Worked very hard to pry open a flashlight battery. Scooped out some of what was inside, a translucent white paste. spread it on a Ritz and ate it, and almost immediately wished I hadn't.

Harvey Pekar Memorial Desk

The boy completed his fall soccer season 5-2-1, and after the final game at Denison Field, I whisked him to the CH-UH Main Public Library just in time to catch the unveiling of the Harvey Pekar Memorial Desk Sculpture.  All of Cleveland Heights, it seemed, was on hand to celebrate the man, and this fitting tribute; an interactive art installation on the second floor of this library, which was one of Harvey's favorite places to be. 

 Joyce explains the piece.

It has been about a year since Harvey's wife, Joyce Brabner, originally announced her intentions for the sculpture. Shortly after his death, she has wistfully remarked that she wanted his grave at Lakeview Cemetery to be marked with something you could color or write on, with chalk. When Lakeview politely informed her that they have a policy of not letting anyone mark the monuments, she contacted the library. Between a successful Kickstarter campaign and positive support from, well, everybody, the piece became a reality.

Local artist Justin Coulter created the statue, which sits atop the desk. Anyone is welcome to peruse the drawers, and use the items inside, which include pens, pencils and paper, as well as copies of some of Harvey's favorite books.

You may touch the artwork.

The back of the statue features a chalk board divided into comic book panels for anyone to write or draw upon. I was about to do a little cartoon of Harvey but the boy for some reason talked me out of it. That's all right, it is there to stay and I will compose something on some ordinary day. Maybe take up the whole thing, tell a whole story!

Doughnut.

Guerrilla Theater Company

Guerrilla Theater Company debuted on "Columbus Day" twenty years ago, at the first celebration of the Committee of 500 Years of Dignity and Resistance.

(October 12, 1992) On this cool Monday evening, Columbus Day, a holiday which had always been celebrated unquestioningly in my youth, was under fire. In Public Square, Cleveland Public Theatre had organized the very first 500 Years of Dignity and Resistance Festival, a celebration of Native Americans. At least 500 people had come to protest, peacefully, and with style.

True to his word, Jim Levin invited Guerrilla Theater Company, who hadn’t done anything to date except annoy some coffee drinkers, to participate. Seven well-intentioned, middle-class, white kids struggled mightily to produce a handful of sketches about the Native American experience.

We arrived at the Free Speech quadrant of Public Square shortly before dusk. There was a drumming circle going on, a dozen or so people of indigenous ancestry producing a slowly, steady, resonant beat with their drums, chanting beautifully. There were also a number of ragged-looking, white, crunchy-granola people in the circle with them.

As we ambled across the park, Levin walked up to us -- we were all wearing jackets, summer was fading and with encroaching night the temperature was dropping swiftly. He looked earnest as he approached. He always looked earnest.

“Hey, uh, Gorilla People,” he deadpaned. “Glad you could join us.”

“Thank you for including us in this event,” I said. “We wrote some plays just for tonight, we hope they’re appropriate.”

“Yeah,” he said, and took a brief pause. He peered into the middle distance, as though he were trying to discern what brand of jeans that guy crawling up the Terminal Tower was wearing. “You know, we’re going to finish up in an hour or so, and we’ve got a real peaceful vibe going here, if your people aren’t entirely prepared, it’s cool, if, uh ...”

“We’re prepared,” Torque said. “Say the word and we’re on.”

“Oh,” Levin said, “uh, okay, well, the stage is right over there, when the time comes.” There was a temporary platform, a surprising three feet high, complete with a rail for safety and two microphones.

“Great,” Torque said. “Just say when.”

We walked over to the stage, which was unoccupied during the Drumming Circle, and dropped off our stuff.

“He doesn’t want us to go on,” I said.

“Oh well,” Torque said.

We waited around for fifteen minutes or so. The drumming continued, it was very pleasant, and moving. I wondered what it had been like earlier in the day. Probably a lot of yelling, a lot of speechifying. There were protests -- in Little Italy the statue of Columbus on Mayfield Road had had red paint thrown on it -- but also a lot of music and celebration.

Now, however, it was peaceful, no one here but a hard-core band of thirty or forty fans of CPT and their Native American comrades.

“Greetings again, folks,” Levin said, speaking on the mic. We hung back against the rear railing of the stage. All seven of us were wearing our new, soon-to-be-immortal GTC T-shirts -- the logo was now a seated gorilla wearing a helmet that covered his eyes, with the word “THEATER” running cryptically beneath him.

