Twenty Twenty-One

Eight years ago I began a tradition of writing a post of my expectations for the coming year. The first time I did this, I knew I had two productions and one workshop in my future. Some years are not nearly so fertile, but I have been posting them, anyway.

My expectations for 2020 were modest; a production, a workshop, and the commencement of grad school. And here we are, and no one can be blamed for their lack of clairvoyance. We had no idea what was going to hit us next.

The next year will be even more a mystery. There’s a vaccine! There are a couple of them! What will happen next? Will we be protected, are we safe, if not now, then soon? What will happen? 

I mean. My daughter will graduate from high school. That is something I am pretty sure of.

We will continue to work and protect and care and create. That is for certain. I wrote a new script, and I will be slinging that to anyone who will read it. The publication of one of my scripts is in the works, more on that when it is announced.

Also, great news -- Savory Taṇhā will receive a remount at Cleveland Public Theatre!

And the schoolwork will continue. I did very well this semester. I hope to maintain my GPA.

The year 2021 marks an auspicious anniversary in our family, the twenty year birth anniversary of our first child, born on March 20, 2001. I have no idea where we will be in three months time, or how we will celebrating this birthday. If it’s anything like last year, our family will be out of doors together, experiencing whatever the world has to offer.

But there’s also a new production of I Hate This (a play without the baby) in the works, and this time we will be able to share it with everyone.

Ten Recommended Posts from 2020

Joshua McElroy, Khaki Hermann
"Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street"
(Great Lakes Theater, 2020)

Ten years on, what is this blog? It is a journal. It is a promotional tool. It is self-aggrandizing but also keeps me honest. It is a record of my progress as a playwright. And it is also an opportunity to research and record past events and tie them to the current moment.

These ten blog posts from 2020 may not have attracted as much attention, But hey, I took the time to research and write them and I recommend another look because they're pretty good.

On Procrastination

Accepting the opportunity to moderate a playwright’s panel at CPT while you are fresh in grief and trying to comprehend your mother’s eulogy is just another thing that has to get done.

The Bully of Baker Street: Week Three

Reflections on a tour in progress, and how gratifying it is to learn that adults find your educational play for elementary school children progressive and a challenge to their political beliefs.

The Short Play Project: Humiliation Series

There are about a dozen short play “collection” blog posts, but this one is my favorite. Three short play videos that beg the question: AITA?

"Residency On Demand"
(Great Lakes Theater, 2020)

Documenting Cleveland, Tuesday, May 12, 2020

We all think of ourselves as Samuel Pepys, diarists of extraordinary times. But the records of the Pandemic of 2020-21(?) are so grossly extensive. What have you, on May 12, Literary Cleveland in conjunction with Scene Magazine produced an exhaustive document of the city from one end to the other, and I was glad to be a participant.

Our Midwest Journey (1995)

Our first road trip was a test of our relationship, and in a way defined our future together. A rumination on our mutual love of the highway, tourist traps, and funky theater. 

Savory Taṇhā in Performance (Thursday)

Thoughts on opening night of a live, Zoom theater event, as part of a nationwide discussion on not merely the value, but the very validity of virtual theater.

The Mirror and the Light (book)

The third part of Hilary Mantel’s “Thomas Cromwell” trilogy was surprisingly affecting, and so politically timely. Back then when you fell out of favor, the monarch had you literally killed.

Our Midwest Journey (1995)

My First Fringe Festival

I had always wanted to dive into my first fringe festival (as audience member) experience, as it so deeply informed my next decade. I was amazed to find as much source material online as I did.

Three Hundred Sixty-Five Days of Practice

Would you like to see exactly what it looks like to write three pages every morning for an entire see?

Dobama ‘96 Trading Cards

I have always loved and been fascinated by package design and marketing. But this is the story of a gig that almost destroyed me.

Ten Most Visited Posts from 2020

David

I blog about lots of things. And this blog is almost eleven years old. I like to keep track of what people who follow the blog like to read, and how people find the site who have never visited it before.

I have hidden certain posts for the time being, those which aren’t very interesting and yet seem to drive traffic to the site. The one on Chef Boyardee, for example, receives hundred of clocks a year. And the death of Eliot Ness. If that’s why you came here, you might never return.

This is a list of the most popular posts written in the year 2020.

10. On Revision

Final notes before first rehearsal for a new play script. Revision is good!

9. Culver City Public Theatre present “Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street”

A fascinating, pandemic-era return to a script originally written and performed for live audiences of thousands in schools and libraries, now packaged for safely viewing at a distance.

8. Assessment 

From time to time I have provided a self-assessment, where I am in my work. What has been happening in general. How is my mental and physical health. These often drop when I have been away from the blog for a bit.

