaw coined the term Bardolatry to mock those who attempt to deify Shakespeare. Shaw felt his work equal to Shakespeare’s and he is certainly entitled to that opinion. I agree that far too much emphasis can be put on Shakespeare the man when attempting to understand the work. What I cannot abide is the invention of biography for Shakespeare of Stratford in attempt to expand upon his legacy. Most of what people think they know of Shakespeare is apocryphal, the fact is we do not know.

But that’s okay. We have the most important part of him: this big, fat book, which, if it had not been printed in 1623 we would not have any text for Macbeth, Twelfth Night, The Tempest and fifteen other of his plays. They would for, all intents and purposes, not exist.

When Great Lakes' slate of events are announced, I hope you make time to join us for a workshop or a performance. There are a lot of folks who would just as soon not venture downtown during the Baby Elephant Walk this summer, and I understand that, too.

It’s not worth losing your head over.

The Secret Adversary: In Review

Cleveland Sight Center

Yes, it has been over a month since my last entry. These things happen. However, for years I have posted updates about the outreach tour and how it is progressing. Unfortunately, I attended only two performances of this year’s play, my adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary, before the sudden death of my father.

Family business and my own sense of disorientation and mourning kept me from the show for a week. Lisa and I were going to host and moderate the performances equally, and thankfully she was able to take all of them instead, in my absence.

Lakewood Public Library

As it happened, the afternoon performance at the Cleveland Sight Center occurred just when each of my brothers were in town, and the day before my father’s memorial service. We all attended together. My brothers have never before been in the audience together, and with me, for something I have written.

Not surprisingly, The Secret Adversary has been very well attended. The name “Agatha Christie” remains popular. Christie’s works are the third best-selling in the world after the Bible and Shakespeare.

We had to turn numerous people away at Clague Playhouse when all seats were taken, though a dozen or so stayed to watch the large video screen in the lobby that showed the performance. It was standing room only in Lakewood, but no one was required to leave.

Those turned away are no doubt disappointed, and post-show evaluations give certain audience members the opportunity to complain about crowded conditions or having to sit in the back. (Did I mention it’s free?) However, the overwhelming reaction to the production is very high.

"Your actors are amazing! Possibly better than what I've seen on touring Broadway casts."
- Student, Elyria Catholic High School

"The script was outstanding - this was a great adaptation!"
- Kendal at Oberlin audience member

“I really, really, really loved this play. I very much enjoyed the actors and actresses, the theme, the dialogue, and the ending scene was just beautiful.”
- Student, Hudson Middle School

Friday afternoon we performed in the new Cleveland School of the Arts building, in their “Black Box” space. Over 150 students in attendance, and they were wonderful, leaning forward, hanging on every word, getting every jokes, gasping at each revelation. After the show, their questions were all processed-based, about character, accents, physicality, even about the writing, adapting a novel into a play.

There will be a performance this afternoon in Cleveland Heights, which is home base for me. There are only three more public performances before we close, in Oberlin, Akron and Lorain.

The Secret Adversary opened on February 16, my mother's birthday. She and my father were in attendance, he was always a great reader and very fond of mystery novels and he provided and suggested numerous books that I used for research. And basically made me a person who would want to adapt a novel by Agatha Christie into a play. He enjoyed the show.