The Intimate Bar

Emily Pucell as Dare Wright
Photo courtesy of Cassie Neumann

Do Do That Voodoo
Sept. 10, 2011
Pandemonium 11

Toni K. Thayer ... The Living Newspaper
David Hansen ... William F. McDermott
Emily Pucell ... Dare Wright
Joshua D. Brown ... Orson Welles
Geoffrey Hoffman ... Bernard Schrader
Eric Perusek ... your bartender


McDermott chats up Dare at the Intimate Bar in the Alcazar Hotel.
We had two great performances Saturday night, the "Lose Me Lodge" space had, perhaps 30 chairs in it which were filled at 8 PM and we were SRO at 8:55.

At the end of the brief performance, Toni was to hand out copies of McDermott's actual PD review of the "Voodoo" Macbeth, but she did one better and actually calling out the banner. Every audience member took one! And they had Josh's poster for It Can't Happen Here on the reverse.


Orson Welles shares a laugh with his driver ... or is Bernard yawning?
It was a sheer delight working with this team, even for only a few days. Having Josh back in town was a thrill, and he took the opportunity to play Orson Welles with great joy. Mr. Welles was in rare form that night ... it was hard for me to play half in the bag and focus on the other actors' faces, but I looked up at Josh one time when I was going off on some rant and he had this maniacal grin on his face, it was tremendous.


Welles quizzes the theater critic as he phones in his review.
This was my first time working with Geoff, and I hope to again.

I was ostensibly the "director" of this piece, I wrote it, it was short, our time was short, so I just told everyone what I wanted.

But he graciously offered several spot-on suggestions, which in the whirlwind of our time together I was extremely grateful to receive.

He really gave me an excellent note for the delivery of my last line which really put a nail onto the last moment. Well, the penultimate moment. The last moment was his, and that was super, too -- especially to our older crowd, who really got it.

This event also gave me the chance to do some revisions.


YES!!!
Photos courtesy of Margi Herwald Zitelli
After our second performance, it was time for dessert, to check out a few of the other shows ... and to finally get that Magic Hat.

Did I mention CPT received a one million dollar grant from The Kresge Foundation’s Building Reserve Grant program? So it was a good night for everyone.

Do Do That Voodoo

For those of you jonesing for a piece of this new play Centennial! ... the first public performance of one short scene from my unofficial history of Cleveland theater will be presented as part of Cleveland Public Theatre's annual benefit extravaganza -- PANDEMONIUM!
In 2003, then-Artistic Director Randy Rollison had the brilliant idea to kick out all the stops and create a mammoth benefit which would not only entertain and intoxicate (in all sense of the word) as many monied patrons as possible, but also to show off as many square inches of CPT's burgeoning campus as possible. At the same time, he solved the seemingly unending bane of the theaterworld -- mooching artists. Why yes you can have a free ticket! But you have to perform.

And we do. And we love it. Because no one wants to miss this party.

That first year Randy asked me to shepherd some actors together to present Neo-Futurist plays in the scene shop. And so for one night Magdalyn, Josh, Kelly and I were the New Guerrillas presenting Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (by permission) an attempt to perform ten plays in ten minutes. A dozen audience members were seated in the freight elevator at the Levin lobby, were handed a menu of plays, dropped down to ground level, the doors swung open and the four of us started shouting at them for which play they wanted to see. After ten minutes a buzzer went off, the doors closed and the audience went away. It was such a hit we were asked to reprise it several additional times during the evening. Yes, I kissed Christine Howey on the mouth. Yes, I paid her two dollars.

What we were unaware of, sequestered in the bowels of the theater, was how expansive the rest of the party was. We simply hadn't seen it. After we were released, we went above and found a huge dance party going on in the Gordon Square and out into the then-unpaved parking lot. It was huge! Since then, we the acquisition of the Church and Fellowship Hall spaces, it has gotten even bigger.

In 2005 we were about to open the revival of The Vampyres and I provided a cutting from that play ... which was presented out of doors on a platform stage. It was just one of those cases of bad planning on my part, I was unable to participate in any of the technical preparations and just distanced myself from the entire event. It wasn't the year for it for me, with a two year-old and a new baby at home. When Beth asked if I was interested in providing something this year, I made sure the scene fit the venue.

Two years ago, my wife wrote a piece especially for the event, a tribute to the goddess Kali in the form of a Mary Kay party, a scene I was delighted to have participated in. Last year the theme for the night was Wild Thing and though I was unable to attend, I was very happy to send the actor-teachers from Great Lakes to teach happy, adult partygoers how we coach first graders to perform Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are. Apparently, it was quite a hit.
This year, my scene Do Do That Voodoo takes place in the Intimate Bar at the Alcazar Hotel following a performance of the Federal Theatre's Negro Unit touring production of Macbeth, directed by Orson Welles.

