Play a Day: The Tallest Building In The World

Matt Schatz

For Tuesday I read The Tallest Building In The World, by Matt Schatz, and available at New Play Exchange. On of these days I will read his An Untitled New Play By Justin Timberlake but everybody has been reading that and loving it so I thought it could wait.

You know, my wife wrote a play and that play was being produced at the New York International Fringe Festival in downtown Manhattan. We had a company of young people and during our off-hours we'd go everywhere and see everything.

One of our members really wanted to see the World Trade Center, and a small group broke off to check it out. Big, ugly buildings, or so they said. I was hungry or something and wanted to get lunch, so I passed. Maybe some other time. This was in August, 2001.

You knew I was going to conclude my little story with something like that, a fact like that, there was an obvious dread in the entire anecdote. Here it comes. And so it is with any tale bout the Twin Towers. Like the Titanic, an enormous human undertaking through which no story can be told without a foreknowledge of its horrible demise.

Schatz's play is not about the end of the WTC but its beginning, a debate between those who would determine its fate, who would collaborate and argue to create what was at one tie, for a short time, the tallest building or buildings in the world.

There was a time when we reached for the future, instead of cringing from it. Schatz tells an expansive story with great economy, utilizing a small number of interesting characters who debate and kvetch with wit and passion to build a dream for the future. The tragedy as they see it is the predetermined ephemera of architecture. Superlatives like "tallest" are fleeting, and as the playwright points out, "architecture might be the only art form where the art is destroyed as a means of progress."

The audience is all too aware of the flaws in the logic of their design, and how the techniques employed to make the thing possible are also elements which will contribute to its eventual destruction.

Play a Day: Monsters Are Made

Hannah C. Langley

For Monday I read Monsters Are Made, a new work in development by Hannah C. Langley, and available at New Play Exchange.

The playwright has chosen to post a new script which is in development, which is a brave and unique move. It would be one thing to read this 82-page script and believe it is complete, but I can see where there is room for development.

I keep these blog entries to reflect upon the work, not to critique, just to record my reading, but properly workshopped it would be fascinating to see the struggle play out between these two well-defined characters, not just mentally but physically. It is quite violent.

The #MeToo moment has emboldened women (and men) to come forward and accuse their assailants, and they have done so in overwhelming numbers and we know it is only the tip of an iceberg. We are hearing their stories, full-throated and without apology, and we who listen are learning a new language for their survival, strength and determination.

This play asks the question, though, to what extent must we understand the assailant, the rapist? What do you do with a perpetrator who demands his own punishment, when doing so is merely another form of control, dominance, and presence? One character states plainly, "you know you're a rapist but you don't even know what rape means." We now better understand what it means to be the victim, but those in positions of power do not yet understand what it means to be the assailant.

By the way, Langley's bio was written by her mentor which is a boss and creative idea.

Play a Day: Before Evening Comes

Philana Omorotionmwan

Last April I decided to read a play a day from those posted at New Play Exchange, a program of the National New Play Network. The result was joining a community of new writers across America, learning a great deal about where the work is being created, and how good so much of it is. It was an inspiring experience, and I look forward to experiencing (at least) thirty great new plays in this brief period of time.

Whether I can actually manage the time necessary to read a play a day, and comment upon it, in addition to all other responsibilities is another matter.

For Easter Sunday I read Before Evening Comes by Philana Imade Omorotionmwan, an impending graduate of Ohio University's MFA in Playwriting Program. (Bobcats, represent.)

A Dystopian parable, set in a near-future where all African-American men are legal bound to make a very specific sacrifice to maintain their own survival. In days past, those enslaved told of people who could fly (and escape their captors) and that story is wound up in this, a moving and lyric tale of the men who are complicit in the system and the women who sacrifice everything to save their children from it.

This year I have been reflecting on my own life, as I turn fifty in July. As the morning paper reminds me, in three days it will be the fiftieth anniversary of the murder of Dr. King. The world has moved forward in the past half-century, and yet today it feels as though it is spinning backward, or that it's never moved.

