BorderLight Theatre Festival (2026)

When the BorderLight Theatre Festival debuted in 2019, I was so excited! I have had several delightful experiences participating in theater festivals from New York to Minnesota to Alaska, and the thought of having our own, right here in Cleveland? The possibilities were thrilling.

I have been grateful to have had plays in the past three festivals, by accident and by design. Give Me Your Keys commissioned and produced Step Nine in 2023, Talespinner Children’s Theatre remounted their spring production of The Toothpaste Millionaire in 2024, and I self-produced The Right Room in 2025.

This year, while I do not have a show in BorderLight, I have made plans to see as many shows as possible. While I expect there to be a lot of my friends in the festival in any given year, I have so many friends in the festival this year!

Some of the shows I am dead chuffed to attend include (but is not limited to) Eszter Balint’s punk rock memoir play I Hate Memory!, Kierstan Kathleen Conway’s queernoir Our Souls Did Touch, and Anne J. McEvoy’s monodrama Blessed Unrest: a Fantasia on Martha Graham’s Demons.

I plan to report on what I see and hear this weekend, check back to see my posts and follow me on Instagram. And tell me what to see!

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

"Stereophonic" at the Connor Palace Theatre

The 77th Tony Awards, June 16, 2024

The KeyBank Broadway Series at Playhouse Square has something between forty- and forty-four thousand subscribers, which is the largest season ticket base in the country. If an average season is like this one, subscribers will have the opportunity to witness six new Broadway musical productions and one play.

For a short moment, when the kids were in their adolescence, we had a subscription. During the 2017-2018 season we had the chance to see the musicals Waitress and Hamilton and also Stephen Karam’s Tony-award winning play The Humans. And it was weird. On Broadway, the show, which takes place in a realistically rendered Lower East Side duplex apartment, played to an audience of one thousand. The Connor Palace seats nearly three times that, and seated as we were in the balcony and off to the side it was like watching someone’s Thanksgiving dinner from the far end of a football field.

Sometimes, subscribers get confused by these theatrical offerings, the ones without songs. Even I was surprised, though not unpleasantly, to learn that The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was not a musical. That one, at least, was so full of visual stimuli that our seating was actually a blessing.

Andrew Gombas as Peter

This year, we were treated to Stereophonic, David Adjmi’s roman à clef about the turbulent creation of Fleetwood Mac’s classic 1977 album Rumours. Two years ago the show was nominated for a record number of Tony Awards, and won the Tony for Best Play. Best Play, not Best Musical. It’s not a musical, a fact which apparently left a great many subscribers, especially Baby Boomers and aging Gen Xers confused, and in some cases, outraged.

One old dude went on social media to decry his experience as “HORRIBLE” (yes, all caps) going on to report that “AT INTERMISSION THE AUDIENCE LEFT IN DROVES!! THIS IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION.” He concluded his rant with, “I am sorry to be so negative,” which I do not actually believe.

Before I go any further, I would like to report that not only is Stereophonic a good play, I think it is excellent. I saw it twice, the first week of the run, and then again last Saturday night. More on my experiences in a moment. Suffice to say, when thousands of folks buy into a series of productions, the vast majority of which are musicals, and you are presented with a show about a rock band, you might expect a rock musical. I wouldn’t have been surprised if some folks thought they were going to see a Fleetwood Mac cover band or something.

"Hedwig & The Angry Inch"
Cleveland Public Theatre, 2001

When I was public relations director at a certain local theater company in the late 1990s, they produced the intimate, three-person opera Bed & Sofa by Polly Pen & Laurence Klavan, inspired by the 1927 Soviet silent film of the same name. It was a beautiful production from top to bottom, the score, the singers, the set design (by the late Ron Newell) however, we were dinged by audiences and critics for advertising the show as a musical, and not as an opera. My boss thought the word opera would drive people away.

Stereophonic was advertised as a play, and it is a play with music, which is not the same thing as a musical. What else can one say? How else can one advertise? Except to emphasize that Stereophonic received the most Tony nominations in history, and even won the Tony for Best Play. Were they also supposed to tell stupid people not to come?

I was excited to see this show for several reasons which I will (eventually) enumerate. A couple years ago the podcast Decoder Ring with Willa Paskin produced “Making Real Music for a Fake Band,” an episode centering on the development of Adjmi’s new play. The conundrum; playwright wants to produce a work about the creation of an album which will eventually be regarded as one of the greatest of all time. If we are to hear that music, it better sound pretty good, right? And Adjmi is not a songwriter. But he found one in Will Butler, late of Arcade Fire, and together they wrote songs like Drive and Masquerade for the show which do amazingly capture that mid-70s Malibu sound.

Jack Barrett & Steven Lee Johnson
"Stereophonic" National Tour, 2026

Paskin’s episode also included references to other works that feature hits that never existed, like the film That Thing You Do and TV shows like Daisy Jones & The Six. What was not included in that list was another stage play, one which deftly blurs the line between play, musical and rock show, Hedwig & The Angry Inch. 

We saw the legendary 2001 Cleveland Public Theatre production of Hedwig, starring Dan Folino and Alison Garrigan, and soon after the film starring creator John Cameron Mitchell. The songs, co-written by Mitchell and Steven Trask, are entirely original, they do not sound like other songs, but they owe so much to the style, the substance – the vibe, if you will – of David Bowie, Elton John, Marc Bolan and so many others, that they trick you into thinking you already know them, and even love them, the very first time you hear them. And that’s what Adjmi and Butler were going for.

Matt Zitelli & Tim Keo
"The Vampyres"
Cleveland Public Theatre, 2005

I have also written a couple songs for my plays (plays that are not musicals) including the lyrics for “Come” and “Doctor” (music by Dennis Yurich) for the play The Vampyres, and both lyrics and music for “If You Were a Train” which was written for The Right Room. For that last I set myself a simple task, to create what David Byrne might call a “naive melody” or somewhat repetitious. I even included a fake biography in the program in an attempt to lead people to believe it was a real song by a real artist.

