Play a Day: What Was Lost

Steven Carl McCasland

For Wednesday, I read What Was Lost by Steven Carl McCasland and posted at New Play Exchange.

I have put the dead white male playwrights on a shelf for a while (except for, you know, that one) but I still hold a certain regard for those frustrating American navel-gazers of the mid-twentieth century, Miller and Williams. Miller fancied himself a poet but he only ever wrote a weird kind of prose. It is Williams whose work truly sings with beautiful melody.

The one thing they most had in common was the chosen subject matter of all of their plays; themselves.

McCasland has created a creation myth, about the original production of The Glass Menagerie. But he does not center the playwright but the ageing star, Laurette Taylor, who originated the role of Amanda Wingfield. It is a story of recovery, poetic in its own fashion, as Taylor presents at AA meetings, her stories of personal struggle rival that of Tom, the narrator of the play she is starring in.

Williams plays his part as well, an alcoholic philosopher who inspired his mother figure into sobriety, for her own sake, but really for his, you know?

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Be a Mensch

Daniel Takacs

For Wednesday, I read Be a Mensch by Daniel Takacs and available at New Play Exchange.

Four years ago, which may as well be a lifetime ago, we were talking about four hundred dollars. As in, what percentage of Americans are four hundred dollars from crisis. That that is the line between moving forward, and total disaster.

Asking for charity has less stigma than it used to. It still has a stigma, no question. But how many people do you know have been assisted by a Go Fund Me page - maybe set up by someone on someone else's behalf - to get them through a difficult economic time?

Socialism remains a dirty word, state-sponsored socialism. But we practice private socialism every day. Targeted assistance. I give my money to help the people I know. But it's not much. It's never enough. Imagine if we all gave to help everyone. But Americans don't want to help everyone, because we hate those other people.

Now, to family. Whether we're teaching Salesman or Glass Menagerie, we ask the question, what do we owe family? Do we owe them anything? What do they owe us?

Takacs has created a modern sit-com with Be a Mensch, a Jewish Glass Menagerie (complete with fragile unicorn) in which the eldest son is also faced to choose between his family and self-determination, dominated by a larger-than-life absent father figure. Only in this case Abram is not dreamily self-involved as Tom Wingfield is, but harshly realistic.

It's a coming of age story, one with a much more satisfying, if troubling, conclusion than Tennessee Williams's memory play.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Sources: Could You Come Up With $400 If Disaster Struck? Weekend Edition Sunday, NPR (4/23/2016)
The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans by Neal Gablet, The Altantic (5/2016)

Balm In Gilead (1989)

"Balm In Gilead" by Lanford Wilson, directed by Dennis L. Dalen
(Ohio University School of Theatre, 1989)

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
- Jeremiah 8:22

“‘Disintegration’ is the best album ever!”
- Kyle Broflovski, South Park

Nineteen Eighty-Nine was the greatest year in musical history. This is a point of some debate, but I know it to be true. Psychologists have explained that each individual believes the music released in one’s twenty-first year will generally be regarded as superior to all others.

But come on, Paul’s Boutique, Three Feet High and Rising, Deep, Pretty Hate Machine, I could go on. Disintegration is indeed the best album ever, and well describes my own psyche at the end of my third year in college, when it was released.

I had gone from second-year golden boy to third-year pariah, and started my fourth-year in perhaps the most mentally correct place I have ever found myself. I learned that I need to get my professional shit together and was ready to just bear down and work until graduation.*

The undergraduate production that fall was Balm In Gilead by Lanford Wilson, a production which opened thirty years ago tonight. An ideal play if you want to cast as many people as possible, Wilson’s work is a hipster fantasia taking place in and around a twenty-hour diner frequented by the addicted, sex workers, and also thieves, hustlers, and criminals.

Joe (Peter Voinovich) and Darlene (Susan Hobrath)

All my best friends, my contemporaries, were in this production (except Jules, who was across the alley, performing in Hurlyburly) and we all underwent a deep, focused investigation of the world of heroin users, expending the kind of time on research that was so plentiful at school, even if we were unaware of it.

We had scheduled a meeting with a therapist at the campus addiction recovery center. I knew absolutely nothing about heroin, save for having watched Sid & Nancy. What I learned became quite valuable, as I will soon point out.

We did not need to study the time period, because director Denny Dalen did not set it in any specific time period, or to be more accurate, we were each from different eras, as though we were walking through some kind of purgatory.

Larry was a 70s street hustler, with picked out Afro, Pete a Miami Vice styled wannabe kingpin in a blazer and T-shirt. Ricky in all-white disco attire, Susan a 60s flower-child, Lisa a hard-boiled 1950s waitress with small apron and snood.

Me, I was the narrator, an addict named Dopey in a mid-80s Deep Purple T-shirt and a high school varsity jacket. My long hair ratted out and my first real beard, I have deeply warm feelings about this costume. Much love to designer Tavia DeFelice.

