"Step Nine" at the BorderLight Fringe Festival (2023)

Nicholas Chokan & James Alexander Rankin
"Step Nine"
(Give me your keys, 2023)

Last year, James Rankin asked me to write a short play for his new theater project, “Give me your keys.” Specifically, he wanted a piece that could be performed in a bar by two men in their thirties, and by a bar he meant an actual bar. A site-specific piece.

The play I wrote is called Step Nine, an intensely private conversation between two old friends and artistic collaborators who share shameful and complicated secrets. I could have called it You’re So Vain, because of the several people who came to see it performed this weekend, former and present collaborators who thought this play might be about them.

The piece was performed four times this past weekend as part of the BorderLight Fringe Festival, a new and exciting eclectic festival of works produced by artists from near and far. It was a dizzying weekend, and I was delighted to see several other shows but not nearly as many as I would have liked to. And the shows I did attend, most were filled to capacity. There were so many folks downtown for this festival!

Step Nine was set in the Snug at Parnell’s Pub in Playhouse Square, which also happens to be where I celebrated my fiftieth birthday. The Snug is indeed snug, an alcove off the main room, and though the show was free you could say we “sold out” as for each thirty minute performance the place was packed.

James directed the piece, and until Thursday evening I hadn’t even seen a rehearsal. Nick Chokan played one character, the other by three other actors who cycled through the performances, including James himself, Jason Leupold and Luke Brett. They spoke at a conversational level, motivating the audience to lean in.

Folks who arrived late and couldn’t fit into the room craned their necks through the doors, some on Friday night opting to wander away to the bar and instead contribute to the cacophony which had made it hard for them to hear.

“I thought, while watching it, and for long afterwards, whether I could forgive. Whether I can. Whether I should.” - Samantha C.

Standing outside the Snug on Friday night, someone confided it felt inappropriate to bring drinks into a room for a “step nine.” That’s one of the twelve steps outlined by Alcoholics Anonymous where you apologize to those you have wronged. I understand it’s one of the most difficult steps.

Reaction to the piece was very positive. Even when I couldn’t hear the actors (after the first show I stood outside the room) I could hear the laughter. I could see what was happening. And when the performance concluded the applause was loud and generous. But folks also said it was disturbing. I think I need to accept the fact that I write disturbing plays.

 

UPDATE: BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. Help support our production by dropping a donation on our GoFundMe campaign! 

Minnesota Fringe Festival: Twenty Years On

Next week, I will have my first script bow at the BorderLight Fringe Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. I spent the first decade of the 21st Century paying attention to the fringe movement that was taking fire across the country, never imagining we would eventually have our own right here at home.

And yet, next week my play Step Nine will go up four times in the Snug at Parnell’s Pub in Playhouse Square. Better yet, it’s free. Check it out.

Red Eye Theatre, August 2003

Twenty years ago this week, however, I was in the Twin Cities for the tenth annual Minnesota Fringe Festival. This was the first time I had personally produced a show at any festival, and my learning curve was steep. 

The show was I Hate This (a play without the baby) and the things I learned there would serve me extremely well over the next decade. At that time, I started my first blog (I Hate This Blog) to record the experience.

Some lessons were hard: primarily, to plan for success and also to set your expectations very low. The home team, wherever you are producing, will have the advantage of family, friends, colleagues and a pre-existing audience. I learned to be happy with the attention I could attract, the audience I could engage.

Our (opening night) house was very, very small. It was a difficult show for me - I have never performed it without at least a few audience members who know who I am. No one laughed much, The tiny house contributed to this, I am sure, but I just couldn't tell if it was flying.

Afterwards I just sat in the dressing room a few minutes, trying to pull it together. I mean, tonight's show was one of the hardest things I have ever done, ever. The lighting guy (for the venue) came in and told me how great the show was.

I told him how I felt about the audience not laughing ever and he said, "Oh, that's just a Minnesota thing, you don't laugh at someone else's problems.” — August 2, 2003

I also learned to see as many shows as I could. There are a number of reasons for this, not least of which to glom onto the zeitgeist, to know what’s going on, not just in the festival, but in the larger world. Getting out into the festival also gives you the opportunity to meet not only the artists but the support staff, for the venue, and the festival itself.