I always planned to see Stereophonic, the podcast was very persuasive, and anyway, I like plays. When I then found out my friend Andrew Gombas is an understudy on the tour, and that he was scheduled to play the role of Peter (do I get sued now if I call Peter the Lindsey Buckingham role) the last weekend of the Cleveland stand, I got a ticket to see it then.

Then I lucked into a pair of tickets for the first week of performances. Seeking someone to join me, I asked my friend Sarah, who is a singer and interpreter of late 20th century rock songs. She accepted the invitation gleefully, and over dinner I asked what she knew about the show and she told me she’d already seen it three times, including on Broadway. She loves this show!

During intermission David, one of my new work colleagues, joined us for a short chat, and I was intrigued. Sarah knew the show well, it was new to me but I was familiar with the source material (i.e. Rumours) and for David, who is in his mid-20s, it was all something new. I was very curious about his opinion and while he was engaged he wasn’t sure where it all was going. 

After, we three had drinks at Parnell’s where Sarah said something which stuck with me: Think of it like Chekhov. And that made great sense, because, like Chekhov, Stereophonic isn’t about plot, but about interesting characters and how they bounce off each other, in search of an elusive happiness. Chekhov is a vibe. And if you can’t dig that, well. You aren’t going to like it.

And by the way, happy birthday, Anton Chekhov.

I was very much looking forward to sharing the piece with Toni at the end of the run (and to see Andrew in it) but first we had the chance to see a special event, hosted by Playhouse Square, featuring the entire company, playing classic tunes from the 1970s like "Rebel Rebel," "Ventura Highway" and a breathtaking reinterpretation of "Being Alive" from Company. The absence of songs by a certain bi-national quintet was not a surprise.

Gombas was Emcee for the event, recalling how he had gotten his professional start as an actor-teacher with the school residency program, even calling out to me in the house to ask if it was in fact that very building we were in in which we rehearsed, and indeed it was.

Eli Bridges, Christopher Mowood & Andrew Gombas
January 12, 2026

Toni held off on listening to the songs that were to be created during the telling of the story of Stereophonic, but hearing each of these artists sharing their talents that evening meant she was even more excited for the actual production.

So what, after all, is Stereophonic about? This is what it is not about; it is not an episode of Behind The Music, a lascivious kiss-and-tell in which we are witness to orgiastic binges of passion and drugs and the total destruction of human souls and minds. No one throws a keyboard through the great glass window in that beautiful set. To the contrary, there’s even a character arc in which one goes from booze swilling degenerate into insufferable (not quite) ascetic.

No, it is – and if you have been paying attention, you know why I am attracted to this piece – about craft, about the act of creation, and how interesting characters bounce off of each other in the pursuit of that craft. Everyone is serious about the work, and they all have different ideas about how to make it happen.

The creation of Rumours is legendary, due in large part to the disintegration of the romantic relationships between the two couples in the group. But the group didn’t disintegrate, at least not right away. They even leaned into the controversy, agreeing to that Rolling Stone cover that shows them all in the same bed together. But this play doesn’t take place in bed, it takes place in the recording studio, and in that way it is a “locked door” play in which the players cannot depart until they are through completing their task, namely recording the album.

This is a story of a very specific time, when record labels would throw absurd amounts of cash at a band of young artists, giving them all the time they need with access to the best equipment available (as well as access to gallons of alcohol and mounds of blow) in the hopes of creating solid gold. For better or for worse, this particular time will not come again.

And time is a character in this piece. This is perhaps why a lot of subscribers “LEFT IN DROVES!!” at intermission, because the first act by itself is ninety minutes. Because that’s the time it takes. And when the music plays, it sounds really good.

The U.S. Tour of "Stereophonic" by David Adjmi at the Connor Palace Theatre, Playhouse Square, Jan 6 - 25, 2026.

On Understudies & Swings

Roger Allam & Susan Fleetwood
"Much Ado About Nothing"
(Royal Shakespeare Company, 1990)
Ms. Fleetwood does not appear.

One of my favorite theater experiences was when our school group was in Stratford-Upon-Avon in late 1990. A blizzard socked the area, and the roads were impassable.

The plan for the morning was a matinee of Much Ado About Nothing starring Roger Allam and Susan Fleetwood. We were staying at an inn right in town, but anyone who was driving in from anywhere to see the show were out of luck. So few were in attendance they announced it would be general seating, so instead of the balcony some of us chose the third row.

The stage manager came on stage to address the audience, looking bemused. She explained it may be an RSC record, with no fewer than six actors assuming roles for those performers stranded in the outskirts, and several members of crew. But the show was going on!

And it was marvelous. We saw actors whispering dance choreography to each other during the party scene, and I noted one time someone said a line twice. Other than that, they nailed it, including the comparatively young woman who stood in for Ms. Fleetwood as Beatrice.

This was when I learned a very important lesson: Without the understudy, there is no show.

Once upon a time we said, “The show must go on!” And actors with fevers and vertigo would pump themselves up with antihistamines and pain relievers would muscle through. It was expected. COVID has changed all that, and rightly so.

This does mean that, unfortunately, smaller theaters may need to close a show due to illness, and this has happened many times. Last year, as the Omicron variant was rising, theaters right here in Cleveland closed their holiday shows early, one after another.

Today, our professional theaters make more time to prepare understudies and also budget for swings.

“While an understudy is usually a smaller or ensemble role within the main cast of a production, a swing is an offstage performer who only goes on if someone in the ensemble is unable to do so. A swing most often does not cover principal roles in a show.”
- Dramatics Magazine

Desmond Sean Ellington crushed it.

Attending a show and discovering that an understudy is going on has become more and more common. I myself have made pre-show announcements this season, more than once, that someone other than listed in the program will be going on.

