Wrap-Up | BorderLight 2026

Mike Frye

BorderLight 2026 has closed. I had gotten myself a “Binge on Fringe” pass so that I could make plentiful reservations without thinking about the cost each time. No, I didn’t max out the pass, but that’s fine. Let's call it a donation.

Saturday I made the error of booking some shows back-to-back, I don’t recommend it. You fret about how long the show you are watching will go over and then run the risk of entering the next show late like a douche.

By noon I’d decided to just drop one of the shows I had planned to see and relaxed. Maybe a little too relaxed. No one need eat an entire jumbo pretzel at Hofbräuhaus all by themselves.

I arrived late to Bell, Book and Discount Cocktails, and chose to lurk just outside the open door of the Grille like the incubus from Fuseli’s Nightmare. Like a creep.

Later, I was on my way from one place to somewhere else when I ran into Bell/Book’s Carrie Williams at the Patio, part of an SOR crowd enjoying Tales From the Bard. Improvisor Mike Frye (with musical accompaniment by Jack Routhier) spins a sung and spoken yarn based on audience interactions.

I had no idea what the plot was (hardly the point) when he announced the arrival of Old Father Time. And oh God yes, he was looking directly at me. I was pressed into service, and executing my role as instructed, hobbling in pain and just as suddenly spry. Then old. Older. It was a hoot.

So, I can honestly say I performed at BorderLight this year. See you in 2027!

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

Blessed Unrest: A Fantasia on Martha Graham's Demons | BorderLight 2026

Anne J. McEvoy

Someone needs to write a book about Anne McEvoy. Many know her as a local theater actor and director. She has played most Cleveland area stages — and also her streets as a historic interpreter.

Did you also know she co-founded Nature's Bin in the 1970s, which was not only an important local food source but provided vocational training for those with developmental disabilities?

I first got to know Anne when we were both cast in You Can't Take It With You at Great Lakes Theater in 2005, and soon after we played together in The Dark Lady of the Sonnets for the GLT outreach tour.

She's originated roles in a few of my plays, including my adaptation of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and during the quarantine she was a player in Savory Taṇhā for Cleveland Public Theatre. 

And with Women in History she has interpreted a slew a memorable characters, including Sarah Bernhardt, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Abigail Adams, and Dorothy Fuldheim, among many others. She also performed the role of Mary, mother of Jesus, in Mamaí Theater Company's final production, The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín, a production marked by crowds of protestors lining the avenue currently occupied by the BorderLight Festival. 

William & Elizabeth
"The Dark Lady of the Sonnets"
(2006)

In Blessed Unrest: A Fantasia on Martha Graham's Demons (written by the performer, directed by Jamie Koeth) McEvoy embodies the legendary mother of modern dance as she grapples with the limitations of her physical self. The unapologetic anger she feels that can no longer dance, anger and resentment, but never self-pity.

Emily Kuntz makes two remarkable appearances, first as a memory of a young Graham, dancing in ponytail and black headband. Later, as a contemporary student, providing the septuagenarian Graham the opportunity to find a way back from despair.

It's a bravura performance from McEvoy, and one I hope finds a larger local audience some time soon.

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

Our Souls Did Touch | BorderLight 2026

Kiara Sylvie Durbin

I first saw Kierstan Kathleen Conway when played Kattrin in a local production of Mother Courage and Her Children. Kattrin is the daughter of the titular character, so traumatized by her wartime experiences she has been rendered voiceless. 

My wife and I were both so taken by Conway's performance and I strongly recommended the folks at Talespinner Children's Theatre ask her to audition for my new play, The Toothpaste Millionaire. 

It wasn't until after I had suggested she audition that I realized I had never heard her speak. No matter, she was just the right person to play Kate.

Conway is not only a talented actor, she is also a photographer, theater producer and playwright, and she wrote Our Souls Did Touch which was presented in the Grille at the Hermit Club. I don't know enough about the Hermit Club to know why they call it that, the paneling and baby grand piano more befits a space called the Parlor than the Grille, but it was ideal for this production.

Shows like this are like an elegant gift box, when a fringe production is assigned an unusual space which they subtly inhabit (I speak from experience). I can't even say whether Conway's team brought in a single piece of furniture, they didn't need to, it was all right there, down to the small piano lamp which narrator Truth Alice Taylor, channeling the spirit of Hedda Hopper, would use to briefly illuminate her space to provide context and innuendo.

Our Souls is a fictional piece inspired by the kind of sordid tales found in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon, though in this case "sordid" doesn't involve ugly details like Coke bottles or low overpasses but instead the lives of people in non-heteronormative relationships.

Complimenting the space, Conway created handwritten programs in the form of love letters, and designed a series of devastatingly stylish period looks. The playwright is also blessed with a classic face, even in her starlet character's most difficult moments, she looked as though she could be captured for a black and white still for Look. Her paramour, a journalist played by Kiara Sylvie Durbin, was styled in a number of Katherine Hepburnesque pants looks, each more confident than the one before.

