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

State of Siege (2003)

Drew Narten, Mindy Childress
(Bad Epitaph Theater Co., 2003)
Photo: Anthony Gray

Sunday night, I noticed I had a tickle in my throat. By bedtime, I was coughing. I decided to wait until morning to self-test, and all night I was achy and woke countless times. I obsessed about taking the test, and what the result would be. At six I took the test, which turned immediately positive. I have Covid.

By the middle of Monday morning I was weak and achy. I tried to sleep in, but was obsessing about my job, about the residency, the lesson plans I needed to teach – and how many actor-teachers may also have Covid. As the morning progressed, the news was largely positive, in that they were not positive.

I never imagined I was invulnerable, I never thought I was immune, I thought I might be immune, because who knows? In those apocalyptic plague stories there’s always a small percentage that never contracts the disease.

In 2003, Bad Epitaph emerged from hiatus with a production of Albert Camus’ State of Siege (1948) which he had adapted from his own novel, The Plague.

The play is a fable about a bad omen in the form of a comet over Cadiz, Spain, and how the people’s collective fear paves the way for a man named The Plague to assume the reins of power. It is the apocryphal quote from Ben Franklin, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety,” made manifest.

Drew Narten, Nick Koesters, Christine Castro
(Bad Epitaph Theater Co., 2003)
Photo: Tim Safranek

Bad Epitaph Producing Director Tom Cullinan chose to produce this piece because (1) he had long wanted to and (2) it was a response to the Patriot Act, when Americans openly encouraged the government to strip away at our civil liberties in the “war against terrorism.”

“Cullinan imbues the production with sinewy style and imaginative staging,” said Cleveland Scene theater critic Christine Howey. “All the actors wear half-masks, in commedia dell’arte style, which gives this parable a heightened sense of symbolism.”

Traditionally, anti-fascist plays such as this one are resolved when the people come together as one, eschew their fear, and cast out the authoritarian. Unfortunately, if this was ever something that happened in the United States, it does no longer.

For twenty-one years we have lived in a perpetual state of crisis, and the authoritarians are still winning, through division and fear, which has never been so evident as during the current pandemic.

Because we are still in a  pandemic. If you have any doubt, come on over and I will breathe on you. 

Source:
"Mask of Tyranny: Totalitarian governance is explored with style in Bad Epitaph’s State of Siege" by Christine Howey, Cleveland Scene, May 14 - 20, 2003

On Abortion

"The atmosphere is tense," said Robert Corlett, a spokesman for Planned Parenthood of Greater Cleveland. "But we are prepared."

- Washington Post, July 9, 1993  

Rich "Torque" Weiss & Shelly "Gooch" Bishop
The Plain Dealer, 7/14/1993
Photo: Roadell Hickman

Mainstream Democrats, those who have supported legislation to preserve abortion rights, have also contributed to the entirely unnecessary sense of shame that has long been associated with this vital reproductive health procedure.

“Safe and accessible but rare,” they would say. Why rare? As if it is something which should not happen. Safe and accessible and legal, now and forever. That was all that needed to be said. The rest is judgment.

I bristled in 1992, in 1996 and in 2000, as candidates Bill Clinton and Al Gore would firmly but dispassionately assert their support for a "woman’s right to choose.”

To choose what? A new bath mat? To choose the chicken tempura? How can you defend a thing if you cannot say it? They made it clear, the very word abortion could not be spoken. It was unspeakable.

unspeakable, adj.
1a. Incapable of being expressed in words
1b. inexpressibly bad: horrendous

Abortion is neither of those things. In words, abortion is the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, and while you may ascribe negative feelings to that, that is entirely subjective.

So, not unspeakable. However, by ceding the definition of abortion to those who would seek to abolish it, those who would preserve it have waited until far too late to embrace it.

Twenty-nine years ago this week, during the summer of 1993, an organization calling itself Operation Rescue set out to stage protests in nine cities across the country, outside clinics that provided reproductive health procedures (including abortion) and also the homes of doctors who perform such procedures.