Last Tuesday, the family went to see the touring production of Hamilton at the KeyBank State Theatre. That night Burr was played by Desmond Sean Ellington who usually plays Mulligan/Madison (that role assumed by John Devereaux) and this was exciting to know; that something different was happening that night, just for us. He delivered a beautiful rendition of “Wait For It” and ferociously stuck the landing in “The Room Where It Happens” which are absolutely my two favorite songs in the show.

Opening weekend of the world premiere of The Land of Oz at Dobama Theatre, my good friend Sarah Blubaugh went on as Mombi the Witch. It’s exciting when a friend goes on, and others show to support them. In the past, I have made understudy announcements at the Hanna and there are cheers from supporters who attended just to see them.

I myself decided to attend opening night of Oz, which I did not have on my calendar, when Sarah gave me the word that afternoon that she was going on. Unfortunately, the power went out ten minutes into the performance. If you live in Cleveland Heights, you know. I did, however, get to see the entire show, with her in it, that Sunday night.

It’s a delightful show, Sarah was delightful in it, and if they didn’t have her as a swing, the entire first weekend may not have been possible.

Next time you hear there is an understudy, give a cheer! Because otherwise, you just wasted all that money on the babysitter.  

Source: “Swing Time, Nailing the role of the offstage performer” by Skye Pagon, Dramatics Magazine, July 21, 2020

Process LXXIV

Before/After

Good news! The screening was a success, and Playhouse Square and University Hospitals also have made streaming I Hate This: A Play Without the Baby available for free through the end of the month. Over four hundred viewers have seen it in just five days, and I hope to make it available to others in the future.

Interviews for workshop are winding down, which is good. I never intended the play to be just a series of individual monologues, I want to find common themes and even similar phrasing to braid them together into a chorus.

“Braided narrative.” That’s a term I learned in craft and theory last week. I Hate This is a braided narrative. It always has been.

And I need to continue plotting my adaptation. Let me rephrase that, I need to begin plotting my narrative.

This week I also enrolled for next semester, my last semester of grad school. What a remarkable feeling. Four months from now my thesis production will be in the rearview and really, that’s it. I don’t want to get too maudlin about this, but it truly has been enjoyable. How would I have survived the shutdown without it?

I have a little under three weeks to complete the first draft of my creative writing essay. I could expand that thing into a book. Or better yet, a play. Really. I like writing plays.

I Hate This (First Reading, 2002)

Twenty years ago today, August 26, 2002, we held the first public reading of I Hate This (a play without the baby).

To recap, my wife and I suffered a stillbirth in early 2001. And I wrote about it. And wrote about it. My journal was a form of solace and understanding. We mourned, we talked, we traveled. We wanted things to stand still for a while but they kept moving forward.

My wife had a show in the New York Fringe that August and I saw a lot of shows, many of them solo performances. As I drove a van of sleeping teenagers and young adults back to Cleveland I had a lot of time to think and I realized then that I was going to write a show about this experience.

It had only been five months. I told myself to wait, not to think about it again at least until the new year. The wife had invited me to join her writers’ group which met at that coffee shop in University Circle. In 2002 I began to share pages for what would become my first solo performance.

Early that summer I met for lunch with Joyce Casey, Artistic Director of Dobama Theatre. As I had worked there for three years she was my former employer and mentor, and also a good friend. I had shared the script with her and she asked how she could help with the piece and I said I wanted to hold a reading, an invitation-only event and could I use the space. She agreed.

This was something I had never done before. I hadn’t actually written many plays. I’d never had a public-private showcase of a work I had just written. Maybe a few folks invited over to my house to read and comment. I planned to invite a wide variety of people, friends and close artistic colleagues, but also directors of other theater companies and most importantly to extend an invitation to those we had met on our journey, others who had lost children and were familiar with this grief.

I made postcards to send through the mail or to hand out. I must have sent emails, too.

Tom Cullinan was director, he would go on to direct the original staging of the play. We worked in various rooms in my house to create a shape for this performance. It was script-in-hand but there was also blocking. In the end what we created was the basis for the stage play I would eventually perform, on and off, for the next five years.

There were no slides, I read the title for each scene. There was no music or sound effects, those would come later. There were a couple music stands so I could place the script for longer passages. It was a staged reading. I wore the sweater.

The version dated June, 2002 is remarkably similar to the final version. I have edited and edited as the years have gone by, but its shape was established from the beginning. There are uninteresting details which were cut, and inaccuracies.

“I sang to it on Friday and I swear it was listening to me.”

That line may be poetic, or possibly emotion-evoking. It is not accurate. I changed that passage before the first reading. There were many, many f-bombs, and other obscenities which were unnecessary.

There is a scene where my brother and I are in the Cloisters in Upper Manhattan, observing the Annunciation Triptych. I compare myself to Joseph, the blithely ignorant father: “He has no idea what’s about to happen to him.” In the original draft I go on to describe other famous men who have lost children:

“God lost His son. Did you know the guy that writes Doonesbury, his wife had a stillbirth. And John Lennon and Yoko Ono had a number of miscarriages. And Luis Guzman. He’s that guy, you know, in 'Traffic' … yeah, you know, that guy, him, too. Read it somewhere. Really fucked him up for a while. Isn’t he great?”

That passage was struck from the August, 2002 version, the one I used for the reading. I had wanted to share what a widely-felt experience child loss is, and examples of famous men who have was one way to do that, I guess. But the scene is long and bends from topic to topic and we needed to draw a narrower focus.

Trying to describe our visit to Great Britain to see my other brother that summer, I originally read this:

“I don’t know what we wanted our trip to London to be, but it wasn’t what we wanted. I love that city, it bleeds history, and you’re surrounded by people from all over the world, rushing through its narrow streets, the places just pulses with music and art and exciting smells and noise. But it was still scary to even step outside and you know, there are newborn babies everywhere, even in England.”

Press to play.

But that wasn’t right. That’s some sexy but entirely vague explanation of how I feel when I am in any large city, and when things are entirely normal. It didn’t describe that place at that time, the way we were experiencing it. It was revised for the premiere.