This is what I am talking about. Big stories, big talent, small budget well spent, a dedication to the details. Well done.

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

Enjoy This EP | BorderLight 2026

With book, music and lyrics by Paige Scott, Enjoy This EP is a one-hour play from Indianapolis that chronicles the lyrical annihilation of a twit. Zachariah Stonerock is the picture perfect embodiment of a critic, specifically a music critic. 

But this isn't Sideways, the white male snob slouching towards middle age does not charm the attractive younger woman in spite of his many unpleasant attributes. At least, not for long. Not only does Lisa M. (gorgeously voiced by Hannah Boswell) put up with very little of his shit, unbeknownst to him she is an artist, a musician, a good one, and she does not require his validation. 

Not that she wouldn't like it. She just doesn't need it. Or him. It's a really great takedown of the myth of the put-upon, self-styled intellectual snob who really, really deserves love, a character that Paul Giamatti has played several times, actually.

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

Well-Balanced Dads | BorderLight 2026

Hot Dad Photo Shoot

This wasn't on my list. Creators Britt Anderson and Richie Schiraldi put out a call on social media for dad jokes, so I offered my favorite joke ever.

I saw my doctor for an examination the other day and he told me I needed to stop masturbating. When I asked him why, he said so I can examine you.

They private messaged me to say it's a good joke, but more of a "dirty uncle joke" than a dad joke. I hadn't noticed that theirs is a family show. I sheepishly responded with an apology and deleted my joke.

But then I posted another one.

Q: Why was six afraid of seven?

A: 6/7 lol

This one went over much better, because I also hadn't realized they were offering free tickets to Well-Balanced Dads for the best dad joke — and I won! Thank you, Britt and Richie! Eventually, I get it right.

And this is a show I would have been sorry to have missed. I did not assume it would have a meaningful plot. I also did not anticipate the Hotel California Dream Ballet. Dick and Dale and neighbors and dads and great friends who go on a dad-only camping weekend in a show which asks the question, "Why are dads?" 

Anderson and Schiraldi are very talented acrobats and hilarious comedians and improvisors. There were several opportunities for audience interaction (our performance included a small child who did a spot-on impersonation of an irritated parent who wanted the monkey business in the back seat to stop or they were going to turn this car around) and a coda that illustrated just how much more there is to being a dad than fathering.

There's that word again. 

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

It’s all a MESS! An Evening of **Smutty** Monologues with Convergence-Continuum | BorderLight 2026

Not their costume. Oh, no.

It’s not just that It’s All a Mess is a collection of monologues written by great local playwrights like Klae Bainter, EN Brettrager,  JC Cifranic, Samantha Cocco, Léo Fez (pictured), Mike Geither, and Christopher Johnston, and performed by some of my favorite local actors, it’s the fact that Convergence-Continuum has reintroduced the word SMUT to the popular conversation. That fact by itself tickled my trigger.

Making sex funny is hard (I said "hard") or at least it is when you are worried about offending anyone. It's a fine line, and so I have got to hand it to each of these playwrights, and this team of talented interpreters, that the evening was not only hilarious, but also earnest, hurt, kinky, angsty, and joyful.

In what was perhaps my favorite piece of the evening, it was also ornithological. Big ups to Michael Anderson for giving us the horniest bird obsessive since Matthew Modine.

You can look that up. 

I have eight shows (nine if you count another double-bill) booked for tomorrow. While none of them overlap, I am curious as to whether or not I will be able to successfully dash from one venue to another on time. Curious, but I refuse to be anxious about it.

My wife had a piece in the New York Fringe in 2001. I was running sound and had a lot of time on my hands. I think I saw sixteen different shows. If I play my cards right, I may see as many shows this weekend!

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

Closed Loop of Consanguinity | BorderLight 2026

Carol Laursen & Emily Liptow

I am always so grateful to have the opportunity to catch something I missed the first time around. Emily Liptow and Carol Laursen were developing Closed Loop of Consanguinity at Cleveland Public Theatre as part of Soft Launch last winter (where our elder child was also presenting) but we missed it. Here it is again!

Carol and I met at Ohio University and we performed together in Michael Frayn's Wild Honey in 1990, and later in Eight Impressions of a Lunatic for Red Hen Productions. I have directed her In Shakespeare. We are both citizens of Cleveland Heights, her children were child-minders for our children. I love Carol.

Closed Loop of Consanguinity is a brief, semi-improvised dance and movement piece in which the two artists explore the space and objects and each other and at times even the audience. The event begins with a voiceover inviting the audience to switch seats, to have a different perspective, and I kept thinking of that as I watched them, asking myself what their perspective was at any given moment.

After the show an audience member I was speaking with wondered what "consanguinity" means and I told them it's having a common ancestor, to be connected by blood.  I also admitted I looked that up before the show.

Consanguinity is on a double-bill with In Visible Orbit, created and performed by Greenhouse. They perform strenuous choreography to anxiety-inducing music, allowing us to bear witness to the physical toll the work takes on them, at the same time how dedicated they are to the performance. It's a celebration of grace and exhaustion, pain and exhilaration.

