Guerrilla P.R.

The other night I was at the Dark Room, and before the event began some of us were chatting about that eternal question, who do I have to fuck to get people to see my show?

Default promotion, in the old days, required purchasing advertisements in the paper. The quiet part was that if the theater didn’t pay, the paper wouldn’t review your play, and it was always the reviews which drove ticket sales, not the ads themselves.

Today, with the absence of print journalism, theaters pay for ads on Facebook or Instagram. Direct mail is also still a thing, and it is important, because at the very least you need to let people who have already shown an interest in your company about what is coming soon.

But, and this is the case for every single theater, from LORT A down to that immersive storefront production with ten folding chairs, to have a successful production you must go beyond. You need to appeal to non-regular theater goers, because there are never enough of those. There certainly aren’t enough theater artists to fill the seats at any house, and they shouldn’t be expected to, anyway, because they are busy doing theater.

So, how do you get the word out? How do you, as they say, let ‘em know?

As I have recounted before, I have always loved marketing, products and swag. In high school we started an improv troupe and I was much more interested in selling the buttons we had made for the troupe (buttons were big in the 80s) than rehearsing improvisation.

And who designed these buttons? I did, of course, using my brother’s brand new Macintosh computer. They did not go very well, however, not as well as the Guerrilla Theater Company pins we made years later, those sold very well though I still have a couple hundred of them in my attic.

At college, a graduate student who was put in charge of marketing for the school of theater approved of the comic strip I drew for the daily university paper, and especially liked when I would include references to current productions. He’d made an arrangement with a local pizza place to include flyers for the upcoming production of On the Verge by Eric Overmyer, but he wanted something original, that would engage someone who had just ordered a pizza.

I created a “chutes-and-ladders” style board game with paper cut-outs of the three main characters and you would roll a die and move your piece around a cartoon globe, traveling through time and space to opening night of the show!

Guerrilla Theater Company had a regular advertising deal with the Free Times, we’d buy the smallest advertisement we could, but we’d buy them pretty much every week. Not just to keep folks aware of the show, and not just to announce the theme of the weekend, but to continually flog the Guerrilla Connection.

The idea for the Connection came from Dial-A-Song, a service provided by They Might Be Giants since the mid-1980s, a phone number you can call to this day and hear an original song. We had a designated line which would have a different message every week, letting folks know the theme of the week, hear a short play, or important announcements.

It occurs to me only right now that we didn’t need a separate line to do this. The office line as xxx-9002, the Connection was xxx-9003. The message could have been the regular office line, why did we pay for two lines? I guess we thought it was to separate “business” from “the show.” Whatever.

But the advertisements weren’t enough to fill the house. That happened occasionally when we had a review, or when we were interviewed for the radio. We had a gorilla costume, and sometimes one of us, usually Torque, would don the suit and we would hand out small flyers for the show. On college campuses. At rallies.

Once, we mocked up fake parking tickets. They looked just like real City of Cleveland parking tickets, with VIOLATION in big letters at one end, and amusing fine print which promoted the show (and the Guerrilla Connection). Torque wore the gorilla suit and went around downtown, ticketing every single car we came across. No idea whether we attracted a single audience member through this gambit, but we did get one message to our office line threatening legal action, which we found hilarious.

When it came time to promote Bad Epitaph Theater Company’s first free, outdoor production, Kirk Wood Bromley’s The American Revolution, we returned to buttons. Only this time, we weren’t selling them. Company members were asked to wear large buttons featuring the first American President and the legend “ASK ME” in large letters.

The plan was that, when someone did, in fact, ask, said company member would not only fill in the inquirer about the details of the upcoming production, but would also take the opportunity to ask for a dollar to support the production – a Washington for Washington, as it were. Mind, this was in 2004, over ten years before the Hamilton $10 ticket lottery, known as Ham4Ham.

Yes, Bad Epitaph must have pulled in over fifty dollars through this gambit, but that wasn’t the point, it was to open a conversation about the show, with a random selection of people who may or may not otherwise have had any interest in seeing a play, this play, any play. And that’s what it’s all about, to move past impersonal modes of advertising, be they print advertisements, online invitations or email blasts, to get to the point where people, lots of people, are actually talking to each other about a show.

Note: The title of this post comes from the book Guerrilla P.R.: How You Can Wage an Effective Publicity Campaign...Without Going Broke (Harper Collins, 1993) which I unironically purchased after the disillusion of Guerrilla Theater Company, when I went to work as Director of Public Relations at Dobama Theatre. It was a handy primer on the basics of marketing though this edition is now almost entirely obsolete as it was written just before the rise of the Internet. Levine also produced a revision called Guerrilla P.R. 2.0, released in 2008.

David & Toni's 25th Anniversary Open House

Last night my wife Toni and I held an open house to commemorate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. After some day-before jitters as to whether or not to postpone due to rain, we were rewarded (after a one-hour start delay) with a beautiful evening outdoors, surrounded by family and friends both old and new.

As I reflected to the crowd, so many of those in attendance were folks we have met along the way, since we were wed in 1999. There were three present who had attended the wedding or reception (many others had sent their regards) other guests we had met over the past quarter-century though work, theater, the local schools, and of course, own children.

The big event was the unsealing of the time capsule, which we had packed with items commemorating the year of our marriage, and our place in it. The capsule (a can, really) itself was a wedding gift, and we filled and closed it on our first anniversary on June 26, 2000. As I had taken it down from a high shelf in our bedroom, I was surprised at how heavy it was. That is because it was filled mostly with paper.

Newspapers, magazines and photocopies. An entire Plain Dealer from our wedding day, front pages from the first day of the new century, a paper copy of The Onion, LIFE Magazine’s Year in Pictures edition, SPIN’s 90 Best Albums of the 90’s. Also, programs from Bad Epitaph plays I had directed, and articles from the Free Times she had written.

Whatever happened to my script from The Drew Carey Show? I put it in the capsule.

Then there were letters, from absent friends, family, some we’ve lost along the way. And yes, the compact disc 1. For which we do have a player and 2. That actually played. Guests were invited to listen in to voices from December 1999, at a dinner party and again at the huge 20th Century Revival Party we held for NYE Y2K. There were surprises, and even a few tears.

It was a beautiful evening. Since our youngest went away to school, my wife and I have been doing more than our usual share of traveling, and most recently celebrating this milestone in our life together. But it was a significant and moving experience to be able to share this love with so many whom we call friends.

Hamlet & Me (Part X)

Player Queen, Player King
Lee T. Wilson & Pandora Robertson
"Dumb Show" choreographed by David Shimotakahara
Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999

Twelve years ago, Cleveland said good-bye to its last full-time theater critic. At that time, I expressed concern over the larger implications of that vacancy. Love critics or hate them, they write theater history.