The turnout was very good, all things considered. Sixty people? Maybe seventy? Following the reading I changed and sat in the back while Tom led a post-show discussion about the script.

I mean, here’s the thing. Everyone in the room knew me, most likely knew both me and my wife. They knew we’d lost a pregnancy. I knew no one was going to be very critical of the work. But I didn’t know what I’d written. Was it a play? Was this a story anyone wanted to hear? Would they say, I am glad you got that off your chest?

Well, no. No one said that, at least not yet. And there were generous questions about form and clarity. Someone suggested I cast other actors to play the characters I impersonate which was interesting and while that was not something I wanted to do you it has been done that way.

One theater colleague, a playwright (I did not yet call myself a playwright) marveled at the fact that I would even attempt something like this. She said there was this conventional wisdom that it takes ten years before someone can successfully write about tragedy, and yet I just went ahead and did it.

And Randy Rollison, Artistic Director of Cleveland Public Theatre asked if I had any plans for it. I said I had not. He asked if I would like to participate in a new works program he was planning, called Big Box. I said I would.

My wife and I were already four months pregnant with our next, and living child. They would be a month old when this new play would would premiere at CPT in February 2003. And that is how two decades can pass without your really noticing.

Process XXXVI

NIAMH: Another thing I’m frightened of is jumping under tube trains.
JIMMY: Stand well back.
NIAMH: I stand right back by the wall.
- Carly Churchill, Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp. (2019)

PAFNUTIUS: Everything according to number, measure and weight.
- Hroswitha, The Conversion of Thaïs the Whore (10th Century?)

Research for the new work.

As summer fades, I encounter a crisis of faith. There exists more uncertainty now than during the depths of the shutdown. We were told to stay home, and allowance was made for our condition, for we were all in the same situation. 

Now we try to return to a kind of normalcy, even as the pandemic continues. And it is left to the individual to fend for themselves. Some abide by practices of safety, while others not only flout these practices but are combative about them.

We train to go into schools. Are schools safe? Every day a new student or teacher is reported to have contracted Covid. That’s just at the school my son attends, one school. And ours is a district that takes the virus seriously. 

How do I in good conscience send the actors I am training in a potentially hostile and dangerous environment?

Playhouse Square had established a vaccination mandate, our theater operates out of Playhouse Square. People are furious. Do they know we are in the middle of a pandemic?

My uncertainty also relates to my writing. This is a fallow period. I have ideas, yes. A story and characters, yes. I have no faith in my own originality. You know, at a young age I was ridiculed by my brother’s friends because my writing was derivative. They were in college, I was thirteen. It was a criticism that has hounded me ever since.

We spend the weekend in Athens, visiting the elder child for "Parents Weekend." In our spare time, around the in-laws place, my goal is to breathe and focus. Breathe and focus. Focus. 

Can I remember how to focus?

The Future: September 2001

James Alexander Rankin
Photo by Cody York

You know this story, or one very similar to it.

It was my second week as an actor-teacher for Great Lakes Theater. We were in rehearsal, playing a warm-up exercise. Someone’s cellphone went off, and instead of turning it off, this someone answered it and started talking. This has always irritated me in remembering it, that that was unprofessional. Inappropriate.

I recall only now that it was his mother. If it had been my mother, I would have answered it, too.

The rest of us kept playing the game. Silly game, one meant for children. I could overhear the conversation my colleague was having. Something bad had happened, happened in New York.

I thought, I am now in the ignorance. Really, I thought that. This is my last moment of the innocent not-knowing.

It was a deep, blue Tuesday. And on that day the 21st Century truly began.

As I was composing the script about my experiences with stillbirth, the script which would eventually become I Hate This (a play without the baby) I included a scene about September 11th. It made sense to me then. The story begins in March 2001 and tells about what happened through the following twelve months. It is set in time, how could you not make mention of the most traumatic moment in modern American history?

On that day we, we actor-teachers, we first listened the radio, and then went downstairs to watch on TV in a local bar and grill, before finally drifting away. Rehearsal was over for the day. I called my wife, she was watching at the fitness center. She lived in NYC for seven years, we knew people there, we had been there less than a month earlier, and we were both still so fresh in our personal grief. Was she okay? She was fine. Disoriented, but fine. We planned to meet at home.

She had a therapist appointment that afternoon, and called to see if she was seeing anyone that day. Her doctor said, well, she had appointments after all. And didn’t it make sense, seeing as what had happened that morning, to keep them? The doctor even asked if my wife would like to invite me to join them, which was very nice, and so I did.

David Hansen
(MetroHealth Main Campus, 2005)

Trauma can trigger unrelated trauma. It felt selfish even then to make this about us, and our loss. People had died that day, thousands of people died horribly. But we were still in our recovery, and the shock of this other event was still a shock.

I tried to articulate this in my play, which I began writing in 2002. One member of our writers group thought it was a distraction from the main story, which was and is intensely personal. He said it took him out of our story to mention 9/11. The others disagreed, and I kept it in, but his sentiment was not unreasonable and it stayed with me.

I remember my first performance in the West Village in 2004, as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. I was aware of the fact that I might be reporting back to people personally affected by the tragedy what it had been like to watch it on TV. From Cleveland.

During the scene in question, titled “The Future,” I take the briefest of pauses after first mentioning the World Trade Center, a moment of silence in which one of the critics seated in the second row, literally five feet in front of me, loudly clicked their ballpoint pen to make a note. Ah-ha.

Directing the play for video this year, Chennelle asked if I would consider dropping the scene. She’d suggested a few judicious but minor cuts here and there, first when she directed my performance in 2016, and again directing James for the Playhouse Square video. Minor, but notable. She’d never suggested cutting an entire scene. I asked her to film it, and we’d see.

