Assessment

Last Tuesday I sat in the window at Appletree Books, writing new monologues for The Witches. We’d had a reading the night before, of the first fifty-five pages, It went well, people laughed. They cared about what was happening. That was a good sign.

The main characters are three women who work in a roadside attraction, and their ages are relevant to the story. One Millennial, one Gen X, one Boomer. After the reading, one had questions about Morgan, the one in her forties, the overlooked middle child of the trio. She’s overshadowed by the other two, which is, of course, the point.

But we’re not done with the story yet, and so I sat in the window on Cedar Road the next night, writing two monologues for that performer, who plays Morgan and also the enslaved woman from 1692, Ruina. She figures into the opening play-within-the-play in which she accuses Goodwife Miller of being a witch.

It’s an original story culled from so many sources in my head, I am piecing it together carefully. Not too absurd, not too real. I don’t know why I am sharing all of this today, except to wave frantically saying hello, still here. The work is happening.

It’s the kind of inner-monologue I normally would share on my running blog, but since the marathon I haven’t been too interested in running.

This week, this Thanksgiving week, there are many and wonderful things to accomplish and experience. Tomorrow I will be meeting a middle school aged intern at a CMSD school to introduce her to a team of actor-teachers so that she may shadow them for the day before I head off to visit other teams at other Cleveland city schools.

We will discuss your affairs this very
afternoon over a bowl of smoking bishop, Bob!

We’re also having our annual pre-holiday potluck in the office, for which I will once again be providing the Smoking Bishop. As we speak, baked and spiced citrus is soaking in wine and sugar. If I still have my legs tomorrow afternoon, I will be editing prize-winning short stories written by CMSD students for broadcast on the radio in mid-December.

Tuesday is the first of two student matinees of Great Lakes Theater's A Christmas Carol to celebrate the writers of these stories. It’s always a thrill to kick off the holidays in this manner, but it takes a great deal of preparation and occupies my thoughts for most of November.

At the same time, both of my brothers and their families are coming to town for Thanksgiving, which is also a reason for celebration but with it comes all the attendant plotting and planning.

This in addition to all of the holiday planning for my own, nuclear family. We have our personal traditions and as long as the children live in our house we will honor and keep them.

As you can see, much is happening. I wouldn’t have it any other way,

Writer in the Window (2019)

Four years running, I have participated in the "Writers In the Window" event at Appletree Books.

The very first time was in 2016, just before the election. It was hot, the door to the store was propped open, and the Indians were still up in the Series, 3 games to 2. Things looked good.

I sat in the window three times that November, writing a good deal of Red Onion, White Garlic. Last year it was About a Ghoul. I write plays every November, on display in the window of Appletree Books, in full view of Cedar Road rush hour traffic.

Usually I have a laptop, this evening I brought a wooden writer's desk and wrote by hand for two hours, and I daresay I accomplished more in this manner, penning three scenes for The Witches, which I will get to hear read next week

I am lost as to what happens next. But that was also true two hours ago.

Appletree Books is located at 12419 Cedar Rd. in the Cedar-Fairmount District of Cleveland Heights.

Play a Day: Provenance

Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder

For Thursday I read Provenance by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder, and available at New Play Exchange.

Earlier this year I attended an audition and the performer chose as her contemporary piece a monologue I hadn't heard before. When I asked about it, she said it was from The Bone Orchard by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder. She'd found it at New Play Exchange. I will read that someday, today I read this instead.

prov·e·nance (ˈprävənəns) n.
the place of origin or earliest known history of something.
"an orange rug of Iranian provenance"
synonyms: origin, source, place of origin; More
- the beginning of something's existence; something's origin.
"they try to understand the whole universe, its provenance and fate" - a record of ownership of a work of art or an antique, used as a guide to authenticity or quality.
"the manuscript has a distinguished provenance"

It is also the name of the restaurant in the Cleveland Museum of Art. My wife and I love to dine in museums. We also love books, though it would be difficult for me to suggest I love books more than she. She has worked in several bookstores, in New York and Cleveland. I visited her in early 1995 when she was working for Shakespeare & Company, the one on West 81st Street, now demolished.

During her shift I sat in Cafe Lalo and wrote my first full-length play, The Vampyres.

She often laments never having become a librarian. But she is an English teacher at an all-girls school, and while that's not the same thing it feels to me like a related thing. Because though there remains great gender disparity in who gets published, the care and maintenance of books, like the care and maintenance of most things, falls to women.