“We’ve had a great day here celebrating 500 Years of Dignity and Resistance. That was a great drum circle.” Pause. We wait. “We have just a few more events lined up before we call it a night.” Another pause. Levin made a wry smile.

“We at Cleveland Public Thee-ay-ter ... are dedicated to presenting new, young, street artists. So it’s only fitting that here, making their stage debut as part of our festival, are Guerrilla Thee-ay-ter Company.”

“Good evening!” I said into the mic. A surprising and hearty “Good evening!” was the response. “We are Guerrilla Theater Company and we are proud to be participating in the 500 Years of Dignity and Resistance!”

Smattering of applause. As I peered out at them in the diminishing twilight I saw a lot of native peoples. I don’t think I’d ever been in the presence of so many indigenous people. And I was suddenly very self-conscious about our little band of white kids who were about to do some plays addressing the Native American issues. Jesus.

“We are going to present a short selection of plays for your enjoyment. The first is called Tourist Trade.”

Jelly Jam joined me at the mic. This one was written by Mammy -- I was a White tourist, asking the price of lots of native hoo-hah (a shawl, a tom-tom) from Jelly Jam, an Indian. Then I ask how much it would cost to buy everything -- Nature. The Native American does not understand what I could possibly mean, and so tells the White Man no one could buy the air we breathe. The White Man is pleased to ded uce that it’s free and takes it.

“I hope you enjoy it,” is Jelly Jam’s polite reply.

Polite silence as we set up our next piece, a thoroughly confusing piece of work I wrote that employed the entire six member ensemble.

In this one we presented a series of sequels to the 1982 movie E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial. In these follow-up films, E.T. returns with more and more friends and they eventually over-run the planet.

Get it?

Polite applause for the effort, as we set up for another play.

Levin leans his head through the railing in the rear. “How many more are you doing?” he asked, politely.

“Just one,” Wee-Bear told him. “It’s all we’ve got.”

We concluded with a piece written by Torque, thankfully not the one he had developed in rehearsal about the Native American who attempts to maintain his dignity while getting hit in the face with a number of cream pies, but instead a straight-forward, didactic piece arguing the offensive nature of the Cleveland baseball team's mascot.

Suddenly, Torque dumped the script and hollered out, “DUMP CHIEF WAHOO!” with his fist in the air. This was greeted by enormous hoots and the strongest applause we'd received. We retreated in triumph. Levin took the stage.

“Guerrilla Theater Company, folks!” he said, “When does your show open?” he called to us as we picked up our jackets to go.

“Next week!"

The Kardiac Kid (play)

Eric Schmiedl got me my first professional theater-related job. It wasn't really his doing, he was slated to remain with the education department of Karamu Theatre for a second year, but decided in stead to go off and get married or get another graduate degree or something and there was need for a tall, thin, guitar-playing white guy for their touring production My World If ... Someone else in the company knew my name, I got the call, and could stop waiting tables at Friday's.

I also needed to learn to play the guitar in 24 hours. Three chords. Who can't play three chords?

My World If ...

Eric and I first worked together when he directed Sarah Morton's Night Bloomers in 2006. That's an interesting story unto itself, for another time, perhaps. He also directed me in Eric Coble's The Velocity of Autumn at Beck Center last spring. But most of our time together is at the Playwrights' Unit, where I am constantly delighted by the pages he brings in from whatever he is currently working on.

Last summer, the boy and I saw Singin' On the Ohio, Schmiedl's two-hander about the Ohio & Erie Canal presented at the Big Red Barn Theatre. He wrote and was one of the performers in it, and spend the entire summer -- two performances every Saturday and Sunday -- spinning this historical yarn about an Irish-born canal boat captain and the once-enslaved young woman who came on board as his assistant. After the show I asked if these were real, historical people. He said, no, he'd made up the whole thing. But the Ohio & Erie Canal is real, the setting, the history is real. I wanted to believe.

Nathan Lilly, Eric Schmiedl, and a complete douchebag.

The Kardiac Kid opened this weekend at CPT, ostensibly a story of the 1980 Cleveland Browns Season, but fortunately it's not. I missed his last homage to the Browns, the collaboratively conceived Browns Rules because I was under the impression that it was supposed to be a big, funny, loud pageant of Browns Fever, and if I did not care to watch football, I wouldn't really enjoy it. That, and it had Nick Koesters in it, and I hate him.

Last night I took the kids and some friends to check out this new, solo performance. Watching Eric perform his own work is something not to be missed. He's just so warm, engaging, so very, very real. More human than human. In this ninety-minute show (there is an intermission) he tells five stories of Browns fans during the entirety of that non-championship season, a reminder that it's not the game, it's how that fits into the rest of your life that's important.