There’s nothing wrong with James’s delivery. In fact, it’s very good. But watching a rough cut of the video, I have decided that Chennelle is right, that the time had come for this scene to go. Because to someone who had not lived through that moment, it is distracting. There are details that tie the play to time and place, but that one is so vast. Mentioning it before was appropriate, because it was expected. Today, I agree that it is no longer necessary to include in this play. 

James Alexander Rankin performs "The Future"

Playhouse Square presents the premiere of the video adaptation of "I Hate This (A Play Without the Baby)" by David Hansen, directed by Chennelle Bryant-Harris and performed by James Alexander Rankin, in the Westfield Studio Theatre on Saturday, October 15, 2022. 

I Hate This: Recording

Westfield Insurance Studio Theatre

I have become my mother.

When I Hate This was first produced at Cleveland Public Theatre in 2003, my mother chose not to watch. If you are familiar with the Levin Theatre space at CPT, you know that the seating is on risers. Mom offered to hold month-old baby Zelda, so that Toni could watch the performance. Mom walked back and forth, behind that tall bank of seats, listening, keeping the baby lulled asleep.

She said later that she preferred it. She didn’t want to watch. At first, I thought it was because I had hurt her feelings with the production, but that wasn’t it. She did want to see me in pain.

This entire week, sitting in the dark recesses of the Westfield Insurance Studio Theatre, watching James tell my story, there were moments when I found myself not watching. Not merely looking at my phone, but closing my eyes. Looking down. I did not want to see myself, my wife, in pain.

Most of the time, however, I was enjoying myself a great deal. Just sitting there, watching these professionals do their work. Because what they’re making is a movie. Julie the stage manager, Angie the sound designer, Ananias the cinematographer, Chennelle the director, James the actor, the entire Playhouse Square surround team. Collaborating, creating video and sound.

One of the advantages of this process is that they can record scenes out of order, to save time. And to record several takes of each shot. In between, Chennelle may or may not give James notes. They have a secret language together, a code. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but it works.

Ananias & James

How old were these two in 2001? Eleven? Twelve?

The laughter in the house brings me joy. When discoveries are made, when mistakes are made. It appears to fuel James’s spirit in performance. This is not a play about feeling grief. I mean, it is, but it is more about dealing with grief, reacting to it. Trying to say the right thing, maybe getting it wrong. Human frailty.

This is also an opportunity to get it better than I have in the past. It’s a performance, not a documentary. This means that everything presented is a choice, my choice. Chennelle has helped me make better choices. Some of my original performance decisions make me cringe. A few were racially insensitive. A nurse. A child in a toy store.

And there were elements of casual cruelty, revenge. And she would ask, what purpose does this serve? If I had no answer, then out it went. She is nicer to my parents than I was.

The process of filming all of the scenes, out of sequence, took five evenings. My job in attendance, as I saw it, was to correct misstatements during performance -- but only when I felt it was absolutely necessary. James might drop a phrase in one take, and I would think ... does it matter? Usually not. I’d let it go.

Once, at the end of the rocking chair scene, he used the word baby once instead of child. That I corrected. But performance notes? No. Not my business. Chennelle and James had worked so carefully on a consistency of style, of mood, most of all of character, it didn’t make sense for me to interject.

Chennelle & James

Watching James perform the birthing scene, I was overcome with emotion. You might think, of course you were, why wouldn’t you be? Well, I’ll tell you why. Because of the words. I could recite the scene in my sleep. This version of that event, I have it memorized better than perhaps any passage of text that I know. And I have seen others perform the same piece and enjoyed witnessing it, but not been affected.

But in this peculiar situation, he’s so like me, but not me. He looks like me, only smaller. But he’s different enough that I saw the scene in a whole new way, and I thought I could truly see myself the way others might see me. And what happened. And how I felt. And that made me cry.

The biggest revelation was watching James perform the “Blame” scene, which was always the hardest scene for me to perform. People ask if it’s difficult for me to play this most tragic moment of my own life and I say no, because I enjoy telling the story. But this scene is hard, because I don’t like who I am in it.

However, James shows that in the proper hands it is a dynamite monologue. I’d even recommend it for people to use for auditions.

So. Now his work is, as they say, in the can. Next up … editing!

Playhouse Square presents the premiere of the video adaptation of "I Hate This (A Play Without the Baby)" by David Hansen, directed by Chennelle Bryant-Harris and performed by James Alexander Rankin, in the Westfield Studio Theatre on Saturday, October 15, 2022. 

I Hate This: Westfield Rehearsal Period

James Alexander Rankin

Rehearsals for I Hate This have continued, in my absence. It’s good not to be there, so Chennelle and James can play and collaborate and make big choices and fail and achieve without concern for what the person this play is about might be thinking.

Adapting the script into a screenplay I actually returned a few lines that I had previously cut. There’s a joke about the things I didn’t say to an offending nurse. Only I couldn’t sell it as a joke, and it made the moment angry. But James can, and now it works the way it was supposed to.

There are things that I can write that I cannot perform. How interesting is that?

Then there are those moments that no longer work, or perhaps they never did, or they just won’t work here. “Don’t just play angry,” I say. Well, what about those moments which just seem angry, and without purpose? They teach nothing, they show nothing, they mean something to me, but to no one else. Can I let those go?

Yes. Yes, I can let those go. Now, I can let those go.

Attending a run-through on Friday night I was delighted by James’ elastic presence. He is very playful and passionate, with a fluidity and a dramatic flair that I do not have. He’s using his talents to tell our story, it is performative (and my goodness, that word has been receiving some abuse lately) and dramatic, and he has permission to do this and an audience can receive it in a way they could not if it were me.

I recently discovered that a young man in Minnesota is representing his high school at the state speech and debate tournament using a piece from this play in the “Serious Interpretation” category. Others have requested it, this is the first time I have been aware of anyone actually doing it. I wish I knew what piece he had chosen to perform!

