I do not recall celebrating the end of the first decade of this century, we just kept calm and carried on. Today, however, there are all kinds of folks asking, "How did you spend the past ten years?"
Ye, gods. I shudder to think. That would be called my 40s, and they flew by. What on earth did I do with them? I don’t feel like I’m any different, anywhere different than I was in 2009.
But the end of that year was when I was awarded a Creative Workforce Fellowship, which was an important step in my journey as a professional playwright
My primary goal in having received the fellowship was to write a play inspired by the events of 1936, and to that end I began this blog, Cleveland Centennial. Most of 2010 was spent chronicling my research, then this blog became a general repository for my thoughts and experiences regarding playwriting and theater.
Reviewing over one thousand unique entries, and in chronological order, here are my Ten Best Blog Posts of the 2010s.
Devon Turchan is the Emcee in Cabaret (Blank Canvas Theatre)
We work in the city. The spaces we inhabit for our art and our the nourishment of our souls are made of cement and brick and glass, those man-made substances least likely to trap or keep heat. And yet, that is where we go, to occupy empty storefronts where we scheme and build, so close friends and friends we haven’t met yet can huddle against the elements to have our little moments before scattering to our various sectors once again.
Last week the wife and I went to the 78th Street Studios, once the design headquarters of American Greetings, then another largely vacant warehouse in the largely vacant near west side. Today it is a feature of the Battery Park district, an artists’ haven with spaces for galleries and also private functions (I have attended a wedding reception there) the site of several temporary Theater Ninjas installations and currently home to Blank Canvas Theatre.
We were attending a sold out performance of Blank Canvases’ acclaimed production of Cabaret. They had sent an email message to all those who had reservations (God, the things we could have done with email back in the day) warning us that parking would be an issue, as the entire building would be packed with interested shoppers taking the Holiday Bazaar. They recommended we arrive early, as to have time to find a parking space and then leisurely browse the wares of dozens of local artists.
I have seen a couple of shows at Blank Canvas, a tiny space with roughly ninety seats on three sides of the stage. Have you ever seen Cabaret in someplace the size of an actual cabaret? It is a rare treat, I will tell you that. They had a wait list, the best of their shows often do. It doesn’t matter how many seats a theater has, you want it full, people like to know they are part of something special, something in demand.
We (not me, the collective we) used to create these spaces, carving them out of the unhappy emptiness of urban abandonment. A storefront in Tremont with a single light over the door lighting a hand painted sign that read “The Actors’ Gym.” On any given Saturday evening we would wait for five or six the trickle in. Then there was the coffee shop carved out the space between two buildings with a metal roof over it, “The Brick Alley.” They offered folk music and the occasional dramatic offering.
John Coltrane's Christmas Meditation (Moko Bovo) 12 Bands of Christmas Sing, 12/22/1992 (Cleveland Public Theater)
Our new theater company used this space to produce a modern-dress yet otherwise pretty traditional three-hour Hamletwhich was surprisingly well received and was also selling out its run, filling each of its ninety seats. People would drive in from their homes in the suburbs, park on St. Clair or 40th Street, see the show and then promptly vacate the area.
Cleveland used to have one major urban entertainment center at a time. Once, you had the Flats. Then it was the Warehouse District when everyone began fleeing the Flats, later East 4th. It was as though the number of people coming downtown weren’t enough to accommodate two neighborhoods at once.
Last week there was a public hearing regarding Cuyahoga Arts and Culture’s decision to eliminate the Creative Workforce Fellowship, and many opinions were expressed regarding how these individual artist grants contributed to the cultural strength and vitality of neighborhoods like Tremont, Ohio City, Gordon Square, Waterloo, Hingetown -- those last three are names that were made up in the past ten years, they used to be called the Detroit Shoreway, Collinwood and, uh, Ohio City (?) as they have each become distinctive downtown neighborhoods where people actually hang out instead of scurrying right back to their homes.
So, we were seeing Cabaret in this tiny space in the middle of a large warehouse. Audience members with beer and popcorn jostling for position in our seats, remaindered from some defunct movie theater, trying to find space for all of our large, poofy coats. It was happening, the dream is real. I was reminded of that strange opportunity we received, almost twenty-five years ago. This guy owned the Union Gospel Press Building and wanted our company to move in. He wanted us to do our work there, we’d be pioneers, the rent would be seriously cheap and we could do whatever we liked.
We also wouldn’t have a lease, because he didn’t believe in those. I can only imagine what it would have been like if we had moved the entire operation, lock and stock, into that space on the edge of Tremont, overlooking the only recently completed Interstate 490.
We would have had off-street parking but no one would have stepped foot into that place just to see us, and even if we were able to turn it into a success we’d be out on our asses the moment the guy decided he didn’t want us there any more. That's not urban homesteading, that's like subletting on the surface of the moon.
Jean-Jacques Sempé (2005)
The other night I began a new project in the service of another writer, we had our first read-through in a former storefront, part of the massive Cleveland Public Theatre complex. The mercury was in the teens, but a fragile pane of glass was keeping us from dense, muscle-deep and piercing cold. We gather together to read a new play script.