The script is very challenging to read, as several conversations can be happening at once. You had to say your line in the order it appears on the page, but you might be responding to something someone said three lines back. But the more we did it, the more we heard it, and the more it became like a kind of word jazz.

I remember the week leading up to opening was particularly tough. Denny had something for everyone, and more for some than others. The underclassmen were a pain, as they debated every observation Denny had for them, responding with some explanation for how the way they were doing it made sense.

There's a saying. "Take the note." Don't argue with me. Do it.

One night, before we started in with notes, someone speculated on how long notes were going to go, and how wearying it all was.

Self as Dopey

“Not for David,” said one of the second-years. giving me the side-eye. “He never gets any notes.”

I was a little too quick to respond. “No, I don't. But if I did I’d be sure to pitch a fit about them.”

It got better. Denny was not happy with the penultimate dress, and everyone knew it.

He said, “David is the only person on this stage who knows where he’s coming from and where he’s going to,” or words to that effect.

I don't usually remember compliments, but I remember that. A couple years ago, when posting about Greg Vovos' play, How To Be a Respectable Junkie, I recounted my experience in preparing for this play, and how close study of the text and an understanding of the effects of heroin made it possible for me to pick apart the threads of conversation and develop a clear map of (as the man said) where I was coming from. Where I was headed to.

Check out the post, the playwright makes it all crystal clear.

So yeah, I was proud of myself, for being the professional, for embodying a whole character and being confident about it. It has been a very long time since I have had the opportunity to dive so deeply into a character.

But the whole production was like that, it was practically immersive. Balm was staged in the Forum, a deeply thrust stage. The set (Daniel N. Denhart, designer) inspired by Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, the non-present walls of the diner clearly defined by light (James A. Gage, designer) all organey warm inside, and bluishly cold out.

The script is a symphony of despair, one that repeats night after night, as we lounged about the set, crouching in corners, shivering, when we weren’t on. Smoking live cigarettes. Spitting.

DOPEY: (turns to face the audience) Are you getting any of this?

And who knows. Maybe I could have been an actor.

"Balm In Gilead" by Lanford Wilson and directed by Dennis L. Dalen, at the Forum Theater at Ohio University, November 3 - 11, 1989.

*Side Note: Fall Quarter 1989 I had roles in three productions, the mainstage and two fourth year studio plays, whereas all other fourth years were in only two. In addition to Dopey I also played the Fire Chief in Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano" and in Tennessee Williams' "The Gnädiges Fräulein," the Cockalooney Bird.

On Interpretation

¿Donde está el Siete Madres?

in·ter·pret   [in-tur-prit] v.

to bring out the meaning of (a dramatic work, music, etc.) by performance or execution.

Often in the theater we use the word reinterpretation, which means "to interpret again." Which is to say ... to interpret. Perhaps, to interpret differently. But still, it is merely another interpretation.

Much has been made of the recent interpretation of Tennessee Williams' Camino Real at the Goodman Theatre. Apparently what they mean is adaptation because from all available description (and I have co-workers who have seen it and told me about it) a deeply heartfelt, if misunderstood, play by the greatest American playwright has been stewed, screwed and tattooed, festooned with artifice and sights contrived to offend. We aren't just talking design choices here, a text which traditionally runs close to three hours plays in less than two, which characters cut, collapsed or entirely replaced.

This should be galling to me, as I love this play. I love Williams' poetry, and his use of dreamlike imagery. It is wonderful and horrible, and no one saw it when it debuted on Broadway in 1953 and that may be another reason I like it so well. But it is precisely because so many have badmouthed it, I wish that I could see it. My expectations appropriately lowered, what could I lose? And after all, some of my favorite productions have been interesting, inspired interpretations of well-trod works. The Skin of Our Teeth at Cleveland Public Theatre comes to mind. Or, you know ... pretty much any single Shakespeare you and or anyone has ever seen.

Saturday night I left the kids at the in-laws and went Uptown to check out the Everything Is Terrible tour, which just happened to be in Athens that night. Since I was first turned onto this site (Josh? Brian? Who takes credit for this?) I have been enjoying their online video productions. Their mission is to collect professionally produced video tapes (they have to be from tapes) and carefully edit them to highlight the sheer awfulness of modern civilization.

You may notice a large amount of their subjects are made-for-TV movies, motivational videos, or locally produced broadcasting, created between 1988 and 1992. The George H.W. Bush era was truly the heyday of inexpensive, godawful filmmaking.

Unfortunately, I was not able to remain for the main event, the audience interactive film Doggie Woggiez! Poochie Woochiez! which also features live music. But I did enjoy the first hour, which was greatest hits collection, presented on a large screen at full-volume. This mash-up of deliriously edited, horrible terrible video included several scenes which have already been pulled from YouTube because of copyright violation. This included a horrifying ventriloquist dummy which the EIT folks had edited to lip-synch to Justin Bieber's Baby.