This was only four months after Dr. David Gunn, an OB/GYN and provider of abortion services, was shot to death outside of his clinic in Pensacola, Florida.

Members of Guerrilla Theater Co. joined a coalition of abortion rights advocates, attending seminars on ways to keep ourselves from getting arrested during counter-protests. Planned Parenthood and other organizations taught us to keep our cool, but put pressure on more radical groups, like Refuse and Resist, not to be confrontational. We were all instructed to make nice with the Cleveland Police.

We needed to keep close to the street, but never step into the street or we would be arrested. We needed to keep a clear path to the door and keep the sidewalk clear or we would be arrested. And most important of all, we were told not to face nor antagonize the opposition.

Each faction was expected to keep on one side of the street, facing the street, side by side. We could not look at each other, speak to each other, nor antagonize each other. We were to face the street, wave our signs, chant our slogans to the general public, but not to each other, and not towards the clinic. If the Police felt one side was confronting the other, we would be arrested.

We, the members of Guerrilla, met to throw around ideas for performance-based stunts, but didn’t think it was appropriate to attract that kind of attention to ourselves. It wasn’t about us. Besides, we had all been explicitly warned not to stir things up.

So, we just made sure we were on the line, bright and early. We held up signs that had been made by others and responded to passing, honking cars as though they were our supporters regardless of whether they were.

Things passed without incident for us on that first day. Early the second day, however, a tall, stocky, middle-aged man wearing a suit stood with his toes on the line facing our side of the sidewalk, and began addressing us. He was balding with a gray beard. Not a bad look.

He called out, "God sayeth blah blah blah blah blah!" or something to that effect.

"You're not supposed to be facing us, sir," someone said politely.

"God will blah blah blah the unrighteous," he called out -- he wasn't screaming or yelling, he was obviously used to projecting his voice long distances.

One of us went to a policeman and pointed out what should have been obvious, this guy was antagonizing us and that he shouldn't be doing that. The policeman walked over to the Tall Man, and asked him to please face the street. The Tall Man made a brief objection as re: freedom of speech, yadda yadda and faced the street again. For about five minutes.

Soon he was back to facing us. "God holds sway over the wicked," he yelled, "you cannot hide from the judgment of the Lord."

As this was the second day, our fear and adrenaline had subsided a bit. Our minds were clearer, but it was hot and we were tired ... and it was only noon.

"You cannot hide from the judgment of The Lord," he said again.

The Plain Dealer, 7/13/1993
Photo: Robin Layton Kinsley

Torque and I walked up to the line to face him. A few of our cohorts saw us making this bee-line towards him and tried to stop us, not knowing what we were up to.

We stood at the line, facing him, smiling a little. He looked us in the eye. He was taller than we were, and I am tall. We said nothing. The police did nothing.

"The Lord shall smite his enemies!” he said to us, so everyone could hear.

Then slowly, and with great care, standing side by side, looking straight at the Tall Man, we raised our arms and put our hands onto the domes of our own heads. He continued to stare at us.

In unison we moved our hands down onto our own shoulders. Maintaining eye-contact as long as we could, we bent down to touch our own knees.

And finally, breaking eye contact for a moment, we touched our toes. Then we stood up straight and stared at the Tall Man, and waited.

"The Lord --" he started, and as he did so, so did we.

Head, shoulders, knees and toes.

The police walked nearer to where a conflict appeared imminent.

"The Lord Our Father will save you from --"

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes. Knees and toes.

After it became apparent that that was all we were going to do, and that we weren't going to stop until he shut up, he wandered away, and so did we.

It was only perhaps five minutes before the Tall Man was once again standing perpendicular to the street, his toes on the line, facing our side, pontificating.

"God will honor the virtuous life!" he called. Torque and I exchanged a brief glance and sped back to our positions in front of him. But we had already discussed a change in tactic.

We touched our own heads, side in front of him, and then our shoulders. We touched our knees and our toes.

"The Lord sayeth I will be vengeful upon those --"

"YES!" we shouted together as we stood up straight. His mouth closed. We touched our heads.

Shoulders. Knees. Toes.

"The Lord Our Father --"

"YES!" we cried, orgasmically as we stood back up.

"YOUR STRANGE RITUALS WILL NOT SAVE YOU!" he yelled, and defiantly shrunk away from the line.

Our satisfaction was short-lived, however. It is impossible to know whether or not our confrontation embarrassed the officers who failed to act but very shortly a few members of Refuse & Resist were arrested for being a “traffic hazard during rush hour” as well as “taunting people and refusing the adhere to police rules” when all they were actually doing was crossing a side street, not the main thoroughfare, across from the protest.

We were once more tense and angry, our end of the sidewalk chanting “PEACE, officer! PEACE, officer!”

The next day Beemer, Torque and I brought our own signs, and stood with the crowd on the Operation Rescue side of the street. We had signs that read:

EVERY EGG DESERVES A NAME

SAVE A LIFE, SHOOT A DOCTOR

THOU SHALT NOT SACRIFICE ANIMALS WITH DAMAGED GENITALS
Leviticus. 22:24

Because everyone was facing the same direction, it took a while before anyone realized what our signs read. There were some murmurings and finally a young man said to me, “Hey, friend, you’re making us look bad.”

I said to him what so many evangelicals have told me throughout the years: “You’re almost there.”

The Plain Dealer, 7/12/1993
Photo: Roadell Hickman

Recalling the events of July 1993, it was clear even then that Roe was a house built on sand. (Matthew 7:26) Organizers from Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice wrung their hands over the positive optics that were generated by Operation Rescue, and the more confusing message sent by activists like those members of Refuse & Resist.

The associate director of Greater Cleveland Planned Parenthood said that “some of the stuff (Refuse & Resist has done) is disgusting,” referring to stunts such as when one protester arrived as a crucified woman wrapped in a bloodied American flag. “It’s harmful to the Pro-Choice movement.”

Meanwhile the media was marveling at how passive and meek the Operation Rescue protestors were behaving while at the same time reporting on their protesting outside of the private homes of doctors, which in light of the recent murder of Dr. Gunn must have been absolutely terrifying to those inside.

Since 1993 Operation Rescue has branded itself Operation Save America and has expanded its efforts into harassing school districts into banning gay-straight alliance student groups and even ceremoniously burning non-Christian religious texts. 

Defenders of reproductive freedom were wrong to believe that a soft message maintaining the status quo could ever remain successful. With Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization effectively ending the national right to safe and legal abortion, we have shifted the language from “a woman’s right to choose” to one of “bodily autonomy” which is stronger and punchier, but we must also not be shamed from using the word abortion.

In the few weeks since Dobbs, and the implementation in Ohio of a law prohibiting abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, we have already learned of a ten year old who has gone to Indiana to receive an abortion. A cancer patient who could not receive chemotherapy while pregnant who has gone to Indiana to receive an abortion.

I can only imagine my own wife, suffering from preeclampsia, our unborn child already dead, having to travel to Indiana to receive the abortifacient drugs to induce labor, drugs which quite possibly saved her life.

Also? Early in our relationship, my wife Toni I had an elective abortion. We have never regretted that decision, and we would have made the same decision today. Looking back, that decision made the rest of our lives together possible.

It was our legal right to do so, and it will be again.

Sources:

“Operation Rescue to Begin Antiabortion Demonstrations Today in Seven Cities” by Gary Lee, The Washington Post, 7/9/1993 

“4 Arrested at Abortion Protests at Two Clinics” by Joe Frolik, Plain Dealer, 7/12/1993

“Anti-abortionists' burning of Quran called 'hateful'” The Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 7/20/2006

"Man Charged With Rape of 10-Year-Old Ohio Girl Whose Abortion Story Dave Yost, Other Republicans Called a Fabrication" by Vince Grzegorek, Cleveland Scene, 7/13/2022

Ten Recommended Posts from 2020

Joshua McElroy, Khaki Hermann
"Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street"
(Great Lakes Theater, 2020)

Ten years on, what is this blog? It is a journal. It is a promotional tool. It is self-aggrandizing but also keeps me honest. It is a record of my progress as a playwright. And it is also an opportunity to research and record past events and tie them to the current moment.

These ten blog posts from 2020 may not have attracted as much attention, But hey, I took the time to research and write them and I recommend another look because they're pretty good.

On Procrastination

Accepting the opportunity to moderate a playwright’s panel at CPT while you are fresh in grief and trying to comprehend your mother’s eulogy is just another thing that has to get done.

The Bully of Baker Street: Week Three

Reflections on a tour in progress, and how gratifying it is to learn that adults find your educational play for elementary school children progressive and a challenge to their political beliefs.

The Short Play Project: Humiliation Series

There are about a dozen short play “collection” blog posts, but this one is my favorite. Three short play videos that beg the question: AITA?

"Residency On Demand"
(Great Lakes Theater, 2020)

Documenting Cleveland, Tuesday, May 12, 2020

We all think of ourselves as Samuel Pepys, diarists of extraordinary times. But the records of the Pandemic of 2020-21(?) are so grossly extensive. What have you, on May 12, Literary Cleveland in conjunction with Scene Magazine produced an exhaustive document of the city from one end to the other, and I was glad to be a participant.

Our Midwest Journey (1995)

Our first road trip was a test of our relationship, and in a way defined our future together. A rumination on our mutual love of the highway, tourist traps, and funky theater. 

Savory Taṇhā in Performance (Thursday)

Thoughts on opening night of a live, Zoom theater event, as part of a nationwide discussion on not merely the value, but the very validity of virtual theater.

The Mirror and the Light (book)

The third part of Hilary Mantel’s “Thomas Cromwell” trilogy was surprisingly affecting, and so politically timely. Back then when you fell out of favor, the monarch had you literally killed.

Our Midwest Journey (1995)

My First Fringe Festival

I had always wanted to dive into my first fringe festival (as audience member) experience, as it so deeply informed my next decade. I was amazed to find as much source material online as I did.

Three Hundred Sixty-Five Days of Practice

Would you like to see exactly what it looks like to write three pages every morning for an entire see?

Dobama ‘96 Trading Cards

I have always loved and been fascinated by package design and marketing. But this is the story of a gig that almost destroyed me.

Documenting Cleveland, Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Literary Cleveland invited folks from all over Cleveland to document our city on Tuesday, May 12. It is their intent to create one, unified essay that chronicles this time, in this place.

They had intended to release the final product last week, but the task has proved greater than they had originally conceived (see tweet).

Update: We have nearly 60,000 words of material from our May 12 project and still have 50 more submissions to review. So the bad news is we won't have a final product ready this week as planned, but the good news is together Cleveland wrote a novel.

— Literary Cleveland (@litcleveland) May 25, 2020

In the meantime, this is my 1,000 word entry. We were asked to write in third person. Mine is perhaps more personal than the criteria required, but it was my day, it was a particular day, and this is what happened to me.

It was a peaceful, uneventful Tuesday, in the midst of a pandemic. Three weeks ago. Before the uprising.

6:56 AM – Home, Cleveland Heights

After hitting snooze four times, he finally got up at half past six. It was a bit chilly for mid-May, but he opened the door to the side porch. He liked to hear the birds. The gas fireplace was lit, and it was time for morning pages.

He had slept through the night. If he didn’t take Benadryl the night before, he usually woke around two-thirty and just lay there for an hour. They said it was from all the worry, but he thought it was from all the alcohol.

8:09 AM – Forest Hill Park, East Cleveland

He took a brisk run through Forest Hill Park. It was overcast and cool, and it was gosling season. As he ran through the park, he had to make a wide berth so as not to get attacked by hissing, parental geese.

Out in the neighborhood he had been running onto the tree lawn, or onto the street, to provide at least ten feet of distance between himself and anyone who shared his path.

8:51 AM – Home, Cleveland Heights

He had lemon cake for breakfast. His wife had made one for family friends, and one for them. Saturday night he had made a loaf of potato bread and a batch of chocolate chip cookies because he was bored. Those went in about two days. In the past two months he had gained ten pounds.

His dreams had been vivid, active. Full of crowds. He only dreamed about people and places that he never usually encountered during the day. Last month it was the parking garage at work, which he had last entered on March 16. Now it was live performances. Memories of his dreams leaked into his waking thoughts.

9:31 AM – Home, Cleveland Heights

He settled into his workspace later than he’d planned. His desk was the wooden, round supper table downstairs. His wife, daughter, son; everyone else worked in their own bedrooms. The whole first floor had become his office.

11:22 AM – Home, Cleveland Heights

He was in a Zoom meeting with the education team. Today they were discussing the summer arts camp. This year they were creating five days of virtual programming, which would include storytelling, crafts, theater games, and scene work.

His daughter wandered by, so he pulled her into the meeting and everyone was glad to see her on the screen. She had an AP Calculus exam at 1:00 PM, and was clutching a fistful of sharpened pencils.

His co-workers had a lot of questions for her about online testing.

She reminded her father, him, not to use WiFi or to make any sound from one to three. Her brother said he didn’t know what he would do with himself for two hours. 2:22 PM – Home, Cleveland Heights

He typed up a list of items he had made note of last weekend, rooting around in his mother’s attic in Lakewood. The boy was on the couch, reading. Quarantine might be good for something after all.

3:21 PM – Mom’s House, Lakewood

His mother had died in January. They’d made plans to sell her things, her house, but that had been put on hold. His brother and family had driven all the way from the Twin Cities in one day to stay at that house, and go over her things.

He drove from his house in Cleveland Heights. Cars like were closed, atmospheric chambers, safe transportation vessels. Driving, he felt something like normalcy. Then he saw all the people at Edgewater, milling about without masks on and thought, “What the fuck is wrong with those people?”

4:07 PM – Mom’s House, Lakewood

He and his brother took a break from sorting through boxes. They were in the backyard, in the garden behind their mom’s garage. They stood apart and drank beer and talked about family. A neighbor came over to the fence to say hi. He and his brother were sorry/not sorry about not shaking hands. The neighbor told them their mom came over shortly after he and his wife had moved in, with photos of their house,the neighbors', from back in the day.

Mom grew up here, in her house in Lakewood, one that had been in his family since 1940. Eighty years.

He missed her every day, but he was grateful she wasn’t part of this.

4:51 PM – Mom’s House, Lakewood

They went through photos, so many photos. Some very old photos. It was just as well he was already wearing rubber gloves.

6:49 PM – Mom’s House, Lakewood

The rest of his family arrived in the other car with carry out. They dined al fresco, on that gorgeous spring evening, cool but bright, seated six feet apart in his children’s grandmother’s backyard. The neighbor on the other side introduced herself, too. She told lovely stories of how his mom and her daughter, the neighbor’s, would chat as his mom tended the garden.

He kept reminding his brother to keep his mask above his nostrils.

9:10 PM – Shoreway, Cleveland

He and his daughter talked as they drove back to the east side. She was worried her senior soccer season would be canceled. She would be a captain this year, and they’d already made plans how to continue team building traditions while keeping social distance.

They took the Shoreway, which at night feels like flying over the city. His daughter spied The Q. She just knew the Harry Styles concert was going to be rescheduled. His kids had been taking all of this so much better than he thought he would have at their age. Or was now.

11:15 PM – Home, Cleveland Heights

He and his wife returned to their couch, before the fire. They sat in silence, sipped whiskey, and read. Tomorrow would be much the same.

UPDATE: Literary Cleveland published the completed, final essay in Cleveland Scene on Tuesday, June 16, as well as an interactive map featuring all 140 submissions from this project.

"Love's" in the time of COVID-19

Thou art a boil, a plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle, in my corrupted blood.
- LEAR II.iv

In the midst of life we are in death, et cetera.
- The Smiths, Sweet & Tender Hooligan

Woke this morning to discover "King Lear” is trending on Twitter.

Scott Crim & Jane Plishka
"Love's Labour's Lost"
(Rubber City Theatre, 2020)

The theaters closed due to an outbreak very early in Shakespeare’s career, in 1592. That was very early in his career, when he was collaborating with Marlowe and writing his epic poems.

Outbreaks continued over the following years, and when the Globe Theatre was closed in 1603 Shakespeare was the height of his abilities. It is speculated that he wrote King Lear at that time.

The very idea that theaters would cease operation due to an outbreak of contagious infection (let alone, professional sports teams) was to my understanding a thing from the past, not something that could possibly happen in my lifetime.

And yet, here we are. Closer to home, the company that I work for, Great Lakes Theater, took the difficult and unprecedented step of cancelling an entire production. The company was hard at work on a production of my favorite of Shakespeare’s comedies, Much Ado About Nothing, due to open the last weekend in March.

As Ohio Governor DeWine decreed, all public events with an audience of more than one hundred persons must be suspended, GLT and companies across the city joined theaters across the nation in closing.

Orders, thought meet by his Majesty, and his Privy Council, to be executed throughout the counties of this realm, in such towns, villages, and other places, as are, or may be hereafter infected with the plague, for the stay of further increase of the same.

Also, an advice set down by the best learned in physic within this realm, containing sundry good rules and easy medicines, without charge to the meaner sort of people, as well for the preservation of his good subjects from the plague before infection, as for the curing and ordering of them after they shall be infected.

- James I, “Order for Plague” (1603)

Theaters closed due to an outbreak of plague. - March 2020

As with all the rest, Akron’s Rubber City Theatre suspended performances for their production of Love’s Labour’s Lost after opening just last weekend. The show, directed by my dear friend Kelly Elliott (she who directed last summer’s Henry V for CSF) had already received an excellent notice from Cleveland Scene, which said it was “engaging” and “exuberant.”

As a farewell they decided in short order to stage one last, closed performance last night with an invitation-only audience of company members and a few friends who have a reputation for laughing loudly and in all the right places. My wife and I were glad to be part of that number.



Following the performance we learned over one hundred people were watching it live. As of this morning, the event shared by local media outlets, views have gone into the thousands. Even Terry Teachout, critic for the Wall Street Journal tuned in.

Sitting in the audience, I was reminded of Love’s Labour’s Lost as produced by Great Lakes Theater in early 2016. It was also an engaging and exuberant performance. Shakespeare's script is quite the farce; the first half can be quite dense and you have to keep up with a remarkably self-indulgent amount of word play on the playwright’s part, but when you stick with it the pay-off in the second half is so pleasurable.

The "Nine Worthies" scene in the Rubber City production rose to a joyfully riotous argument, the Great Lakes production four years ago to something like a wildly playful bacchanal. But as is the case in all productions, the fun, the games, the play within the play, are suddenly broken by the announcement that the King of France, father to the female romantic lead Katherine, has died.

A very real and heartbreaking moment in the midst of a very silly play. I found the sentiment quite timely.

The theaters have closed, as they have many times before. They will reopen, too.

Rubber City Theatre presents "Love's Labour's Lost" (2020)
Photo: Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal

UPDATE: The postponed Great Lakes Theater production of "Much Ado About Nothing" opened March 25, 2022.