This evening my wife and I will welcome folks into our home for the final salon of the calendar year (more on that some time) building a wall against despair and disillusionment, against the cold. It's what we do. It is what we have always done.
One of my very favorite New Yorker covers is by Jean-Jacques Sempé. Published in January, 2005, it features a street in the city, winter, cold, snow falling. The neighborhood is dark except for one street-level club, the lights are on, the band is playing, people are heading in wearing their heavy winter coats.
Cuyahoga Arts & Culture is reviewing the
role of individual artist funding as it relates to its mission. CAC’s
board will discuss this topic at its September board meeting. There will
be no Creative Workforce Fellowship application deadline until Cuyahoga Arts & Culture has completed its review. - Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, June 6, 2014
The Creative Workforce Fellowship has been suspended.
As an honored recipient of a fellowship in 2010, I would like to make
clear my deep appreciation for the opportunity this award provided me in
pursuit of my work.
The award means money, to be sure, which
means freedom. Freedom to take time from my regular work (for which I
must thank my employer, Great Lakes Theater) to engage in research and
travel, which resulted in several new works.
New writing
materials (which I still have and use and care for) continue to
facilitate my work, four years on.
I had the opportunity to experience
more plays, from immersive house performances to Broadway productions of
award-winning works and everything in-between.
Most, most
importantly, however, was how this fellowship changed the way I think as
a professional artist, living and working in this region. Prior to my
CPAC fellowship, I was fortunate to produce one work a year, or every
two years.
Since 2010 I have had five plays produced, two solo
performances remounted, one play published, one production in New York
City, another in California, one of my scripts has been produced in high
schools across America, another in England, and also a fully-realized
workshop of a sprawling, large-cast play I had always hoped to create,
and will someday beat into submission. And the work continues.
All this, in addition
to having joined the Dramatists Guild of America, increasing my
production with the Cleveland Play House Playwrights' Unit, participating
in the development of a Broadway-bound play script (as an actor) and
all the several shorter works I have provided to companies across
Greater Cleveland.
I used to say I write plays. Now I am a playwright.
Cuyahoga Arts and Culture has a very important job ahead of them, in
educating the voters of Cuyahoga County how an unqualified success their
organization has been. No one I know questions how fortunate our region
has been for this remarkable funding. We are the envy of arts
communities around the nation.
An important part of that
success, however, has been the individual funding provided through the
Community Partnership for Arts and Culture. A shortlist of fellowship recipients include nationally recognized artists as playwright Eric Coble, fashion designer Valerie Mayen and dancer David Shimotakahara. (Complete list available here.) Their work has been fostered through this program, also, to the benefit of our larger community.
I will make sure
the CAC board has heard my opinion prior to their September board
meeting. Please be sure they hear yours as well.
Last June, six playwrights and I gathered to discuss the possibility of creating a new play inspired by Jacques' "seven ages of man" speech from Shakespeare's As You Like It for the Great Lakes Theater 2014 free outreach tour.
I laid down a few ground rules, deciding which characters would be available to them, and in what time period it was to be set. These four characters would use each other to tell tales inspired by (but not restricted to) one of each of these ages: infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon and advanced old age.
Assigning each age was no big deal, everyone negotiated and came to an agreement. Area critic, playwright, poet and performer Christine Howey chose "second childhood and mere oblivion" or senescence, as the Bard describes, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Exact Change
Christine is having a good year, and it's not even February. Last weekend she wrapped up a three-week, sold out run of her new solo performance Exact Change at Cleveland Public Theatre. She was recently announced as a 2014 Creative Workforce Fellow, provided by the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture and funded by Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. And of course, she's a playwright for Seven Ages.
Interestingly, we could have booked Exact Change and repackaged that as Seven Ages and had our tour already in the bag. Chronicling as it does the playwright's own experiences from childhood to these later years using verse, video and startling costume changes to evoke a modern Tiresias.
Christine's tale opens our septameron -- beginning where we all conclude -- pitting old Portelaine, a man nearing the end of his days against those who would "cheer him up" or "put a smile on his face". It is a role and responsibility which has struck home to me on numerous recent occasions (including past outreach tours which have visited certain assisted care and nursing facilities) and one which I am still coming to terms with for this piece.
"Cleveland, Ohio and Cuyahoga County are my home. If events come together that take me and my family to another location, it will be as a result of opportunities presented as a result of what we have learned and gained from our lives here.
"My work has given me a greater appreciation for my hometown, and made me look closer at every person, every building, every public space. Cleveland has suffered greatly through the second half of the 20th Century and I do not have the answers as how to make it a thriving metropolis again. Even during the depths of the Depression, Cleveland was a thriving, throbbing place where things were happening. I can be part of that -- indeed, I have spent all of my creative energies striving to be exactly that. The Community Partnership for Arts and Culture and Cuyahoga Arts and Culture have invested in me as an artist, and I promise to make a strong return on that investment."
Creative Workforce Fellowship Final Report Filed at 5:59 AM, January 31, 2011