Jesus Christ Superstar (musical)

John Legend (2018)

The summer 1979 production of Jesus Christ Superstar at Huntington Playhouse in Bay Village may have been the greatest theatrical event of the 20th century. I couldn’t say for sure. I was ten, going on eleven. But as far as I was concerned, it was beyond compare.

We had albums for musicals in our house. My father really liked Godspell. That one’s a poppy, upbeat revue of parables and lessons without any real narrative structure except for some reason one of them gets murdered.

Superstar tells the story of Holy Week with a few loud guitars which has led some to call it a “rock opera” and it is, in the way Rent is a “rock musical,” which is to say it’s really not.

We had a copy of the original, pre-production concept album version, which we did not get as much play in our house as the Godspell record, and for good reason. Every track sounds like a first take, and for rock music they chose a lot of guys who aren’t very good at hitting the high notes.

I mean, Murray Head can’t sing. Am I the first person to notice that? The guys from ABBA figured this out when they gave him “One Night In Bangkok” from Chess and had him rap. I mean, Murray Head can’t rap, either. I digress.

In performance, it’s really Judas’s play. If there were another character in musical history who could be compared it’s Burr in Hamilton. He’s the narrator, we get to hear his version of events, he feels entirely justified in his actions, and he makes a terrible mistake that he immediately regrets.

In addition to making Judas into an anti-hero, Superstar pisses off some of the devout because it ends with Jesus’s burial (spoilers alert) and no resurrection. Judas is the one who gets to come from the dead for a reprise with newfound cosmic awareness of future events, to ridicule and snark. Good ol’ Judas.

I have rediscovered my turntable.

My brother was about to start his sophomore year in high school, and he was in the pit band situated in the wings of our community theater; a grand, old, moldy barn located right across the street from the lake. He was playing vibes, and I had literally nothing to do those summer evening’s but play or watch TV. It was summer!

He’d shown me how to sneak into the loft next next to the tech booth. There were couches and pillows and you could lounge and view, high above and just behind the audience. Must have been a make-out paradise, but I could not tell you.

So I went up there to watch. And I was compelled. I had been raised protestant, I was familiar with the gospels the way most Americans are -- vaguely. I knew the characters and the plot. And this way the late 70s, so sympathizing with a hip, charismatic Jesus with complexities and even hypocrisces was not a stretch, not even for the pre-adolescent mind.

I cannot remember who played Jesus, however. No one ever does. Judas, however, was performed by the late Tom Castro, a beloved educator from Lakewood. I already knew him from when he played Ogg the Leprechaun in Finian’s Rainbow, the same show in which my brother played Sunny, the mute sharecropper’s child … and we should leave it right there.

Unlike the recording with which I was marginally familiar, Castro was an indelible presence as Judas, a powerful singer, occasionally followed by a shadow, a female dancer dressed from toe to crown in a black leotard (SATAN?) I can see him now, and I will never forget him. I wanted to be him.

A couple of nights I watched the how from the loft. Then I asked my brother if I could sit backstage to watch the show. Just sit next to him, in the “pit” band in the wings (there was no actual pit.) It was a community theater production, there was no one around to say, no, that’s dangerous. Or no, that’s foolhardy. Or just plain, no.

So, I sat in a chair by the band one night, and for the first time, I saw how it was all done.

I saw the characters become actors once they crossed into the wings. I saw the tasty-looking food on trays and in baskets were fake. I saw the stage hands and I saw them moving the set around. I saw actors slipping into and out of costume pieces -- nothing risque, but it was suggestive enough that I thought I was seeing something I should not have been.

These things I also remember; the band was tight. High school students and adults, and they were good. One thing I love about the score of Superstar is how creepy it is, not just haunting but spooky. Atmospheric with lurking evil. It’s thrilling!

NBC's version of the last supper (2018)

By my second night backstage I was on my feet. Walking around, staying out of the way, I understood the traffic pattern. I would hide in the wings, getting as close to the action as possible. I was a kid, but not much younger than some of the other players. I could do this. I wanted someone to invite me onstage. I had a fantasy of some company member saying, here! Put this on and join us!

