The Right Room | BorderLight Festival (trailer)

Here (film)

I'm staring at the asphalt wondering

What's buried underneath (where I am)

- Death Cab for Cutie, "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight"

Here (2024)

On a recent transatlantic journey, I had the opportunity to watch a couple films including The Northman, a re-watch of Spielberg’s West Side Story and also Bob Zemeckis’s adaptation of the graphic novel Here.

The film Here came and went last fall, cost $50 million to make and made $15 million at the box office. That it was based on a short comic from 1989 that I had found very inspiring at the time had piqued my interest, but the negative reviews kept me from seeing it. Recently, however, in describing my new play The Right Room to a number of people, one said the concept reminded them of this movie (which they had liked) and of course, that filled me with great concern. I will go into the comparison in a moment.

Like the 1989 comic and the 2014 graphic novel, both by Richard McGuire, the film depicts the corner of an American living room from one fixed vantage point. The camera never moves (until the very end) but the narrative moves back and forth in time, from the 1940s to the 1970s, back to the 1910s, forward to the 2020s, even further back to before the house was even built and even into prehistory.

The major failing of the film is that an in-depth narrative is laid upon it, and that this narrative is not terribly compelling. A young man (played by a CGI de-aged Tom Hanks) grows up in this house, and just as our vantage point is stuck in one place, so is he, confined by the expectations of his father, his inability to succeed in business, that in spite of having a loving wife (Robin Wright) and family, he is unhappy and cannot move on from "here."

The movie’s fatal flaw, however, is its score by Alan Silvestri, an award-winning composer, responsible for iconic themes found in wildly successful movies like Back to the Future and Avengers. You can hear them, right? Of course you can.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

The Here score put me in mind of Elmer Bernstein’s legendary score for the 1962 film adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The main theme to that film is like liquid nostalgia, at once sweeping and sweet, grand yet intimate.

The first time I read Mockingbird, I found the first half to be interesting but disjointed – a selection of unassociated small town tales. When the trial happens, however, all the elements of the first part come together to define what happens next. And Bernstein's music serves to underscore lost innocence that comes with seeing the world as it really is, while remembering what it used to mean to you.

The thing about the graphic novel Here is that it has no narrative, it is an abstracted rumination on the meaning (if there is one) of time and space, and our brief place in it. These moments sometimes turn back on themselves, as when a 20th century child plays with a plastic dinosaur in the same frame as an actual dinosaur from millions of years ago that once occupied the same space, or a young woman is offering a cocktail in the same panel as she, as a baby years earlier, is being nursed with a bottle.

The Here screenplay by Zemeckis and Eric Roth includes a few brief, abstracted moments like these within the larger narrative (the one defined by the the Tom Hanks character) but they clash with the movie's serious, dramatic tone, and come off not as humorous but obvious and heavy-handed, especially as they allude to recent events, like COVID or the BLM uprising.

Meanwhile, Silvestri's score keeps reminding us that this is meaningful, this is important. But all we are seeing is a number of (mostly white) people living, growing old, and dying. And while there is a common philosophical argument that death gives life meaning, death does not in and of itself give life meaning.

Here (1989)

A professor of playwriting once described to me what he called the “dead baby” plays. He had had a number of students – people in their late teens and early twenties – drop a dead baby into the narrative of their scripts, which he saw as cheap, unearned poignance, and he absolutely has a point. When I was a young man, I dropped suicide into the narrative of more than one project, and that was also sloppy writing, and thoughtless.

Death does not provide meaning, but it can inspire meaning.

My new play, The Right Room, takes place in four different time periods, and in four different rooms, but they are all hotel rooms (or three hotel rooms and one room in a boarding house) in four different cities. And it follows the story of one family, in these elements I can see how I was inspired by McGuire’s original 1989 comic Here.

In my first draft, there were four distinct scenes, which I have since braided into one continuous scene, and so four couples share the same room, all at once. And I like to think that meaning is revealed by the actions that take place in those rooms, by those characters. Not time, nor place, nor even death. That it is life that gives life meaning.

"Here," a student film by Tim Masick and Bill Trainor (1991)

Magnolia (film)

 

While I was recuperating from eye surgery, a friend offered to bring dinner and suggested we watch a “comfort movie” which was a wild concept because while I understand that other people have their comfort movies (our eldest, for example, relies upon Moana) I usually spend movie time finding something new, something I have never seen before.