The introduction included an original video featuring a puppet explaining the definition of FAIR USE, in an appeal for understanding. EIT is covered by the First Amendment because their work comments upon the original. The manner in which they present the original critiques the original. Watch this shudder-inducing scene from the Rodney Dangerfield comedy, Ladybugs.


Okay. Once you have taken a shower to wash the shame away, ask yourself ... was that commentary, or is that scene inherently creepy on its own right, and the slasher-movie music therefore redundant?

As long as I am drawing a line from big-budget slash-ups of Tennessee Williams to hilarious, ghastly, ironic, online video montages, I would regret not bringing up Video Psychotherapy, which began in the 1980s as the brainchild of area cinematographer Ted Zbozien and broadcast late-night on the Mayfield Heights public access channel.

He took a store-bought ventriloquist dummy, suited it up with a black turtleneck, blazer and black sunglasses, had his friend Jeff Adams provide a mocking voice, and you had The Doctor, a fascistic mental overlord who submits his views to an endless reel of superfast edits featuring terrible screams, exploding heads, plummeting bodies and extended riffs of ordinance.

The Doctor's largely spontaneous rants are all the more delicious because they include the swingy stylings of the Art Institute of Chicago playing Dreaming of the Master from the album Nice Guys. Video of the original shows are hard to come by, even on YouTube, because Zbozien carefully guarded the tapes after the show's original run. Recently, however, he has reemerged online with a new puppet, made-to-order -- again, to avoid copyright infringement.


Late 1980s Video Psychotherapy
However, his use of existing clips from copyrighted works of film and video appear to fall more acceptably under the FAIR USE doctrine, because each clip is so brief, and cannot be taken to represent the whole. I mean ... I'm not a lawyer ...

The Republic of Gilead
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to spend long hours with The Famous History and Life of King Henry VIII (All Is True) written by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, which I will directing this summer for the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival. This is one of Shakespeare's late works, the co-writing credit (which is widely accepted) an indication that he may have started writing it and abandoned it, or was too preoccupied with business matters to give it his entire attention, or if you believe such things, that he was already dead (i.e. not the Shakespeare of Stratford) and other writers were taking scripts he had barely fleshed out, expanding upon them and keeping his name on them.

Whatever you believe, what most people know about Henry VIII (the play) is that it was the one that was being presented when the original Globe Theatre burned to the ground in 1613. There are no quotations from it that went on to be famous. My personal favorite: "All hoods make not monks."

My plan is to edit the thing down to 90 minutes, the text hardly warrants anything longer. The major problem with cutting Henry VIII is that, as arcane courtly intrigues go, it's plot stands out as being at once terribly complex and stupifyingly boring.

However, as I have had almost a year to mull this puppy over, the one thing that strikes me as interesting is that if you took this play by itself, absent any knowledge of the English history that came before or after it, you would not be so impressed by Henry's break with the Catholic Church (arguably what the pay is all about) but rather the extent to which women do not exist as human beings. Catherine of Aragon, historically a great English ambassador, is relegated to the status of non-person when the King decides to divorce her. The First Divorced Woman, how does THAT make a girl feel?

The argument is that the King, now middle-aged, wants a male heir and Catherine can no longer provide him with children. So he dumps her for a pretty, much younger wife. And it's 2012 and I'm thinking, hell, thank goodness no fat, white, self-righteous Christian men of power do that anymore.

So I've been reading The Handmaid's Tale. And I am looking forward to how we may interpret this.



UPDATE: My bad, EIT's "Baby Doll" is, indeed, available online. More creepy dummy goodness!

William F. McDermott

William F. McDermott
(Feb. 17, 1891 - Nov. 16, 1958)

Born in Indiana, attended Butler College, McDermott came to Cleveland in 1921 to become drama critic for The Plain Dealer. In addition to writing theater reviews for the Cleveland and New York stages, and making travels to Europe to interview literary luminaries, he also wrote columns on various issues of the day.
The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History notes that he wrote against censorship in the 1950s, I'd like to know more about that. Much has been made of a certain doting actress restaging an entire production from the Hanna in his living room in Bratenahl when he was too ill to make it to the theater.

What McDermott and I disagree on - the value of federally funded theater. What we agree on - the brilliance of Tennessee Williams.

According to Dennis McDougal the young Louis Wasserman worked to ascend the rungs of Cleveland nightlife by plying local journalists with liquor ("buying them drinks, partying with them at the Alcazar Hotel, escorting them home") and occasionally writing their items for them when they got too loaded. The list of theater critics Wasserman claims to have ghosted for is all-inclusive, including Mr. McDermott.

Sources:
The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood
The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History