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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Ed Frascino
The New Yorker (1991)

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.

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!

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, 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.

CWRU 50th Annual Science Fiction Marathon

Pizzazz was a short-lived pop culture magazine produced by Marvel Comics from October 1977 to January 1979. Any given issue might include articles about Mattel’s Slime, Spider-Man, Shaun Cassidy, or the film Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was also notable for including short comics of the first new Star Wars stories to follow the original film.

I had my tenth birthday during the all-too-brief print run of Pizzazz and I was absolutely the demographic. The June 1978 issue (“First National Edition!”) featured the article “Do-It-Yourself Guide to Day-And-Night Marathon Summer Vacation TV Watching.” A tongue in cheek piece (but I didn’t know that) it was intended for that kid who saw the summer as one long, boring stretch of nothing to do.

The story included tips on what to wear (ratty bathrobe), what to eat (and where to store it within arms reach), how to orient yourself in front of the TV, even what to use to change the channels without getting up (a grocery store stick) in the era before remote controls. Fans of Ferris Bueller might be interested to know it provides instruction on how to trick your parents into believing you are ill which includes making a tape recording of yourself coughing.

It Came From Outer Space

They even suggested using an egg timer to take naps during late-night commercials before the stations went off the air (they used to do that) and you could catch a couple hours sleep before sign-on.

After completing a week's worth of non-stop television viewing, the article concluded, “You’ve done it! You’re 10 times more bored than you were when you started. You swear you’ll never watch another minute of TV for the rest of your life. But just think how good the rest of the summer looks now!” Which is pretty much how I felt by the conclusion of the CWRU Film Society 50th Annual Science Fiction Marathon last weekend.

Since 1976, at this time of year, Strosacker Auditorium on the Case campus would be packed with nerds to watch non-stop flicks from Friday evening to some time after midnight on Sunday morning. I’ve been several times, usually to catch a few movies in a row depending on what was being offered. This year the rundown was so epic, I decided for the first time to do the entire thing.

Mars Attacks!

While I did not pack a ratty bathrobe, I did bring a change of pajama pants, slip-on shoes (not slippers) a pillow, and also a blanket that I never chose to use. I have been watching what I eat recently, due to an elevation in my bad cholesterol. For the marathon I brought no food of my own, only cash with a resolve only to consume what was made available. Before the show even began, that included a slice of Dewey’s pizza, a bag of popcorn and a Pepsi. It was luxurious.

We watched Ready Player One (2018) and It Came From Outer Space (1953) and for a midnight snack enjoyed a vanilla muffin with chocolate chunks. Every year there are two or three “surprise” attractions, and at 1:15 AM that was Mars Attacks (1996). I changed into my soft pants, settled in and promptly fell asleep.

One Million B.C.

I was a bit self-conscious about wearing pajama bottoms, I know the kids do but I’m not a kid. But then I saw grown men walking into the bathroom in their socks, so I stopped worrying about it.

In 1998, to promote the Dobams’s Night Kitchen long-form, sci-fi improv One Step Beyond, members of the company appeared at Strosacker during the marathon to play trivia and give away tickets. Thing is, we appeared twice: late Friday night, and again on Saturday morning. The thing we didn’t think of is that there’s really only one audience for the marathon. The second time I took the stage I was heckled; “Hey! I know why I’m in the same clothes I was wearing last night, why are you?”

I also slept through most of Disney’s The Black Hole (1979) and no one could blame me. By that time I had figured out how to curl into my lecture hall seat in the right way so that I could be comfortable. It was cute.

This Island Earth

One Million B.C. (the 1940 one, not the other one) started a little before five a.m. and that kept my attention, if only because of all of the animals that were harmed or mutilated for its creation.

The first time I brought my son to the marathon was in 2017, when we saw Arrival (2016) and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005). The boy was eleven, he said Arrival was the best movie of that year. He’s never said anything about Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Thankfully, I had brought a toothbrush to the marathon, freshened up and got a cup of coffee. And they had apples! We saw This Island Earth (1955) and breakfast was a whole everything bagel from the Cleveland Bagel Co. with cream cheese and they also had Malley’s stuff here so I had two milk chocolate covered pretzels. It was heaven.

