Twenty Years On

William Sidman
"The Dead Sparrow" (1890s)

The events of March 19, 2001 are so close in my memory that it is difficult to believe that everything else has happened since.

Who was I, twenty years ago? A 32 year-old man, not exactly young, certainly younger than this. I had no steady employment, had none for almost three years. Managed a theater project. I had no children.

Twenty years ago I smoked cigarettes, every day. I drank beer and wine, but small liquor. I watched television from tapes, got my news from papers. Agonized at length over what the critics said, not just about my work, but about everyone else’s work.

I hated critics. I used to care about critics.

My concerns were narrowly focused. I was selfish, and took joy in that selfishness in so much as it meant I could concentrate on the two most important people in my universe, my wife and me.

I thought of myself as a writer, but I did not write. I had written one produced play - I had written one play, and had it produced. I contributed small pieces to other shows. But I did not write. I kept journal entries. I wrote about me.

I had no experience with children. I knew no children. I was terrified of children.

My experiences in education were poor. I did not possess a twenty year history with one company, I had not visited scores of schools. I did not know how to create a lesson plan. I knew very few people with children.

I had little patience. I had little compassion. I was not kind to people. My interests were small, I wanted to reach outside of this but I did not know how.

I had an illusion of the future. I had no vision for the theater company I was shepherding, no artistic philosophy of which I was confident. I was blithely ignorant of my place in the larger society.

And I did not know how a child would be part of this. We were in our thirties. If we were going to have a child (only one child) this was the time to have it.

Why? I did not know. Why did I want a child? I did not know. How did I imagine a child to be part of all of this? I did not know.

Everything I think, everything I know, everything I want. Everything I am part of. Every emotion I have. Every expectation of every morning. My awareness, my understanding, my self, my love, my happiness, my hope, my belief in the future. Me. I was born, the person I have become, whoever he is, started on that day, the day I learned my child was dead.

"What Happened" in Performance

Karthik TMK

This, from a review in nytheatre.com in August 2004.

"As a play, I don't know ['I Hate This (a play without the baby)'] would work on its own, with an actor other than Hansen performing it, but maybe that is the nature of the autobiographical, non-fiction, one-person-show genre."

Two others have performed the entire script, as a reading in Manchester, England and as an undergraduate thesis in upstate New York.

Last Saturday, March 6, the play received a unique production (under the alternate title What Happened) in Chennai, India, directed by Denver Anthony Nicholas. For the first time the roles were divided between two performers, Karthik TMK and Mrittika Chatterje.

It was, by all accounts, a remarkable production. There were two performances on a single day, and each were sold out. 

Mrittika Chatterjee

Many of the local theater community was in attendance, showing support for the first live play in the area for over a year. The matinee crowd was younger, and less emotional about the subject matter, which could be expected. The evening crowd was older, and much more affected by the work, many openly sobbing at the end.

I was particularly touched to learn how emotional folks became when Mrittika recited the letter from “Becky” near the close of the show. Performed by a woman I can see how much more sympathetic she would appear, more sympathetic than when, for example, a man would perform it, as I traditionally have.

On further reflection, that nytheatre.com review may have gotten it entirely wrong, and I may have as well. This piece may work much more effectively when it is interpreted by someone other than myself.

Which is exactly what someone new will be doing very soon.

"I Hate This (a play without the baby)" is available at Amazon as paperback or ebook.

Process XX

In the middle of the week, Wednesday around noon, Tim and I were about to teach a class. I was “subbing” I guess, he had been working with the class all week, I was stepping in for a couple days.

He asked me how things were going, the way you do, and I couldn’t even speak. I could barely create a coherent thought. I was about to teach a class. I have been reading scripts, I have been writing. I have been reading comics, I have been drawing comics. I have been writing text for one job, I have been writing text for the other job.

I have had classes, I have done housework, I have been trying to get out and run during the good weather even though I pulled a muscle in my calf. I have been dreaming the deep dreams, and I have also had a series of headaches that have interrupted my sleep.