While I was there I ran into playwright Eric Coble. He strongly recommends H.O.P.E., Natasha Mirny's modern interpretation of the myth of Pandora. 

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

I Hate Memory! | BorderLight 2026

 "The past is a dick."

Esme Thorne (with Balint)

My brother introduced me to the works of Jim Jarmusch in the late 1980s. When I first visited his new St. Paul apartment in 1989 he had a handsomely framed poster of Stranger Than Paradise. It's one of his favorite movies, and we often quote that or Down By Law whenever it seems appropriate. And cousin Eva taught me about Screamin' Jay Hawkins.

Much later, I took my fourteen year-old son to see The Dead Don't Die, Jarmusch's 2019 zombie comedy film. I thought it was okay, but he really dug it. I thought I recognized Fern the waitress, and sure enough, that was also Eszter Balint. It was crazy. I have only ever thought of her as a teenager, but she's my age.

The other night she made an appearance at the Cinematheque, and you might ask why she would come to Cleveland for the screening of a film she made over forty years ago, or maybe you were already aware that her musical memoir I Hate Memory! is playing BorderLight.

A Hungarian immigrant, and the child of dissident theater artists, she first settled in New York City in the late 1970s. They lived at the Chelsea Hotel. No, really. She was in the thick of it, at that time, in that city, as an adolescent. As a child.

The show is a happening, as Balint tells stories, plays songs (great band) penned by herself ... and Stew! The young musician and actor Esme Thorne takes turns as the teenage Balint. The playwright's own vocal quality is a like a punk rock Blossom Dearie. There are projections and banter. It's a play, it's a concert.

It's a rough show. I mean that in any number of ways. It is a rare opportunity. Get there.

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

Gr33n Hamzies & Eggoes | BorderLight 2026

Dan Zanes was lead singer of the Del Fuegos and a wild garage rocker and swiller of Miller High Life until he started having kids and that's when he started recording children's music. I, too, had not considered the child audience until I started fathering them.

Fathering. What a terrible verb. I digress.

Faye Hargate and Renee Schilling collaborated on the Visual Theatre Award winning Her Mark for BorderLight 2023 and they (with Joan Hargate and Jeremy Paul) have devised a new exploration of motherhood with the creation of Gr33n Hamzies & Eggoes, an original and exploratory art installation for the very, very young.

I felt a bit odd, I knew I would, appearing as an adult without a child escort, but they don't judge. The space had just opened and there were already five kids with their two adults, and Hargate and Schilling, costumed as what appeared to me to be DIY store associates were making suggestions and accommodating needs as the child audience explored and commented and created.

Dan Zanes with my family (2005)

I was provided with stickers I was told I could put anywhere I liked (I put hem up high, there seemed to be no stickers up there for some reason) and was offered a basket of "dream boxes" the team had created previously in collaboration with a CHUH school.

In fact, dreams were a theme, the walls featured trees that asked "Where do you go when you dream?" with answers like, "I hear music in my dreams," and "I see my dog, he is no longer with us."

The night before I had dreamed that we lived in a society where cannibalism was permissible, but it was unseemly to discuss it. You had to be very discreet when disposing of long bones. I didn't write any of this on the trees.

Before I left there was a group activity where our hosts read the Dr. Seuss book which inspired the title of the installation. There were many questions from the children. How did you set this all up? What is that? Are you a rapper?

It's a calming, welcoming room, and the kids I saw appeared very happy to be there. This is an non-ticketed event. I recommend bringing a young person. 

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

In the Castle of Eternal Sunset | BorderLight 2026

Hogan Wayland & Brady Craddock

I might have missed this one entirely, were it not for another company having to unfortunately pull from the festival. I looked at the performance map and In the Castle of Eternal Sunset was playing at the same time so I swapped my tickets for that, without even looking up what it was about.

And it just so happens to be a play about the randomness of experience! Epically poignant.

The show is being presented in the upstairs space at Parnell's, a room I have spent much time in but God as my witness I can't remember if I have been up there since Covid. Waiting at the bottom of the steps I met Lethan Candlish, who is also presenting at BorderLight this year, and he handed me an honest-to-goodness promotional card for his show, Who Am I, Again?

Handing out your card at festivals was such a big deal in the early aughts, by the time we did Double Heart in 2013 it seemed to be a dying art. For And Then You Die in 2009, I handed out actual bottled water with the show attached as a sticker, which was burdensome but I'm proud of it. Which is all to say, go see Lethan's show! He brought cards!

Lethan Candlish

In the Castle of Eternal Sunset is written by Charles Green and comes to us from Knoxville, Performed by Brady Craddock and Hogan Wayland, an audience of twelve circles the game table as these two play Dungeons & Dragons and navigate an epic quest. 

