The Blackout of 2019

Blackout sunset down West 47th Street

Just returned from “vacation” which I state in ironic quotes because it was all too brief, arriving and departing on subsequent Sundays, a good thirty-six hours spent fretting about whether and in what shape my wife, daughter and mother-in-law would arrive in the cove. Their Monday night flight our of LaGuardia had been cancelled and they spent the evening in a hotel room in Queens.

I drove to Maine with my son (my daughter had obligations at home until Monday, hence the flight) and then drove her home by way of Providence, Rhode Island. My wife is currently still on vacation with our son. I do not mind having driven both ways, as plane travel is something I have (like my father, like my father-in-law) grown to absolutely despise.

We were visiting colleges; Brown, then RISD. I have now visited five schools with the girl, feeling more like a responsible, attentive parent than I have in years. Last month we toured schools in New York City.

For her sixteenth birthday I promised her a father/daughter visit to Manhattan. Originally I was thinking maybe we would camp out all night to get tickets to SNL, which she is devoted to, but summer, the off-season, seemed much more practical. And, anyway. Schools.

Times Square

Friday, July 11

We arrived at LGA early on a week day, the flight delayed just enough that we would be unable to stop at the Airbnb to drop off our bags first. Fortunately, and by design, we each had only one bag, backpacks, which we carried for most of the day.

NYU was the first stop, which impressed her especially with each of its satellite campuses. We had not signed up to tour the studio art school, unfortunately. We did, however, have a moment to slip into Caffè Reggio on MacDougal Street for coffee and salads. I asked if it were possible to charge my phone and was politely informed that the place was so old there were no outlets except behind the bar.

I have fond memories of relaxing here during the NY Fringe in 2004, where I would run lines for I Hate This. My performance venue at that time was a walk-down, way over by 11th Avenue. There was no modern development there at the time, the forty-seat site is gone, now part of the mammoth Hudson Yards development.

We then visited Parsons School of Design. I’m such a dork my only knowledge of the place is Project Runway. At the conclusion of our tours we jumped the C train to Morningside Heights. Our host was a lovely, accommodating woman named Ruth, whose apartment was decked with independent movie posters from the 70s, and for Broadway shows starring the young Al Pacino and signed by the entire company. She is a classic New York gal.

My wife and I would no doubt have headed out for some night life, but my date was a teenager and it had been a long day, so the plan was dinner and an early start on Saturday. The sun was not yet about to set and it was hot, but hit the patio at Harlem Tavern and it was refreshing and delightful.

Mount Rushmore of Art, Eduardo Kobra

Saturday, July 12

I rose early that morning, around six, and set out to get coffee, which was surprisingly difficult. All the cafes were closed and the bodegas I checked out were not accommodating. I had to settle for Dunkin’, a street person reclining out front asked for a Boston Cream, so I got him that and also a banana for which he was much appreciative.

The girl and I then set out on a three-mile run. We were just a few blocks from Central Park, and I’d never been to the Northwest quadrant. Even when I ran the marathon in 2006 we passed the statue of Duke Ellington on the east side. Here we entered the park by the statue of Frederick Douglass and did a couple laps before heading back, freshening up and stopping by Caféine for caffeine and sandwiches.

We headed downtown to attend the Whitney Biennial. I let my daughter set the pace, and we took our time on every floor. Three hours in one art museum, viewing, taking time for coffee and water, all dictated by her interest. It was amazing. We had some fascinating conversations about the work, and about art in general. She is such an insightful young woman.

The High Line, 2012

By the time we exited it was very hot, as we mounted the steps to the High Line. The family had last visited this place in 2012, when we were attending a cousin’s Central Park wedding, so the children were much younger but she had happy memories of the place. It was much more crowded on this day, and sunny and warm.

She and I are alike in our physiology, our endurance, but I still needed to check in, make sure it wasn’t all too exhausting. We came down off the trestle to find some lunch and the folks at Don Giovanni were a joy. We had a relaxing meal, checked out a gallery, and then walked to Times Square to attend a reading at the New York Musical Festival.

Not just any reading, mind you. We were there to catch a 6 PM performance of Everything is Okay (And Other Helpful Lies) written by Melissa T. Crum and Caitlin Lewins. The first thing the girl noticed was that she recognized one of the actors from The Bold Type.

“How can she be doing that, and also doing this?” she wanted to know. I told her that’s what New York actors do.

This was the final of three shows for Everything is Okay, and it was as though the entire administrative staff from Cleveland Public Theatre was there, which was pretty cool.

"I have no mind, I'm the village idiot."