Thomas Cullinan & Brian Pedaci

Upon the recent announcement that Peter Marks is stepping down from his position as critic for the Washington Post, New York Times critic Jason Zinoman expressed a similar lament.

“The historical record will also suffer. Losing this spot in my opinion matters more than losing a film or book critic because theater is ephemeral. My memories of shows I saw in DC as a kid have faded. The only thing that keeps them alive is the archive of reviews. Reviews mean that theater art lives forever and can keep getting discovered.” - Jason Zinoman on Facebook 12/18/2023

Looking over my journal for Hamlet, I was shocked at how much direct communication I had with members of the print media over that period; calling them on the phone, accosting them in public. It was 1999, and promoting your show exclusively online was not yet a thing. We had a website, yes, but we could only drive people to that through our print advertisements!

No mass theater email lists, no NEOPAL, no social media, none whatever.

Ours was a new theater company and we needed coverage, in print, on paper. Plain Dealer Theater Critic Marianne Evett wrote a preview piece, mentioned our fundraiser in her column, and reviewed the show.

I harangued the guy who wrote a weekly theater round-up for the weekly Free Times to include our events in his column, and was simmering with rage those weeks he said he didn’t have the space. Without coverage, we didn’t yet exist.

But they did cover our work, the critics did come to see our independently produced show. They all came on the same night, which was terrifying for me, what if the power went out? In that space it was entirely possible. But the lights stayed on, as did the heat (another concern) and we were reviewed by the Plain Dealer, the Free Times, and Scene Magazine.

Over the past ten days, I have described several productions of Hamlet. This is how the historical record describes ours.

Jay Kim, Jason Popis
Gary Jones Christine Castro

David Hansen – Cleveland's champion of twentysomething madcap intelligentsia; founder of the antic subversive Guerrilla Theatre (sic) and the edgy Night Kitchen – has happily sought new horizons with his Bad Epitaph Theater Company. [5]

Hansen, Thomas Cullinan and other BETC co-founders Alison (Garrigan), Brian Pedaci and Sarah Morton met at Dobama's Night Kitchen, where the quintet discovered compatible tastes and aims. As maturing, ambitious theater fanatics invariably do, they concluded, "It was time to take the next step." [3]

The group's creative esthetic will be expressed through an unslavish fidelity to texts and a reasonable respect for what's valuable in traditional performance practices. "People coming to us," (Hansen) cautions, "expecting some wild, shocking interpretation will be disappointed." [3]

The Bad Epitaph Theater Company will present their very first production, "The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark," opening April 9 at the Brick Alley Theatre. [1]

Directed by Hansen, Hamlet features Thomas Cullinan as you know who, Alison (Garrigan) as Gertrude and Brian Pedaci as Claudius, supported by a 13-member ensemble. [1]

Alison Garrigan, Tom Cullinan

You’ve got to admire the guts of a new theater company giving birth to its baby with a whack at "Hamlet." [4]

A judicious cutting of the script (reduced by a sixth and shaped into three acts that average an hour each), primarily reliant on following the narrative’s progression with an emphatic clarity, occurring in stripped-down, unspecific, but modernized setting and dress. [4]

Featuring an eclectic and dynamic cast, more grounded in Stanislavsky and psychological realism than in plumy vowels and exalted emoting, Hansen's "Hamlet" emphasizes fast-paced storytelling over poetry and pathos, yielding a robust, energetic production. [5]

The production… is a good one, given clear and thoughtful direction by David Hansen. The publicity has labeled it “in-your-face,” but in fact, the interpretation is straightforward and not at all confrontational or experimental. And the production shows how potent the play can be on its own, with the simplest possible set and costumes. [6]

Using modern dress, ingenious economy, and performers who know how to captivate a wide variety of audiences, this interpretation reproduces in spirit the immediacy and vitality that the original cast production likely flaunted. [5]

Christine Castro

It’s a decided relief and pleasure to report that the Bad Epitaph Theater Company’s most respectable production of the hallowed classic not only justifies a touch of audacity, but, much more crucially, earns the genuine anticipation of the group’s next, hopefully less historically perilous, project. [4]

The guiding force here is clearly director Hansen, who demonstrates a well-defined and knowledgeable understanding of the play, apparent in the production’s major strength — its sharply etched, thoroughly lucid story line. [4]

Hansen propels his three and a half hours without a single traffic jam. [5]

We seem to be reviewing posters lately, so I must say that if (Thomas) Cullinan acts half as well as he looks as the all-in-black modern-dress Hamlet, well, he ought to be dynamite. [1]

Cullinan immerses himself in the complex role, pacing it well and letting you see the fluctuations in Hamlet’s moods. His terror at meeting with his father’s ghost (a strong performance by Hansen), his easy banter with Polonius or the spies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, his anguish in confronting his mother – all add up to a moving performance. [6]

Marie Andrusewicz

Cullinan is first of all the right thirtyish age — not too callow to have had the required depth of experience nor too old, which would upset the balances of various character relationships. The blond actor’s unmarked features additionally generate a still boyish, brooding self-interest — not to say self-indulgence — that perfectly suits this most unheroic hero. Intelligent, word-obsessed, the often petulant eternal student is caught in an endless analysis of his own inaction until he’s forced to erupt in a violent release. The appealing Cullinan has these aspects well in hand and delivers a secure and sustained characterization. [4]

This is a family drama, whose anguish builds throughout the evening. When Cullinan’s Hamlet dies, having finally brought about his vengeance on Claudius at the cost of so many other lives, you feel genuinely moved, touched, as you should be, by the waste of a promising young life. [6]

In a fearsome performance of finely carved detail that delineates a blighted soul, Brian Pedaci effectively evokes that vital something that is rotten in the state of Denmark. [5]  Pedaci is suitably conniving and slimy as Claudius, who has killed his brother, the old King Hamlet, married the queen and seized the throne. [6] Pedaci’s Claudius is commendable and particularly strong in his devious calculation. [4]

David Hansen

Alison (Garrigan) is also very good as Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude. Looking beautiful and rather lost, she rises to the emotion-filled confrontation with her son in which she learns of her new husband’s treachery. [6]

As Ophelia, Christine Castro is touchingly and authentically sweet. [4] When Ophelia flips her lid, she pistol-whips the entire court with her flowers. As her petulant big brother, Laertes, Jay Kim is boyish, brash, and impetuous. [5]

Some unconventional casting provides new insights into the play. Gary Jones is a stout, vigorous Polonius, a bustling middle-aged snoop rather than an old busybody. Marie Andrusewicz is quietly effective as Hamlet’s loyal friend Horatio; Pandora Robertson gives the Player’s speech histrionic force; and Dawn Youngs has exceptional presence as Rosencrantz, Hamlet’s treacherous schoolmate. [6] Allen Branstein's gravedigger combines the best bits of Samuel Beckett and Walter Brennan. [5]