There is a random element; on the throw of a die, an audience member will read a passage from a game manual, a poem of memory, nostalgia, and loss, while the agile performers execute tableaus of connection and discovery. This participation lent the proceedings an element of electricity and alertness.

Our crew didn't play Dungeons & Dragons, we played its scrappy knock-off, Tunnels & Trolls, which had fewer rules and took itself a lot less seriously. The game master was usually Fred, and his adventures were tightly wound, fraught with excitement, and strewn with hoary in-jokes and characters that were usually a thinly veiled swipe and either someone in the room or one of our usual targets. Eternal Sunset is much more earnest, and reflected a sincerity we were all too protective to permit. 

After the show I had to dash, we were seeing Lucinda Williams at the Beachland Ballroom. I have plans to see many more shows Friday night!

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

The Protest Café | BorderLight 2026

What if the United States threw a once-in-a-generation celebration and nobody came? Well, after last weekend, we all know the answer to that that question. When I was a kid, the American government commissioned all kinds of things to celebrate the Bicentennial, including the short film People People People, created by animators John and Faith Hubley. 

It is a surprisingly frank depiction of life on this continent (or this part of it, anyway) from before the arrival of European colonizers, and including some of the more unsettling aspects of what they (we) did once they (we) got here. The Bicentennial was a celebration, but it was also an education. And even the government, for a brief moment, strove to educate people.

First on my dance card for BorderLight 2026 was a selection of American protest songs, The Protest Café, bringing together some of my favorite folks. I have seen Eric Schmiedl and Tina D. Stump work together, most recently BUCKEYES; Buses & Baseball at last year's BorderLight, and this show also brings in Chennelle Bryant-Harris and Chelsea Cannon, both of whom composed the entire cast for Schmiedl's play adaptation Huck Finn, which I produced for the Great Lakes Theater outreach tour in 2018.

Chelsea & Chennelle

The program began before the rains began, it was a lovely evening. Eighty degrees, but cloudy, on the Patio at the Hermit Club. I had enough time after work to grab a pint at the bar and settle in to a table, where I found familiar faces and made new friends. I am reminded of previous festivals in other cities, where I felt alone and desperate for connection. Here, I know everyone. Like, really. It makes me so happy. It feels like home.

The Protest Cafe is brief and joyful, but powerful. We were invited to sing along, and I was delighted not only by how many lyrics I knew, but by the songs they chose. I was expecting something old-timey. Union songs! The Bourgeois Blues! Instead we were treated to protest songs from the entire span of the last century — and even one from this.

Looking around, I saw a one or two (white male) faces that weren't necessarily happy with the menu of songs. I wonder what they thought was going was going to be protested, the King of England? The First Amendment? Immigration? There's a spirited rendition of Irving Berlin's When That Man Is Dead and Gone. It was written about Hitler, but if in hearing it you are thinking about someone else, someone in particular, well surely that's his fault and not yours.

The company is inviting and warm, and so very patriotic. This one's free, but you need to make a reservation as seating is limited.

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

BorderLight Theatre Festival (2026)

When the BorderLight Theatre Festival debuted in 2019, I was so excited! I have had several delightful experiences participating in theater festivals from New York to Minnesota to Alaska, and the thought of having our own, right here in Cleveland? The possibilities were thrilling.

I have been grateful to have had plays in the past three festivals, by accident and by design. Give Me Your Keys commissioned and produced Step Nine in 2023, Talespinner Children’s Theatre remounted their spring production of The Toothpaste Millionaire in 2024, and I self-produced The Right Room in 2025.

This year, while I do not have a show in BorderLight, I have made plans to see as many shows as possible. While I expect there to be a lot of my friends in the festival in any given year, I have so many friends in the festival this year!

Some of the shows I am dead chuffed to attend include (but is not limited to) Eszter Balint’s punk rock memoir play I Hate Memory!, Kierstan Kathleen Conway’s queernoir Our Souls Did Touch, and Anne J. McEvoy’s monodrama Blessed Unrest: a Fantasia on Martha Graham’s Demons.

I plan to report on what I see and hear this weekend, check back to see my posts and follow me on Instagram. And tell me what to see!

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

How I Spent My Summer (2025)

Bridal Falls, Goat Island, NY

Three months. Summer has been ending earlier and earlier, this year it began earlier, too.

To celebrate our eldest’s graduation from college, we planned an international journey, a vacation in Spain. We hadn’t taken our children on a transatlantic expedition since they were very, very young, not since I brought I Hate This to the UK. They don’t even remember that trip, only in photos.

First, however, a snag. I thought I had a valid passport, and I did, but it was due to expire. We noted this days before our departure. Renewal necessitated an urgent drive to Buffalo, which was in its way a not unpleasant prelude to the season, which included a fine cocktail in the hotel bar, and a rainy day stroll in Niagara Falls State Park, waiting for my ID to be processed.

Fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes in the presence of Bridal Falls. I live for moments like this.