During the performance the lights dimmed dramatically, but just as swiftly came back up. Following the performance we learned the power was out on the west side. The elevators were no working and the lights were out in the stairwell. It wasn’t until we made our way to the street and we passed the enormous crowd out in front of Aladdin that I realized what this all meant -- Broadway shows were being cancelled for the evening.

The girl had wanted to do some shopping around the square, but the stores were now closed and the sidewalks were crammed with tourists and New Yorkers going, where exactly?

The trains on the west side were down, so we walked across town. I tried hailing a cab, but they were all full. We finally made it to the 6 express train, which was packed, and took us past our stop all the way to 125th Street. So, more walking, just my daughter and I strolling through Harlem on a hot Saturday night.

We weren’t sure if restaurants in the neighborhood would be open by the time we got there, and besides, she was exhausted (her FitBit reported we walked twelve miles that day) and just wanted to collapse in our room, so she picked up carry-out at the Whole Foods at West 125th and Malcolm X Boulevard.

My wife took classes at CCNY in the early 1990s and just the phrase “the Whole Foods at 125th and Malcolm X Boulevard” made her laugh. It is a different city.

It took over two hours to get to where we were staying. A real New York experience. The kitchen was in fact closed at Silvana, a Middle Eastern place I was really hoping to try -- but the folks there did serve me dolmathes to go, for which I was especially grateful. I really love New Yorkers.

Central Park Carousel, 2004

Sunday, July 13

I’m training for a marathon, and my schedule dictated a ten mile run, which I took. All through Central Park, as far south as Bethesda Terrace and including several laps around the reservoir.

The girl slept until eight, which was only proper. We had a leisurely breakfast as Les Ambassades before heading back up the the train at 125th. On our way we noticed a film shoot between Manhattan and St. Nicholas Avenues. It appeared to be a period shoot, and by the cars and costumes, I guessed it took place in the late 50s.

Later we learned it was for the new West Side Story.

Anyway, the plan was to see a Broadway show, whatever was available at TKTS. I described each show as fairly as possible, only vetoing one or two I had absolutely no interest in. I assumed she would choose a musical, but once I had described The Play That Goes Wrong as Noises Off on steroids (I had no idea if this was true, but that’s pretty much accurate) that was at the top of her list. She played Poppy in a high school production of Noises Off her freshman year.

While we waited for the matinee, we did some shopping, and took a walk through Central Park. We took a ride on the carousel … which we had last done together in 2004. Can you imagine?

Fort Tryon Park

Also, The Play That Goes Wrong is fucking hilarious.

After the show, we took the train all the way uptown, had noodles at Tampopo, and took a stroll Fort Tryon Park, just before dusk. It’s a very special place for my wife, and now it is for me, as well. Someday I look forward to taking the girl to the Cloisters. Both of the kids, actually.

Monday, July 14

We packed up to go, having one last coffee at Caféine and taking our things into a cab for Brooklyn and a tour of the Pratt Institute before flying home.

It was a delightful journey, I hope to take my son on a similar one in two years. Maybe to NYC, maybe Chicago. He really likes Chicago. I'm not trying to sell the kids on cities other than Cleveland as a place to go to school or to live and work. I just want them to know there are other cities, and that they can go where they choose.

Tomorrow, the first of August, my daughter begins soccer practice for the new school year. While the summer isn’t exactly over, it has begun to end. And we’re ready for that, too.

"Everything is Okay (And Other Helpful Lies)" at the New York Musical Festival

For my daughter’s sixteenth birthday I promised her a weekend getaway to New York. We travel, our family travels a little, but she’s halfway through her high school years and I am not getting any younger. Taking a special trip, just the two of us, it seemed like something I would later regret not having done.

We have a freewheeling itinerary, which includes visiting schools, art museums and galleries up and down Manhattan, conditioning runs in Central Park (she for the soccer season, me for the Chicago Marathon) and who knows, maybe a show or two.

Saturday evening we’re going to Playwrights Horizons in Times Square to attend reading of Everything Is Okay (And Other Helpful Lies) by Melissa T. Crum and Caitlin Lewins, presented as part of the New York Musical Festival (NYMF).

This is particularly exciting to me, to get the opportunity to see this work. Missy and Caitlin are good friends and colleagues, Cleveland artists, and talented, rising playwrights. I have had the chance to watch this piece grow and grow at Cleveland Public Theatre, where they teamed up as Nord Family Playwright Fellows to first create this works as song cycle at Pandemonium and Entry Point, further develop it at Test Flight (I missed that one) and then receive a full production on the mainstage last fall.

Everything is Okay is a Millennial musical, chronicling two days (or nights?) in the lives of a cohort of twenty-somethings, slouching towards thirty, trying their damnedest to smile bravely through disillusionment, disappointment, and death, armed with wit, attitude, and a lot of alcohol.