The Brick Alley (Theatre) is exactly that – a former alley roofed over and made into a building with a long, narrow theater space. Hansen and set designer Gunter Schwegler have put stages on each side, one backed by the building’s brick wall and the other by black and gold hangings. A walkway runs between them, with the audience seated across both ends. [6]

Pandora Robertson,
Allen Branstein

The result might look unconventional, but its flexibility and intimacy adds to the emotional immediacy of the show. [6] Schwegler and Jennifer Linn Wilcox’s scenic and lighting designs nicely adapt to the Brick Alley’s unusual two-sided arena space. [4]

For the academically inclined, yes, the language survives … an ideal introduction for untested Shakespeare neophytes and, for those suffering from overexposure, a perfect way to rekindle an old flame with a sweet prince. [5]

Bad Epitaph, which takes its name from Hamlet’s words to Polonius about the company of actors who have just arrived at Elsinore (“After your death, you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live”), is clearly a company worth having around. [6] 

Three professionally written reviews for one storefront theater production in Cleveland. Those days will not come again.

To be continued.

[1] “Happier notes” by Larry Gorjup, Free Times, 4/1/1999
[2] Calendar Listing, Editor, Scene Magazine 4/9/1999
[3] “…and the melancholy Dane” by James Damico, Free Times, 4/7/1999
[4] “Heavy Decisions: Of Hamlet and The Old Settler” by James Damico, Free Times 4/14/1999
[5] “Quite the Mischievous Boy: In Bad Epitaph Theater's production of Shakespeare's hit, it's dog eat dog in Denmark” by Keith A. Joseph, 04/15/1999
[6] “Company’s debut delivers potent version of Hamlet” by Marianne Evett, Plain Dealer, 04/17/1999

Cloud 9 (2000)

"(It'll Be Fine When You Reach) Cloud Nine"
From left: Diane Mull, Tracey Field, Nick Koesters, Alison Garrigan, self

“I hear you are considering Cloud 9.”

This was James Mango, Artistic Director of Charenton Theater Company. The other new theater start-up, creating professional work in funky urban spaces.

We were at an event at Fadó, an Irish-themed bistro in the Flats. It was late Spring, 2000. Standing out on the boardwalk, on the banks of the Cuyahoga. The weather was perfect, the city was on the rise. The Millennium had begun (don’t argue with me about numerology) and everything was possible.

James told me Charenton was also considering that title, and proposed a co-production. I was suspicious. Not skeptical, I was suspicious.

He told me that with their management and promotional skills, the show could be a blockbuster. I asked him, what does Bad Epitaph have to offer?

He said, “The best talent in Cleveland.”

Diane Mull as Edward
Photo by Anthony Gray

Well played. He flattered me, he came to me and made a generous suggestion. I told him I’d think about it, and immediately went into overdrive, figuring out how soon we could announce the Bad Epitaph 2000-01 Season, and to secure the rights to produce Cloud 9. On our own.

Why? Arrogance, I imagine. I was thirty-two. My company was a hot property. I didn’t want to dilute it. Co-productions were not yet a thing, but they would be and very soon. James was thinking outside the box. I was being territorial. That was my first mistake.

Most of our core company was involved in the production of Cloud 9, and I will say it was the best in Cleveland. Roger Truesdell was tapped to direct. He had helmed Sin the previous fall, presented at Inside Gallery (now the site of the Bourbon Street Barrel Room) a temporary forty-seat space which sold out every performance.

Most of the spaces we had already engaged were either unavailable or defunct for that fall. I can’t tell you how many interesting spaces we had considered for Lysistrata, including the Paris Art Theatre on West 25th Street, an abandoned pornographic film house.

We could have had the Studio Theatre at Cleveland Play House, an intimate thrust space. Just a few years later Dobama would often use the space before they found their present location in Cleveland Heights.

But I got it into my head we must have a proscenium, and we found one. A sweetheart deal with the folks at Tri-C East, in Highland Heights. They had a new, state of the art facility and wanted to draw attention to it. It was a six hundred seat auditorium.

"Come Gather Sons of England"
Company from "Cloud 9"
(Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 2000)

Well, that’s very big,isn't it. But I had high hopes for attendance. All of our productions caught fire and attracted large audiences -- Hamlet, Sin, Santaland, Lysistrata, they were all selling out shortly after opening.

Also, we were generating great press! Our new was nominated for a Northern Ohio Live “Award of Achievement” for Lysistrata, and in the awards issue was a feature written by Christopher Johnston, about the company, and me in particular. Surely, Bad Epitaph was ascendant. This production would attract even greater audiences.

From the beginning, however, my best instincts told me that all of our productions should be produced within the city of Cleveland. The original mission clearly stated we would be presenting classics and important contemporary drama in an urban setting. Now, we were moving into a cavernous space, way out at the intersection of Interstates 271 and 480. That was my second mistake.

The acting company included regulars Nick Koesters, Tom Cullinan, Alison Garrigan, Chris Bohan, myself, were joined by actors new to Bad Epitaph, Diane Mull and Tracey Field. A raked set was designed by Don McBride, spectacular light effects were created by Greg Owen-Houk, and our house composer, Dennis Yurich, created original music.

The production was set in both 1880 and 1980, nice round numbers. What had originally been a contemporary second act was now itself a period piece, which began with a news report on a London pop station (Sarah Morton as the DJ) and a brief snatch of the title song as though interpreted by XTC.

Our version of the complete song, sung by the company, was much more wistful. It begins with Gerry (Nick) singing the first verse solo, before being joined by Lin (Alison), then myself and Diane -- the Edwards -- and the song builds and builds until everyone is on stage, singing. During the climax we are all dancing, but we are each dancing by ourselves.


Roger created a beautiful picture postcard, exactly what I hoped the production would be. It closed with a signature Truesdell moment, with glitter and confetti showering onto Betty 1980 (Tracey) and Betty 1880 (Nick) as she has finally found herself.

And the reviews were positive, pointing up the strengths of our production, and also its failings. Tony Brown for the Plain Dealer commented that the “too-large theater ... dilutes the intimacy.” Imagine if we staged this at the Studio, or in another welcoming art gallery. Brown also called our production “a perverse sort of children’s theater for adults.” I’m not sure he meant that as a compliment, but I will take it as one.

The critics agreed that this script had come into focus into the intervening twenty years. Free Times critic James Damico claimed Churchill’s text, “never convincingly coheres or evolves dramatically … held together solely by the consistency of its anti-establishment criticisms." But he also said that time and our “resourceful and energetic production” had considerably “considerably depoliticize[d] and clarif[ied] the play’s properties.”

Which is another way of saying we took the rough edges off. The headline for the PD review was “Strong message is sugared in 'Cloud Nine'.” Indeed.