Bilbao, Spain

When folks ask what my favorite part of our Spanish vacation was, you will forgive me for saying it was the opportunity to spend ten, responsibility-free days in the company of the three people I love most in the world. Social anxiety issues aside, our kids are excellent travelers. They are not only open to interesting, sometimes unplanned experiences, unusual spaces and food, they are also very good communicators and check in when they need a break. I am also better at this than I was as a young person, and that is thanks to them.

Our eldest’s achievements inspired this excursion, so the emphasis was on art. We saw the Prado, and the Reina Sophia. We attended the Guggenheim Bilbao, and finally the Segrada Familia. However, we also took in a little jazz with the boy, happening upon a barside trio outside the Guggenheim, and the David Pastor Quintet in Barcelona. I tagged the bandleader on my socials; a brief interaction revealed the connection between him and the head of the boy’s department at UC. Small world, indeed.

Great Lakes Theater Camp

I am always seeking new and better ways to lead, instruct and create. This is as true at our annual summer arts camp as in any other arena, and not only did the team put on some pretty amazing performances, I was developing new ideas as how to best curate an all too brief playwriting workshop, and how best to showcase the work.

We had about a half hour, every day (which is to say, for only six or seven days) for a small cohort of middle school aged campers to write short plays, which then received staged readings by high school aged campers. Everyone agreed the work was good, and I have some powerful thoughts about how to make the experience more exciting for all involved next year.

Peter Voinovich
"Churchill at War"
Actors Summit Productions

The eldest and I turned out for the No Kings protest where I spotted Fred Armisen casually walking past om his way to the opening of the SNL exhibit at the Rock Hall. By his gaze he seemed either impressed or bewildered by the Free Stamp.

We’ve also been attending a lot of Guardians games. It’s been a season of ups and downs, for the time being I’m withholding judgment. I have also had the chance to meet up with old college friends (emphasis on old) including seeing my roommate Peter onstage for the first time since, well, college, playing Churchill in a solo performance in Akron.

Much of my mental energy has been focused on The Right Room, of course, and my physical energy as well. While rehearsals were taking place I was acting as de facto sound designer and also curating and even creating props for the production.

Zach Palumbo, Nicole Coury
"The Right Room"
In Rehearsal

The BorderLight Festival was remarkable. I posted about our performances last month, it was all up and over on the same day. The next day, a Saturday, I saw a half dozen shows. 

Highlights include Impact Award Winner Sincerely, (The Diary Play) by Bryanna Lee, She Was a Conquistawhore by Rachel O'Hanlon-Rodriguez, performed in The Snug at Parnell’s (where Give Me Your Keys produced my play Step Nine two years ago) and Eric Coble’s The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus, masterfully performed by Tia Shearer Bassett.

Then we got the heck out of town.

Zach Palumbo, Nicole Coury
"The Right Room"
BorderLight Theater Festival
Photo: Daren Stahl

I try not to look forward to our annual journey to Maine. It will come, as it (almost) always does, but once it’s gone, so is the summer. This year, however, we were joined not only by the children but also their partners. It was a joyful and relaxing celebration of family and fellowship, replete with day trips and afternoons on the rock just reading, great food and drink and conversation.

Our last night on the road, stopping in Little Falls, New York, I had another chance to indulge in falling waters, writ small.

Now we’re back and home and at work and August has barely begun. But this weekend we’re going to Cedar Point.

The Right Room | In Performance

Charles & Mathilda
(Zach Palumbo & Nicole Coury)
Photo: BorderLight Theater Festival

The BorderLight Theater Festival is closed for 2025, and with that, so too our run of The Right Room in the Presidential Suite at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Playhouse Square. For those in the room, and for our young company, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The audience only saw the bedroom; the bed, a couch, a few armchairs. They, the audience, were asked to sit in one of eight, ordinary, cushioned chairs. They were also asked not to relocate those chairs, and to make sure their personal items were stashed underneath. They were also advised that though this play would be intimate, it would not be interactive; do not touch or speak to the actors, and they will not touch or speak to you.

Once they were settled, the characters entered through the same room the audience had. Throughout the performance they accessed the bathroom (lines delivered when folks were offstage in the bathroom were amusingly louder than those delivered in the room itself) and occasionally dipped into a closet – but it wasn’t an actual closet. It was a door into the adjoining suite, blocked by a curtain.

The suite (or living room area) was our green room, it was larger than the bedroom. The east end of the Crowne Plaza is rounded, with a view overlooking East 14th and Euclid, the Chandelier. The audience could see this as they entered, but most sat with their backs to the windows for the show. If you can imagine, the entire suite wrapped around the end of the hallway. The door to the suite faced the door to the bedroom itself.

Just as the actors were lining up for entrances at the top of the first performance, facing the suite door, ready to cross the hallway to the bedroom door, I was standing off to one side behind them. Suddenly, the actors playing Fanny and Mason both turned their heads to look at me. And in that moment I saw my biological grandparents, people I never had the chance to meet or even know about, young and attractive and with their whole lives ahead of them. I wasn't expecting that.