Zelda

At this point I was taking a vacation, and reflecting on three hundred days of consecutive writing (I am currently on Day 465) and what had transpired since then, the death of my mother, the pandemic, and even good things, like a show I had written that was about to virtually “open.”

7. Play a Day: John Proctor is the Villain

Each April I read one full-length play from those posted at New Play Exchange. This was one of my favorites, written by Kimberly Belflower, and has been receiving a great deal of deserved attention. The title of this play was actually the inspiration for my most recent full-length; the working title was “John Bender is the Villain,” but I have since changed that. 

It's now titled "Goatfucker".  

6. Fosse, Verdon and all that jazz. 

The recent passing of producer and choreographer Ann Reinking brought me back to this one, an examination of how to break down the “great man” theory of history.

5. Ben Is Dead (magazine)

A nostalgic look at an artifact about nostalgia. Many thanks to the folks at BID for pushing this one up the charts.

4. “Love’s” in the time of COVID-19

A document of the last live, public performance of a play I saw in a theater, the night of Friday, March 13. This melancholy celebration was only appropriate.  

Virginia

3. Enola Holmes (film)

This one gained traction no doubt because the film had just dropped and folks were interested in that. But it generated a great conversation about adaptation, woman-centered narrative, and modern themes presented in period drama.

2. My mother’s hands.

A brief reflection, written the morning after my mother died.

1. A few bits of wisdom.

A letter from my grandfather to my college-aged mother, posted a few hours before my mother died. It is only just that this was the most visited and shared post of the year. It’s a good letter.

Ten Theater Projects in 2020

"High (short play)"
(Center for Arts Inspired Learning)

2020: The Big Cancel.

Last week WaPo theater critic Peter Marks made the argument for a cabinet level position for the arts, a Secretary of Arts and Culture, if you will. And were not living in a nation which has always been and remains a reactionary, Puritanical society I might hold out hope for such a move, a champion for the millions of arts workers and the hundreds billions of dollars a year that are tied up in the arts.

As things stand, the performing arts are either on hold or online. Even with a vaccine on the horizon, current estimates suggest it will be another year before we are safely congregating in large numbers.

Like so many writers, I had projects in development which were canceled, or postponed. But I was also one of the fortunate creators whose work either went online, turned into something else, or whole new works were developed as a result of the pandemic.

In chronological order:

"The Witches"
Jailyn Sherell Harris, Adrionna Powell Lawrence

Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street (Great Lakes Theater)

We began rehearsals for this year’s outreach touring play a few days after my mother died. Three weeks of rehearsal and fifty performances later, the show closed on March 8. At the end of that week, the office downtown was closed, and it remains so to this day. 

The Witches (Cleveland Public Theatre) 

We had our first read-through of this new play script in late February. It was to be workshopped at Cleveland Public Theatre over one weekend in April. We had to replace one of our actors, and had a single rehearsal with the new team on Tuesday, March 10. 

A couple months later I returned to that space, mask on, disinfectant at the ready, to use for an entirely different project, and the rehearsal table was still there, with additional copies of the rehearsal calendar lying around, one of the actors had left their script. It was all just waiting there for an acting company that never returned, a project abruptly abandoned.

"50 Hamlets"
Chennelle Bryant-Harris
(Great Lakes Theater)

The Short Play Project

What began as a feverish writing project took on a life of its own after the shutdown began, as I put out a call for folks to use my two-to-three page scripts and make short videos out of them, staying within CDC distance guidelines. And they did, over seventy individual, short films, created by artists from all over the county (and even overseas) with imagination and heart. Watch them all here.

50 Hamlets (Great Lakes Theater)

As we were striving to continue offering educational programming to the schools which have come to depend upon it, we were also learning ways we could take advantage of the opportunities presented through modern technology to bridge time and space. Arts educators who have proudly called themselves “actor-teachers” reaching back forty years collaborated to create this unique artifact from the beginning of the shutdown.

The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (Brave Spirits Theatre)

As we were all learning how best to navigate Zoom recordings, I accepted a role in this live performance produced by Brave Spirits Theatre in Staunton, VA. They had plans to stage a slate of history plays, pre-Shakespearean works, many of which the Bard used as template for his own, more famous plays. They moved production online, and I learned an awful lot about the limitations of the medium, and also its tricks. Brave Spirits announced their dissolution on November 21, another financial casualty of the pandemic.

"Savory Taṇhā"
Hillary Wheelock, Zyrece Montgomery
(Cleveland Public Theatre)

The Way I Danced With You (Culver City Public Theatre)

As we were all learning how best to navigate Zoom recordings, my friends at Culver City Public Theatre were presenting bi-weekly new play readings through the summer, and this romantic two-hander was part of that line-up. 