One of the universities I attend had Spring Break this week, so I had one thing I didn’t need to deal with. 

I was supposed to sub Friday, too. I forgot to show up.

There is also the let-down from no longer having a show in production. The thing about Zoom plays, once you close your laptop it’s like they never happened. No programs, no ticket stubs, no memories of after-show talks in the lobby, no hugs.

But I do have a lovely little flowerpot my director presented me with, as a gift. I need to find something happy to grow in it.

Process XIX

Homework companions.

The annual new play festival will be different this year, of course. We have all written ten-minute plays to be produced for video. So it’s really a short film festival, which is an education in that I have never written a screenplay before, not even a short one.

There are rules, however, and by that I mean legal safety guidelines. Adapted from my ten-minute play The Children Who Played at Slaughter, I have been through several drafts making the thing even filmable. The cast size needed to be brought down from six to four, their ages needed to be changed (we can’t safely work with children) and several instances where the actors would come into contact needed to be rethought, if not eliminated.

Then the director and my advisor had a brilliant idea: What did I think of animation? I love animation! For my latest draft I was able to restore the original ages for the characters, and the original setting (it had moved from a municipal dump to a firepit in the woods) but I also kept many of the other changes from the re-writes which made it a tighter, nastier piece of work.

You gotta say yes, you know?

Meanwhile, I finally got out onto the road to time out my twenty minute quarantine play. The assignment is to create a play script which could be produced under current conditions of public safety. I plan to write a script which can be performed uninterrupted via Facebook live. So, I needed to see how much time it would take to get from point A to point B ... and C and D and so on.

It’s the first time I have gone running on my own since January, and hey guess what, I pulled a muscle in my calf. But not before I timed out the distances for the play. 

• 00:00 Scene begins at Monticello & Taylor
• 03:15 Near-accident at Mt. Vernon Road
• 07:00 Enter the park at Forest Hill Blvd. and Lee
• 11:00 Enter the woods
• 12:15 Encounter at path diversion
• 13:30 The Bridge

Which leaves some six minutes for this scenario to play out. Bags of time. So far I am thinking of five actors, the runner, the girl, the bicycle rider, the guy in the boat house, and the old man. In practice it would also require a support team, to provide security and assistance -- and light.

My wife asked me, do you need to film this or just write it? I just need to write it. But I’d love to make it happen some time this summer.

Process XVIII

Click to enlarge.

One of the things I failed to mention at the beginning of this semester was that I was afraid of failure. That I would fall short this second time out, that I had taken on too much. At the same time, I felt more alive than I have in years. 

I am no longer afraid. And I still feel alive. This, in spite of being largely sedentary. The snow, cold temperatures and sheer busyness have kept me from running, at all, for over a month. And I don’t care. And that’s not good.

Regardless, Taṇhā has opened, and I am very happy with that. I have settled into my assistantship, and I am very happy about that. Teaching classes remotely can be exhausting, but this past week was light and I was so very happy about that.

My “mini” comic, as you can see, was not so very mini. I deluded myself into thinking it might take a couple hours. It only took two hours to draft and complete a comic strip when I was in college … well, this one took the better part of three days. And I’m still not happy with it. I just got a new appt redo the voice balloons

Because I’m not done. I’m going to keep working at The Negative Zone.

For craft and theory I need to develop a twenty minute “quarantine” play, and I have an idea which I have gotten really excited about. It involves running, so? Now that the temps are above freezing, maybe I need to get off my butt.

Seriously, though. This new one-act script idea is driving me to distraction, and I am so jazzed about that.

"Savory Taṇhā (sixteen short plays performed by a rotating ensemble)" continues this Sunday at 6:00 PM

"Savory Taṇhā" (aflame/afloat)

Hillary Wheelock

“Taṇhā is the price you pay for being a person,” said Arthur on Friday night, at the post-show for Savory Taṇhā. He was also in attendance on Thursday night. Regarding the final scene, about the person who creates art from those things left on the curb, those cast-off, he added, “It wouldn’t be a complete life if you didn’t have these things. The loss is what makes it important.”