(My brother) had some friends over for dinner, and I found myself in the position of trying to describe the differences between the style of performance in my show and (Rik Reppe's) "Staggering Toward America." I play characters, but then so does Rik ... but he's not really acting, only, well, what are we doing when we impersonate someone else and tell something from their point of view, I mean, isn't that what acting is?

On the way home from seeing Amy Salloway in "Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat?" I was struck by all of these deep thoughts about solo performance, and not just solo perf. but spoken word perf, and not just that, but the entire stripped-of-artifice thing — as can be illustrated by the work of the Neo-Futurists.

(We) saw three of them (Neo-Futurists) do a final dress of "Drinking & Writing" at the Bryant-Lake Bowl. They do the show in a bar, the three of them drink the entire time (well, the two guys do) and talk about drinking and its effect on writing and great American writers ... or (vice) versa.

I have been struck by a number of no-frills shows at this Fringe, shows that have a great deal of honesty and heart ... Shows that really communicate something, told by people who I am actually happy to listen to. I only hope I can count myself among those people. — August 6, 2003

Nick Koesters, Denny Hansen & Me
Volunteers for "Voice-In-Head"
Minneapolis Theater Garage, 2003

Self-promotion, while an end unto itself, is also helpful in teaching you how to think about your own work. This is from the first day:

I ran into some people outside (the venue). They asked what my show was, and I said, "I Hate This" and as they looked at my card one asked, "Oh? And what do you hate?" and I said, "oh ... uh, I, ah, my wife and I had a stillborn child, and, uh, this is about that." 

"Oh," he said, kindly.

I said, "Yeah, I really gotta work on the pitch." — August 1, 2003

Then, two days later:

I approached a number of people… One said, "I've heard good things about this," and another, "what is it about?" 

And I said, "Two years ago my wife and I had a child who was stillborn and this is about the year I spent coping with it. Now, whatever you think a show like that might be like, forget it." 

Then someone asked, "Is it a good show?" and I said, "It's a great show — your friend here already heard good things about it." — August 3, 2003

Looking forward, to the BorderLight Fringe, I hope to maintain some of the perspective that I gained from festivals I have attended in other cities. The Minnesota Fringe was, even twenty years ago, quite progressive in their implementation of social media. Facebook wouldn’t even exist for another year, Twitter even later, and yet in 2003 the MN Fringe had a message board ("Vox Fringe") for anyone to leave reviews and starred ratings.

The question then, as now, is what percentage of participants on their message boards were potential audiences, or other fringe artists.

Last night the Vox Fringe board greeted us with this cry in the wilderness: "Who Do I Have To Blow To Get A Mainstream Review?" 

Ah, yes. The question of the ages. This person went on to lament the fact that all the papers have covered the same dozen shows (this is not true) and goes along with the accusation of local critics ignoring the out-of-town acts (they haven't.) 

But there is something to be said for the media concentrating on established performers and writers and up-and-coming companies which have already made waves at previous Fringes. — August 7, 2003

Finally, during the frenzy of festival activity, it is good to reflect upon what it is you are offering, and how it fits into the larger picture of the event. The following year, when I brought my show to New York, I heard someone say, “I like my fringe funny.” Not surprisingly, they were not interested in seeing a show about stillbirth.

One of the two closing night parties was last night ... I only got to chat with a few people ... one conversation was with a Fringer artist … she was torn up about a review she received in the weekly paper, and I think I said all the right things for her to put it in perspective. I mean, the show isn't for the (local weekly paper’s) readership … 

"Your show isn't hip," I said. "My show isn't hip. You know people like your show, they've told you, and that's what matters, when you come down to it." — August 10, 2003

James Rankin & Nicholas Chokan
"Step Nine"
Give Me Your Keys, 2023

Very soon, artists will descend upon downtown Cleveland for the BorderLight Fringe. The festival is still in its infancy, and I am excited and apprehensive. Will people come? What will they say? Which shows will have what we called “buzz”, and which will not? 

