Shakespeare In Debt Benefit

I hadn’t planned Bad Epitaph further than one show. I was 30, and I wanted to direct a production of Hamlet with all my friends. That was it.

We held a fund raiser at the Brick Alley Theatre at 4051 St. Clair Avenue, where the show would be presented in April, 1999. The evening was called Shakespeare In Debt, a play on the title of a recent hit movie. The generous goodwill offered by neighborhood restaurateurs as well as funds raised by an electric and interesting silent auction brought in about eight hundred dollars, which was close to our goal.

We also put on a few silly sketches and a live set by a singer-songwriter Rachel McCartney. The entire evening was a show of heartfelt support from the Cleveland theater community for what we were trying to do.

At the end of the evening we were cleaning up and tallying funds when I noticed a bankers box just sitting out on a table, in front of a large window, right next to the (unlocked) door to St. Clair Ave. “What’s this?” I asked.

It was the door, admission to the event, which had consisted largely of walk-ups, paid in cash. There was another five hundred dollars in there.