This is not to say I don’t watch movies more than once, of course I do. I think I saw Ghostbusters in the theater around ten times. I have a DVD collection, not a large one, but it includes many discs I buy just in case – just in case I have the opportunity to share them with someone else. Not to sit and watch them on my own.

So, what title? What movie? I chose Paul Thomas Anderson’s L.A. epic Magnolia. Hadn’t watched that in maybe fifteen, twenty years. I first saw this movie in early January 2000, when it was in general release. I saw it with both of my brothers, which was a rare treat. But we’re all movie guys with opinions, and at one point in the film, I had a startling moment of self-awareness.

"This is something that happens."

The film has great momentum, after an extended narrated introduction on the nature of coincidence and the importance of storytelling, the plot whipsaws from one storyline to another, which are at first seemingly unrelated but are soon found to intertwine.

About half way through I thought, “Oh, no. I’m loving this, but we’re having dinner after – what if my brothers hate it?” Long story short, we were all impressed.

Sharing it with my friend, someone much younger than I, in 2022, was another revelation. I know what it’s about, it’s about fathers, the sins of the fathers, about toxic masculinity in general. That is the central theme, and one which resonated more deeply with me now that I am a father myself. I’m not sure what my young colleague thought. I find that many young people prefer not to engage with such issues, not as entertainment. Horror films, sure, but not dramas which depict ordinary men doing everyday, terrible things.

Moving forward a few years, I have also now shared Magnolia with our son. We watch movies together, he knows it’s important to me. And while he did enjoy the film, he wasn’t so sure about the song.

Yes! The song. About two-thirds of the way through this three hour movie, when every major plot thread has risen to a point of no return, and every character is at their most isolated (two of them are actually on the verge of death) the song “Wise Up” by Aimee Mann begins, and every character sings along. There is no explanation for this moment, it simply happens. The entire song plays, and everyone takes a lyric.



This comes right after hospice nurse Phil Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman) administers a coma-inducing level of pain reliever to his charge Earl Partridge (Jason Robards), a moment which hits differently once you have also made a like decision for one of your parents.

The song was always controversial. Janet Maslin, for example, writing for the New York Times, found it to be a horrible mistake. “It's astonishing to see a film begin this brilliantly only to torpedo itself in its final hour.” This is a widely held opinion, though I naturally disagree. For me, it is space to breathe, to sit with the characters for a moment before we charge into the rest of the narrative, which is about to go absolutely batshit.

Melora Walters in "Magnolia"

Also, I like singing. I like songs in movies, I like songs in plays. I once directed Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, in which the discarded and despondent Queen Katherine says, “My soul grows sad with troubles,” and urges her bard to: “Sing, and disperse 'em, if thou canst.” In this modern dress production, her assistants perform a karaoke version of “Somebody That I Used to Know.” There were some giggles from the crowd at first, which were dispelled when they realized, “Oh, my God … are they going to sing the entire thing?”

Of course we were. Why wouldn’t we?

My new play, The Right Room, is about four couples, in four different Midwestern hotel rooms, in four different years during the 20th century. The action plays concurrently, in the same room, each couple unaware of the others. Except when they break into song two-thirds of the way through. Did I steal this idea from Magnolia? Of course I did. I also stole it from Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9. I steal from all sorts of places, because I am a genius.

What song, you might ask? The classic "If You Were a Train" by Buddy Langston. From Wikipedia:

Buddy Langston, a soulful saxophonist, rose to fame in 1930s Kansas City, blending blues and swing into electric late-night sets. A self-taught prodigy, his smoky solos enchanted crowds at the 12th Street Reno Club. Langston's bold improvisations influenced generations, securing his legacy as a cornerstone of early American jazz history.*

Why a song, you might ask? From my stage directions:

The song is an opportunity for choreography through which characters who do not otherwise speak to each due to the limitations of time and space to engage.

Will it work, you might ask? Well. Maybe this summer I will have the chance to find out.

Source:
"Entangled Lives on the Cusp of the Millennium" by Janet Maslin, The New York Times (12/17/1999)
Wikipedia: Buddy Langston

Hamnet (book)

“He is himself, not a play.”
- Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (2020)

Last week we saw the Broadway tour of & Juliet at the Connor Palace. As the show began, and the character of William Shakespeare took the stage, I had the sinking feeling I was about to be subjected to yet another foolish depiction of the Bard – like the one in Shakespeare In Love, Dark Lady of the Sonnets or – God, no – Something’s Rotten.

I mean, I knew what I was getting into, a fantasy “What if” Juliet hadn’t died, laced with Max Martin’s greatest hits. I just didn’t know HE was going to be a part of it. Because he’s not a character in his Romeo & Juliet.