As the sun will cross the sky, the Browns lost today. Score was a laughable 41-27. No idea who they played, don't imagine it makes any difference, could have been anybody. The Cleveland Browns are just awful, and I have never understood why my fellow citizens put themselves through this misery year after year for what I find to be a painfully slow, boring game. Eric didn't change my opinion of football or the Browns one bit last night. He just made me love people more.

Lombardi by Eric Simonson closed at Cleveland Play House this weekend, a play about Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, who -- if you can believe his pain -- went three whole years without a championship. The story tales place in 1965, as Lombardi somehow (it's not clear) guides his team back to preeminence.

It went without mention that the city they had to beat to win 1965 championship was Cleveland.  The 1964 Cleveland Browns was the last championship team Cleveland will ever have.

Cleveland Public Theatre presented "The Kardiac Kid" from October 4 - 12, 2013

Campaign Stop

President Obama paid a visit to CSU today.

It rained a lot.

A reported 9,000 people stood in the rain for hours to see the President.

Thanks to Deonna K. for the ticket.

On Fear

A spider. How "Bourgeois".

When I was a child, our house had a crawlspace in the basement. It was behind a door with a simple lock, built up about three feet off the floor. There was a single bulb, the floor was rough concrete. When I was six I would hide in there, draw pictures of monsters and tack them to the beams. A gallery of monsters.

When I was around seven, my family went to a haunted house. It may have been in Avon Lake or something, like a “Haunted Fire Station” to raise money for charity.

Berea ... is so ... SCARAY ...

It was traumatizing. As is her wont, my mother to this day expresses deep, lasting regret for the decision to take me. “I guess I figured if you were too scared you could cover your eyes,” she says. Of course, hearing what you cannot see if much more terrifiying.

The pictures in the crawlspace came down, and I never went in there again, unless I had company.

Children need fear. They need to learn to enjoy chills and suspense, and to know the difference between what is fantastic and what are real life dangers to be avoided. This is why belief in the supernatural, especially mainstream beliefs such as Christianity and Islam, lead to uncertainty, confusion and life-threatening neuroses.

Your odds are not good.

The 21st century has brought with it an interesting revival in monsters. The work of Tim Burton doesn’t seem odd anymore, to anyone. The bizarre, edgy, creepy-funny Beetlejuice has evolved into the much-hated, yawn-fest Dark Shadows.

The World Famous.

The human skull is (or was) the new smiley face. My daughter has pink pj bottoms featuring skulls wearing a hair bow. Anyone who knows me knows I really enjoy wearing  all the swag my in-laws provide from The Smiling Skull Saloon, but no one would confuse me with some kind of threatening person.

There are now a swath of television programs and movies geared toward children that I would have thought unimaginable ten years ago. Disney recently debuted Gravity Falls, about two kids spending the summer in the great northwest with their grand-uncle who manages a “Mystery House”. Every episode centers around a presumed supernatural threat which turns out to be non-threatening … though still supernatural. For example, the male protagonist fears his sister is dating a zombie. In reality, the boyfriend is not a zombie, but a gang of gnomes disguised as one teenager.

Dude ... check it out ...

Anyway. It’s like a cross between Twin Peaks and The X-Files. We all think it is hilarious. However, the boy (age seven) does get increasing scared by the show, and has often had to cover his face, until the reveal, and then it’s all okay. I like that, some chills, then relief. No nightmares.

Paranorman, however, was not a good choice. It’s a very good movie. But I fret because  to really understand it, to even think it’s funny, you need a wealth of pop culture experience that your average nine year-old just doesn’t have. A lot of the humor makes no sense without a basic familiarity with the works of George Romero and the Salem Witch Trials. The boy didn't get the funny, he just saw zombies, and had to leave partway through.

One recent development in pop culture is the ascendance of the zombie. Dracula long ago became cuddly, thanks to the likes of The Munsters, Sesame Street and Count Chocula, the same for “Frankenstein”.  Good Lord, remember Monster Squad? As what scares us becomes familiar, we must turn to what is truly scary. When I was a child it was the Devil (The Exorcist, The Omen, et al) as an adolescent it was the stalker-killer (Friday, the 13th, Halloween and all the rest.)

Monster Squad (1976)

Supernatural animals like werewolves have never been taken seriously in my lifetime -- An American Werewolf in London, the only exception. Only the once-dead remain truly horrifying. The gentleman-corpse who is the vampire has become one to admire and love, and the Creature, in his own way a zombie, can be sympathized with because he has feelings. The zombie is simply a dead thing that continues to move -- and has only one recognizeable thought, and it is to eat you. They don’t even bother killing you first.