Savory Taṇhā (Cleveland Public Theatre)

What began as a feverish writing project took on a life of its own when I was asked to curate a selection of short plays to be produced live via Zoom. We were all trying to figure out how best to share the experience of live theater utilizing available technology

Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street (Culver City Public Theatre)

Plans were made for the folks in Culver City to present another one of my works as their annual, free summer offering for families. Instead, they created a lovely, recorded adaptation of the play which started my year.

"Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street"
Richard R. Rosales
(Culver City Public Theatre)

Residency On Demand (Great Lakes Theater)

Like many arts organizations we have been trying to figure out how to reach our students. They are either still working from home, or those schools that are open are not permitting visitors. We rethought our lesson plans and created a makeshift TV studio in our rehearsal space, and have started piloting live classes. I can’t tell you how good it feels to get back into schools, even at a distance.

Untitled Pandemic Play Script (NEOMFA)

All of my doubts and anxieties have been distilled into a play script for two women actors and one set. The comment I am perhaps most grateful for from the workshop reading was, “I am surprised I get into this play so much.” Now it just needs a proper title. I mean, it has one. But I think I have to change it.

Thinking about calling it “Goatfucker.” What do you think?

Source: The culture is ailing. It’s time for a Dr. Fauci for the arts by Peter Marks, Washington Post (12/2/2020)

Process XII

Okay, I was not expecting my play script to be read in only one hour. I mean, it will probably play at seventy-five minutes, right? Things happen. Cakes are baked, games are played, tables are turned over.

Over last weekend I had a brainstorm in which I was able to incorporate something I wanted to do into the script which was also something I needed to add, all in the same action I cannot tell you how satisfying that was.

It was a release to hear this slightly modified version read by the other members of the program, and their questions and comments were constructive and helpful. As the reading itself drew to a close I was almost, but not quite, in tears. It was cool, the camera was off. But this is my life. These are my fears.

I am a fifty-two year-old man. And yet, I was extremely anxious to see the comments on my flash fiction inspired by the works of Richard Wright. It is amazing how much I have forgotten, or never knew, about writing papers. The comments were supportive. My professor “got” what I was trying to do. And yet, academia is not art, you are supposed to make your point clear. There were many places in my analysis in which I could have been direct, instead of coy.

I was satisfied with my grade.

My first semester draws to a close, all I need to do is complete and upload a fifteen page paper, drafted from twelve weeks of handwritten pages, underlined quotes, and a lifetime spent carefully learning lessons of circumspection and gradual if incomplete awareness.

The Pudding Mixes

Ohio University used to break from Thanksgiving to New Year’s leaving those of us without anywhere better to go at home, with or without a job. Home for the holidays my freshman year my girlfriend broke up with me and that was particularly devastating because no one had ever broken up with me before.

She is still the only person who ever has. Yeah, I said it.

Sophomore year, for better or worse, I was much more self-possessed and relaxed into the holidays in a manner I never had before. They were big fun. I was taken by the spirit, the spirit of Christmas, if not of Christ. There were three albums I listened to a lot that season, driving my mother to distraction: George Winston’s December, Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the new compilation to benefit the Special Olympics, A Very Special Christmas.

Since then I have become something of a holiday music nut. I look forward to that time after Thanksgiving when I have permission (in my house) to begin playing holiday music. The house is decorated, I want my mind decorated.

But I don’t like all Christmas music, not just any will do. In the early 90s I made a cassette of my very favorite Christmas songs, C-90 minutes of tunes and that was the soundtrack for me. It was called The Pudding Mix, after the name of the extended version of Wham’s “Last Christmas.”

In 2004 I made a new Pudding Mix CD to share with my colleagues, another in 2007, and again in 2009. But I wasn’t happy with these, because in an effort to fill them out I added songs I didn’t really care about.


I made this fan video of the Firesign Theatre bit "Toad Away" ten years ago.
Unsolicited YouTube comment: "NOT YOUR TYPICAL ALBUM HACK WITH A BACKGROUND!"

But anyway, who listens to cassettes or CDs anymore? A few years ago some folks who worked on Bad Epitaph’s production of The Santaland Diaries asked for a playlist of the songs we used, and so I obliged. It is a great collection of songs. And it’s only an hour, perfect length.

When I played "Crumpet the Elf" three years ago I was inspired to make a collection of songs that I think of as holiday records, but really aren’t.