Now, and I can’t remember why I thought this was a good idea … we had a pre-opening night preview. That is not unique. However, there was no admission, In fact it was promoted as FREE. A free performance, the night before we opened!

Tracey Field, Nick Koesters

This is all well and good if you are only telling friends and family. But we promoted it. Because I felt we needed strong word-of-mouth, and what better way than to paper the preview? And people came! Our free preview was a big hit, all our friends and family came! It was the largest house we had for the entire run.

What the fuck? What was I thinking? Am I some kind of Communist? We had an entire weekend of previews for Lysistrata (I was terrified it would suck and I wanted time to make massive changes, which it turns out I did not have to do) but still we charged admission for them.

There were over fifty people there for the preview, their number dwarfed by a sea of seats. We didn’t even ask for a donation on the way out. This was my third and final mistake.

I loved this play, I wanted to return to a text that had so inspired me as I began my journey as a theater artist. And we did it just right. And audience size varied widely ... between ten and fifteen people.

One night, after another inspiring and poorly-attended performance, I drove to Cleveland Heights to catch the last half of Angst:84, a new play by my wife, Toni K. Thayer, at my old haunt, Dobama’s Night Kitchen.

I snuck into a seat in the back row on the far left side of the house, which was nearly sold out. An audience composed largely of teenagers and young adults, exactly the demographic for which I had created this project five years earlier. But I’d never produced such a popular show for the Night Kitchen.

I was happy for her. I was jealous. I was sad. I missed this. I was an adult, soon to be a father (or so I thought) and I had moved onto adult projects. But I still wanted to be back here, in the basement, in a great neighborhood, making exciting art for a young audience.

And yet, and you will have to take my word on this, over the years several have told me they did see our production of Cloud 9, and how much it meant to them. I get those comments about this show more than anything else Bad Epitaph produced.

See also: Cloud 9 (1986)

Sources:
Strong Message is sugared in 'Cloud Nine' by Tony Brown, The Plain Dealer, 10/23/2000
Clearing the Clouds; Bad Epitaph works wonders with 'Cloud 9' by James Damico, The Free Times, 11/1-7/2000

The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged) (1999)

Nick Koesters, Allen Branstein & self
(Beck Center for the Arts, 1999)

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) was either:

1. Written by people who love Shakespeare for people who hate Shakespeare.
2. Written by people who hate Shakespeare for people who love Shakespeare.
3. Written by comedians for an audience of absolutely no one.

The bane of critics everywhere and to the delight of audiences everywhere, this show has been produced constantly since first produced by the Reduced Shakespeare Company at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1987. The wife and I saw the original in 1997, near the end of its nine year run at the Criterion Theatre in London’s West End.

Classify this one as Shakespeare (not) On Stage, as not only does Shakespeare not appear, but the entire play ostensibly celebrates Shakespeare while simultaneously reinforcing those elements that everyone hates about Shakespeare.

It is also horribly dated, including gags that are casually sexist and outright racist, that is, unless you think the idea of three white guys deciding to interpret Othello as a rap song as “edgy.”

This month, I will appear for only the third time onstage at Beck Center, and each time in the Studio Theatre. Eric Schmiedl’s adaptation of King Lear opens May 31. Seven years ago, I played Chris in Eric Coble’s The Velocity of Autumn.

Twenty years ago, with Nick Koesters and Allen Branstein, we performed The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged).

I was shocked when director Roger Truesdell asked me to consider the role, especially playing against two accomplished comedic actors. “But Roger,” I said. “I’m not funny.”

“Yes, you are,” Roger said. “You’re just afraid people might think you are.”

The one saving grace of Complete Works is the note on the front page which reads:

“... it’s also important to keep the show fresh and timely by updating the many topical references as events warrant.”

To put it another way, you are free to change the script to make it funny. As a result we felt entirely justified in not only changing the late-80s pop culture references to late-90s pop culture references, but also anything else that wasn’t funny.

What we couldn’t do was write a different play, so we still labored with the Titus Andronicus cooking show, including my lame impersonation of the then-87-year-old Julia Child (huh-larious) and the aforementioned “Othello Rap.” At least we could pretend to be appalled, like you do, and to change truly offensive verses like:

Now Othello loved Desi like Adonis Loved VENUS
And Desi loved Othello cuz he had a big … SWORD

Into:

AL: Desdemona, she was faithful, she was chastity tight
DAVID: She was the daughter of a duke
NICK: Yeah, she was totally white

My voice was more Ad Rock than Ice Cube.

We also had great fun tweaking other local companies. Our changes are in red.

AL: One popular trend is to take Shakespeare’s plays and transpose them into modern settings. We have seen evidence of this with Shakespeare’s plays set in such bizarre locations as the lunar landscape, Nazi concentration camps and even Akron.
DAVID: Akron?
NICK: Who does Shakespeare in Akron?

Later, I had a discursion regarding ‘The Apocrypha’ or those works whose authorship was once in dispute, referred to as “‘The Lesser Plays,’ or simply, ‘The Bad Plays.’ And yet, not all of The Apocrypha are completely without merit … except Edward III.”

Cleveland Shakespeare Festival had produced the only-recently canonized Edward III that past summer. One night a contingent from the company were in the audience and they booed my little joke.

“Oh,” I ad-libbed,” you’ve seen it.”

I went on to to describe what a fascinating play Troilus and Cressida is, but then bore the shit out of absolutely everyone in telling the story, which is coincidentally what I also did for Cleve Shakes audiences in 2018.

We changed scripted references about Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Boris Yeltsin to Donald Trump, Rudolph Giuliani and Vladimir Putin, which are more relevant now than they were twenty years ago.

The inclusion of Putin was odd, though, because the run of the show ran over into the year 2000, and Vladimir Putin was only just inaugurated on January 1st of that year -- we changed the reference from Boris Yeltsin after the announcement.

No one knew anything about him, except the name, so I suggested we change Nick’s recitation on "Chernobyl Kinsman" (Two Noble Kinsman, get it?) to include this exchange:

NICK: Does it have Vladimir Putin in it?
DAVID: It doesn’t have anybody pootin’ in it, Nick.

He's a monster. We didn't know.

We threw in Ally McBeal jokes, Jar-Jar Binks jokes, references to The Blair Witch Project, and my personal favorite, when Nick’s Macduff emerged with "the usurper's cursed head,” he was, in fact, holding a replica of his own head, which was the same prop used when he played the lead in Macbeth at Beck Center the previous season.

It gets better. As prescribed in the stage directions, “(drop kicks the head into the audience)” -- but then Nick hollered, "GOOOOOAAAL!!!!" and ran in a tight circle, before sliding on his knees and ripping off his shirt to reveal a Brandi Chastain inspired black sports bra (Google Women’s World Cup 1999.)