Sources:
Order for Plague, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Boys Will Be Boys, But They Learn a Lesson Too in Rubber City Theatre's Joyful 'Love's Labour's Lost' by Elaine Cicora, Cleveland Scene (3/10/2020)

UPDATE: What We Miss When Broadway Goes Dark by Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal (3/18/2020)

Professor Street Theater

2275 Professor Street (1992)

It was November 4, 1992. We were having rehearsal for our third week of performances of You Have the Right to Remain Silent!

I went up to the office during a break to check the election returns on CNN, where I was stunned to see the projected returns quite solidly suggested that Bill Clinton was going to win.

The idea that twelve years of Republican presidency, and specifically the Reagan-Bush Era, was coming to a close, was beyond my ken.

In 1980 I was twelve. Then I was twenty-four.

I came downstairs and announced the news, which led to a general cheer from the entire company.

Retro, our more libertarian member, sneered, “Man. What the hell are you people gonna write about now?”

The space was the Professor Street Theater. We’d signed the lease in August, $700 a month for two thousand feet of performance space downstairs and four rooms upstairs.

Four could squat for $175 each and we’d never need to generate a penny’s worth of profit for our work. We presented Silent! for eight months, closing in May to take a short break, produced a Shakespeare and then vacated for a different Tremont location.

Retro held onto the lease for a while, creating and presenting the Off-Hollywood Flick Fest there before the owner sold the place and it was a private residence and artists’ studio for nearly twenty-five years before the coffee shop Beviamo relocated there last year.

Professor Street Theater (above) and Beviamo Cafe (below)

Last April, I stepped into the space at 2275 Professor for the first time for the first time in almost a quarter century for a latte, and to get majorly freaked out.

It’s the same room, only so much brighter and different. Our early 90s landlord was adamant about our not changing a thing about the building, he pitched a fit when we painted a sign on the front door without his permission. It was easier to ask forgiveness.

The walls had been paneled all the way to the ceiling, the present occupants stripped away top level revealing fashionable brick, and painted the lower part white, brightening to room. We had papered over the windows for show privacy and to render the room entirely dark if necessary. Now the room is full of natural light.

Then & now.

While there are a few major alterations (the bathroom has been rerouted) what was startling was how the same the room felt. It was disorienting, sitting on a new platform in the window, sipping coffee and looking over the space like a hovering ghost.

Thoughts of a revival were inevitable. What if we staged a fundraiser, reading old scripts, or even writing new ones, right here where it all happened? No, really, maybe we shouldn’t. And besides, no one knows where the scripts are anymore. I don’t have them.

So what did we have to write about, now that "our guy" was going to the White House? We had only for two been weeks criticizing the George H. W Bush administration, would we now be praising and supporting this new president? Waving the flag for the status quo?

We did begin that way, we had to. He repealed the gag rule, that abortion could not be discussed in the military. And we would champion his attempts at health care reform and allowing gays to serve openly in the military … two agendas which failed, and failed badly in short order.

Much of our work turned inward, and by that I mean not only introspective (and also, unfortunately, at each other) but more local.

In the final days of 1992, an African-American man died while in police custody. He had been placed in a choke hold which rendered him unconscious, and was later determined to have been the cause of death. Then, as now, excessive force is an issue which plagues the Cleveland police department. Torque wrote a piece about that.

The choke hold play (title?)

There were audience members who openly objected to the political stuff, especially when it wasn’t funny. We took a stand against being portrayed as a sketch comedy group (or God forbid, improv) and intentionally threw in conceptual pieces for their own sake, with no punchline whatsoever.

The Scene Magazine reviewer, turgidly recounting every minute sexual reference from the performance he witnessed (even creating a few where they didn't existed) claimed the choke hold scene "backfired like a '62 Buick."

He also described Beemer as a "solid gold b----," so I guess that's funny?

After election day we retired a piece written by Jelly Jam, one I was proud to have had a hand in, creating a recorded soundscape of musical and nature sounds, and a weird voice-over (Lee's voice slowed down.)

With the lights dimmed, the entire company of seven crawled the floor, rose to their feet, came together but then fell away as the voice described and ancient ritual which made a people strong, but as more and more failed to participate, the civilization collapsed.