As it happened, I really enjoyed & Juliet (so did my 96 year old aunt) and so much more than Something’s Rotten, which I really do not like. The former is a celebration of queer empowerment, the latter a middling 21st century meta-musical that still manages to be as hokey and immersed in the patriarchy as The Producers, which it so hard is trying to be,

But why, I asked, even as I was bopping along to "Backstreet’s Back" and "Oops …", why do we do this, and by we I am absolutely including me, why do we, why are we compelled to participate in the Shakespeare Industrial Complex (SIC) not content to merely overproduce his work (which is itself a problem and basis for another discussion) but to contribute to the lore, to expand upon the characters, the plots – and the man himself.

Corey Mach as William Shakespeare
"& Juliet" Broadway Tour (2025)

Why, in short, all the Shakespeare fan-fiction? Because, to be sure, it does not often rise above that.

Since I first picked up and then put down the novel Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, over three years ago, I have read two other historical fictions about Tudor-Stewart era playhouses, Jinny Webber’s Bedtrick and Mat Osman’s The Ghost Theatre. But this one, Hamnet, kept reemerging in conversation. “Have you read ..?” All the recommendations, all the references, the book itself, staring at me from a shelf, a table, the floor, a pile of other books.

I finally read it: difficult to get into, then for the past week impossible to put down, only to conclude poorly, as this achingly well-told story of a mother’s grief was in the end contrived merely to connect the lost boy to the famous play. I felt cheated. I got angry. I still am.

This novel is inspired by the life and untimely death of Hamnet Shakespeare, the playwright’s only son, fraternal twin to Judith, younger sibling to Susanna.

Stephen Greenblatt

What I do like about this book is that it focuses on Agnes (one of two possible first names for Shakespeare’s spouse) who is in this telling a fascinating, magical person, strong and confident, gifted with second sight, a deep understanding of herbal medicine, even a falconer!

Where there are gaps in the historical record (or perhaps I should say gap, one big, fact-free gap) it is Agnes who acts, who has agency in spite of familial oppression and public scrutiny. It is she who decides that if they are to be together, she must become pregnant. Later, to realize his independence from his family – and from Stratford, where she can see he is unhappy – it is she who convinces him to follow his bliss to London.

There is even the suggestion that she wanted the second-best bed left to her in his will, because, after all, it was her bed! The one available fact that folks have used to divine the unhappiness of their union, in this telling he was merely serving her desire, and put it in writing.

 Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth
"The Northman" (2022)
A film directed by Robert Eggers

And she does, and they do, because he wrote a play called Hamlet.

Then, the plague. She saves (or believes she saved) Judith, but loses the boy. And she suffers, so deeply. It was unbearable. I put the book down. I picked it up again. Because I was made to care about this woman, and I wanted to see her make her way through her grief, and to reunite with her estranged husband, the one who made a successful living in a playhouse, far from home.

Time and again, folks have strained to tie the name of Shakespeare’s son to that of his most famous play. Stephen Greenblatt made note – and O’Farrell echoes in her prescript – in the article, “The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet,” (link) that the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable in the 1500s, which is far too easy an explanation.

My wife’s name is Toni. Tori is also a name and only one letter different from hers but if I called her “Tori” she would say, “that’s not my name.” And Greenblatt has been criticized for just making shit up.

Hamlet and Hamnet are similar names. But apart from that uninteresting detail, there is nothing to suggest Hamnet's death in any way inspired the composition of Hamlet.

Because the play Hamlet has nothing to do with a dead child.

Because there are no twins in Hamlet. And though he did write a few plays that did feature twin, none are named Hamnet, nor Judith (there are no Shakespearean characters named Judith at all, nor for that matter, Susanna). And twins used for the purpose of comic mistaken identity was and remains a common trope.

Ed Frascino
The New Yorker (1991)

Because Shakespeare didn’t choose to name his main character Hamlet for this particular revenge tragedy; it is based on an ancient myth about a Norseman named “Amleth” – which would be a terrible name to have to say upon an English stage, you couldn't finish a sentence.

“This gentle and unforced accord of Amleth thith thmiling to my heart.”

“Lord Amleth ith a printh out of thy thtar.”

“Come hither, my dear Amleth, shit by me.”

And tho on. And because Shakespeare himself did not even choose to change the name Amleth to Hamlet, someone else did that, writing a different revenge tragedy that included a protagonist named Hamlet in 1585, which was a few years before Shakespeare even started writing plays, and fifteen years before he wrote Hamlet.

Here’s the thing. The reason many have sought evidence that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare is because there remains scant evidence of who the man was, so they try to draw connections from the text to his contemporaries, those about whom much is known. And while these “Adventures in Authorship” may be harmful, so is drawing bogus connections between the text and what very little we do know about the man himself.

"Hamnet" (2025)
Directed by Chloé Zhao

Speculation, for the purpose of fiction, is all well and good, but we must cleave to the facts as we know them, because these speculations, very often stated as fact, become accepted as fact. The Queen never asked for a play about Falstaff in love. Shakespeare never said “William the Conqueror came before Richard the Third!”

And Hamlet was not written for Hamnet, which is unfortunately the climax of O’Farrell’s book. And her depiction of Agnes witnessing a performance is perplexing, because it is in witnessing the scene between Hamlet and the ghost of his father (performed, as has been often suggested, by Shakespeare himself) that she comes to understand her husband’s grief – but it’s not there, not on the page, not on the stage. She describes a young boy playing Hamlet, which is absurd on a couple levels – Hamlet isn’t a boy, he was probably played by Burbage, how the hell could a boy player carry the rest of the show, etc. etc.

Why does it matter, you may ask? Why does it make me, as I have said, angry? Because. I didn’t want to read it. Then I was glad I was reading it. Now I am unhappy that I read it.

Greyson Heyl and Nic Scott Hermick
"Twelfth Night (Or What You Will)"
Great Lakes Theater (2025)
Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Agnes was beside herself to learn that her husband had written a play using their son’s name (even if it’s not really his name) and made the journey, for the first time in her life, out of Stratford and all the way to London. London! Can you imagine? To see a play! She’d never seen a play! Most people those days never had! (Actually, they had, but whatever.)

And what would she have actually seen? A fully grown male actor, upon a stage before a rowdy, packed audience, playing a Danish prince, who is by turns mopey, arrogant, somewhat creepy, pretentious, passive-aggressive, misogynist, and murderous, who is ultimately killed in a duel, the stage littered with the bodies of many other characters whose deaths this Hamlet character was directly responsible for.

Honestly? He should have invited her to see Twelfth Night. Agnes may have found that one much more relevant and affecting. It has much more to say about grief and acceptance, and it has twins in it.

Great Lakes Theater presents "Twelfth Night (or What You Will)" by William Shakespeare and directed by Sara Bruner now through April 6, 2025 at the Hanna Theatre, Playhouse Square.

On Reservations (and online reservations)

Do you remember?

Once upon a time, and it wasn’t long ago (wait, no, it was long ago) you could make a reservation to see a play at a theater the way you could also make a reservation at a restaurant, by calling them on the phone and reserving seats and then just not show up, like you can with a restaurant, having put no money down and suffering no financial penalty to yourself.

This remained true for most small, community or nonprofessional theaters through the end of the twentieth century. When we started Bad Epitaph in 1999, we made an arrangement with a new, online ticketing service (which just happened to employ one of our company members) and took reservations this way exclusively. It was a bit of a shock to some of our patrons.

“Surely, I can call you and make a reservation and play with cash when I arrive, right?” one might ask, and I would respond, “If there are seats, you can purchase them for cash when you arrive.” Some found this impractical, even rude, and said so. After all, most had not yet purchased anything online, and the idea of typing their credit card numbers into their home computer made them uncomfortable.

They had every reason to feel uncomfortable, and really, we all still should, be we’re just used to it now, like eating while walking or wearing pajama bottoms to the grocery store.

And I did feel rude, asking people to do this, to pay for their tickets in advance, and online only. But it was the 90s. It was the new millennium. Things were changing. Today it might seem rude to contact a theater and attempt to make a reservation without paying in advance. You might not show up and just who do you think you are?

Fundraising, too, has gone digital. Every ticketing interaction includes an opportunity to kick in a little more, you know, for the education programming. For the children.

I have used the internet, several times, to make independent productions and projects possible. Bad Epitaph used to throw benefits (really high-tone rent parties) to raise necessary funds for pretty much each show. Some of them were surprisingly iconic, though each of them gave me a killer migraine. My 35th birthday party was actually a fundraiser to send I Hate This to Minnesota, which felt weird at the time. Still does.

More recently, however, we have used Kickstarter to get Double Heart to New York, and GoFundMe so I could attend a playwright’s conference in Alaska. I have not used either service more than once, not because they weren’t successful, but rather because I have found diminishing returns when doing the same thing twice.