The script as written closes with a familiar theater cliché:

"If you enjoyed the show, tell your friends. If you didn't, tell your enemies."

By the second weekend we were sold-out in spite of receiving some scathing reviews from those aforementioned critics who simply hate the idea of this admittedly dumb little play.

AL: If you enjoyed the show, tell your friends.
DAVID: If you didn't ... you must write for the Free Times, man.

Exit, pursued by a laugh.

Beck Center for the Arts presents "King Lear" directed by Eric Schmiedl, May 31 - June 30, 2019

The Realistic World

When asked what made him qualified to criticize theater, former Plain Dealer theater critic Tony Brown was fond of saying, “I got the job.”

If you were to ask what made me feel qualified to create a long-form improv comedy, when I had received little to no training in the artform, I could have said much the same thing. I took two courses in college, and I had seen a few club and long-form improv shows.

I shared a detailed history of my education learning through trial and error in a post last summer.

Following the inaugural Dobama’s Night Kitchen production, Bummer, we went straight into rehearsals for The Realistic World.

In 1995 the first so-called “reality” show, MTV’s The Real World had wrapped up its London season, and after four years of throwing seven young people together to show “what happens” (nothing did) the producers were about to begin forcing things to happen. They stopped casting normal people who possessed things like dignity and shame, and started dragging in sluts and assholes.

Impressed as I was with the narratives of the early seasons, especially San Francisco which featured six very likeable people and one dickface who the rest immediately kicked out of the apartment, because that’s what you do. The idea of our performance would be for seven actors to assume alter-egos which they would carry from performance to performance, week after week. A few additional actors (we called them “ringers”) would play pizza guys, waiters, family members or boyfriends, whatever was suddenly called for.

Meet Christine

This first iteration, The Realistic World 1, featured Amanda, Christine, Dan, Erin, Jeff, Marty and Tia - their real names. The setting was a fictional rental house in Tremont (this was confusing, some audience members wanted to know where in Tremont we were performing) and we would use some word association and ask the audience some questions at the start of the show to act as subject matter for the story.

Yes. The very first performance, as host, I asked an audience member to share the worst thing that had happened to him recently and he said he came straight to the theater from his uncle’s funeral. I was literally speechless. I have it on video, I couldn’t say anything. That was AMAZING.

We kept the framework basic, each performance started with a house meeting where all seven actors would share issues inspired by the audience suggestions, and then break into two or three person “give-and-take” scenes (we called them "Change Ups") cutting from one scene to another, and the action (ideally) would build.

Finally the first half of the performance would end with the “Miracle Scene” which took place in one agreed upon space, and into which an unlimited number of actors could appear. In this scene, it was very important for actors on the stage to give-and-take focus, so though you did not necessarily leave, only one conversation was happening audibly at any one time.

It was called the “Miracle” scene after that New Yorker cartoon by Sidney Harris where there’s this chalkboard with an elaborate equation and a blank space just before the solution which reads, “... then a miracle occurs.”

Then we’d do it again, change ups followed by a “miracle” scene. There would also be "confessionals" in which a character would sit on a stool and improvised a monologue about their feelings.

An entire episode was book-ended by a house meeting, during which everyone would toss out grievances or personal news which would be fodder for the show, and we would conclude with house dinner. Each episode someone would be responsible for making “dinner.”

DAN: (incredulous) You made dinner?
TIA: Tacos.
ERIN: Did you make any without meat?
TIA: Yes.
ERIN: (surprised and delighted) Really?
TIA: Yes.
(beat)
TIA: They’re the ones with nothing in them.

The second iteration, The Realistic World 2, debuted twenty years ago tonight, on January 20, 1996. There were only seven "episodes" of The Realistic World 1, and seven for The Realistic World 2, which was directed by Erin Cameron. The cast consisted of myself, another Dave (our names the source of many varied nicknames) Sarah, Trish, Tom, Haley, and Anne.

The first run was an interesting experiment with some wonderful moments, but Erin was able to shape the scenario into a much more polished performance, and we had all learned an awful lot from the first go round. Each member of the original cast was a ringer for this one, and they had the opportunity to create recurring characters within this new neighborhood.

TRW2 was set in an apartment on Coventry, which was much less confusing for everyone and we were able to make reference to many venues on the street with which everyone was familiar.

Haley & David

Living inside of it myself was a bit heady. I created an Über-David, an insecure stock trader with a sharp tongue, I had the opportunity to be the kind of bust-out asshole you might know me as if you only know me through Facebook. However, the fact that I was the oldest of the house members (at 27 almost ten years older than Haley, our youngest at 18) made me the butt of many age-related jokes.

Really. I have been dealing with this shit for a long time.

Anyway, it was exciting to craft an alternate personality and to see how much he might change over the course of seven episodes. The agenda that my character had often bumped up against those of other characters creating some true friction which didn’t always remain on stage.

Critical response to our little experiment was mixed. The Free Times accused us of wanting it both ways; improv comedy laughs and compelling personal involvement, which "this callow troupe isn't up to delivering." Scene said "something this young and hip is a boon to any city which boasts a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame," though they may merely been baiting the Free Times.

We knew we had made some kind of impact when the new "club" improv troupe in town, Cabaret Dada, made reference to us during one of their performances. Asking the audience to suggest emotions, one called out, "Ennui!" Host Jeff Blanchard made one of his iconic skeptical faces and said, "Ennui? What do you think this is, The Realistic World?"

Night Kitchen developed other long-form improvs (One Step Beyond, Soap Scum) which succeeded in providing a definite story structure (urban legends, soap operas) but also relied a bit too heavily on tropes and types. I think what I love most about The Realistic World was the same thing I enjoyed about the first few seasons of The Real World, watching real young people figure out real life situations realistically, with real emotions on the line -- happiness, embarrassment, affection, humor -- everyone reaching to achieve their own personal success or failure. It's what people in their twenties do.

Recently I uncovered our Trivial Pursuit - 90s Edition. Yes, there is such a thing. It came in a silver, metal box with the legend, The most trivial of decades. Indeed, as Carl Jung once said, “May you live in interesting times.” I wish our times were as dull and introspective as they were twenty years ago.

Lysistrata (2000)

Shannon McNamara, Arthur Grothe

Photo by Anthony Gray

"The version of Lysistrata you are about to witness comes at a time of particular economic strength in this country. The United States is not at war. People are making a lot of money, and nobody's losing his life on foreign soil. So, can Lysistrata only be performed when things are good? Is its original daringness never to be experienced by theater audiences again? Where is the radicalness of this play? What makes it worth seeing now, under these conditions?"

- David Bell, Lysistrata, Then and Now (Bad Epitaph production program)

In 1996, I picked up a copy of Aristophanes' Lysistrata at ABCDEFG Books in Camden, Maine. This edition was translated into verse in 1924 by the noted Australian Jack Lindsay, with illustrations by his father Norman Lindsay. One of the original hardcovers, this was exactly the kind of smutty book that would have been found indecent and its transmission through the U.S. Post illegal under the Comstock Act of 1873.