The scene will feature Toni K. Thayer as the Voice of the Living Newspaper, Emily Pucell as Dare Wright, Geoff Hoffman as Bernard Schrader, Joshua D. Brown as Orson Welles, Eric Perusek as the bartender ... and your truly as William F. McDermott.

Saturday, September 10. Pandemonium. Be there.


Evan Palazzo
"You Do Something To Me"

Edith Stevenson Wright

Edith's Hanna Building Penthouse
Apartment & Studio, 1954

Edith Stevenson Wright (1883 - 1975) was born in Youngstown, the daughter of a British immigrant steelworker. She spent her life largely in Cleveland, Ohio, as an accomplished and (as such things go) successful portrait painter, living and working in the Hanna Building penthouse. She was married to and divorced from theater critic Ivan Wright, they had two children, Blaine and Dare. Dare Wright was a fashioned model, later photographer, and author of The Lonely Doll (1957) as well as a series of other children's books.

Edith began training at the age of 13 at the Central Ontario School of Art, and by 16 she was mentoring under J.W.L. Forester, a British painter of government ministers.

In 1954 Edith had painted a portrait of Winston Churchill, which was unveiled at Christmastime at the University of Bristol. Sir Philip Morris, vice chancellor of the university, was so taken with the work that he told Edith he was going to arrange a sitting with the 28 year-old Queen Elizabeth, then only one year into her reign. Using dare as a model, she created an eight-foot drawing to prepare for this most amazing opportunity, which unfortunately never materialized.

The only Edith Stevenson Wright I have ever seen up and close and in person used to hang in the Schubert Library at the Cleveland Play House. It was a bit of a surprise, last fall, finally - after three years in the Playwrights Unit - to climb the circular staircase to the balcony of that dectagonal room to get a closer look at the cases filled with marionettes, and the portraits of former CPH Artistic Directors. I did not expect to come face to face with an artist whose name I was familiar with.

Edith had painted a portrait of actress and company member Helen Watkins. She was a player with CPH for decades, Edith's painting dates from the 1950s. In The Crucible, Ms. Watkins played Rebecca Nurse.

Sources:
The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll (Jean Nathan)
The Plain Dealer
Wikipedia

Blackwing Sketchbook

Dare

Blackwing Sketchbook
Jenny Lerew, 2006

Dare Wright

Dare Wright
(December 3, 1914 – January 25, 2001)
... and speaking of children's books featuring black and white photographs of stuffed bears in real-world settings ...

Born in Canada in 1914, Dare Wright spent most of her formative years in Cleveland. Her parents were separated when she was a child. Her older brother Blaine lived with their alcoholic, theater critic father, while she lived with her mother, professional portrait painter Edith Stevenson Wright.

Settling in Cleveland in 1919, and after a few living arrangements based upon the kindness of strangers, the independent painter and her young daughter found their own apartment in Cleveland Heights in 1921. She was commissioned to paint lawyers, judges, politicians - and finally received the favor of the Hanna family. She painted a posthumous portrait of Marcus Bales Hanna, and later his son, Daniel Sr. owner of the Cleveland Leader, and later the News. They lavished her with connections and attention, granting her studio space in the Hanna Building.

I work in the Hanna Building. Crazy.

Dare went to Coventry Elementary School, and by fourth grade a boarder at Laurel School. Biographer Jean Nathan in her book The Secret Life of The Lonely Doll suggests that her life of impermanence coupled with her mother's focus on the superficial (because, you know, she was a painter) was a major factor in shaping Dare's deep-seated sorrow regarding connection with actual people, and her tendency to render inanimate objects with personality and as a repository for her fantasies of love and acceptance.

If Dare were raised by her successful, aloof, artist father and had an ne'er-do-well mother who drank a lot, it would still be called the mother's fault for Dare's becoming a glamorous, disaffected freak, because that is how we look at things.

Edith's success grew. She painted Calvin Coolidge's portrait in 1928 and it was hung in Public Hall, where he had received his party's nomination in 1924. In 1935 a cigarette caused a fire in Public Hall and the portrait was destroyed.

Graduating from Laurel in 1933 (top five in her class) Dare moved to New York and discovered the brother she had never known. Her journeys took her from there to Hollywood (where she failed to become an actress) back to Cleveland and to New York, eventually establishing herself as a stunning, stylish model for fashion magazines.

She became a photographer, and was equally accomplished in front of and behind the camera. In 1957 she created her legendary children's book, The Lonely Doll featuring Edie, a felt Lenci Doll from her own childhood, named after her mother. In the story this most lonely of dolls is visited by Mr. Bear and Little Bear (stand-ins, of course, for her absent father and brother) and after a tentative period of discovery and tests of trust, the trio is bonded forever and will never be apart again.

The Lonely Doll disappeared in obscurity - but remained a strong, psychic presence in the mind of many baby boomer aged children, and eventually returned to print in 1998. We have a copy. My daughter's middle name is Dare.

Dare Wright died in 2001.

Sources:
Wikipedia
The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll
This American Life