"Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare Guerrilla Theater Company, 1994
"Let's talk." - Romeo and Juliet, III.v
The last time I yelled at an actor was in 1994.
We were close to opening Romeo and Juliet at the Actors’ Gym (current site of the Bourbon Street Barrel Room) for Guerrilla Theater Company. It was one of those moments when the entire company crosses the stage, a pantomime, as music and recorded narration plays.
I was seated in the house. I could hear chatter throughout the space, especially out in the lobby, and it was those folks who needed to center first, setting off the action. I was pretty sure they weren’t paying attention, and I called the cue anyway.
The music started, and … nothing. No one entered, as I had assumed. I hollered for the music to stop, and from my seat I cried for everyone to stop fucking around and pay attention – to act like professionals.
There were murmurs of assent and understanding from the far corners of the space and we continued without further incident.
I was twenty-six. I have lived well more than another lifetime since then, and I cannot recall shouting in anger in a theatrical setting ever since. Not at Night Kitchen, not at Bad Epitaph, not in my current position. I have taught myself not to lose control; yelling is never helpful, and it may very well be harmful. Better not to.
"You Can't Take It With You" by Kaufman & Hart Bay High School, 1982
Our drama teacher in high school yelled at me exactly once (well, twice – the other time was in a class, that is story for another time) and it was for the exact same reason. I was a freshman, it was tech week for the recently mentioned production of You Can’t Take It With You, and I was goofing off in the house when I heard my cue.
Panicked, I bolted through the auditorium and leapt onto the stage, ducking around the curtain in a desperate attempt to make my entrance late when our director held the action and dressed my down good. It was probably that moment I had in mind when I scolded the Guerrilla company. Perhaps that’s why I did it.
Are there those who enjoy anger? Who luxuriates in it? That anger is the way they get things done and that is a necessary avenue to success? Because I don’t see it. I have never been so alienated from a cast as I was from the Romeo and Juliet company, for a variety of reasons. It was quite the education. But shouting in anger is the end of open communication. Let’s figure things out together. Let’s talk.
Junior year at Ohio University, I was preparing a soliloquy from Hamlet, the one that begins “O, that that this too, too solid flesh …” The day I presented it in workshop for our voice and movement teachers, I was asked why I had chosen this particular piece.
I could have been honest and said, “I don’t know.” I could have said it was the first monologue in the first script I picked up yesterday. I can’t remember what I actually said, but I am sure I tried to bullshit my way through. I was worried I might be asked to choose a different piece, and I’d already worked on this one for over an hour and I did not want to start again.
But they wanted to know, what interested me about the character? Why Hamlet? And the more they asked, the more embarrassed and defensive I became because the fact was, I knew nothing about Hamlet.
I was fortunate enough, attending Bay High School in the early 1980s, that I could still benefit from the expansive liberal arts education that had been afforded to the teeming mass of my Baby Boomer antecedents. We weren’t merely offered the same English curriculum provided to every grade level (English I, English II, etc.) but quarter classes in a variety of genres and disciplines.
I took classes in Journalism, radio drama, Death in Literature, and courses in both Shakespeare Comedy and Shakespeare Tragedy. It was like a college curriculum. We even had a quarter course in Vonnegut, if you can even imagine that.
Richard Burton & Alfred Drake Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 1964
For Shakespeare’s Tragedies we read Hamlet, King Lear, and Romeo & Juliet (we had all read Macbeth in eighth grade.) We watched the BBC adaptation of King Lear starring Laurence Olivier and John Hurt (1983) and Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968). But we listened to the 1964 Broadway Cast Recording of Hamlet, starring Richard Burton and directed by John Gielgud.
I cannot speak for my classmates, but I absolutely loved these studio recordings. What I remember most was how Burton brought out Hamlet’s great, cynical humor, which I had missed on the page. Wry, sarcastic, incisive, bitter. The guy was an asshole, and so was I.
And so, several years later, it made sense to choose a piece from this play to rehearse for class, but as was normally the case during my undergrad years, I hadn’t bothered to return to the text. I knew nothing about Hamlet.
Senior year in high school, Mr. Knapp assigned E.M. Forster's short story The Machine Stops. What seemed charmingly prescient in 1986 has become alarmingly so in the almost thirty years that have passed.
In brief. two hundred years into the future (the year 2109, according to Forster, best known for novels like Howard's End, A Room With a View and Passage to India) humanity will have destroyed the surface of the planet, and created a self-exiled under the surface of the planet where every individual human lives their existence in single room where all necessities are provided by The Machine.