And this wasn't even the original. While Lindsay père created line drawings that are delightful and racy, featuring a collections of male and female characters naked or mostly naked, all actual genitalia are either (in the case of males) cast in dark shadows or (in the case of females) erased. You may interpret such censorship as you will.

The text of Lindsay fils, however, goes through an even more bizarre transformation. Reading it, I wasn't immediately compelled, for example, to produce it for the stage. It wasn't very funny, and though the sexual humor was apparent, it was so tame as to be virtually uninteresting. Later I found a paperback of Lindsay's translation that was published in the 1960s, and learned he had bowdlerized his own work! His original text, as published without fear of censorship, still includes innuendo and puns rather than outright obscenity ... but they're better.

The last major notable production of Lysistrata in Cleveland was the legendarily pilloried production at the Cleveland Play House in late 1970. That production was actually produced at a time America was at war, but as Tony Mastroianni reported in the Cleveland Press, "This is an anti-war play, basically, but it is difficult to find the message under all the sniggering and archness."

Cleveland Play House, 1970
Photo by Tom Prusha

Both he and Plain Dealer critic Peter Bellamy delivered the production a one-two punch the day after it opened (Bellamy called the production, "perverted" and "obscene") and reservations didn't merely dry up, people were calling the Play House to cancel. In what may have been the shortest run of any professional production in Cleveland, Lysistrata at the Play House had three performances and suspended the run.

Our new company, Bad Epitaph, was maintaining a streak of strongly-received productions. I had an idea at that time that we would produce a classic in the Spring and something contemporary in the fall, as far as we could take that. Having produced a Shakespeare as our inaugural production (Hamlet) I didn't want to return to the Bard again for as long as possible.

I found Lindsay's verse translation to be clever and funny, but possibly a little inaccessible to a modern audience. However, reading other, more recent translations, I realized that this was its strength. For example, the translation the Play House used thirty years earlier was by Douglass Parker, written in 1964, and that should tell you right there what went wrong. A jazz aficionado, Professor Parker strains to be hep and obvious with his sex jokes, and the entire script reads like an extended comedy sketch from Playboy After Dark.

But what is Lysistrata, anyway? Is it an anti-war argument, the purpose for which Aristophanes wrote it in 411 BCE? Is it one big sex comedy? Is it an Ur-feminist text, championing the strength and power of women? Or is it exactly the opposite of that -- as Mastroianni pointed out in his review, "What the Play House production misses in emphasizing the obvious is the underlying story of women desiring to resume normal domestic relations."

Lysistrata can be seen as a conservative piece of work; the women are refusing to have sex with their husbands until they abandon unending war and return home.

Also, at this point in history, I was only recently married, and my wife and I were making plans to have children. So my interest in staging a happy celebration of marriage, sex and procreation was also very personal.

Shannon McNamara, Alison Garrigan, Elaine Feagler
Photo by Anthony Gray

Director's Note:

There is no private domain of a person's life that is not political, and there is no political issue that is not ultimately personal.
- Charlotte Bunch

The Greeks invented Democracy, built the Acropolis, and then called it a day.

- David Sedaris

Bad Epitaph's production of Lysistrata opened on May 19, 2000, and it was very successful. The Plain Dealer called our production, Helter-skelter and often hilarious, the Free Times a high-spirited and campy romp, and Scene Magazine christened it that summer's first joyous work.

By closing night we were sold out - oversold, actually, adding more and more seats. That fall Bad Epitaph received a nomination for a Northern Ohio Live Magazine Award of Achievement, based largely on the success of Lysistrata. But that is the end of the story, not the beginning. 

I recently read over my notes from the rehearsal period, and learned some very important lessons that I had forgotten.

Christopher Bohan, Jennifer Wiech
Photo by Anthony Gray

My apprehension over producing a sex comedy were great. As a rule, sex just isn't funny, it's embarrassing. Case in point, the movie Exit To Eden, based on one of Anne Rice's soft porn novels. Director Garry Marshall wanted to make a gentle comedy that adults could enjoy together, but when it appeared the movie he was making wasn't going to appeal to anyone, he threw in a caper subplot (entirely unrelated to Rice's work) and cast Rosie O'Donnell and Dan Aykroyd as detectives. What was merely cheesy swiftly became crass.

One of the few exceptions to this rule is The Tall Guy featuring Jeff Goldblum and Emma Thompson in the funniest sex scene every committed to film. And I've seen The Room.

I must have been inspired also by my recent experience performing in The Compleat Wks of Wllm Skhspr (abridged) at Beck Center. When Roger Truesdell cast two of the funniest men in Cleveland, Allen Branstein and Nick Koesters and then chose me to round out the trio, I thought he was insane because I am not funny. The experience was a crash course in what funny is or can be, and I took a (un)healthy dose of the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink ethos of the Reduced Shakespeare Company and thought I would try it with this 2,400 year old Greek comedy.

The production company was solid, Don McBride build to order an Acropolis that doubled as the set from Laugh-In, with balconies and shuttered windows that open and close. Ali Garrigan - our Lysistrata - designed contemporary costumes, and Brian Pedaci the numerous ridiculous props, some of which he procured from places like Chain Link Addiction.

I had invaluable assistance from my dramaturg David Bell (who provided all sources below) who provided not only a bottomless well of theater history, but was also my confidant during the darkest parts of the rehearsal process and was very insightful as to what was not working and reminding me what was.

And, of course ... it was a musical! As we assume, the ancient Greeks used song to convey strong messages, and so did we. Following my suggestion that this story plays itself out everywhere, all the time, our composer Dennis Yurich shaped Linday's verse into the lyrics for eight songs that were Goth, rock, ska, country, even a nod to the Andrews Sisters.



Of course, what everyone really remembers is the nudity. I know artists who have strong, negative opinions about nudity onstage, that it breaks down suspension of disbelief in a way that nudity on screen does not. Frankly, I think the opposite - that film celebrates unhealthy body types and calculated audience response in a way that a live naked human performing in a play does not.

That doesn't mean I wasn't eeked out by casting a play where I was asking actors how much they would or would not disrobe onstage. I knew from experience in other productions that it was best to be very specific up front, and to set a date when we would commence "show conditions".

Clyde Simon, Alison Garrigan
Photo by Anthony Gray

My rehearsal journals remind me how horribly self-conscious and unfunny everything was proceeding through the month of April. I was positive I was going to drop a large turd onto the stage of Cleveland Public Theatre (the company which we had made a healthy arrangement to perform) until the first of May. 