We have completed one cycle of these four different performances. One audience member, Patricia, joined us on the second night, then through Friday and Saturday and returned last night, to enjoy all four. After the show Saturday she admitted that upon a second viewing she felt she was spending too much of her attention comparing the performances, but by the third night she was simply taking in the stories as they were, with fresh, new eyes.

The names we have given the four differently cast performances are not some random affectation. The first, the one we are performed again last night, is Aloft. This one tracks most closely to what I was thinking when I wrote them, in gender orientation, in the age of the characters. As a result, there is a youthful quality to them, as younger performers like Zach and Zyrece take the fore, the older performers supporting them in their journey.

Zach Palumbo

Aground has a masculine edge, as Brian's presence dominates the proceedings, Brian who is my own personal stand-in in all things theater related. Hillary’s kinetic energy takes precedence in Aflame.

The fourth version, Afloat, is the one which subverts expectation. Anne is most present, expressing the doubt and fear of failure which we usually attribute younger people. After you get to a certain age, these feelings can be too shameful to express. Also, we get the middle-age sex action.

We asked Patricia for some immediate reaction having seen all four, and she remarked upon the hospital scene, that it is that one which changes the most. The three relationships represented in the scene.

And I realized, that’s right. There are not two relationships in that scene, but three. But then, to me, that third, unseen character never changes.

See: Cleveland Public Theatre Savory Taṇhā Program

Cleveland Public Theatre presents the Zoom Premiere of "Savory Taṇhā (sixteen short plays performed by a rotating ensemble)" directed by Caitlin Lewins and featuring Anne McEvoy Zyrece Montgomery,  Zach Palumbo, Brian Pedaci & Hillary Wheelock, now through March 6, 2021.

Process XVII

"Hello, Cleveland."
Alters #4
(Aftershock Comics, 2017)

We’re reading the Paul Jenkins/Leila Leiz comic Alters for class this week, the third notable comic to take place in Cleveland, Ohio, after American Splendor and Howard the Duck. It is also notable in that the protagonist is a trans woman superhero, named Chalice.

Last week we took in the Iceman comics which delved into his life as a gay man, which was queer as in strange (as they say.) It is often an odd fit when an long-established character is rewritten to have a sexual orientation contrary to previous expectations.

So, yeah. We’ve moved onto queer superheroes. When I was a teenager, reading X-Men was in its full flower, working as an aggressively overwrought metaphor for any marginalized group. This came to its obvious conclusion in the X2 when (coincidentally) Bobby “Iceman” Drake reveals to his parents as being a mutant. The metaphor is played for comedy.

His mother asks, “Have you tried ... not being a mutant?”

In the Iceman comics he has to come out to them a second time, this time as gay. No more symbolism, this is attempting to reflect the real life experience.

Alters had the advantage of starting fresh, a new “universe” with a different power dynamic between superpowered humans, which I enjoyed more. In spite of its unique and sympathetic protagonist, and leans harder into the lives of marginalized people - not only trans, but disabled, homeless, people of color - it still falls into a several traps, including a queer-coded arch villain and the cringey depiction of a single black mother anmed Sharise.

Is she realistic, are there people like Sharise? I guess. But knowing it comes from the mind of a white, male writer, the situation and vernacular were a little difficult to take.

And then there’s the Cleveland thing. Just as Steve Gerber, who never visited Cleveland, chose our hometown as the setting for the adventures of Howard the Duck, the British-born Jenkins made this Chalice’s home without really knowing anything about it. Where the hell is “the city center”? The least bit of research could have made it more believable. As it is, Cleveland is simply a stand-in for “Not New York.”

As for me, I am spending this weekend creating a twelve-panel comic adapted from my short play The Negative Zone, which takes place in a comic book shop in the mid 1980s.