How I Spent My Summer (2020)

Rich & Dave (1991)

When I was in college, I used to make a mixtape every summer. I referred to it (to myself) as a “junk tape.” It was intended to be a document of the season, because I love summer so much, even when I hate it.

If there was a song I was listening to a lot, I’d add it to the tape. A movie I discovered at the video store, I put a snatch of great dialogue or music on the tape. Or moaning. You get what I’m saying.

Bumpers from Sunday Progressions, maybe I would record myself reading one sentence from a novel or a comic book. I still have them somewhere, from 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990 …

The 1991 mixtape was the absolute best. It was a complicated summer, the tape begins from when I left Los Angeles, and chronicles my being single in my new apartment, trying to rekindle a relationship, meeting people on Coventry, getting kittens, waiting tables, having troublesome one-night stands.

I remember it included Whispers & Moans, So Like Candy, the theme from Northern Exposure, Satisfied, Mama Said Knock You Out (Unplugged), Who, Where, Why? (Video Mix), There She Goes, and on and on. It was the very best mixtape ever made.

The following summer I was partway through creating my Summer 1992 mixtape when it, the 1991 tape, and my car, were stolen in New York City. I made summer tapes for a couple years to follow, but it was always with a sense of sadness for their lost brethren.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern (1991)

The summer of 1991 still exists, of course, in my memory. Not many photographs, not much documentation, but I was there. Out there, on the street. Performing at open mics in the yard, handing change to addicts, listening to my roommate have sex, meeting characters. Laying the groundwork for my adulthood. But there is still an emotional gap, and it is recorded onto that lost cassette.

Now, unlike then, I have documentation. Gigabytes of documentation. But will this summer be absent in other ways? Because of everything that did not happen, or happened at a technological remove.

Will we hold memories of good times when our senses are not entirely engaged? All the cocktail parties, trivia nights, play readings and performances, did they actually happen if the people we interacted with were not in three dimensions? Have no odor? No observable feet?

CAMP THEATER

Trying the think back even two months is taxing. Each Friday I think, again? And yet, I will retain fond memories of this year's virtual Camp Theater!

However, though we all have made fascinating and in some cases groundbreaking discoveries in online and distanced performance, nothing compares to the energy of young people brought together to play and work, to act, dance, sing and combat, to dress up and stage work together, and I hope we never have to do it this way again.

Chase Kneuven & Alexis Long (Culver City Public Theatre)

THE WAY I DANCED WITH YOU

Our friends at the Culver City Public Theatre were forced to suspend their spring production of Romeo & Juliet -- and also their free, summer production of About a Ghoul, my children’s play adapted from Moroccan folk tales.

In lieu of these events they have hosted a series of virtual play readings, and I was very happy to witness their reading of my play The Way I Danced With You, directed by Lauren Bruniges and performed by Alex Long and Chase Kneuven.

Even better, they are currently in the process of creating a full, virtual production of Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street, which will be presented on select dates next month.

Topsail Island, North Carolina

NORTH CAROLINA

Okay, I don’t want to get defensive about this but, okay? We went on vacation, and not just anywhere, but we went to the beach. I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, “what the fuck were you thinking?”

Look, it’s not like we went to Florida. I wasn’t soaking in a hot tub with two hundred strangers, I wasn’t soaking in coronavirus soup. My mother-in-law had rented a beach house before it all came down and we weighed our options and thought, well. We know this place. The beach is not crowded, we will social distance, be together as a family. No hugs, no handshakes. We’ll dine-in and enjoy the sun and try to create some sense of sanity.

And you know, that's just what we did.

SAVORY TAṆHĀ

Anything I might say about Savory Taṇhā (sixteen short plays performed by a rotating ensemble), I believe I have already said. In the midst of this time of artistic uncertainty, it was such a release to work with actors, even via Zoom, to create a live performance.

I am reminded of freshman year at school. First years were not permitted to do acting work. As an extracurricular I volunteered to be a DJ for the green radio station, and one of my classmates mused that I had found a way to still be vocal and creative, even if I couldn’t do so onstage. It felt like that, almost like getting away with something.

Brian Pedaci & Zyrece Montgomery
(Cleveland Public Theatre)

The fact that I conducted the final rehearsals and all of the performances from a beach house felt even more transgressive. This is how I get my kicks, I guess.

HAMILTON

Everybody watched Hamilton.

MAINE

We had barely been home before driving off again, this time to Flood’s Cove. Heading out, I thought it was an unwise decision, and not for the obvious reasons. I have never arrived at the Barnstable without my mother there waiting for me. Stepping into that empty, unprepared cabin, was a challenge but I held it together. We closed the door to the first floor room she used to share with father, and just last year with Jacques.

My wife, my son, and I (the girl has a job and stayed at home) only this trio dined each night at the table which was traditionally full of Hansens and Bakers, Thayers, Kosboths and Tanskis. I wondered why I was there, was I there for me, or was I merely holding a place?

But as the week progressed, I felt my own place. The boy and I would fish, or he would fish and I would read and we went out on the water and I began to feel my own sense of ownership. And I knew I would return.

Many grateful thanks.

ESTATE SALE

Settling my mother’s estate has been a multi-level process, one which should have been resolved months ago but for the virus. Every time I go there I feel as though it will be my last, first to assess the estate sale team, bringing everything she has ever owned (she has owned, but also what he parents owned, eight decades of belongings) to be sorted, priced, and sold.

It was overwhelming. This is why you pay people to do things you don’t have the heart to do.

The sale was successful, ask me for a reference. I was out of town for the weekend itself, I was glad to be literally removed from town. But I still needed to return to haul out the garbage, the useless leftovers, the junk. The unwanted artifacts.

Waiting for the guys to come, the junk men. Lying on the floor of the dining room, the same space mom occupied in her hospice bed as she died. I hoped it would be poignant, that there might be some epiphany but mostly I just looked at my phone and dozed.

CENTER FOR ARTS-INSPIRED LEARNING

As the summer was drawing to a close, I was contacted by Giorgiana Lascu at the Center for Arts-Inspired Learning (formerly Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio) to provide some short play scripts for her teenage interns as part of their end-of-season program of events. We spent a crazy morning pitching out scripts and her charges were very excited about getting to work on them.



In the past five months, folks have created nearly seventy-five short films from these scripts. I have actually backed away from writing as many, recently I have been playing with dialogue between a mother and daughter and I am not sure where that is going to go yet, but it is an exciting new journey.

Meantime, it does my heart glad to look back over the summer, to see it book-ended by Camp Theater, and by this project, enjoying the work of hopeful young people.

THE DECK

Five years ago we had our deck rebuilt and since that time I have taken loving care of it. We have expanded the furniture to include shelves and a small table, found on someone’s curb.

Houseplants and candles and twinkle lights and now it is as though we have added an entire new room to our modest abode. And we write and we read and we drink (we’ve recently cut the drinking) and relax and create and do our best to enjoy what we have and to make our way through.

I am anxious about the time we all have to go back indoors.

Thank you for listening to my Summer 2020 junk tape.