But even the zombie is being made more accessible. Leafing through a children’s costume catalog with the boy, we found zombie versions of superheroes. What is up with that? Why would you want to be that for Halloween? Not just a zombie … Zombie Robin? Uh, okay.

The boy and I had a very interesting conversation recently about why Halloween is associated with scary things. It wasn’t easy to explain, and maybe that confuses the average person. But it helps to know these two things; he has always known about his stillborn older brother, so celebrating the dead -- and the Day of the Dead -- are not bizarre, spooky ritauls, but an annual celebration on par with birthdays and other anniversaries. Also, too, having been raised non-religious, he has no weird conception of what death is. People are born, they live, they die and return to the earth.

Death does not scare him. At least, not yet.

Tradition.

So why is All Hallow’s Eve, and the Day of the Dead, the holidays which inspired Halloween, associated with the supernatural? He still doesn’t get it. It doesn’t keep him from enjoying it.

There is a home near us with a large front yard facing a very busy street which has an annual Halloween display which is pretty creepy. This year, however, in creating their display they decided to include a hanged person. They weren’t finished with it, but apparently someone compained, presumably, that the depiction of someone hanged -- lynched -- was offensive.

How did I know this? Because, in addition to the numerous “gag” tombstones featured in the display, they included this defensive response to whom it may concern:

I found their response more unfortunate than the hanged dummy. My city is racially diverse, with the population of whites and blacks running close to 50/50. Lynching as a symbol of race terrorism existed (past tense?) through the lifetime of many of my neighbors, it’s not something abstract.

Might I also add that if the featured style of execution were something else, say another deeply symbolic form of torturous death, say crucifixion, that might also offend a lot of people.

Part of the problem was that the figure was generic, just a big stuffed head through the noose. If it had been a cartoony witch or something, that might have seemed more in the spirit of the season.

I mean, the display also features someone drawn and quartered. That freaks the girl out more than the hanged person -- which has, at last, been detailed to represent a bonnet-wearing Puritan woman. Putting it into a period well-past, and associating it with the witch trials does make it look more appropriate to the season. But the defensive-message gravestone remains today.

SPOILER ALERT: PARANORMAN

Which brings me back to Paranorman. There really was a witch hanged in this story, a young girl who had magical powers, who was condemned as a witch. The lesson is about acceptance, about tolerance. She was a little girl with special abilities -- she wasn’t evil. However, according to certain religions, which believe in witches, it doesn’t matter if she felt she was good, having these powers means that, will you, nill you, she is a product of Satan. Like the gays. For some, tolerance is not an option.

Not a witch.

But homosexuality is a real part of nature, supernatural "witchcraft" abilities are not. The Salem Witch Trial was something that actually happened, many were imprisoned, twenty were executed. None of them were actually witches. Depicting a hanged "Salem witch" troubles me, too. That's an innocent, hanging there, first terrorized and tortured and then killed. They were lynched, too.

Monsters are fun. Men are scary.

Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage

Great Lakes Theater School Residency Program includes about a dozen (and growing) lesson plans, for students in first grade through seniors in high school. These five days residencies may cover a single play (e.g., Romeo and Juliet, recommended for freshmen) or in the case of elementary school students, a variety of classic children’s tales. Our actor-teachers are paired off in teams of two, who visit the schools bringing costumes, props, scripts, swords, stage blood, whatever is necessary to facilitate the plan. Our people perform keys scenes, put scripts into students’ hands and act with them, conduct relevant theater exercises, and hold meaningful discussions which connect the students’ own lives to the classic text at hand.

During September, which is to say right now, our actors are in training. We have five return individuals, and three people new to the program. They have a weight of new material to memorize and learn to facilitate before working with actual kids, and only three weeks to get it all in. Usually this means picking up one new residency a week, throughout the process.

On occasion, though not every not year, not even every other year, we take some kind of relevant field trip. When everyone is learning the elementary school residencies, we have visited the zoo to study animals and tell stories about them. In my time with the program, we’ve only done this twice, in 2004 and again in 2007. When there was a special exhibit at the Western Reserve Historical Society on Maurice Sendak in 2005, we went there as well. However, such journeys are time-consuming, often taking an entire day away from rehearsal, which is why they are so infrequent.

My favorite of all the lesson plans is the middle school one, which is called the Classic Drama Residency (CDR), as it covers several plays in the course of one week, each day addressing a different form of conflict in society, and how to cope and resolve conflict. Junior high is a powerful, sometimes extremely troubling period in human development (worst period of my life) and having the opportunity to address issues that directly affect students that age is moving, exciting, and important.

