Assessment

Today was truly the longest day of the longest month. Rehearsals for the Great Lakes Theater School Residency Program are in full-swing. Expansive hours in a vacant office in the Hanna Building (not the site of Edith’s studio - she was in a penthouse on the top floor) training four new actor-teachers how to illuminate the classics for a potential 16,000 students in Northeast Ohio during this school year.

Last night it was Curriculum Night at Noble Elementary, attended now by not only my daughter but my son. My wife and I are members of the PTA. Please Vote Yes On Issue 6. Heights schools depend on it.

There is a great deal of theater in my future. Sunday we will be present for a matinee of The Life of Galileo at the Allen Theatre, the new home of Cleveland Play House. Next week in the Hanna Theatre, Cabaret opens Great Lakes 50th Season, and The Taming of the Shrew opens the following week.

Before the first half of 2012 comes to a close, I will have been playwright, actor and director for three different shows at three different companies.

Meanwhile, I am still attemtping to conduct my exploration of Cleveland during different points in history. Recently I have been looking into the fifties … however, with the impending staged reading of It Can’t Happen Here, we will be dipping back into the year 1936 … as if that weren’t already apparent.

Last year, during the first weekend of September, I took a 24-hour writer’s holiday with the intention of completeing an entire play. I wrote one act, which while shy of my goal was not something I was unproud of.

… what a dizzying array of double-negatives, now where wasn’t I ?

It is my intention to jump back onto that train very soon, hopefully in the form of another retreat at my parents home in Lakewood. Having had a year to meditate on the second act, purgation is definitely in order. But not this weekend. Or the next. Nor the one after that.

Let’s say October. New play in October. Someone hold me to that.

We're going bowlin' ... so don't leave 'er in Solon.

Ladies and gentlemen ... Charlie Mosbrook.
We are having a big Cleveland weekend.

Tonight it's Noblefest, the annual PTA fundraiser/carnival held at my daughter's elementary school. It was cancelled last week due to (what else?) rain, and Hell or highwater, literally, it will be taking place this evening. Come join us!

Tomorrow at noon begins the Hessler Street Fair. Time to buy a big, fat pea pod sandwich and a lemonade, get the boy a new tie-dye, straightarm the Communists and listen to the hippie-dippie stylings of Charlie Mosbrook

Charlie goes on at 2 PM people, be there.

If we have been left behind at 6 pm, then the Great Lakes Theater Festival Stratford-Upon-Avon High School Prom is my next stop ... I am playing Vice Principal Shakespeare and the girl will be attending as one of my sprites. Just spent the morning fixing up Gray's Armory in anticipation of the event.

I need to post about the Armory some time soon, it's fascinating.

Sunday, the boy celebrates his sixth birthday in Full Cleveland style, having a big old bowling party at Freeway Lanes in Solon.

"The Lady" Opens Tomorrow

We got press! Still trying to figure out where exactly patch.com comes from, it suddenly appeared on my cultural radar last week, and suddenly there's a reporter at the last dress of The Lady, taking pictures, asking questions, and the next day we get a nice write-up.

Much ado about a school play? Perhaps. And I do wish I had spent more time on follow-through. We might have had some kind of banner for a backdrop -- though I prefer the blank, sky-blue wall, that's me. My habit is always to keep it simple, concentrate on the performance and that's it ... I owe it to Mrs. Eisenberg for staying on top of things like props and costumes from the get-go. The girls have put together some wonderful outfits suggesting different eras, one girl in particular was helpful finding suitcoats, ties and hats for the three male characters.


And hey! It's an opening! It's a premiere! An educational piece of theater performed BY students, for students!

We'll hold a brief talkback afterward, I will be available to field questions from the children.

I hope the reviews are positive.

Feb. 25 UPDATE: Winter storm results in cancellation (postponement?) of production. Trying not to be extremely disappointed and depressed this morning.

The Lady

I am a devoted Heights Schools parent. Perhaps I could do more to contribute to the betterment of my children’s education, but I am doing what I can. I attend PTA meetings, volunteer when possible. I cannot describe the joy I felt being able to bring the GLTF School Residency Program, to which I have devoted the past ten years of my life, to a school where my own child could experience it.

My daughter and my taxes go to Noble Elementary School.


Noble Elementary c. 1960
Last year when she was in first grade I heard there was going to be a Black History Month program, featuring a short play. Even then I began trying to come up with an idea for a play I could write which would be suitable, from the point of view of appropriate, and entertaining, and worthwhile content -- as well as something that was practical, that ten year-old could memorize and perform on a minimal (non-existent) budget.

What emerged is my new ten-minute play, The Lady. If the subject is Black History, then I didn’t just want to write about slavery, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass or anything like that. Not that these stories aren’t important, they are. But I was reminded of my daughter’s American Girl dolls - the only African-American doll is Addy Walker, a runaway slave girl from 1864. No South Side Chicago girl doll from 1964, nor the Black daughter of a Republican Representative doll from 1994. Just the former slave girl doll. We have all come so far, and there are so many stories.

When it became evident that Michelle Obama would be our first African-American First Lady, historians went to work and discovered family history she herself was unaware of, stretching back to the pre-Civil War era on her mother’s side. Using the simple framework of an interview for my play, Mrs. Obama sets the scene for three vignettes which reference not only the voyage from slavery, but also the Great Migration and the rise of the Black Middle Class. In seven pages.

I met today with the Young Ladies of Noble, a group of select fifth grade girls, who will be performing this work in late February. They were all very excited. It was delightful to hear them read it out loud. I will be joining them several times in during the next six weeks to direct the piece. I think we are all going to have a lot of fun.