Wall-E

January 2020, four of us came to the marathon specifically to see Twelve Monkeys (1995) and before that, the short French film it was based on, La Jetée (1962). By then, we already knew about COVID-19, it just wasn’t here yet. It was a disturbing evening.

Next up was Terminator 2: Judgement Day, which I hadn’t seen in over thirty years. Forgot how young Ed Furlong is in T2. After, we enjoyed a program of the opening credits to a dozen or so Saturday morning cartoons from the 60s through the aughts.

One year — I think it was 1999 – they showed Until the End of the World (1991) and that was a doozy. A somewhat futuristic noir from Wim Wenders, the obtuse, three-hour plotline was complicated by the fact that the film canisters had gotten out of order, the audience was in revolt. Lone voices in the dark would occasionally cry, “WHERE’S THE SCIENCE FICTION???” and “AUUGGHH!!!”

The Lost World

The Wall-E (2008) screening at 11:30 AM included a trailer for Hello, Dolly! (1969) and shawarma from Aladdin’s. Then we watched The Day the Earth Stood Still (1955) which is possibly the greatest science fiction film of all time. I know this because I have seen it several times, usually at the marathon because they play it so often.

During a tense but quiet moment near the end I loudly observed, “... he came back to life – and his name is CARPENTER!” My riff was met by a cascade of groans and catcalls.

Did you know ..? The Lost World (adapted into a silent film in 1925) is the only short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle not to feature Sherlock Holmes? The midafternoon screening included a live accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis.

Godzilla

For dinner they brought in burgers, and I was surprised to see a large crowd of new audience members file in and fill empty seats for the 6:00 PM screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Rumor has it it was assigned for someone’s class, but who wouldn’t take the opportunity to see Kubrick’s epic? I hadn’t even seen it until last year when it was streaming, and I was excited to see it on a big screen.

There was a bit of acrimony as some joining us had little patience for the riffing coming from those who had been there for almost twenty-four hours. Meanwhile, one of the men’s toilets was down. By intermission the burgers were gone.

Our first CWRU Science Fiction Marathon was probably 1996. I can’t recall going before that time. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984) which was on this year’s bill played that year, too. The riffing when Ellen Barkin appeared got seriously rapey and my partner loudly told them to knock that stuff off, and they did.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Trailers and shorts before the feature are always references – or clues – to the feature about to play. For Secret Film #2 they included trailers for Gorillas in the Mist (1988) and The Whales of August (1987) and the Looney Tunes short Rabbit Fire (1951). The movie? The original Godzilla! (1954) I was asleep by the time he crushed Tokyo. With two flicks left I put my pants back on.

By midnight, I was ready to cash it in and head home, but then I decided what’s the point of having done this if I wasn’t going to see it through? We finish marathons. Besides, I still had that pillow. I dozed through a lot of Deadpool & Wolverine and by 3:30 AM we all staggered out into the frigid morning.

“You’ve done it! You’re 10 times more bored than you were when you started. You swear you’ll never watch another movie for the rest of your life. But just think how good the rest of the winter looks now!”

Monday night my wife and I went to the Cedar Lee.

Visit the blog of silent film composer and accompanist Jeff Rapsis for his own take on this year's marathon.

Here (graphic novel)

"Here" by Richard McGuire
Pantheon Books, 2014

While at school, I was introduced to alternative comics and the then-emerging concept of the “graphic novel.” I’d been into superhero comic books since I was ten, I was even a hanger-on in a specific comic book store (dramatized in The Negative Zone) but in the late 1980s I was beginning to be exposed to works by artists like Harvey Pekar and also Art Spiegelman.

Before the publication of Spiegelman’s award-winning novel Maus, this telling of his father’s experiences during the Holocaust were serialized in Raw, a more-or-less-annual anthology of works from comics artists around the globe, a magazine that was edited by Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly.