The work that gets the most attention through CDR is The Diary of Anne Frank. This is the story of an astonishingly self-aware girl. It is also a story of the Holocaust. our actor-teachers do not teach Holocaust history. But in order to appropriately understand the girl and her circumstances, you must understand the time. Part of my job is to bring our performers -- whose average age is 24 or 25 -- up to speed on an awe-inspiring period in human history, and to do that in a couple hours. We have so many lessons to prepare for, there isn’t time. I have tried long-form improvisations, sharing books, documents obtain from various sources ... it all feels woefully inadequate.

However, we have in Cleveland a remarkable resource in the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, and in preparation for this year’s rehearsal process we arranged a tour of the exhibits, requesting special attention on Antisemitism. What we received was a truly moving experience.

The permanent exhibit at the Maltz Museum is a must-see, which I especially recommend to my fellow Clevelanders, because it is not simply about Jewish history. These fascinating displays, many of them interactive, chronicle the immigrant experience in America, through the particular lens of European Jews, with an emphasis on (wait for it) Cleveland!

Our docent led us to particular points of interest on our journey to the extreme manifestation of hate. There is, in fact, a room labeled HATE, which includes a stirring film of Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit, the song about lynching, lyrics by Jewish-American Abel Merropol -- a man who events would have it adopted the orphaned children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (I heard that on NPR.) Several of our people took in the map of known hate groups in the US and were astonished to learn how many are in the Cleveland area.

The thematic connection of race-hatred toward American blacks and its relation to Antisemitism extended to the 1936 Berlin Olympics display, prominently featuring our own Jesse Owens.

Our docent kept asking questions of the group and it was my role to play Hermione, putting my hand up every time.

Docent: Does anyone know why we have Superman here?

Me: Glenville High graduates Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel!

Five points from Gryffindor for being an insufferable know-it-all.

Zap! Pow! Bam! (2009)

We eventually came to the Holocaust room, which is set off as an alcove from the main path of the exhibits. I had brought my son for the Zap! Pow! Bam! exhibition in January 2009. He wasn’t yet four years old, but enjoyed the Superman serials and the supermarket Batman car which you could ride for a quarter. Taking in the permanent exhibit, I guided him past this certain alcove.

The images are horrible. There are hateful cartoons of leering Jews, reminding me, for example, that Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice was considered, in spite of modern revisionist thinking, supposed to be a hilarious comedy where the villainous Shylock gets what’s coming to him. Just because he’s a more interesting, nuanced character than say, Marlowe’s Barabas, only means Shakespeare was a better writer, not a better person.

Mounted on the wall is an article (which I will, someday, include in its entirety) written by my old nemesis, theater critic William F. McDermott. Poor Bill. He was supposed to be taking a summer holiday in Austria in 1938, instead was appalled to find the treatment of Jews there something he was unable to keep silent about, and on July 7 had penned an op-ed for The Plain Dealer warning America of what was happening, and what was next.

The three-minute film of the liberation of the death camps is simply unbearable.

This part of our tour, albiet all-too-brief, was not without hope, though we did, unfortunately, have to dash through one of my favorite parts -- the hall of inspiring Clevelanders of Jewish descent. It’s a list too long to cover here, but I am glad to say I know many of them!

We were hurrying to meet a special guest, Mrs. Betty Gold, formerly of Trochenbrod, Poland (now Ukraine) a city which no longer exists. Mrs. Gold was not one of those who endured the camps, but rather an 11 year-old girl whose family members lived for two years in a swamp, hiding from the Nazis before being rescued by the Soviets.

Listening to her story, it was impossible for my mind not to wander to my own girl, age 9. Mrs. Gold’s stories of her own father, whose determination and good sense and good fortune made his most of his family members of the only 40 people who survived out of a city of 5,000.

Sometimes I forget that, in spite of my own research, this time continues to slip further and further into the past. As I press on into my mid-40s, the actors-remain in their mid-twenties. Great books have been written, and films made, of this horrible time in an effort to ensure that no one forgets. Or that it is understood that these things do not simply happen. They were caused, intentionally, by people.

The next day, our actors were back at work, performing scenes from A Raisin in the Sun and The Glass Menagerie, playing theater exercises, eating sandwiches from various PlayhouseSquare establishments. But as we revisit the scenes from Anne Frank -- or even a new scene included in the Macbeth residency, in which Macduff learns the news that his entire family has been slaughtered -- our young actors can no longer say they have never met someone to whom this has happened.

“Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.” - Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird