The Secret Adversary: In Review

Cleveland Sight Center

Yes, it has been over a month since my last entry. These things happen. However, for years I have posted updates about the outreach tour and how it is progressing. Unfortunately, I attended only two performances of this year’s play, my adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary, before the sudden death of my father.

Family business and my own sense of disorientation and mourning kept me from the show for a week. Lisa and I were going to host and moderate the performances equally, and thankfully she was able to take all of them instead, in my absence.

Lakewood Public Library

As it happened, the afternoon performance at the Cleveland Sight Center occurred just when each of my brothers were in town, and the day before my father’s memorial service. We all attended together. My brothers have never before been in the audience together, and with me, for something I have written.

Not surprisingly, The Secret Adversary has been very well attended. The name “Agatha Christie” remains popular. Christie’s works are the third best-selling in the world after the Bible and Shakespeare.

We had to turn numerous people away at Clague Playhouse when all seats were taken, though a dozen or so stayed to watch the large video screen in the lobby that showed the performance. It was standing room only in Lakewood, but no one was required to leave.

Those turned away are no doubt disappointed, and post-show evaluations give certain audience members the opportunity to complain about crowded conditions or having to sit in the back. (Did I mention it’s free?) However, the overwhelming reaction to the production is very high.

"Your actors are amazing! Possibly better than what I've seen on touring Broadway casts."
- Student, Elyria Catholic High School

"The script was outstanding - this was a great adaptation!"
- Kendal at Oberlin audience member

“I really, really, really loved this play. I very much enjoyed the actors and actresses, the theme, the dialogue, and the ending scene was just beautiful.”
- Student, Hudson Middle School

Friday afternoon we performed in the new Cleveland School of the Arts building, in their “Black Box” space. Over 150 students in attendance, and they were wonderful, leaning forward, hanging on every word, getting every jokes, gasping at each revelation. After the show, their questions were all processed-based, about character, accents, physicality, even about the writing, adapting a novel into a play.

There will be a performance this afternoon in Cleveland Heights, which is home base for me. There are only three more public performances before we close, in Oberlin, Akron and Lorain.

The Secret Adversary opened on February 16, my mother's birthday. She and my father were in attendance, he was always a great reader and very fond of mystery novels and he provided and suggested numerous books that I used for research. And basically made me a person who would want to adapt a novel by Agatha Christie into a play. He enjoyed the show.

The Lady & The Bard

February is the longest month. Annually, I am engaged in the Great Lakes Theater Festival Outreach Tour. With the exception of last year's tour, this means putting my writing on hold for six weeks, my days spent in the office and my nights in rehearsal. This year we are presenting Daniel Hahn's Twice Told Tales of the Decameron which is a physically demanding piece of work. It is also tricky on the tongue.

Marketing Director Todd Krispinsky asked me to contribute to the GLTF artists blog on the production, which I have been only too happy to do. But I have had little to contribute to this blog. Or at least, nothing yet. It does not mean I have not been working.

For example, I am reading a thick book, A Shadow of Red by David Everitt, which (in keeping with today's theme) was a gift Daniel gave me after the 2008 GLTF Outreach Touring production, Seeing Red. This book deals specifically with the Blacklist in radio and television. How that differs from the Hollywood Blacklist ... well, that's what I am reading to learn. This is very helpful and informative as I piece together the post-Centennial career of Bernard Schrader, and how his work as a scriptwriter for radio may be viewed by those searching for Communist influences in the media.

Meanwhile, I have also continued to work with the Young Ladies of Noble on The Lady, which will be presented later this month. I did not imagine that creating a ten-minute play, incorporating eighteen (and now nineteen) ten year-old girls, with six forty-minute rehearsals, would be an easy task. Having said that, I have been delighted and surprised to find that it has, actually, been an entirely stress-free endeavor.

Ms. Eisenberg, Noble art teacher and counsellor for the Young Ladies, has been extremely helpful, acting as assistant director and defacto stage manager, keeping track of everything I am too dizzy to remember. All the girls grab pencils, take notes, remember everything, we pick up week to week from where we left off, and move forward. We have two more rehearsals in the actual performance space (the cafeteria) where we will be concentrating on projection -- on being LOUD. We may need to use microphones. But they each are doing a splendid job memorizing their lines, creating interesting characters. I am very proud of them.

Okay, as if that weren't enough the beautify my world yesterday, I was also summoned to the Cleveland School of the Arts (Cleveland Metropolitan School District) to act as a judge for the in-school competition for the English Speaking Union's National Shakespeare Competition. The winner would be sent to the regional competition downtown on Feb. 26.

The CSA is blessed to have Dr. Scott Miller as and English teacher and drama coach. He's just amazing. I was a little early and came walking into his class to witness an all-class project dramatizing Hamlet's To Be Or Not To Be soliloquy. This has nothing to do with the ESU competition, stuff like this happens in Dr. Miller's class every day. It was obvious the entire class had been working on the piece for some time, about ten kids, it's got choreography and original writing as well as Shakespeare's text to really get inside the head of someone considering suicide -- but choosing not to.

Then I saw ten high schools students perform monologues from Shakespeare with a commitment, understanding and excitement I rarely see in people so young. So much life, so much hope, so much deserved self-confidence. It was not easy choosing one to send to the regional competition. I live for such difficult decisions.


Harry E. Davis School
Temporary Home of the Cleveland School of the Arts

Victor Schreckengost

Over the Bridge, 1980
Viktor Schreckengost (June 26, 1906 – January 26, 2008)
Dude created the Jazz Bowl, that statue of David Bowie on Lakewood High School, designed kids' bicycles, the cab-over-engine configuration of trucks, and an inspiring drawing of Cleveland called Over the Bridge that I keep on my wall.

Today I taped an interview for CPAC about my Fellowship year. We were asked to bring in something visual, and as a playwright I was scratching my head a little. So instead of paper or books or my laptop, I brought inspiration. I realized today that my generation are the last kids to see this as their Cleveland skyline. One building, the Terminal Tower. The fact that the sun is harsh and bright and the sky orange also puts me in mind of the 1970s.

He was born in Sebring, Ohio in 1906. His father was a ceramicist, and brought his work home with him. Victor and two of his brothers took on the trade. He graduated from the Cleveland School of the Arts (now CIA) in 1929. He studied in Vienna, for six months, returned to Cleveland, and stayed here. He lived in Cleveland Heights until his death in 2008.

In 1936 he was teaching industrial design at the Cleveland School of the Arts. When he began this position in 1931 he was the youngest instructor in their history.

The Jazz Bowl was an anonymous commissioned from Cowan Pottery where Schreckengost also worked, a request for a punch bowl inspired by New York. The man created a black bowl with night-sky blue designs of NYC nightlife etched into it, and the word "JAZZ." It was a great hit with the woman who requested it - Eleanor Roosevelt - and to the artists' knowledge, some 50 were made. Less expensive ones were created with the designs painted on, rather than etched.

"Every adult in America has ridden in, ridden on, drunk out of, stored their things in, eaten off of, been costumed in, mowed their lawn with, played on, lit the night with, viewed in a museum, cooled their room with, read about, printed with, sat on, placed a call with, enjoyed in a theater, hid their hooch in, collected, been awarded with, seen at a zoo, put their flowers in, hung on their wall, served punch from, delivered milk in, read something printed on, seen at the World's Fair, detected enemy combatants with, written about, had an arm or leg replaced with, graduated from, protected by, or seen at the White House something created by Viktor Schreckengost". - The Viktor Schreckengost Foundation

Some of my favorite public pieces of his are "Mammoth" and "Mastodon" (1956) which used to be featured on the side of the elephant house at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. These terra cotta sculptures have been carefully removed and are being restored, and will one day be featured at the entrance of the park.

Sources:Wikipedia
The Victor Schreckengost Foundation