Their real names, by the way, were George and Martha. Truth is stronger than fiction.  

BorderLight show pages included the opportunity for audience members to rate and review the productions, and we received many wonderful comments. Here are just a few:

“Each character was incredibly human; in turns flawed, lonely, searching, funny, sad, excited, passionate, confused, and affected by people and a past they only partly understood.” - Amelia B.

“The staging was deft and I was never at a loss of where to look or what story was being told. A truly immersive theater experience that has to be seen to be believed.” - Philip F.

“Jasmine Renee’s direction was outstanding. Pulling off clear storytelling in such an intimate space is no small challenge, and she nailed it. Serenity Grace Tate’s costumes were spot on, and I was comforted to see that Julia Fisher was engaged as Intimacy Director... I hope his play has a life beyond the wonderful Borderlight Festival. We all need to find ourselves in the right room.” - Daniel H.

On a related note: Today is my birthday, and by tradition, I am on vacation. In the office, birthdays are celebrated with cake and ice cream, and about ten years ago they began celebrating mine in my absence. 

It started with a photo of the staff having ice cream at a place on the square, the gag becoming sillier with each passing year. One year they were all crammed into my office … with ice cream. During the quarantine, a picture of an empty breakroom with hats and noisemakers on the large table.

This year? A staff picture in a room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel with a note reading, "We're finally in the Right Room!"

In case you were wondering, I truly love where I work.

The Right Room | Final Dress Rehearsal

Bradley Hughes & Kayce Kvacek
as Leif & Lucille Larsen

Last night an invited audience witnessed the final dress rehearsal for The Right Room. Today everyone is taking a well-deserved rest — or scurrying about taking care of last-minute details — before tomorrow's ticketed performances at the Crowne Plaza Playhouse Square, presented as part of the BorderLight Theatre Festival.

I cannot adequately express how happy I have been with this experience. The acting company is ideal, the members of production working in tandem, attending to every detail, calmly addressing every challenge, and it all came together so lovingly last night as the show progressed without a dropped moment.

When first proposed, the script ran about 75 minutes. As BorderLight conditions called for an hour max, it was necessary for me to lose a not insignificant number of pages. The result is a tight, streamlined piece which nonetheless lost none of those moment I most treasured. It's a better script. If I were to later expand it to, say, an eighty minute piece, I'm not sure I'd just put everything I've cut back in.

Having eight audience members in the room with us last night, it became apparent just how intimate this piece will be; how close the audience is to the actors, and they to the audience. This may sound obvious, but these audience members are right there in the room with the characters, just as the characters — those who cannot see each other — are with each other. It's such a fascinating dance!

Rachel Gold & Cole Tarantowski
as Fanny & Mason

The post-rehearsal response was positive and generous, and none more supportive than my spouse, my favorite critic (no, really, she's an actual critic) who provided me with some welcome and much appreciated perspective. The company should be confident they are doing great work, she let me know it's a great play.

And here we are. The festival is open, and tomorrow this wildly talented team of artists is going to present this play that I wrote, The Right Room, three times in the same evening, in an actual hotel room. And I have to remind myself this is also the story of a story, a story I have spent the greatest part of my long life believing would never told, that I never knew could exist, let alone that I could actually tell. And to tell it like this.

I don't actually wish my parents could see it. But I kind of wish they could see it.

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025

The Right Room | Production Biographies

Jasmine Renee (Director) 

Directing work in Cleveland includes Measure for Measure with Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, Alice in Wonderland Jr. for Fairmount Center for the Arts, and Shrek the Musical at Fairmount Center for the Arts. Jasmine served as an Actor-Teacher for Great Lakes Theater and is a Teaching Artist with Fairmount Center for the Arts.

Julia Fisher (Intimacy Director) 

Julia (she/her) is an intimacy director and playwright whose work has been seen in professional theatres throughout Northeast Ohio. She is a Certified Intimacy Director through Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, where she worked for two years as a Teaching Artist and Curriculum Developer. She currently serves as Dobama Theatre's Resident Intimacy Director, and she has intimacy directed over 40 productions across Ohio. This is Julia's fifth year creating art for BorderLight, where she and her collaborators won the Near West Theatre Emerging Artist Award in 2022 and the Producer's Choice Award in 2021. www.juliachristinefisher.com

Lindy Warren (Stage Manager) 

Lindy is grateful to assist with this unique production. Production management work includes The 39 Steps at Idaho Shakespeare Festival and Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Great Lakes Theater. For six years, she has also served as director of the youth musical program at Lakewood Congregational Church. She spent two years as an actor-teacher with Great Lakes Theater, bringing Shakespeare to schools across Northeast Ohio. Lindy thanks you for supporting the arts and live theater!

Serenity Grace Tate (Costumes) 

Serenity Grace (they/them) is a Costume technician and designer with a BFA in theatrical costume technology from Kent State University. They have worked as a craftsperson and First hand for Great Lakes Theater since spring 2022 as well as filling various roles for Playhouse Square and touring productions throughout Northeast Ohio.