The director and I shared notes after at Parnell’s, sitting out in the cool night air of Playhouse Square, watching drunken CSU students making their way in packs, up and down Euclid Avenue. I am vaccinated, so is she. The world has opened up a crack, and I hope we do not regret it.

Playhouse Square presents the premiere of the video adaptation of "I Hate This (A Play Without the Baby)" by David Hansen, directed by Chennelle Bryant-Harris and performed by James Alexander Rankin, in the Westfield Studio Theatre on Saturday, October 15, 2022. 

I Hate This: Twenty Years On

James Alexander Rankin

Every five years from the death of our first child, there is occurs a unique occasion to revisit the play I Hate This (a play without the baby). 

In 2006 came a rebroadcast of the Ideastream radio adaptation. Five years after that, in 2011, Cleveland Public Theatre produced an evening featuring both solo performances I Hate This and And Then You Die (How I Ran a Marathon in 26.2 Years), back-to-back.

In 2016, Chennelle directed me in the show at the Reinberger Auditorium, a one-night-only performance. It was a revelation, coming back to do it then, with the eyes a new director.

As the 20th anniversary approached, his 20th birthday, during COVID, I had the idea to make a film. Just using the camera in my phone, recording scenes here and there, on the fly. Some guerrilla filmmaking, as it were. Shoot some monologues in a hospital room one week, at the museum the next. And for this project I would again engage Chennelle to direct -- and employ a new actor to play me, someone age-appropriate for the person I was in 2001.

Folks have requested a film since the beginning. Hospitals much further afield (I was once contacted from the UAE) or those not interested in a live performance but who would like to use the play as a teaching tool. It had never seemed practical before, but now I thought I'd just make one.

I had only just gotten in touch with Chennelle about this video project when I was contacted by Daniel Hahn at Playhouse Square. They have been offering online productions since the beginning of the pandemic, and were looking to create something original. Would I have any interest in their producing a video recording of I Hate This?

I do not believe that anything happens for a reason. But they do happen.

Chennelle Bryant-Harris

Last week we had a couple nights in the space, to rehearse. It was a blessing. Rehearsing in-person for the first time in thirteen months.

James Rankin will perform. Listening to him read it, I had forgotten how it builds. I lived inside of it for so long, I just haven't thought of the writing.

Chennelle had requested I redraft it as a screenplay, which was very helpful for everyone involved. In doing so, I changed a few words or phrases here or there, to adapt it for another voice to speak. But James has already acquainted himself with the script, and asked to change some back.

I have cut a variety of passages since the first performance, eighteen years ago. Some of them for the better, but I wonder. I am glad for the opportunity to wonder.  

Our cinematographer, Ananias J. Dixon, has already become something of a co-director, or perhaps a co-conspirator. It was a joy to watch him and Chennelle jump out of their seats to swirl around James, collaborating to negotiate how the camera is going to swim and move around James, to be his confidant in this story. It will not be a static recording of a stage play. There will be magic.

Playhouse Square presents the premiere of the video adaptation of "I Hate This (A Play Without the Baby)" in the Westfield Studio Theatre on Saturday, October 15, 2022. 

Family Theater Day (2019)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
(EnTechneVision Inc.)

The temperature spiked twenty degrees, and with it, face-ripping winds, ripping down Euclid Avenue. Because that is spring in Cleveland!

Spring also means the opportunity to check out some incredible, international touring companies share their work at student matinees in the days prior to Family Theater Day, this Saturday May 4 at Playhouse Square.

“Playwriting reached its peak with Shakespeare’s King Lear,” or so says Captain Nemo in the EnTechneVision, Inc. production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea from Canada, a seriously intense production happening in the Ohio Theatre.

The reference to Shakespeare's mad king is echoed in a great storm scene in which the captain rails at the sea and sky with, "Blow winds, and crack your cheeks!"

Utilizing three live performers, puppets, actions figure and some seriously beautiful projections, this is a wild adventure perfectly suited for a third-to-sixth grade audience. The language is dense and the subject matter heady (the first children’s play I have seen to introduce the concept of nihilism) it has a strong message about ecological disaster, and urging humankind to find a balance between technology and nature.

Conversely, another program that questions our dominance over wildlife is Shh! We Have a Plan by the Northern Ireland troupe Cahoots, gently told with light and sound, puppets and pantomime and absolutely no dialogue.

There were several short plays we composed for Guerrilla Theater Company which did not include dialogue, though I have to admit I wasn't very good at it, not when I was twenty-five.

Dance of the Demented includes signs with words on them, and I still felt I needed there to be dialogue at the end. One piece I composed which was entirely choreographed (titled, without irony, The Dance) about the importance of human connection, was misinterpreted to be homophobic.

Torque wrote the best of our wordless scripts, The History of Western Civilization, which you can read more about that play here.

Plays that do not include language must be deceptively sophisticated. You must be understood, and we are acclimated to leaning heavily upon language to make ourselves clear. To tell an entire story, to communicate not only emotions but also plans and ideas, takes great plotting, and planning, and rehearsal and physicality and just, you know, everything that makes up live theater.

Now I want to write an hour-long, dialogue-free children's play.

Playhouse Square presents Family Theater Day this Saturday, May 4, 2019

Family Theater Day (2018)

Lula Del Ray

Yesterday, Google celebrated the work of Georges Méliès with a 360° video, highlighting examples of his films. The craftsmanship that went into those movies is absolutely remarkable. Today’s video animations (like the aforementioned “Google Doodle”) stand atop the shoulders of those giants who relied upon wood and nails and paper and glue, and most important of all -- light.

This weekend at Playhouse Square they are presenting Family Theater Day (formerly the International Children’s Theatre Festival) where Cleveland audiences will have the opportunity to see some amazing professional productions intended for all-ages by companies from around the world.

Lula Del Ray, presented by Manual Cinema (Chicago, IL) is a phenomenal accomplishment, an exquisite animated picture postcard, rich in nostalgia and longing and executed with precision and wonder. I sat with an audience of children from schools across the region at the Connor Palace, and after a few moments of requisite shushing, they sat in absolute silence, enrapt not only by the story but the artistry which was present to the eye.