What is truly impressive is how they’ve continued to shape and develop this musical. Everything is Okay has the potential for great things; it’s an urgent, contemporary work which speaks directly to the young adult generation with candor, understanding, and a great deal of humor. And the music is really good!

Having raised the necessary cash through a highly successful Kickstarter campaign and other individual donors and investors, they created a professional demo for the application to NYMF, and for their efforts received a space with nine other musicals to receive readings, directed, musical directed and performed by Equity members. For ten days, Caitlin and Missy have been present for rehearsals but also spending a great deal of time revising the work and providing daily updates to the company.

“It is crazy and beautiful and eye-opening just being writers,” Missy said. For each previous step of this journey, she and Caitlin had doubled as performers. Now they get to take it in.

I talked to them by phone Thursday morning, after they had each slept in for the first time since before Independence Day. Their first performance was Wednesday afternoon, and they unwound that night at Marie’s Crisis, a piano bar where musical theater fans gather and spend the night singing showtunes together.

“It’s like hanging out with your old high school friends,” said Missy, and I can dig it.

Just getting them on the line I had to make an appointment, as they have been rushing about, from rehearsal space to their Airbnb to various writing warrens and back again.

Caitlin, who has been to New York before and has acted as navigator and tour guide for Melissa, who hasn’t. Making their way to the rehearsal space in Times Square in ninety degree heat can dizzying and exhausting, but Caitlin has kept reminding Missy to look up. “Look! It’s Waitress!” she says.

They are intensely grateful for all of the support they have received, at home, from CPT, from all of the artists they are working with this week, especially Chloe Treat (director), Dan Garmon (musical director), Olivia Mancini (stage manager) and all the performers, with their “talented, amazing, incredible voices.” (That’s both of them saying all of that.)

One of the most significant things they have heard this week was from NYMF (pronounced “nymph”) Artistic Director, West Hyler. He remarked that Caitlin and Missy have made a musical that feels like a documentary. It’s a comment which struck them significantly, and which they carry with them. They’re in a unique position, having already had a full production, and getting to break it down and build it up again.

They have already received feedback from Wednesday’s performance, much of it supportive and helpful, though there remains this unfortunate generational divide over the content. They received such criticism in Cleveland. Christine Howey went on a tear in Scene Magazine, accusing the production of “taking navel-gazing to new heights,” wildly mixing metaphors as she bemoaned the kids these days and their focus on personal issues rather than more important things like school shootings and plastic waste in the sea.

This, from the generation who gave us The Big Chill. And plastic waste in the sea. They said the same things about we Gen Xers twenty years ago, and we’re still trying to figure it out.

“Superficial,” came one piece of written feedback from the other night. “That’s me!” said another.

Musicals with heart and empathy like Everything is Okay help us all feel less alone. And that, my friends, is the opposite of selfish.

The New York Musical Festival presents "Everything is Okay (and Other Helpful Lies)" at Playwrights Horizons in NYC through Saturday, July 13, 2019.

(Photos courtesy of Caitlin & Missy.)

Big Month of Plays

"Everything Is Okay (and Other Helpful Lies)"
by Melissa T. Crum & Caitlin Lewins
Cleveland Public Theatre
Photo by Steve Wagner

The Dark Room

It’s been a huge month for theater, which is usually the case for October as traditional season cycles begin. The difference this year is that I have actually had the opportunity to attend several of them, which is not often the case.

I actually had the chance to begin the month by attending the Dark Room, Cleveland Public Theatre’s monthly playwriting “open mic.” It’s free, it happens every second Tuesday, and there is beer. In addition to several ten minute plays written by about a half dozen writers, I threw in a few odd pages from a new piece I have started. They didn’t go anywhere, but people laughed, and so I am encouraged.

See you there November 13th.

Hello, Dolly!

The KeyBank Broadway Series at Playhouse Square has begun. First up, Hello Dolly! Featuring the incomparable Betty Buckley. She really was delightful and made a warm connection with the audience.

Waiting for the show to begin.

Personally, I loved when she crossed the stage to kneel and pick up a stray prop that rolled across the stage following a big, company dance routine. She didn’t break character or stop her delivery for a moment, just picked it up and set it aside like it was her job, because she a professional and it is.

Everything Is Okay (and Other Helpful Lies)

Last weekend I had the opportunity to witness a preview performance of Everything Is Okay (and Other Helpful Lies) at Cleveland Public Theatre. Written by Melissa T. Crum and Caitlin Lewins and under the powerful direction of Matthew Wright, this Millennial musical is a breathtakingly ambitious and brilliant event.

