The Great Globe Itself (revisited)

"I'll come in again."

Recently I have been digitizing a lot of materials at the office. That includes the prompt books for outreach tours, going back decades, a number of which I have written.

So, yes. I have been lingering over my old scripts, because they're interesting. They include sound cues, stage directions — and edits. Lines that were added, lines that were cut, lines that were changed.

These changes would make their way into the final draft of my script. But one line change caught my eye, from The Great Globe Itself, first produced in 2015. It's a significant edit, because it answers a question, central to the third act, which I had failed to address when we started rehearsal.

"They come to hear the gods, not me."

I checked the version I had posted to New Play Exchange and was surprised to find that I had not included it in the final draft. All the other changes were there, but not that one. It makes a difference, and I'm glad I caught the mistake.

"The Great Globe Itself" is available at New Play Exchange, or contact me directly.

On Editing

We have corsets!

Revision is an act of change, or alteration. Re-writing is as or can be even more important than original writing. The version of Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street I presented to the touring company was only the third draft, play scripts can go through many more revisions before production.

Editing, however, is an altogether different enterprise. Editing and revision can be synonymous. In this case, however, we are talking about cutting, excising, weeding. You can only assume how long a text might take to perform until it’s actually read, and even then you need to account for set changes, the use of music or the arrangement of song.

And then there are the words themselves. Until you hear them, hear actors perform them, you might not understand how they are received. And editing will be required to provide clarity, eliminate repetition or redundancy, drop jokes or turns of phrase than simply do not land, eliminate repetition or redundancy, and in general, to make the thing shorter.

We want, we need a fifty minute show. That’s what we’re selling, and schools need to account for the actual duration of the performance. To that end we have already struck out entire verses from almost each of the five songs. Not that the songs are terribly long, each first lasted a little over two minutes. Now they run between a minute and ninety seconds.

221B Baker Street

Does this bother me? Not at all. Yes, the verses are delightful and fun to hear. But we’re telling a story and each song is a means to an end, they are not the thing itself.

And then there’s the text. At the end of every rehearsal we ditch a few lines, or entire exchanges. And I say yes, thank you, to each and every one.

Lines you won’t hear in performance:

VICKY: … you will have to excuse me if I am skeptical about your … reformation.
SHERLOCK: Good word, “reformation.”
VICKY: Thanks.
SHERLOCK: Good for you.
VICKY: Stop it.

It’s a funny exchange, it speaks to the nature of their relationship at that moment. But a similar exchange happens again, a little bit later, and with greater significance.

At another moment we hear the description of an incident in New Jersey harbor, in which the hold of a ship was packed with asphalt, and during a sudden heat wave the cargo melted, sinking the ship. This is something which did in fact happen at the turn of the century, has happened several times in maritime history, in fact. It’s all very interesting, I guess, but who cares? The ship sank. No one died. All cargo was destroyed. Moving on.

This is why I do not like to direct my own work. I have written several tours for Great Lakes, including On the Dark Side of Twilight, The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Double Heart, and in each case judicious editing made the plays so much better than if we had proceeded with the draft provided. These productions were directed by Andrew May and Lisa Ortenzi, and in each of these cases overseen by my supervisor at the time, Daniel Hahn. They each provided vital contributions to editing the script, and so did the acting companies involved.

The Great Globe Itself (2015)

The only time I have directed an outreach tour was The Great Globe Itself, which I also wrote. And the experience reinforced my belief that I am my own worst director. Don’t get me wrong, it was a funny play. The actors, Arthur, James, and Roderick, they each did tremendous work. The designers and builders, our choreographer and our dialogue coach, and our interns who created the educational materials, it was all spot-on and well-executed.

But the script wasn’t sure what it wanted to be. I had thrown so much into the pot, arcane history about the Globe Theatre, the Great Lakes Exposition, Doctor Who, it’s like my every minute, personal artistic interest had been chucked in a blender.

It wouldn’t have taken much, it wasn’t a terribly long play. It was just that much too long, speeches should have been trimmed, gags dumped, and someone, anyone, could have asked, what are you trying to say here? It is a mistake I hope not to repeat.

To be continued.

Shakespeare (Not) On Stage

Roderick Cardwell as Richard Burbage
in "The Great Globe Itself" (2015)
Photo by Ryan Labay

Several years ago I wrote a play about the Globe Theatre, one which described three different buildings which have used that name, from three different eras in two different cities, each which was built to feature the works of William Shakespeare. My play was titled The Great Globe Itself, and toured northeast Ohio, in libraries and schools and theaters.