Using three old school overhead projectors, countless transparencies, a guitar and string trio plus one computer keyboard player, and a couple actors, the company told an a largely wordless saga, projected as shadows onto a large screen.

A teenager, stuck in the desert where he mother manages a satellite array, yearns to visit the big city to see the country duo, The Baden Brothers. Their haunting rendition of the traditional ballad, Lord, Blow The Moon Out, as performed live by these musicians, would have made my teenage heart long to be a part of something bigger.

The Secret Life of Suitcases

The other day I also had the chance to see The Secret Life of Suitcases, created by Ailie Cohen and Lewis Heatherington (Scotland) which is staged like an elaborate gift box or pop-up book; a fairly mundane and muted exterior opens and expands to reveal color and adventure and joy.

Larry is serious about his work and never joins the rest of the office for lunch, until a flying suitcase shows him how much more is out in the world to experience. A duo of puppeteers carry Larry through several journeys utilizing forced perspective, unusual voices, and plentiful droll charm.

The first time I was made aware of this annual event was five years ago, when I was at the very beginning of my enterprise in the writing and creation of plays for child audiences. I am constantly amazed and delighted by the effort and craft companies from all over put into developing stylish and moving productions like these, and they have inspired me in my work.

Bring the family downtown tomorrow, several of the events are ticketed and while others are free. But you don’t even need to bring a child to be captivated by these productions.

Family Theater Day in Playhouse Square is Saturday, May 5, 2018.

Play a Day: The Fear Out There

Dr. Jodi Van Der Horn-Gibson

For Wednesday I read The Fear Out There by Jodi Van Der Horn-Gibson, and available at New Play Exchange.

Our month of #NewDayNewPlay is almost through! After today, I have only five more plays to read before the end of April. However, the first day of May also marks the beginning of the International Children's Theatre Festival, which has been rebranded as Family Theater Day at Playhouse Square.

During the week leading up the Family Theater Day (Saturday, May 5) there will be matinees for school groups, and often I have the opportunity to see some of those.

The first year I experienced the festival came at just the perfect time, as I was only just beginning my work writing plays for children. I saw several plays from around the globe and had my eyes opened to just how expansive and the palette of shows for young people could be.

Van Der Horn-Gibson's play put me in mind of those works, as the playwright delves into complicated issues which trouble children and which they may not entirely understand, issues of bullying, illness and the death of a parent.

Two children from a blended family, almost ten years difference in age, come into emotional conflict as their needs are at odds with each other. At the same time, each are coping with the unspoken fears that come with being left on their own due to a family crisis, and the fear that dwells beneath the surface. Children do not understand what is and what is not their fault, or under their own control.

Van Der Horn-Gibson tells this story, however, with playfulness, with color and humor, seeing the world through six year-old Jodi's eyes as she explores her backyard with a troupe of unique and diverse imaginary animal friends.

The best children's plays are those which are smart and open-hearted, appealing to an audience of all ages, and this is one of those.

Play a Day: The Humans

Tonight the entire family took our seats at the Connor Palace to watch Stephen Karam's Pulitzer and Tony award winning play, The Humans.

For those visitors to this blog who are not from Cleveland, Playhouse Square is the largest performing arts center outside of New York City. Really, it's big and it's beautiful. The KeyBank Broadway Series has the largest subscriber base in the nation.

For years I was not a subscriber to the series, because I'm not a huge fan of musicals. Usually there are a half dozen musicals and one straight play. Last year, for example, that was the Broadway tour of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

When it was announced that Hamilton was coming to Cleveland in 2018, like a lot of people I got my subscription the year before, so that when the 2017-18 season rolled around, I could easily renew and have decent seats for the big show.  In early 2016, it was far cheaper to get an entire season subscription than to travel to NYC just to see that one show ... and I have kids and they want to see that one show.

It also meant we have had the chance to see a lot of Broadway shows I probably would not have seen yet, including Fun Home, Something Rotten, Waitress, and the aforementioned Curious Dog.

It also means we have spent half a dozen evenings throughout the year stressfully trying to manage after school activities, wolfing dinner and squeezing into our seats by 7:30 PM. An evening at theater should be pleasurable, but not necessarily in the middle of the week.

Anyway, I've taken to creating box lunches for the twenty-minute car ride downtown. It's like taking the kids to the amusement park.

It is very odd to sit so high up in the balcony to watch a play. Today you also have to wonder, out of two thousand people in one vast space, who will leave their phone on. Who will cough. Who will just plain chat? These things happen. Put enough humans into a large enough space absolutely anything can happen.

We were all on our best behavior, everyone was there to see an honest-to-God play. And I knew virtually nothing about this show. I did not even know the father would be played by Richard Thomas, so that was a bonus. Or that the mother would be performed Pamela Reed, who I remember so vividly from The Right Stuff. I love The Right Stuff.

There is a fear which lurks beneath the surface. It is white fear. The fear of regression. The lack of advancement. A young woman is having Thanksgiving at her new, first floor apartment on the Lower East Side. It is expansive for a Manhattan apartment, but to her parents it is a step back. Their ancestors left this place to make a better life elsewhere. The grandmother in attendance, who suffers from Alzheimer's, is a symbol this regression.

Loss of employment, not being able to find employment, chronic health problems, bad decisions which lead to loss of status. These fears, simmering below the surface. These are the fears and doubts of white people. I'm not being flip, or dismissive, I am white.  I know these fears.

They are going to lose the lake house. Oh dear. Not the same weight as being arrested for waiting while black. And though the daughter feels like a complete failure in her chosen profession, at least her boyfriend is a trust fund baby. But will he commit?

It is a deftly crafted script, tight, humorous and compelling. A revelation in the final beat, before the blackout (which had my twelve year old leaning into me in apprehension like he hasn't in a very long time) had me wanting to watch the entire play again, from the beginning.