Raw vol. 2 issue 1 (1989) included Here, a six-page story by Richard McGuire. Using simple black and white line drawings, McGuire depicts one American living room from one vantage point, the reader witnessing relatively banal events from the present, the past (both recent and distant) and even into the future.

"Here" by Richard McGuire
RAW vol. 2 issue 1, 1989

Perhaps you have played such a game of imagination – what used to be here? Right here? Before there was a house, or Europeans or even people? When this space was occupied by ice, or members of the Iroquois, or those bougie folks I bought this house from over thirty years ago?

McGuire eventually – twenty-five years later, in fact – expanded upon this work into a full-length graphic novel. Also called Here (2014) the images are now in color and the moments more expansive, but only just. There are no grand narratives to follow, no clearly defined characters, no real story, except for the place itself. What it was, what it is, what it will be.

Last year, TriStar Pictures released a film adaptation of Here, directed by Robert Zemeckis, with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, his stars from Forrest Gump. A box office and critical failure, audiences were in part put off by the grand narrative that had been created for it; namely, that aging white Baby Boomers feel disappointed and that if we live long enough, we get old and die. These are not the themes of McGuire’s short story, nor his book.

"Here" directed by
Robert Zemeckis (2024)

Part of McGuire’s conceit (which Zemeckis, always the technically crafty storyteller, faithfully emulates on screen) is the use of panels that either divide the viewed space – again, always the same corner of the same living room, viewed from the same angle – or more often frames that are like windows peering from the established time (labeled in the upper left corner as 1953 say, or 1989, 2014, 2111) and into other eras.

The original short story (1989) included a small panel of a cat in 1999 (the future) walking placidly through the room. This same cat makes an appearance in the novel (2014) and she is still in 1999 (the past). She was always going to cross that room, she always has crossed that room. That’s time.

One performance which has more successfully drafted a grand narrative onto a single, static space is the Olivier Award-winning musical Standing a the Sky’s Edge in which three generations of Sheffielders occupy the same flat in the same housing estate at three different points in history. In one scene, all three timeframes play out simultaneously, dialogue overlapping, the characters from the different years unaware of each other (though the audience certainly is) as they share the space, even unwittingly sharing a single bottle of Henderson’s Relish.

Recently my aunt found a cache of home movies in her basement, from the 1950s and early 1960s, and my cousins had them transferred to video files. These films capture those moments one might expect; vacations, Christmas mornings, they even include my mother’s college commencement. And birthdays. So many birthdays. I could (and who knows, I still may) make a supercut of my Aunt Dede coming through the door to the dining room, bearing a large frosted cake festooned with burning little candles, to be placed before a delighted child.

 

Through the door, with a cake, placed before a child. Through the door, with a cake, placed before a child. In 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961 ... The only thing that changes are the hairstyles.

Several of my plays have taken place over the course of many generations, On the Dark Side of Twilight or The Great Globe Itself. Recently, I have been creating a new piece inspired by recent revelations in my family tree, and I have been inspired to create something which also attempts to present windows through time to tell the story. More on that, hopefully, soon.

I've Got the Shakes (play)

Jan Leslie Harding, Michael Osano, Mary McBride
"I've Got the Shakes" (1995)
Ontological-Hysteric Theater
Photo: Paula Court

Thirty years ago, I was twenty-six years old and all my ends were loose. My first adventure in self-production was buried in earth, my (first) wife was gone along with half the furniture, and I had a hernia.

That also meant I had a unique amount of freedom, and I also had a hot girlfriend living in Washington Heights. It was winter 1995. I took time off from waiting tables at a pizza restaurant in Lyndhurst, packed a bag, my Macintosh PowerBook, and boarded the Amtrak for a week-long stay in the big city.

There is a special kind of bitter frigidity that is standing on a subway platform during an NYC cold snap. On the street, cold can be an assault, a sudden movement of frozen air can seem so personally insulting, and dangerous. Waiting for a train the air does not move, so just stand and feel yourself in the midst of this unforgiving atmosphere as it affects your exposed extremities, and makes its way in. For me, this was a new New York experience, and entirely alien. But I took comfort in the fact that I was not alone.