Shakespeare does not appear.

Over twenty years ago, my wife and I saw The Herbal Bed by Peter Whelan, a fiction inspired by the once long-forgotten-to-history accusation of “lechery” against Susanna (Shakespeare) Hall, eldest daughter of Stratford merchant and landowner William Shakespeare. The case was found in favor of the defendant, and the play begins as a bodice-ripper which soon evolves into the Puritanic courtroom drama not unlike The Crucible in its torturous circumlocutions.

Shakespeare does not appear.

This summer I read Lauren Gunderson’s The Book of Will, a fanciful imagining of the hands the collected, collated, edited and published the First Folio. inarguably the most significant publication in English literature. (see my blog post on The Book of William)

Burbage dies (almost three years after Shakespeare of Stratford) and it suddenly occurs to their surviving contemporaries that so much of what gave the work its power was locked inside the heads of those who spoke his lines. If not written down, they would be lost to history. The scramble to create a proper volume of the complete works -- in fact, determining what a complete works should consist of -- is as delightful to read as I am sure it is astonishing to witness.

Shakespeare, who as aforementioned was already dead, does not appear.

Finally, my brother sent me a play script from England for my birthday; I Am Shakespeare. Written by Mark Rylance, Oscar and Tony Award-winning actor and former Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe, Rylance is also a notable Shakespeare-denier, an Anti-Stratfordian, one who does not believe the “Man From Stratford” (as they like to call him) wrote the works attributed to him.

And yet, Shakespeare does appear in I Am Shakespeare.

At least, a version of him does. Rylance’s play falls into that category of “debate” plays that Shaw was so fond of creating (see my blog post, Shakespeare On Stage) though is Shaw’s case the argument was on the works’ merit, not its authorship. Shaw was openly scornful of those who proposed or defended such theories.

In Rylance’s play, William Shakespeare, as a character, arrives in the present day at the garage of Frank Charlton, a man obsessed with the “Authorship Question” and who hosts an online chat program that would appear to have a small, devoted following. The program has also ruined his marriage.

(Rylance uses Charlton as his stand-in, and wrote the role for himself to perform. He acknowledges, it would seem, that many who share his unorthodox views are not successful and lauded actors and directors of stage and screen, but more likely to be tin-foil hat wearing losers.)

Shakespeare, the character, has arrived from the past or elsewhere to debate the legitimacy of his achievement. He is soon followed by Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, and Mary Sidney, all to make the same claim. Attention is also given to Marlowe, who is obviously too cool to make an appearance.

It’s all a fun exercise, and very witty, though much of the humor stems from a wide knowledge of and deep appreciation for the works of Shakespeare. You already have to be in on the joke.

When writing The Great Globe Itself I had several agendas. The play was meant to illuminate the significance of the Globe Theatre (three Globes, as I said) as a unique acting space, one specifically suited to (most of) the works of Shakespeare.

I also wanted to tell the story of the theater Shakespeare’s made legendary in such a way that anyone without any knowledge of his life or work, could appreciate and enjoy it.

Ultimately, and here’s the kicker, I wanted to see if I could get away with writing a play about Shakespeare that also suggests the "Man From Stratford" didn’t write his own works -- but that no one would notice.

You didn't notice, did you? It was probably the impenetrable accents. My mistake.

Read "The Great Globe Itself" at New Play Exchange.

Play a Day: Falstaff Riseth

Rachael Carnes

For Friday I read Falstaff Riseth, by Rachael Carnes, and available at New Play Exchange.

My daughter a high school freshman, is currently in rehearsal for a performance of Michael Frayn's backstage farce, Noises Off. It opens next weekend, I am anticipating a good time, though I am understandably anxious to witness my first-living-born child in her first full-length play, one of great physical mayhem, English wit, and above all ...

Uh, timing.

Carnes's tale is one of epic absurdity, a relentless and raucous send-up of Elizabethan and high school drama, and above all a tribute to the thankless theater parent, without whom the show would not go on (but don't tell the senior lead that.)

The pop culture references come at you fast and furious, hip-deep with turns of phrase both classic and current, as a troupe of teens unintentionally strive to produce several productions at once. It's smart, silly, and even subversive, as the playwright has created a Shakespearean showcase where the Bard himself is entirely absent and someone else has written his plays.

Hmn. Perhaps I might recommend another work which poses the Authorship Question, The Great Globe Itself ..?

On Race (one)

Christopher Jackson & friends.