It's those moments, when you learn something you didn't know, which retcons your understanding of your partner, of your life up until that point. Nothing makes sense, until suddenly it does. It can be horrifying, but there is relief in finally understanding.

The "Santaland Diaries" Diaries

The Cleveland Public Theatre production of "The Santaland Diaries" by David Sedaris and Joe Mantello started one week ago today. The second of this two-weekend run kicks off tonight, so here are some personal reflections on the work so far. 

Photos by Steve Wagner.

Wednesday, December 6

Opening night. We had an intimate crowd, maybe twenty-five or so people plus a flock of Red Coats. I was grateful to have my mom in the audience, and a couple of friends. The laughter was extremely polite this evening.

Right off the bat I developed some serious dry mouth, which was no doubt a result of having never performed this material in front of an audience, any audience at all. Sure, I had performed the piece numerous times before my director, stage manager, and our team of designers, most of whom had heard these lines untold numbers of times. But how would an audience react?

We have festive, colorful, holiday-themed tumblers hidden behind the toy boxes and I tapped those at least four times during the show. I am self-conscious about drinking during the show. A critic once called out Curtis Proctor for “gulping water” between every scene, which was an unfair exaggeration. It was like, between every other scene.

I needed to slow down for laughs, but first I needed to learn where they would occur.

Thursday, December 7

This morning I woke up to discover I have pink eye. So, this should be an exciting weekend for everyone involved.

Tonight the house was twice as big as the night before, but the laughs were half so much. There was a weird energy that I couldn’t account for, except that maybe that people had not had enough to drink.

This show has been produced by CPT for fourteen years, isn't that amazing? Word has it that most of those in the audience for any given performance of  The Santaland Diaries love this play and attend year after year. Almost as many have never seen the show before and know nothing about it. A surprising number believe they are actually going to see David Sedaris.

Tonight, while I was changing into my elf costume a woman in the front row asked me a question. I mean, the play was in progress, and she piped right up to ask me a question, like this was a lecture or a TED Talk.

She asked if the outfit I was in the process of putting on was the actual outfit they made me wear.

I just stared at her and a million responses popped into my head, like, “You know I’m an actor, right?” and “This isn’t real,” and “Oh my God, you think this is actually my story, don’t you?”

I also wanted to say, “I don’t have any lines here, so I’m going to ignore your question,” but instead I didn't say anything at all, and just made this pathetic little gesture with my hands as if to suggest, “Nice costume?”

About ten minutes later, her friend’s cellphone went off, and I was debating whether or not to ignore it, but when she pulled the thing out to turn it off she said “sorry” in a manner that was so matter of fact I wondered if she thought she was in a staff meeting and not attending a play.

So then I did speak up. I said, “We didn’t have cellphones in 1989.” That got a laugh, so I continued, saying, “Well, we did, but they were very large and they were only owned by douchebags.”

I realize we didn’t really use the word “douchebag” in in 1989, either, but by that point I was saying, “Where was I?” and picked up from where I left off.

Remember to turn off your cellphone.

Friday, December 8

By tonight, I only had to drink water twice! I have them timed so they almost make sense, too. You’ll have to see the show to know what I mean.

The guy who directed the first Cleveland production was in the house tonight, and when I spotted him I got extremely self-conscious. I would have to say one-third of my performance is me, one-third David Sedaris, and one-third a wholesale rip-off of Curtis, who first performed the role in Cleveland in 1999.

I don’t actually feel bad about such dramatic reinterpretation, or artistic plagiarism, or whatever you want to call it. I mean, Jesus. Cleveland Public Theatre contacted me about doing this show on the 19th of October. Did you expect me to start from scratch? Durr?

Saturday, December 9

Who attends a play at 5:00 PM? During the holidays, a lot of people. I had my biggest house for the first show, bigger than even the 8:30 PM. Both houses were loud and had fun, and it was probably because they had all been drinking heavily, which is something I wasn’t able to do between performances. This is really sad because there’s nothing like being by yourself for two hours in Playhouse Square, surrounded by literally hundreds and hundreds of other people having a great time, and not being able to drink.

There’s a certain passage, if you know the show you know what I’m talking about. It includes a certain word. It’s legendary. It’s awful. People ask you not to do it. “Do you have to use that word?” Yes, I have to use that word. It’s in the script and if you don’t say it, or use a different word, and the people who manage the rights to the play find out, your theater company might receive a cease and desist order.

It falls about a third-way through the show, and it’s a real crucible. It’s a personal challenge to see if I can make the audience laugh in spite of themselves, and they always do. That makes them complicit.

Sunday, December 10

Tonight’s crowd was smaller, and sober, but they were game and we all had a good time. One woman on her way out after curtain call confided to one of the Red Coats that she “wanted to see something dirty!” By that I think she meant she was satisfied.

Changing from my street clothes into my elf costume is one of the weirder parts of the show. I understand Ray used to do a kind of a strip-tease, but that’s Ray and besides, that’s really not the personality I give off through the rest of the show. I might be one of the most uptight and uncomfortable Crumpets in history. I really have no idea.

So, I have some fun with taking my clothes off, but mostly I stare at people who make comments, which is also funny. Tonight, however … man! There were whistles and catcalls. I am a forty-nine year-old man with a spare tire. I raised an eyebrow and said, “Really?”

Monday, December 11

A night off is always nice, but I still have to go into the office. Ran into a colleague in the lobby of the Bulkley Building who saw the show over the weekend, she told me again how much she enjoyed the show. She's seen one or two guys perform Santaland in the past, but that they were all young, that I was the first older guy she's seen do the show.

She said she really liked it this way, from a guy who has been there and done that, but without any bitterness. That I'm able to look back upon this life-changing moment with humor and clarity.

I guess that's kind of what I do.

Cleveland Public Theatre presents “The Santaland Diaries” at the Outcalt Theatre in Playhouse Square through December 17, 2017