May Day we played the scenes where the men and women stripped to fight ... and suddenly the show was ridiculous! Not dirty, just happy, funny stupid, which is pretty much how we rode through the rest of the experience.

In addition to his praise, Tony Brown also called the show "sloppy", and it was literally sloppy, with buckets of actual water dumped onto Nick, Chris and Rob as they scurried around in jackstraps fitted with brightly-colored erections. Our Lysistrata came onstage for the interval with a mop. Opening night, one other writer for the Plain Dealer sniffed, "Well, it's not Aristophanes." There were also more than the usual backstage pranks throughout the run, some which during any other production would have been brought up with Human Resources.

By and large, it was a festive, funny and inoffensive anti-war play. Just before we really needed one.

Sources:
Revival Ruins Greek Play by Tony Mastroianni, Cleveland Press, Dec. 5, 1970

'Lysistrata' at Play House Plumbs Depths of Vulgarity by Peter Bellamy, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dec. 5, 1970
Photo of Ronald Greene and Myriam Lipari as Kinesias and Myrrhina, Cleveland Press, 1970 (date unknown)

Revelry Abounds In Bad Epitaph's Version of 'Lysistrata' by Tony Brown, Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 22, 2000

Rowdy Romps by Amy Bracken Sparks, The Free Times, May 24, 2000

Greeks Bearing Gifts by Keith Joseph, Scene Magazine, June 1, 2000

Love In Pieces (play)

Love In Pieces is a short play, written by Sarah Morton. When Cleveland Public Theatre had a new plays festival, it won the top prize, the Chilcote Award, in 1997. With this honor came a full production the following season, and premiered at Cleveland Public Theatre in February, 1998. I was an actor in the company.

This 40-minute work consists of four scenes, depicting famous couples from mythology and literature: Antony & Cleopatra, Laertes & Ophelia, Orpheus & Eurydice and Cupid & Psyche. Each scene departs from its traditional narrative to paint original portraits of love in crisis.

The playwright makes clear in her stage directions that these are not four separate plays. For example, the set should remain simple, each scene resembling the other, to create what she calls a "dreamlike fluidity." Also, though she concedes the play could be performed by eight actors, or "two very versatile ones," she believes the play works best with four actors playing each of the younger and older roles.

So it was in 1998, where I and Triste Crawford played the first and third scenes, and Doug Rossi and Michelle Pristash the second and fourth scenes. Cleveland Public Theatre promoted the work as an (odd) choice with which to celebrate Valentine's Day. Our costumes and Oliver Sohngen's set were largely white, with red accents, the set like a wedding cake, or more like a bisected cheese wheel.

Doug Rossi (Laetres) & Michelle Pristash (Ophelia)

Critical response to Sarah's work was strong, the Free Times calling the show "both post-modern and old fashioned" and "smart and sweet." The Plain Dealer praised her for having "a gift for using both the visual and verbal elements of theater to create complex, striking work."

Scene Magazine spared little restraint, and with this work sincerely called Sarah Morton, "a nascent playwriting genius."

Each performer received uniformly positive notices ... with one interesting exception. Plain Dealer critic Marianne Evett noted that "David Hansen does not have enough presence and command as the old warrior Antony." Cleveland Public Theater made the mistake in 1995, when I was not yet twenty-seven, to cast me (in a different production) as a fifty year-old former Marine. Only twenty-nine, I agree that I made a young and scrawny Antony. More on that later.

Suffice it to say, the show was successfully produced, and I was very happy to be part of that.

Poster, CPT (1998)

As for Love In Pieces, it was produced one more time, produced by a third party for the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival. The best that can be said about this version is that nytheatre.com recognized strength in Morton's writing, but that there were serious issues with the director who cast herself in all four female roles, acting against a single male partner. These actors had apparently little chemistry and the performance included breathtakingly long scene breaks.

Shooting bull in the rehearsal hall last fall (continuing yesterday's post) I remembered this play. Four scenes, two set in bedrooms, one in a bathroom, the fourth one the road out of the Underworld. The CPT production was presented in the cavernous former ballroom that is the Levin Theatre. True, it was in the round, which was exciting, but hardly intimate.

Each scene a two-hander, three couples and one set of siblings. Impotence, abuse, disappointment, doubt. You can make these feelings span the distance between character and witness, but what if you closed that gap, made the audience need to lean in, to listen carefully, or make them truly feel they are walking in on something they shouldn't be seeing?

These are the personal moments we all feel in every relationship, that we desperately work to keep secret. Set them in their natural habitat ... what would that be like?

Except for the road out of Hell. That would take some imagination.

Anyway, that was my proposal. I offered it to the company. You want to put on a show, this is the show I am offering, because then I would believe in it. And they all jumped on board.

Tomorrow: Love In Pieces (execution)

Romeo and Juliet (1994)

Guerrilla Theater Company presents The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet in September 9 - October 1, 1994 at the Actors' Gym, 2393 Professor Avenue in Tremont.

Just before dawn, in a Verona remarkably like the modern day Midwest, a moment before first light, the first, gentle strains of A Warm Place by Nine Inch Nails warbles over the audience. In the dim glow we find Romeo, wandering listlessly, composing a poem to himself.

An ominous tableau is made even more disturbing by the lilting voice of the Prince, cutting over the music.

The Prince: Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona where we lay our scene
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean ...

With the dawn our Romeo can see his friends approaching, and he is gone. We are listening to a radio, and the dee jay cuts in:

Dee Jay: 107.9 The End. Good morning, I'm Vic Gideon and it looks like we're gonna have another hot one this beautiful July day, with a projected high of ninety-four degrees. Don't let the heat go to your head -- and if you must speak daggers, please do not use any. It's the Offspring with "Come Out and Play" on Verona's Only Modern Music Station, 107.9 The End.

Scene Magazine reviewer Keith Joseph, confused by the young age of everyone in the cast, he suggested that the concept was that the entire show took place in a high school, that even the parents were teenagers, and the Prince, in fact, a Principal. This last image, bolstered by the slight manner in which all reprimands were delivered, and the whole voice-coming-over-a-speaker thing, seems upon reflection to be forgivable.

So did his appraisal of Tybalt as a “mean, dyke, punk rocker” and Mercutio as a “strident mall chick,” a description which irked Gooch deeply.

James Damico in the Free Times gave us two paragraphs (and no photo!) in which he accused us of considerably cutting the text and removing the story from its larger social context, and said Torque was the only actor who could handle the language. He closed by observing that “Mercutio, one of the ballsiest males in Shakespeare, is played for some elusive purpose, by a woman.”

One of my favorite moments in the entire play for downright giddy excitement is, of course, the Capulet Party Scene. Shame it comes so early in the production.

