Looking forward.

Challenging to conceive that in just a few days I will be in Valdez. I am an easy traveler, I know how to pack simply, wisely. A week long journey with plans to visit the laundry exactly once. First, a day long flight to Anchorage.

Yes, I will have my phone, an iPod, the laptop, and also my notepad and pen, and a novel. That’s something I need to find, I am currently without one. Generally I prefer non-fiction, but not on journeys. What to read? Suggestions welcome.

The program for this year’s Last Frontier Theatre Conference is available online. I have perused the workshops and seminars that are being offered, and the evening performances. Valerie Hager will be presenting her solo work, Naked In Alaska, which was a must-see production at the New York Fringe in 2013, which was also the year we produced Double Heart at the Connelly.

However, I could not get a seat, because performances kept selling out … but now I can! I am reminded of when Weeping Spoon brought Alvin Sputnik to the International Children’s Theatre Festival. That was another sold-out hit at the NY Fringe (2009) that I was provided another opportunity to catch.

This morning the wife and I were looking over the agenda, on any given day there are two or three Play Labs to attend, and seminars are divided between performance- and writing-based concentrations. It’s interesting; several deal with genre I have attempted before (Personal History Writing or From Newspaper to Stage) but never received any instruction in. I am very interested in receiving such instruction.

The program was also how I learned who will be my acting company for the new work I wrote. Taking place over two time periods, ten years apart, I was hoping for actors who could realistically play both 18 and 28 years of age. With no idea what kind of acting pool might be available in the “last frontier” imagine my delight and surprise when I found the producers had contracted two experienced performers in their mid-20s.

I have had a few reading with colleagues. This will be a first with artists whose work I don't know -- and who don't know me from anybody.

This new work, which I have formerly referred to as The George Michael Play, is a romantic, ninety-minute two-hander, or I hope it will eventually be ninety minutes, at the moment I have no idea. It is ninety pages, which may or may not amount to a minute per page. Regardless, after many adaptations, histories, sequels and parodies, this is the first truly original work I have composed in some time. It's new to me, it's different. And it's very exciting.

In addition, playwrights in the Play Lab were invited to submit 10 minute plays and also monologues for a series of workshops which will culminate in performances at the end of the conference. I took advantage of each of those and was very pleased to not only have an original monologue accepted, but that an actor has already chosen it as their subject for their workshops. If they stick with it, I may even see that performed just a few hours before I board my flight for home.

You may read this monologue here.

"I Hate This" at Talespinner Children's Theatre

Older.

Last Saturday night I performed I Hate This (a play without the baby) at Talespinner Children's Theatre. I took the photo at right backstage, minutes before the show began.

I first performed this piece when I was thirty-five. The events it describes happened when I was thirty-three. I am now nearly forty-eight.

I had, on occasion, used hair dye to cover those patches of gray which were arriving daily, to keep my appearance more in line with how I looked in my early thirties. Even then one critic described me as having the somber, cavernous face of an old man. Today my cheeks sag, my eyes have sunk. If I tried darkening my hair or putting pink in my cheeks I'd just look like that guy from Death In Venice.

Besides, the whole point of this endeavor was to tell the story from now. Not in any obvious way (though I did add a brief, new scene to represent Calvin's most recent birthday) but if this go-round has taught me anything it is that the piece works best when I just tell it. More telling, less acting. The writing has always been better, anyway.

Writing the cues on Friday night I thought my, what a lot of work for one performance. But isn’t that how it always is? And it is worth it to do something right the only time you do it. Josh and Chennelle in the booth, he would run his video and sound, she the lights. As we went cue to cue, she made a few new suggestions, to cut some things and to add others. Learned response said no. My heart and more importantly my voice said yes. I was not alone. I was free.

A video posted by David Hansen (@pengo.dhansenx) on May 7, 2016 at 9:59am PDT

Driving there.

Back in 2002, this script was presented at an invitation-only event at Dobama. I can only imagine what my delivery was then, but the script was positively received. At that time, a colleague observed that my new piece contradicted the commonly held belief that it takes ten years before someone can truly write about personal tragedy. She was impressed with how much I was able to see from outside of myself to write it.