The ritual was called “voting.”

Yes, we were young and determined and optimistic and basic. We were also right.

Vote on November 6th.


Source: "Comedy for the Young at Heart" by Keith Joseph, Cleveland Scene, 2/18/1993

Thanks to Kim Martin for the 2018 photos!

Love's Labour's Lost (2016)

Love's Labour's Lost, Great Lakes Theater (Photo: Ken Blaze)

Love’s Labour’s Lost (1598?) was a very topical play, making reference to many timely political figures and historical events, and so, like the comedy stylings of Vaughn Meader, dropped into obscurity almost immediately after it was written.

At its core the story is quite simple. Boys decide for a certain period of time to swear to avoid girls. Girls show up. Hijinks ensue. There are subplots involving a Spanish nobleman (who for some reason is written to speak in a funny accent, unlike the rest of the men who are also from a region in Spain) and academics who speak in impenetrable pedantisms.

Back in 2000 the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival produced a 90 minute version directed by Eric Schmiedl which entirely eliminated the subplots to focus on the (four) men and (four) women. People affectionately called it the “Gap” Love’s Labour’s Lost, because they all wore khakis. Scene gave it an award for “Best Local Production With Homegrown Talent,” because in those days, apparently that was a necessary distinction.

Love's Labour's Lost, Royal Shakespeare Company (1990)

Surprisingly, for all the talk about how infrequently this work is produced, I have had a chance to see it several times. When our school toured London and Stratford in late 1990, we saw Ralph Fiennes as Berowne and Alex Kingston as Jaquenetta, several years before either of them were known by American audiences.

However, I do not recall a moment of that production. Even with all of the topical references removed, the language is very dense, even for Shakespeare. Though you may follow the plot, it is not a sure thing that you want to. The words ... the words are ... there are so many words.

Tyne Rafaeli’s production, now showing at Great Lakes Theater, is by far the clearest and most hilarious version I’ve ever seen. And they do talk a lot. They will also horrify bibliophiles with their unprecedented abuse of bound materials.

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets (2006)

What excited me most about this version was how honestly and firmly the director and performers handle the matter of gender. Comedies about boys versus girls (in the world series of love) can so easily rely entirely on stereotypical gags about female body types and literal kicks to the crotch.

Rafaeli treats us to a story about young men and women of privilege which, while absurd, cleaved neatly to reality, to wit; I cared about the characters. I liked being in the room with them. The playful, joyful, exuberant chaos of the second act was earned and delightful and its abrupt ending was very touching.

In this production Laura Welsh Berg plays Rosaline, attendant to the Princess of France and romantic foil to Berowne, with a fierce worldliness, befitting this storied character. Many have speculated that the dark-eyed Rosaline (Berowne says she has “two pitchballs stuck in her head for eyes”) was inspired by the same “dark lady” who consternates Shakespeare so dearly in his sonnets.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun ? Well, yeah. They're pitchballs.

It was due to this apocryphal connection that we chose to produce George Bernard Shaw's The Dark Lady of the Sonnets as the outreach tour in 2006, when GLT last produced Love’s Labour’s Lost.

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action ...

And speaking of alcohol (wait for it) this weekend I am looking forward to enjoying a refreshing Young Man-Hattan, one of those concoctions to be found in Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails For Your Everyday Dramas, a handy and very funny reference guide of delightful drink and hors-d'oeuvre recipes penned by Caroline Bicks and Michelle Ephraim.

The Young Man-Hattan is a variation on the classic drink, only a little more bitter -- much like the Bard himself, writing some of the least warm and fuzzy love poems ever to an unnamed “young man” and their relations with the aforementioned dark lady.

This Saturday night I have the honor and privilege to be moderator for a light and amusing discussion with Dr. Bicks and Dr. Ephraim before the evening performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost at the Hanna Theatre. Join us!

Great Lakes Theater presents "Love's Labour's Lost" now through April 24.

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