You might think it would be very difficult, over the course of only three days, to generate buzz, so many of us are working ahead of time to get the word out there.

And who knows? Perhaps net weekend some young artist will be taking their first step on a lifelong journey.

I wonder how long I will be producing (“I Hate This.”) — August 8, 2003

Give Me Your Keys presents "Step Nine" by David Hansen, August 3 -5, 2023 at the Snug in Parnell's Pub in Playhouse Square as part of the BorderLight Fringe Festival. Admission is free. 

The Witches: First Reading

Upstairs at Parnell's

What’s next? As I described previously in my post on procrastination, I have been managing my deadlines not by thinking of them all at once, but only by what is next. I would not recommend this as a way to live your life in general, but I found it was the only way I could manage for the present. Only what is right in front of me. I have the skill to manage. And the meds.

And so it was, I completed the first draft of The Witches. Which is to say, I reached the end. The play is not complete, but then why should it be? The Test Flight series “offers artists the opportunity to self-produce works-in-progress.” (CPT website.) It will remain in progress until these performances close on April 11, and beyond.

Director Chennelle, most of the acting company and a few friends met at Parnell’s last week to hear it all out loud, from beginning to end. It read at an hour ten, there’s bits still missing, I will have a longer draft available when rehearsals begin next week.

So, the witches. This is a kitchen sink play, sister to The Vampyres (no, that wasn’t intentional) in that I saw a scene, I felt a mood, and I thought I had something to say. But I didn’t know what was going to happen. Unlike, for example, The Bully of Baker Street, where I had a clear agenda, and plotted a mystery with a beginning middle and end before I started to write, here I had a place, I had characters, and they told me where to go.

And yet, there’s an awful lot going on here, as the readers and listeners made evident. Because it’s not just about witches, it’s about ghosts. It’s not just about women, it’s about generations of women.

Women who should respect each other, but don’t. Those who believe "the young and brash are destroying the work." (Craig's words.) Those who see themselves as functionaries in the grand schemes of their elders. And those who keep their heads down and just keep working.

Then there’s New England, and Salem, and the old beliefs. Chennelle observed something I have always noticed about places like Salem, or New Orleans. They are like Europe, in that they are loud. Heather called it an energy. They have a loud energy. Perhaps that is only to the descendants of those who came or were brought across the ocean to be here. The weight, the loud energy of our history, which is not evident in the newer buildings and pavement of a Cleveland, but in the wood, the soil, the trees of the colonial, coastal towns and cities.

Our company wants rules. What calls the spirits, what makes them go away? Old Hamlet wandered the ramparts seeking attention, but he was also easily insulted. On the Dark Side of Twilight was all about how the rules for vampires have shifted over time. We also need to understand what those are.

Finally, the characters themselves. The four from 2020, the four (five, actually) from 1692. They each have their own history, biographies which I have created but not yet shared. Because I want to know it makes sense before I tell them why I think it makes sense. We will work together to create a common understanding of their past.

There's more, a lot more. And it's a comedy, that's also important. I want it to be stirring and chilling and funny. During our discussion someone mentioned a line from Poltergeist and I thought, well, I know exactly where that goes.

Right now I am feeling excited and grateful, grateful to work day after day with so many talented, loving people. A long, long time ago, when we were youngish, I was sitting with a playwright friend in the Arabica on Coventry, musing pretentiously about the Algonquin Round Table, and how I wished that one day we would be famous and spend our days just writing and our nights sitting around a pub or restaurant getting tight and tossing off bon mots, night after night after night.

Yes, well. I'm not famous and I neither write for a living nor do I spend every evening drinking and posing about. But there are these moments, and there quite a few of them, when we share in semi-public spaces, chatting and drinking, and reading and doing the work, and I think I got what I always wanted after all.

Parnell's Irish Pub Playhouse Square is located at 1415 Euclid Avenue in Cleveland.

A walk with Julie

One Monday afternoon in early October I received a text from my friend Julie, to whom I was once a terrible boyfriend, which read, “Hey David! I’m in Cleveland with my mom today and tomorrow. Can you get together tomorrow evening?”