It has been very inspiring to watch and listen as Missy and Caitlin first presented this piece as a cabaret of songs at the first Entry Point, later performing an uncompleted version of the book at this year’s Entry Point (there was a point in the second act where character was broken and one announced, “Okay, we’re not sure how we’re wrapping this all up yet, but it may go like this ...”) to this fully-realized performance, executed with urgency and style. And may I say the band is fucking incredible?

The show opens to a sold out crowd tonight!

Colin Holter speaking before "Mamma Mia!"
Great Lakes Theater

Mamma Mia!

The company for whom I am employed, Great Lakes Theater, is currently presenting Mamma Mia! and Joseph Hanreddy’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in rotating repertory, and these productions are each a smash. The Jane Austen play is entirely sold out, with Mamma Mia! which runs an additional week, almost to capacity. Tickets are still available, especially on Halloween.

As a member of the education department, I often host GLT’s weekly pre-show event, Playnotes, where we engage an area expert to provide historical background to that afternoon’s performance. Last weekend our guest was Colin Holter, composer, teacher, and writer on music. He described to a packed salon the origins of ABBA’s original success in the mid-1970s, the particular techniques they use in their singing to catch the ear and the heart, and their enduring popularity.

Holter brought a guitar and was able to play and sing a few verse to better illustrate these techniques, and the assembled were rapt and impressed. He will speak again before matinee performances on Saturdays November 3rd and 10th, which currently have a limited number of available seats.

"When the Tiger Sneezed" by Toni  K. Thayer
Talespinner Children's Theatre

When the Lion Sneezed

Every year, in addition to their main stage work at Reinberger Auditorium, Talespinner Children's Theatre produces a shorter program, designed for touring. For 2019 that production is When the Lion Sneezed (Tales of Ancient Assyria and Beyond) written by Toni K. Thayer, a beautiful artist, educator, and my spouse.

It is a tradition that this touring show debuts at the annual Harlequinade gala in the fall and this year was no exception. What was unusual was the storm which blew through and knocked over powerlines across the city last Saturday night. The electricity went out roughly an hour and a half before guests were due to arrive, but thanks to smart thinking and a team of volunteers who just kept working by battery-operated lanterns (we have kinds of crazy things in theaters) they were able to procure a generator which lit up the party room upstairs.

The stage downstairs was still dark, however, but as this play was designed to be produced anywhere, they swiftly adapted it to the party room and we had the opportunity to witness and enjoy Toni’s delightful tale of the origin of cats -- and the diverse ways we feel about them.

"Sweat" by Lynn Nottage
Cleveland Play House
Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Sweat

Earlier this week, Chennelle and I saw the Cleveland Play House production of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Sweat. If there is a contemporary play that deserves a Pulitzer Prize, it is this play, and this local production, directed by Laura Kepley, is outstanding.

It is also a thrill to see that half of the cast consists of Cleveland actors, namely Bob Ellis, Chris Seibert, Jimmy D. Woody and CPH Associate Artistic Director Robert Barry Fleming.

Sweat is an epic take on the decline of American manufacturing jobs and an even-handed observation of the events which led to the election of Donald J. Trump. Not that Trump is the answer, as it is evident that he is absolutely not, but is a clear-eyed explanation of how we arrived at this present moment.

"MST3K Live 30th Anniversary Tour"
The Agora

MST3K Live!

Last night the boy and I attended the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Live 30th Anniversary Tour at the Agora. My goodness, I have not been to the Agora in years and years and years. The movie being taken apart was Deathstalker II, and during the first few minutes the ‘bots made a GWAR joke, which was striking to me because that may have been the last concert I attended there!

Jokes flew fast and furiously, and there is really nothing like laughing together in a packed house. Robots Tom Servo and Crow were joined by both Joel Hodgson and Jonah Ray.

I’ve been enjoying MST3K since the early 90s, so Joel is my favorite, but the Netflix reboot featuring Jonah is also hilarious and the pop culture references are fresh so my son can enjoy they, too. The old episodes are practically Dada-esque to him, most satire is … which may be why his generation loves nonsense humor. It’s good pushback and it irritates the grown-ups.

iGen humor.

The Way I Danced With You

It’s time. We announced auditions for this weekend a few days ago, and the available slots filled up pretty fast. There is a company in there somewhere and I am very excited to discover who they are.

Cleveland Public Theatre presents "Everything Is Okay (and other Helpful Lies)" in the Levin Theatre through November 10, 2018.

Great Lakes Theatre presents "Mamma Mia!" at the Hanna Theatre through November 11, 2018.

Cleveland Play House presents "Sweat" at the Outcalt Theatre through November 4, 2018.