We both had colds that week, and took it fairly easy due to my condition (I had an operation scheduled for March, she would join me in Cleveland to take care of me – and move here shortly thereafter) but we saw art and took meals and watched movies and listened to records and attended theater.

For over a quarter century (at that time) a hallmark of the New York new year was a new work written, directed and designed by Richard Foreman and produced by his Ontological-Hysteric Theater Company, located in St. Mark’s Church on the LES. Opening in January 1995, I’ve Got the Shakes was a great revelation to me in a year packed with revelations.

(click to enlarge)

I was seeking out the “next thing” I would attempt, seeking out unusual offerings wherever I happened to be, including Cleveland, too, yeah, and later Chicago, and Minneapolis. This turned out to be the only experience with Foreman (total coincidence and absolute humble-brag, my then-girlfriend/now-wife’s cousin was a Foreman player during the aughts, appearing in Zomboid! and Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland, among others) and it left me fascinated but flummoxed, amused and uncomfortable.

Shakes centers on the character of Madeline X, a teacher who does not know how or what to teach, the set a deconstructed schoolroom with characters coming and going, without clear intention, as in a dream, a very lucid dream, though never a nightmare.

In spite of the rather small audience space, the (four) actors ere mic'd, so though each spoke in a whisper they were entirely audible. Madeline X herself spoke in a very constrained, high voice. The effect was to make the room, already crowded with detritus, even more claustrophobic. It was so quiet, I was afraid to move, or make a sound.

The dialogue was absurd, amusing in its subversion of expectation, and witty, but I don’t remember laughing. What did it mean? I wasn’t sure, but I was delighted to be confused by unconventional storytelling.

It also served to subvert sensorial sensation. I found myself leaning in, striving for understanding, to follow a thread, to get it, man, when there would come a loud CLANG and all the characters would spin off in different directions.

My wife remembers the audience rake to have been very severe. “I felt like the audience ay way above the stage,” she said, “looking down. It made me feel like I was watching dolls. Not puppets – dolls.”

We see a popsicle, it is white, you would expect it to be lemon, but then we are told it tastes like fish, and so it does.

This was my new curriculum, my course list was experiencing forms of theater that had not been covered in school. I was no longer satisfied with “going to the theater.” Now I had to learn something I hadn’t known before, Perhaps this is what it means to begin your late 20s.

A warning, included in our programs.
It could have been written today (but for the 900 number).

Source: Artforum

Assessment

Photo: Gabrielle DiDonato

Calendar year 2024 I made sixty-five submissions. There were nineteen live performances of my work in a variety of venues.

Fifteen years ago, I received a fellowship and branded myself a playwright. I had written plays, but I had not yet told myself, given myself permission, to announce to the world that this is what, this is who I am.

Like changing my name at age eighteen, not everyone I knew immediately accepted this change. They would recommend to me plays to perform in, because they knew me as an actor, or plays to direct, because they knew me as a director. They were not interested in my plays.

Even so, I was committed to becoming a successful, professional playwright. All I had to do was to get produced. That is what I believed, I just needed to get produced. What I really needed to do was to write plays.

I made a list, way back then, of plays I wanted to write. Stories I wanted to tell. Scripts that I wanted to bring into existence, where they had not existed before. It was not a short list. I wish I still had that list, but I believe it included subjects like George Michael, Three Globes, Eliot Ness, Grandfather’s Letters. I have written all of these plays.

I had a list of hopes, dreams of plays I might some day write, and I have written those. Since 2010, I have created a catalog of work, no fewer than twenty full-length scripts (and so many more shorter plays) several of which have been produced, even published.

It’s not a career, I cannot survive on the income I receive from the work. But there are those things that are under your control, and there are those things that are not. I have younger colleagues who are unimpressed when I lament about what I describe as my few successes. Because they have always known me as a playwright, that is how they see me and how they think of me.

For that fact alone, I should count myself a success, because that is something I set out to do, to redefine myself and how I am seen in the world, and I have accomplished that.