Bradley Wyner (Music) 

Bradley has worked as a music director at Cain Park (Rent and School of Rock), Blank Canvas (Hedwig, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, One Man Two Guvnors, many others), plus Cleveland Public Theater, Dobama, Kalliope Stage, Cleveland Play House. Proud of his many years as a teaching artist (Case Western Reserve, Cleveland School of the Arts, and more); students have gone on to careers as teachers, non-profit leaders, journalists, artists, musicians, and actors on stages from Broadway to Cleveland. Bradley also works as the Director of Education at Milestones Autism Resources.

David Hansen (Playwright) 

David (he/him) has participated in Cleveland’s theater renaissance as a founder of Guerrilla Theater Company and artistic director for Dobama’s Night Kitchen and Bad Epitaph Theater, as well as an actor and director at theaters across Northeast Ohio. BorderLight Festival audiences may have seen his plays Step Nine (2023) and The Toothpaste Millionaire (2024). He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Cleveland State University. David is Education Outreach Associate for Great Lakes Theater and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. www.davidhansen.org

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. 

The Right Room | Cut Dialogue

We are deep into rehearsals for The Right Room, which opens (and, as it happens, closes) on Friday, July 18 as part of the BorderLight Theater Festival in Playhouse Square.

This is a new work, and because of that and also because it needs to fit neatly within a one hour timeframe, there need be editing. That is good. I like editing. The work is not done. Even when it is done, it is not done.

It is not surprising to me that dialogue between the two characters from the 1990s might have be a bit too ... trivial? Let's say dry. Or ironic, don't you think? And possibly unnecessary.

For time, and also comprehension, we cut the following exchange about infidelity.

Characters:

Steve (M, 26)

Aubrey (F, 24)

Time: Fall 1994

Place: A hotel room, Independence, OH

STEVEN

I do worry I am what they call a serial monogamist.

AUBREY

I don’t like that term. It sounds pathological.

STEVEN

Like serial killer.

AUBREY

Serial anything, like a radio drama.

STEVEN

A serial.

AUBREY

Yeah.

STEVEN

I’ve been eating a lot of cereal.

AUBREY

We’re the generation that can eat cereal for dinner.

STEVEN

Who waits for dinner?

AUBREY

I don’t worry about it, I think that’s a natural state for man to be in.

STEVEN

Serial monogamy.

AUBREY

Yeah.

STEVEN

I like the way you say yeah.

AUBREY

Yeah.

STEVEN

Yeah.

[Waving their hands:]

STEVEN & AUBREY

Yeah!!!

STEVEN

I could deal with the monogamy, it’s the cheating I can’t abide.

AUBREY

Don’t cheat, then.

STEVEN

The first time I heard the song “Tempted” I thought, oh! Cheating is a thing you can do.

AUBREY

I mean, there’s “The Piña Colada Song.”

STEVEN

Yeah! Or “Careless Whisper.”

AUBREY

Tipper Gore was right.

# # #

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. 

The Right Room | Actor Biographies

Nicole Coury (Mathilda)

 Performance credits include I’m Alive … and Always Will Be (Lang) with Nightbloom Theatre Company, Aida (ensemble/fight captain) at Karamu House, Language Archive (Emma) and Ada and the Engine (Ada Byron) at Clague Playhouse, Bedroom Culture (Mia) at Cleveland Public Theater, Acts of Clay (various) at Wizbang Theater and Executing Eve at Convergence Continuum.

Rachel Gold (Fanny)

Rachel is a Cleveland-based actor, director, fight choreographer, and educator. Acting credits include The Body Play (CPT), Grand Concourse (Seat of the Pants), Little Women (Dobama), and multiple roles with Great Lakes Theater and Cleveland Shakespeare Festival (CSF). She serves as Artistic Director of CSF, where she directed King Lear, and has also directed The Tempest (Beck Center) and radio plays with Radio on the Lake Theater. This fall, she will guest direct at her alma mater, Baldwin Wallace University. Rachel’s work spans classical and contemporary theatre, with a focus on dynamic physical storytelling.

Bradley Hughes (Leif)

Bradley is currently a BFA Acting Major at Baldwin Wallace University. His recent credits include: Twelfth Night and King Lear at the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival; Three Sisters, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, Measure for Measure, and The Dining Room at Baldwin Wallace University; and The Rescue of John Price (workshop) at The Oberlin Wellington Rescue Theatre Project.

Evan Joslyn (Steven)

Evan was most recently seen as Malvolio in Cleveland Shakespeare Festival’s production of Twelfth Night. He spent the past school year as an Actor-Teacher with Great Lakes Theater, and will spend the next with Montana Shakespeare in the Parks as part of their educational outreach tour of Richard III. As an immersive playwright, Evan’s second collaboration with Columbus Children’s Theatre, In the Land of Oz, will be produced this fall. He received a degree in theatre from Denison University and furthered his training at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey and Gaiety School of Acting. 