This did not happen, of course. My mom and dad came for closing night, and got me a ticket. We sat in the third row. I had not yet sat in a seat in the audience. It wasn’t as good.

Sunday night, NBC will present Jesus Christ Superstar as one of their live musical events. I don’t understand the appeal of these productions, most likely because I’m not really that much into either musicals or broadcast television. The thrill is in seeing them pull off a stunt like a multi-set, large cast musical production, on the night with millions of people watching.

I have heard such terrible things about them, too. They must make for tremendous ratings, because the abuse on social media is astronomical.

However, when they announced this one, I got excited. Because I do love Superstar. And I don’t like anything else Andrew Lloyd Weber has ever written. Nothing. Hate Dreamcoat, hate Phantom, despise Cats. And yet I have never been inspired to see a production again because my memories of that first are so indelible. Besides, most professional touring companies feature desiccated prog rock stars who are well-more than twice the age of Christ when he died.

The thing is, unlike A Christmas Story Live, or Hairspray Live or Grease Live, there’s no book to ruin in Superstar, there’s no acting. It is a sung through piece (inviting the comparison to opera, sure) and unless they find some way to pad it out interminably, all they need to do is to sing, but sing very, very well.

They announced the cast one at a time over the course of weeks. Alice Cooper as Herod is a stunt, they always get someone like him for that one scene, that one song. But then they said John Legend is playing Jesus! Not some fly-by-night pop star, they got John Legend! Well, okay!

Brandon Victor Dixon (2016)

And Sara Bareilles! I’ve heard of her!

But who was going to play Judas? That’s the role, right? Surely they’d get someone famous from one of NBC’s past sit-coms or procedural dramas. Someone with character, but no chops. Because that's what they do for these modern, televised musicals.

No. They got Aaron Burr.

They tapped Brandon Victor Dixon, who assumed that role in Hamilton after Leslie Odom Jr. stepped down. A name as-yet unfamiliar to the ear (he’s not even mentioned in the promos) yet with high credentials in playing another of the greatest, knowing, conflicted anti-heroes ever conceived for the musical stage.

He also lectured the Vice President, you remember that, right?

I’ll be watching. Have a good Friday.

NBC presents "Jesus Christ Superstar" Live In Concert, Sunday April 1 at 8:00 PM

The Way I Danced With You (process)

Sarah Blubaugh & Michael Johnson
(Blank Canvas Theatre, 2018)

Several of my plays have been commissions. There is a need, a proposal, I satisfy certain criteria, the play gets produced, we move on. Then there are the plays I write because I want to write them, I need to. But where do they go? And how do you know if they are even any good?

The Way I Danced With You has followed a process, it keeps moving forward. We read it at music stands in Valdez, Alaska following a two-hour rehearsal. We took three days to rehearse and stage it with scripts in hand, no tech, no set or costumes in Waterloo. And now we have taken three weeks to fully memorize the piece, dress up the actors, and see what it actually looks like or could look like in some future, premiere production.

It makes a difference, hearing the script aloud. A big difference in this case. At the first read-through a few weeks back, Sarah (playing Dani at Blank Canvas) observed that the second scene or act is entirely different when read out loud, looking at the person you’re speaking to you, about the person you're speaking to. You really have to do that to understand what is happening and the emotions involved.

It is still a script in progress, but not by much. The first two scenes are pretty much right where I want them. The first was almost completely set in stone after Alaska, I remember cutting an entire page during our brief rehearsal. Tyler and Chloe read it and I was like, wow, we don’t need that at all! It was liberating.

But that third scene … my lead adjudicator at Last Frontier was Kevin Armento (Balls, Devil With the Blue Dress) and one of the most significant questions he asked was; whose play is it? I said I wanted the play to be about both of them. He said that’s fine, but that it was currently Charles’s play, the man’s play. And that this was largely due to the third scene or act.