However, after this most recent performance, perhaps it remains true that even if you can write it, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can play it. I last performed I Hate This in 2011, ten years after the events in question, and at that time I was trying to recapture the sense of my original performance, as though honesty could only be found in recreating the feelings I had when I first wrote and performed it.

Retro desk.

I was playing anxiety, playing sadness, even playing anger. Chennelle was direct. She didn’t believe me. I am one of her supervisors at work, I have trained her to do the work she does in schools as an actor-teacher. We are friends and we are colleagues, and we have even been artistic collaborators before (see: Love In Pieces) but there still exists a mentor-student dynamic which can probably best be described by age. I am older than she is by a generation, and as such she is suited to best reflect back to me the kind of person I appear to those who do not know me.

That was the best note I received; "But that’s not you."

By slowing down, by lecturing, by being direct myself, there were more opportunities for surprise when I was vulnerable, more time and space for subtlety. I was able to loosen up the words. My delivery became spontaneous, not rehearsed.

I did blow a number of lines, I cannot say for sure whether anyone even noticed. I made unintentional cuts to phrases that I realized in the moment were not even necessary and it didn’t even throw me. I improvised successfully, I was never able to do that with this script before.

The difference, in time and attitude, was apparent almost immediately, and the evidence was laughter. Real, genuine, unafraid laughter. I could see the audience, could see unfamiliar faces in the front row and by looking at them I knew they were fellow travelers, that’s why they were there. And as we began, as I began from the beginning, from the first realization on that horrible day in March, that something was horribly wrong, I felt the same sense of dread and sadness wash over the crowd, the apprehension.

Photo: Anthony Gray (2003)

Then I made the observation of the Christmas tree in the waiting room. The absurdity of the Christmas tree. The wrongness of the presence of a Christmas tree. Get it?

"It was March!"

This was almost shouted. It surprised me. And I got a laugh. A BIG laugh. I’d always wanted a laugh there, but it had been impossible to achieve before. Why? Because it seemed inappropriate to laugh in this situation no matter what I said? Because it wasn’t clear before what my point was?

Or was it the clock? The awareness that this didn’t just happen, that it happened a long time ago for me, and that my telling it no longer has a desperate urgency that demands careful walking?

I have always insisted there are funny moments in this play. Saturday night there were hilarious moments. In the past, audiences have often been entirely unprepared or unable to laugh at them.

Except for the Irish. I once had the opportunity to perform the show in Lurgan, Northern Ireland, and they thought it was hilarious. You may draw your own conclusions about the Irish sense of humor.

Brian P. has seen I Hate This many times since the very beginning. He said, “I guess I should assume you would be a better actor now that you used to be,” to which I responded, I hope so, isn’t that how things are supposed to work? He went on to make an observation about this subtlety I have been remarking upon. A confidence in the work, perhaps? I should have such confidence in every show I do. Maybe that’s why I don’t act.

Often we host a talkback following this performance. People have questions. One of the often asked questions is in regards to the First Birthday: March 20, 2002 scene. Do we still celebrate Calvin’s birthday? Do we do the same things?

In Saturday evening’s performance that question got answered. In a new scene, Fifteenth Birthday: March 20, 2016, I mention all the traditions; cake, chalk, the zoo. That’s not why I included it, my impetus for the new scene was all the reasons I wanted to do the show, at least once, this year. It’s Calvin's fifteenth birthday. I am no longer the person I was. And my father has died.

However, feeling that Saturday was a celebration, as opposed to a teaching moment (those are important, too) and basically believing at long last that the play says what I want to say, and that after sixty minutes I have talked enough, I wanted everyone to have the chance to talk to each other.

Photo: Liz Conway

So I got some light refreshments; cheese, crackers, grapes, some wine and beer, a little seltzer, and encouraged everyone to stay for a bit. I thought we’d hang out for a half hour or so. Before I knew it two hours had passed.

It was like a wedding reception, everyone wanted to have a word with me, which was nice, and I did my best to give everyone my full attention, and also to share it. The crowd was diverse, though a large number were friends and colleagues, some I have known for decades, others were my new, much younger protégés.

Several had arrived because they were fresh in their own grief. Friends had recommended the show to them. I hear the familiar, comforting refrain; the details may be different, but we have far much more in common.