"Double Heart" fundraising video (2013)

Right now I am conducting a stealth campaign for an upcoming project, and for that I have gone back to the egg. I am mailing letters. Through the mail. Using stamps! And I would very much like to send you one, if you would like to learn about the thing before anyone else, share your mailing address with me via pengo (at) davidhansen (dot) org and I will send you a letter. 

It's just that simple.

On (Local) Criticism

Ian McKellen in "The Critic" (2023)

I am only going to explain this one more time.

For a time—a very brief time—we had newspapers. And the newspapers hired journalists, and paid them appropriately for their work. Some of them covered City Hall, some the local sports teams, others the arts. If you can imagine, some covered more than one "beat." And people subscribed to these papers or bought them at the corner store. And so, for a while, we had critics. And we hated them.

Then came the internet. And it was possible to tell exactly which of these journalists' work was actually being read. 100,000 clicks for an article about the latest city council meeting. 1,000,000,000 clicks for the minutiae of yesterday's game. And 10 clicks for the review of the latest show at your neighborhood professional theater.

On top of that, their bottom line was decimated by Craig's List. A quarter for a pape is nice. A dollar a line for a classified ad is money. Their legs were cut, and so, then, was it necessary to eliminate staff.

Tony Brown was cleveland (dot) com's last full-time theater critic, though by the end of his time there they had him covering additional beats. He left in 2011. Andrea Simakis, their style critic. was then also required to cover multiple beats, including theater. Now they pay whoever will do it on a by-the-word basis.

You get what you pay for. Theater criticism does not pay, so it is not paid for. Every theater critic currently working in our area is doing it because they enjoy doing so (in spite of the abuse they receive on social media from certain members of our theater community) and that is hardly a place to negotiate from. 

Class dismissed. I expect your papers on my desk first thing tomorrow.

See also:
On Criticism
Single White Fringe Geek (blog)
Criticism Is Dead! Long Live Criticism!

Henderson's Relish (condiment)

Henderson’s Relish is a condiment produced in and largely consumed in that part of South Yorkshire they call Sheffield. Not trying to start a fight with any native Sheffielders but this Midwest American would absolutely, in an attempt to easily communicate its flavor, compare it to Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce.

However, unlike that unctuous seasoning, Henderson’s does not include anchovies, so not only is it gluten free, it is also a vegan condiment.

The musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge is set in Sheffield, and includes a scene in which several folks in one apartment in the Park Hill estate partake of and comment upon a bottle of Henderson’s. It’s a reference which amused the West End audience I was a part of, which suggested to me it was a local delicacy, but known enough to humor the rest of the country.

Thing is, though, the scene in which the same bottle is commented upon, it is in fact being passed around by three parties who are unaware the others are there. It is mocked at a party in the 2010s, received with minor disgust by recently arrived Liberian refugees in the 1980s, and liberally splashed onto dinner by a miner in the 1960s.

Last week, I was having coffee with someone I hadn’t seen in some time. They asked me what I was working on and when I told them it was about three generations of my family, all taking place at the same time in one hotel room, he asked me if I had seen the movie, Here.

I said I had not, but that was familiar with the graphic novel. And he’s not wrong, because I do believe McGuire’s original version for that was printed RAW (see Here: graphic novel) had a profound effect which stayed with me. But he also could have said it reminded him of Standing at the Sky’s Edge.

Here’s the thing, I am going to be transparent about this – which is odd, because I don’t generally like to talk about the writing while it’s happening, before it’s produced, and I'll tell you why. On more than one occasion I have had conversations with critics and found my words used against me in their write-ups, and that's irritating, you know?

So, what I am currently working on is actually a play my mom wanted me to write years ago. She found my grandparents’ love letters from the early 1930s, and thought they were lovely and that there might be a play there. And they are lovely, but I found no obvious plot.

They were source material, however, for a paper I wrote in pursuit of my MFA a few years back, after she passed, and I began investigating my ancestry in earnest. And that paper led to an actual play script, one which took place in four different hotel rooms in four different years.

It may have been the comic strip that inspired the scenes running concurrently, and maybe it was the musical I had recently seen. There’s a song in my new script, too, an idea which I may have intentionally or otherwise stolen from Cloud Nine or maybe the film Magnolia. All I know is that I needed a song there.

Anyway, I recently ordered a four pack of Henderson’s Relish. It was a lot cheaper to get the four pack, and I did wonder how long the other bottles would be sitting on the shelf, but we’re almost done with the first one. I put Hendo’s on everything.