Chloe Cotton & Tyler Browning
(Last Frontier Theatre Conference, 2016)

Significant revisions were made, for Playwrights’ Local, and then for Blank Canvas. My wife says the play is now about Dani, the woman, that it’s her play. And I am all right with that. But even now, listening to Michael (Charles) in the third scene, playing it all out, I am in sitting in the house constantly thinking about every line -- this could be different, that is unnecessary... Hearing it, seeing it, and seeing her (Dani’s) reaction to everything … it’s important. It’s necessary. I’m seeing and hearing things I’ve never heard in the previous workshops, when scripts were in the way. Reactions are as important as the words themselves.

Having said that, the performances this weekend have been tremendous. And during that scene, that final scene, you could hear a pin drop in the house. No one in the audience moves, they’re all hanging on every word. It’s thrilling. They want to know.

Interestingly, while I leave the ending with a question, Lara, the director, has pretty much made up her mind her mind as to what happens next, after the curtain, and I think it’s pretty clear. Another director might handle that differently, and that’s okay, too.

So there are a few minor edits still to be made on that last scene. But it’s ready to go, this script is ready for a full production.

UPDATE: BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. Help support our production by dropping a donation on our GoFundMe campaign! 

The Way I Danced With You (glossary)

Sarah Blubaugh & Cody Kilpatrick Steele
"The Way I Danced With You"
(Ensemble Theatre, 2019)

Perhaps you are planning to catch The Way I Danced With You  this weekend. I hope you are. But perhaps you were born after the year 1980, one of those "Millennials" people keep talking about.

Maybe when you hear the name "George Michael" you immediately think of Michael Cera. Maybe you've never been to Chicago. Maybe you don't even know where you are.

Here is a brief list of pop culture references which may help you appreciate and enjoy the performance.

All entries sourced from Wikipedia.

Geena Davis & Jeff Goldblum
(The Fly)

Deerfield is a village in Lake County, Illinois, approximately 25 miles north of Chicago. Deerfield High School is consistently one of the top high schools in the state. It is said Deerfield was a major inspiration for Shermer, Illinois, the fictional setting for several of John Hughes’ 1980s teen films.

"A Different Corner" is a 1986 song written and performed by George Michael. The song reached number 7 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

The Fly is a 1986 American science-fiction horror film directed and co-written by David Cronenberg. Starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, the film tells of an eccentric scientist who, after one of his experiments goes wrong, slowly turns into a fly-hybrid creature.

Footloose is a 1984 American musical drama. It tells the story of Ren McCormack, an upbeat Chicago teen who moves to a small town in which, as a result of the efforts of a local minister, dancing and rock music have been banned.

Glencoe is an affluent suburb of Chicago, located on the shore of Lake Michigan. This village is also the setting for the 1983 film Risky Business.

Harold Washington College is a community college part of the City Colleges of Chicago system of the City of Chicago, in Illinois. Founded in 1962 as Loop College, the college was renamed for the first African American to be elected Mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, after his sudden death in office in November 1987.

"Love on the Rocks" is a song written by Neil Diamond and Gilbert Bécaud that appeared in the 1980 movie The Jazz Singer. The single reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in January 1981.

Midland is a city Michigan. In 2010, Midland was named No. 4 "Best Small City to Raise a Family" by Forbes magazine.

The Palmer House, Chicago

Mel Gibson was People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” in the year 1985.

Navy Pier is a boardwalk entertainment district on Lake Michigan in Chicago, which in 2018 encompasses more than fifty acres of parks, gardens, shops, restaurants, family attractions and exhibition facilities. Established in 1916, and not yet extensively renovated until the early 21st Century, by the 1980s it was a destination in decline.

A Night at the Opera is a 1935 American comedy film starring the Marx Brothers, A smash hit at the box office, A Night at the Opera was selected in 1993 for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Older is the third solo studio album by George Michael, released in 1996. It was his first album since 1990's Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 – the six-year gap was due to the legal battle that Michael experienced with his record company. "Older" is also the title of a single from this album, released in 1997. The single peaked at number 3 on the UK Singles Chart. It did not chart in the United States.

The Palmer House (now the Palmer House Hilton) is a historic hotel in Chicago in the city's Loop area. It is a Historic Hotel of America member, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It is one of the longest continuously operating hotel in North America.