Perhaps the most important to me were those in attendance who have never had the opportunity to see it before, my living children. They know about Calvin, they participate in his annual celebration. March 20th is a great day, we take them out of school, we go to the zoo, the aquarium, there's a big dinner and cake. It's fun! It's happy. We also visit the cemetery. They know why, they understand what it's about, and they always have.

However, they've never really heard the story, this story, this play. And now they have, and they enjoyed it. Their favorite part? The scene where I mention them, Fifteenth Birthday.

For years I resisted incorporating any mention of subsequent children in the production. I didn't want to let the audience off the hook, as in, "Oh, they had living children. Everything is all right then." But I knew these two would be there Saturday night, and so many members of their family are represented; uncles, grandparents, cousins, and their big brother. It would have been odd for them not to be a part of it.

Read the complete script of "I Hate This" on INDIE THEATER NOW

A video posted by David Hansen (@pengo.dhansenx) on May 7, 2016 at 8:25pm PDT

Driving home.

Does WMJI have a quota?

Eden On The River (musical)

Not your daughter's Aaron Burr.

This week the Tony Award nominations were announced, and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton received an unprecedented sixteen nominations, including a record seven nominations for individual performances from a single production.

The man himself received a nod for Best Performance by an Actor for a Lead Role in a Musical for the eponymous character, but so did his co-star Leslie Odom Jr. for the inimitable role of Aaron Burr. Historical precedent notwithstanding, I am sure their conflict will be handled with grace and mutual celebration.

Prior to its introduction at the Public Theatre a year ago, the average American who knew anything about Alexander Hamilton probably knew two things; he was the first Secretary of the Treasury and that he was shot in a duel with Aaron Burr. Most probably only knew that second part.

Miranda’s decision to make Aaron Burr the near-omniscient narrator of this production was brilliant, echoing the use of Judas Iscariot as the audience’s confidente and co-conspirator in Jesus Christ Superstar. By the end of the evening, it is as though we know more about the mercurial Burr than we do the fallen angel Hamilton.

The playwright is far too kind to his antagonist, however, depicting a Burr who in the moment of his greatest error expressing instant regret and immediately reflecting upon his haunted future. The historical Aaron Burr returned across the Hudson after mortally wounding his foe, had a good meal and received appointed visitors without once mentioning what he’d just done.

As performed by Leslie Odom Jr., Hamilton’s Burr is not only sympathetic, but attractive with a voice attributable to the heavens. And the historical Burr lived, and his remaining years were adventurous. Perhaps there is a sequel in the works, even now, a musical about the wilderness years of former Vice President Aaron Burr.

Only it’s already been done.

Blennerhassett Mansion

Over forty years ago, John H. Lee of Parkersburg, WV wrote a one-act play called Conclave, which was later expanded in 1974 into a three-hour musical called Eden of the River, in collaboration with Joyce Ancrile and Genevieve Greene (lyrics and music, respectively.) The subject was primarily the personages of Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett, Irish immigrants of some personal fortune who spent their way west until settling at the very edge of European civilization on the island which now bears their name. Blennerhassett Island sits in the Ohio River between present day Parkersburg and Marietta, Ohio.

They had built a charming little mansion and began a farm and entertained dignitaries from far and wide and were by all reports very delightful hosts whose ability to burn through cash was rivaled by their failure in agriculture. An unremarkable American story. Except for the arrival of one very special guest..

Aaron Burr, sir.

The plan was to raise men and funds and head south to drive Spain out of Mexico. The question was whether he intended to join war with Spain when declared by Jefferson, or if he was planning to raise his own army for the purpose of seizing Mexico for himself. Harman Blennerhassett was persuaded to invest in the great man’s venture, and for his troubles was eventually imprisoned and his lands confiscated for joining what was branded a conspiracy.

Blennerhassett was almost ruined. Burr was acquitted, spent some time in Europe, and returned to New York City to quietly practice law, dying at the age of 80.

The Aaron Burr of Eden of the River is a seductive populist, as comfortable throwing back moonshine with western Virginian settlers as he is receiving Blennerhassett guests like the young Senator Henry Clay; the script includes reference to many historical figures who actually visited Blennerhassett Island. In fact, one of the supporting players is Burr’s eldest daughter, dear Theodosia.