Yesterday, the family was sitting around watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Sesame Street float rolled up and who was riding up top, singing the song Try a Little Kindness but Christopher Jackson, he who originated the role of George Washington in the Broadway musical Hamilton.

My friend Grant soon posted on the Facebook, “Kindness? Sesame Street is totally biased and should be canceled. Shameful!” Indeed, even on this day of family unity it is impossible to see every moment as a prism through which to refract this entire American moment.

How to easily unpack this coy bit of FB snark for one entirely unaware? Grant was modeling President-elect Trump’s response to the company of Hamilton having addressed Vice President-elect Pence with a brief speech from the stage of the Richard Rogers Theatre, one week ago tonight.

"The Theater must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!" tweeted Donald J. Trump

What was actually said in those prepared comments did not become the controversy. In fact, it was an entirely respectful speech addressing the concerns a large part of the electorate has about the new direction this nation will take under a Trump Administration. It was a plea from the diverse peoples of America to be seen and to be heard.

What many actually heard was the Vice President-elect being booed by a large part of the audience as he entered the hall, and what they saw was an actor of color lecturing him as he exited the hall.

I got into a dust-up with someone on social media who commented, “Pure Bullying! By definition, it was. Plain & simple. He had a microphone, on his ground, with his gang.”

I not only provided this individual the actual definition of bullying but also pointed out that not all black people are in “gangs.”

He responded, “Who said anything about black people?”

Theater humor.

Of course. We have heard the dog-whistles for so long, and I myself am quite learned in the blunt tools of trolling and misdirection, but I walked right into that one. He who used the code-word "gang" went on to accuse me of race-baiting.

But let us ask the question: Was addressing Mike Pence in that manner appropriate? Was it fair? Did an actor have the right to single out an individual like that while attending the theater? Should not performing artists stick to their job of singing and dancing, and leave the speeches to others in a more appropriate venue? Does everything, after all, have to be about politics?

Well, the play in question is Hamilton, which has invited discussion of controversial issues such as race and immigration in America, and its creators have never shied away from their opinions on such matters. Brandon Victor Dixon, the actor currently playing Aaron Burr, was acting on instruction from the producers, and was provided the speech by them. Lin-Manuel Miranda himself (currently across the sea filming a movie for Disney) is said to have helped write it.

For days I was trying to remember a similar situation, as presented in a play, one in which an actor was intending to make a political speech from the stage without the permission and agreement of the company with whom he shared the stage. Yesterday, I finally realized that I was trying to think of a play that I, myself, had written.

In that play, the artistic director of a company, who is also acting in his final performance at that company in late 2005, is thought to be planning to speak out against the Iraq War following his final bows.

ANDREW

I hear tonight, instead, he might make a speech. 

BENJAMIN

A speech about -- 

ANDREW

About Iraq, yeh. 

BENJAMIN

Can’t say I’d support that. 

ANDREW

Nah? 

BENJAMIN

Not his place to do that. We got people from all across the globe coming here, tourists. Everyone knows someone in Iraq. It’d be insulting to them. 

ANDREW

It’s his last night as artistic director, his last performance -- 

BENJAMIN

It’s not right. He runs the place, he doesn’t own it. It’d be totally unprofessional. We’d have to take it up with the union. 

ANDREW

It’s just words.

BENJAMIN

Man steps out, speaks his mind, appears he speaks for all of us, init? Doesn’t matter if he says he doesn’t. I might even agree with him, don’t matter. He didn’t ask. 

David Hansen © 2015

That is from The Great Globe Itself, first produced was in 2015. Had our production followed the Hamilton-Pence controversy rather than preceded it, our post-show discussions might have seemed a bit more pertinent.

To be continued.

How Did I Get Here? (book)

Same as it ever was.

The past several years my time on vacation has been somewhat compromised by writing or business related to writing. Last year I was researching the years just after the Great War and writing The Secret Adversary. The year before that I was constructing The Great Globe Itself, and in 2013 spent an inordinate amount of time online promoting Double Heart for the NY Fringe.

Granted, there are fewer places I would rather be writing than sitting on the porch of Barnstable, doing my thinking while peering through the triple birch tree and into the cove beyond. But tethered as I was to my books, notepads and (ugh) the internet, I strained my own credulity in denying or deferring offers to walk in the woods, swim in the sea or take the motor out to trawl for mackerel.