As Lord Capulet, Torque was excellent. Magisterial, his verse mellifluous, by turns stern, caring and ridiculous -- if he did not want any part in this production he never showed it on-stage. The party is his, he orders the servants about and commands the dee jay to play some appropriate music for such a modern party. The dee jay obliges with ABBA’s Does Your Mother Know, which provoked a few snickers.

The revelers have their normal costumes on, they simply wore whatever masks we could find in the basement. Some are leftovers from New Year’s with plumes of feathers. There was a Phantom mask, a Nixon mask, and of course, the Gorilla mask. Benvolio has on a rainbow fright wig and a funny nose and glasses. Tybalt’s is a simple neutral mask, sprayed cherry red -- and when she spies Romeo chatting up her cousin Juliet, she makes a bee-line right for him.

Lord Capulet: (stopping Tybalt) Why, how now, my kin? Wherefore storm you so?

Tybalt: Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe,
A villain that is hither come in spite
To scorn our solemnity this night.

Lord Capulet: Young Romeo is it?

Capulet is all smiles, perhaps he knew there were Montagues there, eating his food, flirting with his progeny, but he won’t have a fight started in his house, not so soon after the last one. He speaks soothingly to Tybalt. She is beginning to fidget like an animal about to strike.

Tybalt: I’ll not endure him.

And she tries to push by her uncle, but he snaps and grabs her by the arm.

Lord Capulet: He shall be endured!

The music cuts out suddenly. Conversation has stopped and all eyes are on Lord Capulet.

(Keep in mind -- the entire cast is on the tiny stage here, thirteen actors, doing a creative but conscious job of mingling, silently so as to not detract from the main focus of the scene, and staying out of the audience’s direct line of sight.)

Capulet takes a moment, forces a laugh, gestures to the dee jay who begins a slow song, Walking to You by Everything But the Girl. Capulet pulls his fiery niece to him and they begin to dance. The party releases a collective sigh at this sweet sight and return to their conversations. Capulet hisses the rest of his commands in her ear as she fumes in humiliation.

Capulet: What, goodman, girl? I say he shall. Go to.
Am I the master here or you? Go to.

It was Torque and Xanthe’s idea -- during rehearsal Torque asked if he could “try something” and did the dance bit. Suddenly I needed a slow song, either instrumental or with non-intrusive lyrics.

I met your boyfriend on St. Martin’s Lane
And he said “fancy running into you again,”
We talked a minute or so, then he turned to go,
And I walked into the crowd again.

And the morning was a different place
In every passerby I saw your face
Love leaves a lonely ghost
With one thought upper most
Is this the case in every case?
Am I walking to you?
Am I walking to you?
In every thing that I do
Am I still walking to you?

The song is played as Romeo and Juliet have their first conversation. I guess that made it their song.

When the party ends, partygoers depart through town. Black-shirted Capulet couples move through the city, holding hands -- one masked reveler says good night to an exhausted Tybalt, obviously smitten but receiving only a curt handshake good-bye. County Paris walks the streets alone -- he was last seen looking for his intended, the elusive Juliet.

She appears behind the last row of the house right seating section. Her balcony will be that last row, an entire seating section needs to turn around to see her.

Juliet: Ay me.
Romeo: She speaks! O, speak again ...
Juliet: O Romeo --

Romeo already crouching, falls to the floor.

Theirs is a heartfelt, pulsing mating ritual. She asks for specifics regarding his intentions, and he struts about the big open stage, bragging, making circles and leaping, emboldened by her attentions.

A barrier has been placed halfway down the aisle for this scene, and she cannot move past, nor can he move to the first step of the platform, it is forbidden. They can barely touch. Only at the last do they strain their utmost, craning their necks for one kiss -- and fail. Romeo must be content with one kiss on his hand, and the feel of it on her face. The anticipation of reprising the few stolen kisses at the party must wait for their promised marriage day.

Most of the other characters were pretty arch, but I had made Romeo and Juliet sincere, and attempted to imbue them with true, giddy, romantic love. It was not my intention, setting out on this production, for this to happen. But theater, like life, rarely turns out the way you plan. My first marriage was falling apart. I was in love.

Some saw this discrepancy between the ironic and the earnest as a major weakness in the production, especially those who did not see the supporting characters as deeply etched with flaws, but as cartoons. “The Guerrillas,” said Plain Dealer critic Carolyn Jack, “can’t seem to decide if their version of Romeo and Juliet is a parody or not ... this production turns its characters into slackers, punks and other smart-alecky MTV types who drip with sarcasm.”

Perhaps. She went on to credit Eric and Tracey with “affecting and ultimately serious portrayals” and went on to say they had “a fresh, impulsive, giggly honesty that would delight anyone who has seen Shakespeare’s young lovers played, as they so often are, by self-important 35 year-olds.”

Jack put it most succinctly when she said the lovers’ scenes “look like bits of a BBC broadcast spliced into a Simpsons episode.”

Act One was an hour and a half long. And September, 1994 was very hot. And there was no real circulation in the theater, and the lights were very close to the audience. Opening night, sitting in the back row, a few feet from the ceiling, I could feel the temperature rise perceptibly. I truly worried we would lose people before the end of the show, but most everyone came back, ready to fan themselves with their programs. The second half was only an hour.

On the Cleveland Freenet, I came across a review of our show on the freenet.arts.thtr.critic bulletin board. An audience member praised the show highly. She was “surprised that the performance was the actual shakespeare r&j, olde english intact,” and that “most performances were double plus good.” She also pointed out, “the worst part of the whole play was how warm the actor’s gym became. uncomfortably warm. not the best circumstances in which to hear the bard.”

She closed by saying, “get out and see the show if you can. but wear a tank top.”

The Internet. Hmn. We were closing for good, and I wondered if the Net (we called it the Net in those days) would ever become something big enough that it could have had any use in promoting our plays. Or anything else for that matter.

In the Plain Press, the neighborhood newspaper for the Near West Side, Virginia Jones also reported, “the house was uncomfortably hot.” Joseph remarked in Scene Magazine that “better ventilation and more toilet facilities would have helped.” We had one toilet in the Boutique downstairs, which always served us well when we had a dozen audience members, but a sold-out house of 90 had a difficult time with it after ninety minutes of sitting. We got permission from Edison’s to send people over there, and our ten-minute intermission sometimes stretched to twenty-five.

The Free Times, the Plain Dealer, Scene Magazine, the Plain Press, the Akron-Beacon Journal, the Morning Journal, the Gay Peoples’ Chronicle, the CWRU Observer ... Guerrilla Theater Company was covered. Finally, after two years, everyone was writing about us. We probably attracted more attention simply because we were also announcing our demise, and that made people want to see us before we were gone.

Saturday, October 1st, marked our final performance. Scollard took a piece of chalk and wrote one of Mercutio’s lines (act 2, sc. 1) on the big, black, back wall of The Actors’ Gym, to be our epitaph:

“The Ape Is Dead.”