The best bookstores in Cleveland, Appletree, Loganberry, and Mac's Backs, are all owned and operated by women.

Books are bizarre artifacts; finite, as memory goes, but expansive. Pages have writing on both sides, and collapse into a neat package that can hold thousands of words or stories. Paper is impermanent, easily damaged by water or heat. Even so, some last thousands of years. I have books from my childhood, from my parents' childhood. This CD of priceless personal photographs I burned ten years ago is already damaged and worthless.

Wilder's play is not entirely about books, though that is its entry point. Two women with cross-purposes meet in a library, and the reluctant search for a rare book is on. Her crackling dialogue is positively Beckettian, expressing frustration and futility with knowing wit and absurdity. It is a magical tale about the things we keep, the tasks left undone, and the fear of making connection with those best-suited to take the journey with us.

This month I have taken the opportunity to read so many outstanding plays, so many stories, from such a diverse selection of talented and enchanting writers. In Provenance, one of Wilder's character observes that, "stories are meant to be shared." Isn't it so?

Assessment

It has been two years since I wrote an assessment, which has been a useful tool to reassure myself that, in spite of any sense of inertia, the work continues.

Last week there was a reading of These Are The Times which was very productive, and when I have a moment I will be able to tweak a few things and then, if you can imagine, I will finally be able to begin the submission process. And it only took eight years!

Meanwhile, I composed a piece for Grand Rounds: Four 10-Minute Plays, which will be performed on December 6th at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage as part of the exhibit Beyond Chicken Soup: Jews In Medicine.

Just yesterday I was a "Writer In the Window" at Appletree Books, brainstorming a writing collaboration with my colleague Chennelle which will make its formative debut in early 2018, and tomorrow evening rehearsals begin for a play I will be performing in, to be announced.

Basically, after months feeling a bit adrift, November is packed. Suddenly, I have no time. And you know what? That is a good thing. When I am pressed I am most productive, which is stupid but there it is.

What is not good is how I have almost entirely stopped exercising. Nerve pain has made working out this past summer less than fun, but the fact is I have not gone for a run in over a month. Seriously, October 1 was my last time out. I haven't run so little since 2011, when I was taking antidepressants.

But the kids are all right. My education work is meaningful and sustaining. What I most need is to (literally) get off my ass, and move.

Appletree Books (three)

Hour One

My final afternoon in the window at Appletree Books. Today is cool, in the thirties, but with bright sunshine cast through the window. Lucky for me, I am the only writer here this afternoon, I could choose the one with shade, the other is quite toasty. A solarium.

Remembered to get a cup of decaf, no caffeine after three, or noon if I can help it. No wifi in the window, which is just as well. I should be writing, anything, not checking social media. Nothing there to make me smile, anyway, certainly not inspirational.

I have been knitting together two Indonesian folk tales, and have been pleased with the results, but now I need to conceive of the third act and I am coming up short. I believe I require some nonsense writing. But not right now.

Instead, there is a script I will return to. There are so many scripts I have created in the past eight years to which I have not returned. That is all right, you know. But this one has called to me since the election, or rather the entire Year of Cleveland.

Hour Two

Madness sets in. Early evening drowsiness. Ugh, decaf. Set aside the old play, I was enjoying reading it too much to have an editorial eye. Instead, I returned to the folk tale, and asked questions, questions I turned into statements. Then I thought of my father and asked questions about my father, questions I turned into statements.

WHITE GARLIC

Are you the spirit of our mother?

QUEEN PARAKEET

You may think of me as your mother, if that will comfort you.

WHITE GARLIC

It feels as though our mother has been gone for a long time.

RED ONION

She has only been gone a year.

WHITE GARLIC

Soon she will have been gone many years.

RED ONION

Where do you come from, green bird?

QUEEN PARAKEET

I am the Queen of the Parakeets.

WHITE GARLIC

We are among royalty?

QUEEN PARAKEET

You may think of me as royalty, if that will impress you.

David Hansen © 2016

No idea if any of this is going anywhere.

This is not how I work. I run. I think. Maybe, eventually, I get an idea. Then I write. Staring into the screen or jotting down notes at random when I don't "get" it yet, when I don't have a clue. That is maddening.

Good Lord, I just started drumming my fingers on the table. That is not something I ever do.

At long last, progress has been achieved. Sitting still in an odd space can be exciting, until it is no longer odd. But it is a charming bookstore, listening to conversation between customers and employees was a delightful distraction.

Three weeks ago we were in a different place, but we continue to progress in spite of the difficulty. 