“The Queen and the Soldier” is a song from Suzanne Vega’s eponymous, 1985 debut album.

The South Side of Chicago has a varied ethnic composition. It has great disparity in income and other demographic measures. Although it has a reputation for high levels of crime, the reality is much more varied. The South Side ranges from affluent to middle class to poor, just like other sections of large cities.

Wham ft. George Michael
("The Edge of Heaven")

Top Gun is a 1986 American romantic military action drama film directed by Tony Scott, Despite its initial mixed critical reaction, the film was a huge commercial hit. Additionally, the film won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Take My Breath Away" performed by Berlin.

“The Way I Danced With You” is a lyric from “Careless Whisper” (1984) by English singer-songwriter George Michael. It was released as a single and became a huge commercial success on both sides of the Atlantic and on both sides of the Pacific. It reached number one in nearly 25 countries, selling about 6 million copies worldwide.

Winelight is a 1980 album by jazz musician Grover Washington Jr. It received the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance in 1982. It is also the title of the first track of the album.

Ensemble Theatre presents the World Premiere of "The Way I Danced With You," opening March 21, 2019.

This post was updated on 3/20/2019

Sophisti-pop

"I won't try to stop you when you speak of the past ..."
- Everything But the Girl, "Fascination"

We were so fucking suave.

Teenagers for time immemorial have aspired to adulthood. In the mid 1980s this was reflected in the clothes we wore, the way we stood, the music we listened to. For men the clothes were rumpled, structureless suits. We wore ties to school. We posed and smoked, drank wine coolers and listened to the music inspired by our elders.

Wine coolers. Music inspired by. Ten years later we would be doing the real thing, drinking the actual cocktails our grandfathers drank, and listening to Sinatra. But not in the 80s. We were kids. We had soda pop alcohol, and we had soda pop jazz.

Arabica, the only coffeehouse in Cleveland, was a distant oasis of cool, somewhere far on the east side. We heard there were two. But a third opened in Rocky River in 1982, and I would spend weekend nights there, getting smokes from the machine (seventy-five cents a pack) a fourteen year-old getting jittery on black coffee, talking philosophy with community college twenty year-olds whose lameness should have been evident from their hanging out with fourteen year-olds.

The soundtrack was smooth, it was stylish, it must have a saxophone. Roxy Music’s swan song Avalon was the epitome of the genre which has in recent years come to be known as Sophisti-pop, a bizarre combination of pop, blues, and jazz, with period keyboard stylings, and wistful lyrics of longing, regret, and instant nostalgia.

It is not arbitrary that the Bill Murray character sings “More Than This” for the karaoke scene in Lost In Translation.

So styling, and not yet eighteen.

Some singles were big hits on the American pop charts, including Sade’s “Smooth Operator” and Simply Red’s “Holding Back the Years.” George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” certainly falls into this category. Lesser known acts like Prefab Sprout, Everything But the Girl and The Blue Nile, never played on commercial radio, would find their way into our cassette players thanks to recommendations of other pop stars in music magazines, through college stations, and late-night MTV. And we heard them at the west side Arabica.

This was the soundtrack in my head as I wrote The Way I Danced With You, an exploration of this pretense of maturity, faced with the reality of inexperience.

CHARLES: Then I drove her back to her house and we kissed listening to "Winelight."

This music, invoking images of sun-drenched, exotic locations, smoky nightclubs, shimmering, wet city streets. Nameless, faceless lovers, hungover expressions, overcoats, eyeliner and lipstick. It’s an age-old question, and one that won’t stop being asked any time soon. Why do we want to grow up so fast?

The answer is simple, because being a teenager sucks. I’ve lost interest in childish things but am not permitted to do adult things. “There’s nothing to do,” teenagers exclaim, and they are as correct today as we were back then. There really isn’t.

So we painted a picture of Reagan/Thatcher-era wealth and sophistication (or thrift-store chic and rebellion) and put ourselves squarely in the middle.

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older?

Ensemble Theatre presents the World Premiere of "The Way I Danced With You," opening March 21, 2019.