This year I received a passing request for a new "Pudding Mix" (it was from Daniel) and I was torn. Was I just going to throw together more Christmas songs, without a theme? Just to do it? I decided if I had an hour’s worth of music I could listen to more than once, by December 1, then I would share it. And surprise, I did.

I don’t need to explain too deeply just how to make a mixtape or playlist, Nick Horby has already done this much better than I. It’s not just about clustering a bunch of songs together, they need to sound like they belong together. And there are a number that I have been enjoying listening to recently -- and a few surprise covers I want to point up, cover versions of strange holiday favorites I’d never heard before.



The Closing of the Year: First performed by Wendy & Lisa (formerly of The Revolution) for the holiday bomb Toys, starring Robin Williams. Written by producer Trevor Horn, in its original version it is appropriately sentimental late 80s pop, but in the late 1990s he created a totally bonkers orchestral version featuring Plácido Domingo and Sarah Brightman.

Christmastime in Painesville: In the early 90s this novelty song by the band Slack Jaw was a favorite on WENZ. More recently the song’s composer John Koury joined former deadboys bassist Frank Secich to form The Deadbeat Poets, and it’s their version which is available for streaming. It’s more polished than the original, but then, they are older. And aren’t we all?

Even a Miracle Needs a Hand: In 1974 the Rankin Bass factory produced the cartoon (not stopmotion) special Twas the Night Before Christmas, in which an inventor has created a special clock to welcome Santa on Christmas Eve. However, when it is broken (we don’t need to get into this) a family of mice work to repair the damage. That explains this song’s lyrics … but I must tell you, I did not actually expect to find it when I searched on Spotify. Imagine my utter Christmas joy to discover this beautiful, retrofuturistic rendition, recorded only last year by soundcape hipster Sonntag (Zach Johnston).

Red Hot + Blue (album)

Use your mentality. Wake up to reality.

Thirty years ago, on Saturday, December 1, 1990, the Red Hot + Blue special debuted on ABC. This was an hour-long collection of videos from the Cole Porter tribute album (of the same name) which was a major fundraiser for the Red Hot Organization, dedicated to fighting HIV/AIDS through music, pop culture and art. 

“Cole Porter was one of America’s greatest songwriters, and his music spoke about love and sex and experimentation with intelligence -- and that’s what you want when dealing with an AIDS benefit.” - Leigh Blake, "Red Hot" project co-director

It is difficult to communicate how controversial it was to discuss HIV/AIDS on television. It is shameful to think. This televised special of music videos of Cole Porter songs was aired at 10:00 PM on World AIDS Day, after a particularly disturbing episode of Twin Peaks in which Agent Cooper finally captures the murderer of Laura Palmer (no spoilers.)

The home video recording included the bumpers and intros to each music video that had been originally created for the broadcast, including Richard Gere's suggestion that people use condoms or not share needles, to prevent infection. These bits were cut at the last minute as a result of pressure, and fear, from the network, and replaced with inoffensive tributes to composer Cole Porter.

However, several of the videos that were broadcast were embedded with activist messaging, inlcuding Erasure's ACT UP inspired Too Darn Hot and  k.d. lang's devastating take on So In Love which includes imagery of one caring for her ill partner.

These covers sang to the pseudo-sophisticate in me. Several of them are faithful renditions of Cole Porter classics (Sinead O'Connor's You Do Something To Me, Lisa Stansfield's Down In the Depths, the aforemention k.d. lang track) as they emulate big band or cocktail lounge piano stylings.

The Thompson Twins Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? is an 80s pop throwback, but several tracks look to the future, original hip-hop singles which only use Porter titles for the hook or chorus. The plaintive piano breakdown at 2:30 on Neneh Cherry's I've Got You Under My Skin was a loop I sampled and used on several amateur audio projects as I diddled around with nascent computer sound programs. It even showed up in my design for The Gulf at Dobama's Night Kitchen, ten years later.

We played this album often, and the music reminds me of so much from an intense and fleeting moment in my (very) early adulthood; it was heard in shops in England during a university trip that December, and was part of our soundtrack during the winter run-up to the Persian Gulf War, my final quarter at school. The subject of the album itself was emotionally confusing, mournful and celebratory all at once.

I had one foot out the door, ready to graduate and head I did not know where.

And, of course, HIV is still with us. The COVID-19 epidemic has shown us - again - how social inequity, intolerance, and plain ignorance contribute to the human cost of any transmittable human infection. The theme for this year's World AIDS Day is “Global solidarity, shared responsibility."

Source:

Cole Porter: Red, Hot and New : Fund-raising: 26 years after his death, the great American songwriter’s music still intrigues pop figures by Robert Hilburn, L.A. Times (10/29/1990)