Appletree Books is located at 12419 Cedar Rd. in the Cedar-Fairmount District of Cleveland Heights.

Appletree Books (two)

Back in the window at Appletree Books, on the first day of snow. I was only planning on two slots, but then my wife had several good sessions back-to-back and I have also found myself writing a great deal more than I have in some time. Getting into the window was something I longed for, to be out in the world in more ways than one.

The last time I was here it was seventy degrees, we had not yet lost the World Series, let alone the election. I was anxious, but not yet defeated. Being here is my way of saying you know what? I am still not defeated.

During Fall, fifteen years ago, I had two friends who were producing plays in New York City. One was bringing a production from here to there, a very personal work, to be presented at a theater festival. The other a friend from here, now living there, producing a new political satire.

At that time my wife and I were newly married, still childless, though only by default. It was 2001. I had only just begun my work in theater education with Great Lakes. We had expected a child, and we lost him. Taking a weekend in early October, booking a flight to see theater in NYC on my own, this would be an exciting diversion.

After September 11, my friend here decided it would be inappropriate to present something so personal, something that they felt was insignificant against the backdrop of recent events. I disagreed, but understood. I am not sure how I would have felt had it been my play, my decision.

My other friend's production, scheduled to premiere September 13, its opening was postponed for only one week. I still had my ticket for early October. The President told us to buy things, the Mayor of New York implored us to visit. So it was that on a Friday evening in October I was on our final descent into LaGuardia, flying over the western shore Manhattan at dusk, looking down upon what was already called Ground Zero, entirely lit as salvage crews worked 24/7.

Everyone was in the plane peering out that side of the plane. There were hushed murmurs. It was breathtaking.

One day I should share my reflections on the play I saw, which I enjoyed a great deal, though it must be said it was a very unusual circumstance in which to see a musical especially one which was so funny and dark and satiric. The music was so happy.

The night before the performance I met a number of my friends, including the producer, and asked if it were appropriate to go downtown, to look. It didn't feel right, somehow. I did not wish to gawk.

My friends urged me to, they said I must go downtown. I should bear witness. That it was important.

In the shadow of terrible events, it can be challenging to find that place in your heart to continue with things that are dwarfed in comparison. Creation can be stimulated by personal tragedy, but it can often be stifled.

My daughter is much better at this than I am. When she is sad, she paints and her work is so beautiful.

But recent events, while they have not busted open in me a drive to create something new, they have provided a focus and a desire to bear down and complete what I have already started, and I am here to continue that work.

Because, as the man says, "I still have so much work to do."

Writing In Our Windows continues through the month of November at Appletree Books, you can participate by signing up here.

Many thanks to the folks at Appletree for setting this up. See you on Tuesday, November 22.

Appletree Books (one)

That's me in the corner.

No, when I originally signed up to participate to write in the front window of Appletree Books on Cedar Road in celebration of NaNoWriMo, I did not imagine it would be seventy-five degrees, nor that the Cleveland baseball team would be one win way from the World Series. Honestly, I would rather have taken up my friend's invitation to enjoy a little of that energy over a cocktail at Hodge's or a beer at Parnell's.

Instead, I am sitting in the window of Appletree Books. Trying to write.

It's a little warm, but at least the front door, which is right next to me, because I am sitting in the front window, is open. I like the sound of the end-of-day-traffic. I also like to watch the people walking by. They smile. Why not? It's seventy-five degrees out and we are in the World Series and there's this guy, typing in the window of the bookstore. What's not to smile about?

Maybe that Donald Trump has a strong chance of winning the election one week from today. Try not to think about that. There is writing to be done.

I have also signed up to write in the window at Appletree Books in three weeks, when there may very possibly be snow on the ground. Not only within the bounds of possibility, that is a thing that happens here.

Sunset over Cedar Road

Anyhow, these are anxieties I have brought with me, and I am working to purge them now, in these first few minutes, because I actually like being here. My tiny space, set up high from the sidewalk, in plain view, creating.

What must they think? My God, what is that? That is a writer, my boy! Perhaps he is working on a novel, or if nothing so grand or important, we may assume he is perhaps writing a play. He looks far too approachable to be a poet.

Except I'm not. I am writing a blog. Ye gods, avert your eyes, my son. No one wants to see that shit.

I like this chair, it keeps my posture straight.

Okay, enough. There's a play to be considered.

Many thanks to the folks at Appletree for setting this up. See you on Tuesday, November 22.