Program, 1989.

The most salacious plot point in the play is the suggestion that in attempting to seduce Harman, Burr also made a play for this wife, Margaret. One, single cabin survives from the Blennerhassett era and someone once found the initials “AB+MB” scratched into the warped, almost two century old glass, giving rise to a legend of extra-marital behavior.

Of course, absolutely anyone could have made that inscription over the years.

Eden On The River was modeled after other outdoor historical dramas like Trumpet In The Land and Tecumseh! However, where the production lacked horses and flaming arrows, it did feature live, wandering peacocks and the quaintly majestic backdrop of a reconstructed Blennerhassett Mansion.

Yes, for four summers 1987-1990, Eden was presented on the isle where it happened. I was a member of the chorus (and also Henry Clay, who has one line) for the second and third seasons. The first two years the production able to use the mansion itself as “backstage.” It was still in the process of construction, the floors were bare and the walls naked sheetrock.

Apparently some company members were less than professional with the space, and by the third season we were exiled to a number of air conditioned trailers behind the building. 1989 was a very wet summer, the mosquitoes were rampant but most company members preferred to sit outdoors rather than in the trailers, which were rendered funky and uninhabitable almost immediately.

I was bitten so many times I developed an allergic reaction, creating rash from my right knee all the way up to my crotch, for which I required antibiotics. You’re welcome.

But why was this outdoor musical mothballed after four years? Why is Eden not celebrating its thirtieth season on the river this summer? Once upon a time I might have suggested it was because it’s not very good, but upon further reflection and enjoying a twenty-six year old VHS cassette, I have come to the conclusion that that is simply not the case. It’s no Hamilton, but what is? There are several songs which are much better than I had recalled, and it does have high, historical spirit.


It is a bit too long. Originally staged for the island by Ohio University professor Bob Winters, Bob judiciously cut the three-and-one-half hour long event down to a much more manageable two and a half hours, but after two seasons he retired himself from the production, and the third season it was re-staged by creator John Lee … who promptly restored several songs adding almost another half-hour.

And as I said, Eden didn’t have any fights or exotic animals or any Christian themes or racist native American stereotypes, elements which appear to be necessary for the perpetuation of a destination outdoor musical. Just some attractive turn of the nineteenth century, lots of young dancers from the local colleges, and starring some fine, classically trained voices; veterans from opera companies in Cleveland, Cincinnati, New York City, and beyond. Perhaps folks just want their outdoor drama less genteel, more rugged, and with fewer mosquitoes.

Update:  Leslie Odom Jr. won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his role as Aaron Burr in "Hamilton".

I Hate This: On the Writing

No excuses. No apologies. The facts are enough. The facts are awful. Let them be awful. It is hard not to apologize. But is that the way it happened?

Brian Cook’s production of I Hate This introduced me to the writing, and I am stealing that idea. We don’t know what “David” does. He says he was heading off to work, but he’s wearing jeans and a sweater.

Note: I was wearing jeans and a sweater. That sweater, and some long lost pair of jeans. I was in reality going to audition for an Ohio Lottery commercial, because at that time I thought I was an actor. I was asked to dressed somewhat artsy, hence, the sweater. Regardless, I did not make the audition.

“David’s” mother alludes to his being a writer, and a writer is what I always wanted to be, before I somehow got the idea that I should be an actor. I do not know why I decided to be that, unless it was an urgent need for attention, which is a bad reason to do anything.

Hartwick production design by Brian Cook

Now, as always, I am happiest when I am writing. It is what I always wanted to do, who I wanted to be. I should have studied English, but I digress. In this play, “David” is a writer, in And Then You Die, he is a cartoonist. Even when I was an actual cartoonist, I was more excited by the writing than the drawing.

Brian’s design for the Hartwick production included a great deal of paper. Paper spread across the floor, up the walls, even grew up the legs of the tables and chairs, the hospital bed.

Our design will be much simpler. But writing will happen. There will be writing.

Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio)

Malvolio
Costume design by Zachary Hikle

Yes, we are almost one-third through the new year. And hasn’t it been remarkable? At the end of Twenty-Fifteen I blithely remarked, “Surprises are welcome.” Really, they’re not. No more surprises, please.

At the same time, I made note of dreams I had had about new works. In one I was receiving a staged reading of a play I had not yet written that went extremely well. This was several months before I received an invitation to go to Last Frontier. So that was not even a surprise, then, it was foretold.

Today is William Shakespeare’s birthday. He would be 452 today, which is far too old to be, so it is just as well he also died on this date 400 years ago, in 1616.

Olivia
Costume design by Zachary Hickle

When Shakespeare's First Folio comes to the Cleveland Public Library, we will be ready. Great Lakes Theater will be presenting Twelfth Night (as told by Malvolio) the first two weekends of July, in the newly renovated Brett Hall, just off the main entrance.

In this 45-minute retelling, we are creating a 1980s teen comedy love triangle between Viola, Orsino and Olivia, set in the (fictional) Elyria High School.

The text is entirely Shakespeare, and will also include passages from other of his works, like As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew and even and Hamlet, as well as some verses from the Sonnets. And it's free.

We’re having great fun with the adaptation, it’s fun to treat the 80’s as some bizarre, bygone era, which of course it is. My entire cast was born around 1990 ... so just as you might find in an 80’s teen sex comedy, all the teenagers are played by people in their mid-20s.

Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) opens at Cleveland Public Library Thursday, July 7.

I'm Free (Heaven Helps The Man)

Make-up for an evening of one-acts.

Late summer, 1984. It’s a Sunday night, the next morning is the first day of school. I am lying in bed, probably around 10 PM because in spite of the fact that I was sixteen years old, I had great anxiety about not getting enough sleep, and unlike most kids my age, I got up ninety minutes before school started (and it only took ten minutes for me to bike to school.)

The radio next to my bed was on. I had the radio on all night, every night, from 1977 until I went to college. I fiddled with the volume knob until it was just quiet enough so that I could hear it without having to work too hard to hear it, and not so loud that it would keep me up. First WGCL (1977-1982) then WMMS (1982-1986). Saturday nights I might fall asleep to WCLV Saturday Night, at least until high school when the odds were good that I would be up late weekends.

But it was the night before my first day of junior year, and I was listening to WMMS. Lights were out, I was resting, relaxing. The song I’m Free (Heaven Helps The Man) by Kenny Loggins came on. It starts with this low, atmospheric, bass note syncopation before busting open with a guitar riff and some higher keyboard notes and an upbeat tempo.

I suddenly sat up in bed. I mean, I gasped, and I sat up, shocked and desperate, the way you feel when it’s midnight and you remember you have a book report on something you haven’t read, or that you had forgotten someone’s birthday. But it wasn’t either of those things.

The song I’m Free is from the Footloose motion picture soundtrack. The video shows the singer breaking out of prison (he’s free!) then hooking up with Virginia Madsen, and generally being on the run. It’s about freedom.

But it wasn’t the video. I wasn’t watching the video. It have have been the refrain, which includes a chorus of young people yelling, “I’m free!”

In that moment, in a split second, in the firing of a synapse, I recalled when the first single from Footloose had been released, the title track, back at the beginning of the year. I had resisted the dance thing, but everyone was dancing, the boys as well as the girls (ever since the end of disco, it had been taboo) and then I developed a crush on this one girl and there were these dances, at school, at church, at cast parties and private parties, and teen night at Spanky’s -- she was always there, and I had to do something about that.

Goofing in a Spanish photo booth.

I asked my mom if we could go clothes shopping and she was very, very surprised because neither of my two older brothers had ever asked such a thing and we went to TJMaxx and I got a dozen outfits, it must have set her back a hundred dollars.

And a short, Reagan-era haircut.

That spring I had been to Sibs Weekend at O.U. which for reasons that should be obvious I cannot remember. After the spring musical a number of us produced an evening of one-acts, I directed my first scene.

Ghostbusters opened that June, one of the funniest movies of all time, I saw it no less than ten times in the theater that summer.

That July I spent a month in northwest Spain, learning conversational Spanish, the uses of vermouth, how to smoke horrible tobacco, defending America to skeptical natives, skinny dipping, and yes, working out in discos, every afternoon, every night.