How often do old girlfriends reach out for an evening of booze and reminiscence? Not often enough, to be sure. Especially when those who do happen to live in Anchorage. My response was a subtle, “Whoa! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

They were staying at the Drury Hotel, which is a recent venture, carved out of the former Board of Education building on East 6th Street. Twenty-five years ago we saw candidates Bill Clinton and Al Gore speak before a tremendous crowd from a platform in front of that building.

Julie suggested we have a drink in the lobby, but she hadn’t really been to Cleveland since the early 1990s. I thought we might do a little better.

I met her in the lobby, which features these two amazing, restored murals from 1931. Her mother was staying in for the evening, and she had already tied one on so I knew we were in for a good night. Instead of heading out through the main entrance, I noticed that the rear of the lobby opens onto Veterans’ Memorial Plaza. Had she ever seen the Fountain of Eternal Life? Indeed, she hadn’t. She was impressed, and so was I. I always am.

It was just after dusk, and the weather was just perfect jacket weather. The streets were alive with people, neither team was playing that night, and it was a Tuesday, but many were out enjoying the weather.

We ambled through Public Square. I felt wistful, we all, my family, my co-workers, we spent a lot of time visiting and hanging out there the summer before. Good Lord, the convention and all the rest. The kids running through the fountain. But it was like we’d never even been there this summer. We just hadn’t.

Lek

I was surprised and delighted to see the large, metal “free speech” art installations by Lek (Olalekan Jeyifous) and we made our through the square heading for our ultimate destination, which was East 4th Street.

I didn’t really know which bar we would choose, I just wanted to impress her by showing off the street. The Greenhouse Tavern (which is my favorite restaurant, anyway) had a board out touting it’s rooftop bar, and that was enough for Julie. Up we went.

We sat at the bar and we talked. We talked for a long time. We talked through one old fashioned, and then two, at an open air bar, the screen showing some basketball game (not the Cavs) with a narrow view of the slice of the roof across the promenade, the Terminal Tower, the colorful, hanging light bulbs of East 4th Street.

We remembered old friends, and boyfriends and girlfriends (yes, even one another) and what it is like to raise teenagers, in Cleveland, in Alaska, in Trump’s America.

Social media has afforded us all the opportunity to make contact with, and even continue and grow, relationships with people who in an earlier time we may never have seen or communicated with again, from childhood, high school, college. But what is the nature of that communicate, and what does it mean? That we’re still cool with each other? We mostly agree on things? We make each other smile?

Taking, grabbing the opportunity to sit and talk, for hours, with someone with whom you have a shared history. That’s what we’re missing when we think we’re staying in touch through Facebook and the like. Julie and I barely scratched the surface, but I learned things that were new to me, events I hadn’t heard about or worse, entirely misunderstood.

"The Branches of Education" by Cora Holden (1931)
Do you see Shakespeare?

I have spent a great deal of my forties digging deep and regretting certain decisions I made a very long time ago, but she made me remember why I had made those decisions and some of them actually made sense. It was a great relief.

The bartender gave us a last call, which made me believe it was very late, so instead of having one last at the Greenhouse we hit the street because I had to show her where I work. We walked to Playhouse Square, where nothing was really going on on this Tuesday night, they were in tech for A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Hanna Theatre, but we took a peeked through the windows, and took our chandelier selfie.

Parnell’s was still open so I checked the time and realized it was only just past nine, which was only how late the patio at the Greenhouse was staying open on a Tuesday night, silly me. Well, I had to show her my favorite bar so we went there for another and more reminiscence, sitting out on the sidewalk which is the best place to be.

Some time after ten, the server asked if we wanted another round and Julie said I have to drive eventually and should probably have a glass of water, but that she’d have another, which was perfect. And so it went.

She suggested getting a car to take her back to the Drury but I insisted on walking. How many more night’s like this would there be this season? Just when we reached 6th street it began to lightly rain and we said our goodbyes at the door. I had almost reached the sidewalk when I heard her calling for me. I ran up to the portico, out of the rain, a bit apprehensive as to why she would call me back.

It was the music system. They were playing Tom’s Diner.

“It’s always nice to see you.”