Kayce Kvacek (Lucille)

Kayce is a Cleveland based actress and playwright. She received her BFA from Boston University and has trained at The Academy for the Performing Arts and LAMDA (London). Some of her favorite roles have included Viola in Twelfth Night, May in Fool for Love and Camille in Horse Girls. Her first one act play, Ships in the Night, was accepted to the Boston Playwrights 24 Hour Play Marathon and has since been published & performed across the country.

Zach Palumbo (Charles)

Zach is a Cleveland-based performer whose favorite roles include Eugene in Broadway Bound (Beck Center), Feste in Twelfth Night and the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz (Ohio Shakespeare Festival), Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors, and SpongeBob in The SpongeBob Musical (Blank Canvas Theatre). He’s premiered works at Cleveland Public Theatre, including Savory Taṇhā and Experts in a Dying Field, and performed with Karamu House, none too fragile, and others. He’s also a music director with credits at Clague Playhouse and CWRU. His rock opera Future Perfect, co-written by David L. Munnell, premiered at BorderLight Festival in 2024.

Dani Schmaltz (Aubrey)

New to Cleveland, Dani is an Actor-Teacher at Great Lakes Theater. Previous acting credits include: The 39 Steps at The Appalachian Center for the Arts, Energy Game Changers educational tour with The National Theatre for Children, world premiere musical The Suffragist at Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and The Nerd at St. Croix Festival Theatre, and Dry Land at Rising Fire Theatre.

Cole Tarantowski (Mason)

Acting work in Cleveland includes A Midsummer's Night Dream with Cleveland Shakespeare Festival where he played Demetrius, Acts of Clay at Wizbang Theater, and he played a role in Karfuffle in Parmadoro 2 as part of the 2024 Micro Theatre festival. Cole also has begun his journey as a playwright, with his first full length play, Handlebar Brakes being recently presented as a staged reading at Cleveland Public Theater as part of their Test Flight theater festival.

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. 

The Right Room | Character Biographies

Fanny was born in 1910, in Vermillion, Minnesota, the fifth of eight children. Her mother, a school teacher, passed away when Fanny was fourteen years old. A home-girl (in the former meaning of that term) she had two sons – the first she had placed for adoption when she was 25 – before marrying at the age of 36, to a man with whom she had a third son. She died in 1979, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, at the age of 69, and was buried in her hometown. She was never reunited with her first child.

Mason was born in 1913, in Hastings, Minnesota. He fathered a child that was born in 1935 before marrying another woman the following year, and together they had three children. A career in the Minnesota state house was brought short by his alcoholism, and he pursued a life in teaching and high school administration. He died in 1999, in Bellingham, Washington, at the age of 86. There is no evidence to suggest he was ever aware of the existence of his first child.

Lucille was born in 1904, in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1932, at the age of 28, she married Leif. They suffered two miscarriages and a stillbirth before adopting sons from the Willows Maternity Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri in 1935, and again in 1938. A registered nurse, she was employed by the Maternal Health Association, the forerunner of today’s Planned Parenthood of Greater Cleveland. She died in 1982, in Bay Village, Ohio, at the age of 78.

Leif was born in 1904 in Fevik, Norway, immigrating to the United States in 1927, and receiving American citizenship in 1931. He married Lucille in 1932 in Lakewood, Ohio and they adopted two sons. As a younger man he was a merchant seaman, later a member of the IBM Division of Cleveland Trust Bank. He died in 2005, in St. Petersburg, Florida, at the age of 101.

Mathilda was born in 1935, and brought up in Lakewood, Ohio. She married Charles in 1959, with whom she raised three boys in Bay Village, engaged in a traditional, suburban lifestyle as housewife and mother, supporting school organizations and a local food pantry. Following the death of her husband, she resumed a relationship with Archie, her high school sweetheart. Archie was holding her hand when she died in 2020, at the age of 84.

Charles was born at the Willows Maternity Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri in 1935. His adoptive parents raised him (largely) in Lakewood, Ohio. Graduating from Miami University, he was employed by Cleveland Trust/Ameritrust before forced retirement at the age of 53. He married Mathilda in 1959, and they raised three sons in Bay Village, Ohio. He died in 2016 in Lakewood at the age of 80, never having shown any outward interest in his biological heritage.

Aubrey was born in 1970 in Athens, Ohio, to a teenage mother, who raised her as a single mom after Aubrey’s biological father left when she was four, before her mother remarried in 1980. She graduated from high school a year early, moving first to Atlanta, and then to New York City before she turned 18. She moved to Cleveland in 1995, where she established herself as a writer and editor, a high school teacher and bookseller. With Steven she bore three children, the first stillborn.

Steven was born in 1968, in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in the suburb of Bay Village. Shortly after graduating from college he entered into a brief, two-year marriage. He married Aubrey in 1999, with whom he had three children, the first stillborn. He has been an underground theater artist, an arts educator, marketing director, actor, director and playwright. Since 1991 he has lived in Cleveland Heights, the city of great writers.

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025.