No one desires to come into direct contact with anyone else, all communication is conducted through The Machine. They spend all leisure time (which is to say, all non-resting or feeding time) staring into the screen, through which they communicate and receive thoughts, messages and "ideas".
To my teenage mind, this was a remarkable turn-of-the-century concept of television. I had no idea of how computers and what we would later call the Internet would occupy our potential for expression or communication, and the similarity between Forster's world and this is much more accurate than that of Wells or even Bradbury.
However, let us return to 1986. Mr. Knapp asked what contemporary event came to mind when reading this story. A recent (two weeks ago) return to my alma mater reminded me of how reticent my contemporaries are to volunteering responses. So I do not believe my memory is too inaccurate when I suggest that a fat second or two went by, no one answered, and I finally put my hand up to suggest, "Chernobyl?"
Yes, that is exactly what he was suggesting. The Chernobyl disaster occurred on April 26. (Side note, at Prom that year we were served Chicken Kiev, which made for a number of tasteless jokes.) Since that time, the threat of and benign disinterest in global climate change suggests that it will not take any specific "accident" to drive us underground.
Also, too ... in reference to our capacity for viewing as a solitary intellectual endeavor, our English teacher inquired about any or all solitary activities, and whether they were not in and of themselves, selfish activities, even if they were arguably healthful. He was and is a marathon runner. Hours and hours on the road, away from his growing children, wasn't that inherently self-involved, even if it didn't render him on of Forster's pale, formless blobs of humanity?
This was an element I made reference to in my solo performance And Then You Die (How I Ran A Marathon in 26.2 Years). Since that time I have questioned my pursuit of running and how much time it takes from my family. I have since reconciled that fact that every minute I spent exercising gives back two that may be lost to a sedentary lifestyle.
In any event, this was one of the formative works of my youth. In my 30s, I thought occasionally of adapting a play from this material. Fortunately for me, Eric Coble did it first.
Commissioned by the Hiram College Center for Literature, Medicine and the Biomedical Humanities, Eric wrote a one-act stage play, which was presented at a symposium at Hiram and later at the Ingenuity Festival in Cleveland in 2005. I missed those productions, but asked Eric if I could read it. Centering as it does on two protagonists, Vashti and her son Kuno, with a dozen or more voices coming through The Machine, I felt it would make an excellent radio drama.
Following the success of our radio version of I Hate This in late 2005, WCPN producer Dave DeOreo asked, and now, what next? I suggested The Machine Stops. Then I asked Eric.
Creating this show was a particular delight, involving as it did some of my favorite voice talents (Jazmin Corona, Tim Keo, Nick Koesters, RaSheryl McCreary, Dawn Youngs) and giving Dennis Yurich the chance to create some truly delicious themes and sound effects. In particular, the subtle, throbbing humming of The Machine was unsettling in the extreme.
Also, we employed a number of Foley effects, executed by Kelly Elliott, inspired by the works of Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and Terry Gilliam (Brazil), among others.
Be sure to listen to the Q&A with playwright Eric Coble at the end of the broadcast. The reference to MySpace may startle you.
The very first time I directed a show was senior year in high school, Living Together by Alan Ayckbourn. There were three performances on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday night in early 1986. Opening night I sat in the middle of the house. There was a point during the beginning of the second act where Norman (Steve Pack) was splayed out on the floor, intoxicated, and someone could not remember their line.
I do not know who it was, and even if I did I would not rat them out here. But for a long, awkward moment two or three actors stood over him, looking down, none of them saying anything. My heart was beating in my throat, and the next line was on my lips. I had never been in this experience before, and I did not know what to do. I could have blurted out the line myself, "prompting" them, but I thought that would suck terribly, if I did that. So I didn't. Someone jumped to the next cue, the scene continued. That horrible moment was over, and there was not another like it during the entire run.
It is odd to think that my company for Henry VIII last performed that show a week and a half ago, not to perform it again until this Saturday night in Mentor. The other night I had a dream that this next performance was actually in a theater (not outdoors) and probably my high school stage. Just as the Queen's Vision was to begin, one of the Cleve Shakes company members - not an actual company member, I have no idea who she was supposed to be - wearing a tank top, cut-offs and flip-flops ran out onto the stage with a styrofoam cafeteria tray.
It was a segmented cafeteria tray, but not an ordinary cafeteria tray, this one was about the width of a picnic table. It had on it a grilled sandwich, about the size of a small child, and some enormous kettle chips. This intruding stagehand began to roll the sandwich in the chips. Then she got on the tray and rolled around on the tray herself.
I have no idea what the symbolism is here, all I can tell you is that she was ruining my show.
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