Returning home, summer concluded with band practice, more late nights, dancing in driveways. And now the summer of 1984 was at an end, time to return to school.

In a moment the sheer scope of activity overwhelmed me. This song made me think of that song, and everything that had happened to me, and every place that I had been in between.

And I felt that terrible, sinking sensation, hearing that chorus of teenagers shouting, I’m free, that there was a whole world happening out there, and that that girl was still out there, and that I was in bed, accomplishing nothing.

Love's Labour's Lost (2016)

Love's Labour's Lost, Great Lakes Theater (Photo: Ken Blaze)

Love’s Labour’s Lost (1598?) was a very topical play, making reference to many timely political figures and historical events, and so, like the comedy stylings of Vaughn Meader, dropped into obscurity almost immediately after it was written.

At its core the story is quite simple. Boys decide for a certain period of time to swear to avoid girls. Girls show up. Hijinks ensue. There are subplots involving a Spanish nobleman (who for some reason is written to speak in a funny accent, unlike the rest of the men who are also from a region in Spain) and academics who speak in impenetrable pedantisms.

Back in 2000 the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival produced a 90 minute version directed by Eric Schmiedl which entirely eliminated the subplots to focus on the (four) men and (four) women. People affectionately called it the “Gap” Love’s Labour’s Lost, because they all wore khakis. Scene gave it an award for “Best Local Production With Homegrown Talent,” because in those days, apparently that was a necessary distinction.

Love's Labour's Lost, Royal Shakespeare Company (1990)

Surprisingly, for all the talk about how infrequently this work is produced, I have had a chance to see it several times. When our school toured London and Stratford in late 1990, we saw Ralph Fiennes as Berowne and Alex Kingston as Jaquenetta, several years before either of them were known by American audiences.

However, I do not recall a moment of that production. Even with all of the topical references removed, the language is very dense, even for Shakespeare. Though you may follow the plot, it is not a sure thing that you want to. The words ... the words are ... there are so many words.

Tyne Rafaeli’s production, now showing at Great Lakes Theater, is by far the clearest and most hilarious version I’ve ever seen. And they do talk a lot. They will also horrify bibliophiles with their unprecedented abuse of bound materials.

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets (2006)

What excited me most about this version was how honestly and firmly the director and performers handle the matter of gender. Comedies about boys versus girls (in the world series of love) can so easily rely entirely on stereotypical gags about female body types and literal kicks to the crotch.

Rafaeli treats us to a story about young men and women of privilege which, while absurd, cleaved neatly to reality, to wit; I cared about the characters. I liked being in the room with them. The playful, joyful, exuberant chaos of the second act was earned and delightful and its abrupt ending was very touching.

In this production Laura Welsh Berg plays Rosaline, attendant to the Princess of France and romantic foil to Berowne, with a fierce worldliness, befitting this storied character. Many have speculated that the dark-eyed Rosaline (Berowne says she has “two pitchballs stuck in her head for eyes”) was inspired by the same “dark lady” who consternates Shakespeare so dearly in his sonnets.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun ? Well, yeah. They're pitchballs.

It was due to this apocryphal connection that we chose to produce George Bernard Shaw's The Dark Lady of the Sonnets as the outreach tour in 2006, when GLT last produced Love’s Labour’s Lost.

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action ...

And speaking of alcohol (wait for it) this weekend I am looking forward to enjoying a refreshing Young Man-Hattan, one of those concoctions to be found in Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails For Your Everyday Dramas, a handy and very funny reference guide of delightful drink and hors-d'oeuvre recipes penned by Caroline Bicks and Michelle Ephraim.

The Young Man-Hattan is a variation on the classic drink, only a little more bitter -- much like the Bard himself, writing some of the least warm and fuzzy love poems ever to an unnamed “young man” and their relations with the aforementioned dark lady.

This Saturday night I have the honor and privilege to be moderator for a light and amusing discussion with Dr. Bicks and Dr. Ephraim before the evening performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost at the Hanna Theatre. Join us!

Great Lakes Theater presents "Love's Labour's Lost" now through April 24.