Each of these writing responsibilities were for my job, commissions for the outreach tour, so even as they fed my creative desires they were constrained by deadlines and the need to follow strict parameters. Don’t get me wrong, strict parameters are to me rich compost, but it goes without saying that when I am writing A, I am not writing B, and the opportunities to stretch and explore are hampered.

Not so this summer, having just come off an additional outreach mini-tour -- Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) -- and all the business surrounding the RNC, the plan was to read what I chose to read and to participate in whatever it is anyone else suggested I do. And I have! We have gone on kayak tours, watched fireworks from a lobster boat in the harbor, taken several brief fishing trips, gone on seal spotting expeditions and hiked up the side of a mountain.

And I have been reading How Did I Get Here? (Making Peace With The Road Not Taken) a memoir by novelist Jesse Browner. Inspired by his own feelings of middle-age remorse, the author decided to write this book upon turning the age of fifty in an effort to explain and justify his own feelings of inadequacy.

Put more specifically, as an author in the middle of his life, Browner is filled with deep regret for not being the person he believes he had the potential to be, a feeling which is familiar to untold creative peoples, including this one. The decisions we have made have added up to the people we have become, and if we are not entirely satisfied with who we are we must have made a mistake somewhere, perhaps many mistakes, decisions which, had they gone differently, would have led to our becoming the best of ourselves.

Last Tuesday was my forty-eighth birthday. I have two years to correct every single mistake I have ever made. Just kidding, that is not the point of this book. It is also not merely to come to terms with settling. It also doesn’t simply encourage happiness for its own sake.

Employing a number of examples of brilliant artists who were utterly miserable (most famously writer Franz Kafka and musician Elliott Smith) the author paints a picture of the life as a whole, illustrating not only how genius or talent or work does not necessarily add up to happiness, but that it is the unavoidable fact of not knowing keeps a human from being able to appreciate what is more than what might have been.

When I examine the facts of my own life (I do that a lot, you know) I can become bogged down by missed opportunities, opportunities which were passed upon because I am lazy or fearful or because I thought I was making the right decision but later regretted, decisions made in my own self interest (which are selfish) or in someone else’s interest (which are never duly appreciated) or for one of several other reasons.

I can also become obsessed and resentful for my upbringing, and for never having been adequately instructed or trained, merely told to stop making noise and get on with it, my act of seeking being treated as pestering until I no longer wished to bother anyone for guidance and assistance.

I think we're all bozos on this bus.

Taken together, the most satisfying conclusion I can make is that though I am not as great as I could be, I am most certainly greater than I should be.

“We want what we already have but fail to recognize it as the thing we want.” - Browner, p. 212

The book’s subtitle is a reference to that road not taken from Frost’s poem, a metaphor which he argues is not, as many believe, a paean to regret. If only I had ... whatever.

However, I long ago I realized (decided?) that my life was neatly cleaved between that which occurred prior to March 19, 2001 and everything had has happened after. The death of our first expected child was something happened to me, not an action I chose. However, it was a cause which had a profound effect, a life-altering effect.

The fifteen years since have been an ongoing, chaotic tumble as to what happens next, but there is no question that this road is utterly other than the one I was headed towards, and what I have chosen to do with it has led me to be much more accepting of life in general.

However, prior to that moment I would have said some other point was the dividing line in my life’s history. Marrying my wife, divorcing my ex-wife, starting Guerrilla, leaving L.A., changing my major, taking Accutane, and on and on and on.

This is my beautiful wife.

But it won’t be tomorrow, and it won’t be the day after that. The man says, “You’re fifty-two [or forty-eight] years-old. Do you think anything could help you change at this point?” (p. 164) but that’s not the point of his book. It is rather to see and accept all that is around you as the world that you made, and to continue to choose to make it work in the way that you do.

When I was approaching the age of forty, I had what I thought was my mid-life crisis, which manifest itself somewhat successfully in my solo performance And Then You Die (How I Ran a Marathon in 26.2 Years). However, it is a work I have often thought of coming back to, and with my recent happiness in revisiting I Hate This perhaps I will soon create the time to do so.

The play is only superficially about running, though there is an awful lot of that. It is as Browner states so directly in his book, my piece is also about choosing to "kill off your obsolete, petrified self-image, and fully embrace the happiness that is your due." (p. 260)

On Direction

We close, we do not end.

Our final two performance of The Great Globe Itself were not public performances, they were held at Elyria High School and Firestone High in Akron. Each crowd was very enjoyable for our men to perform for and the post-show discussions were some of the best we'd had the entire tour.

The discussions themselves are always a challenge for these tours, at least at the beginning. We have a list of potential questions, but we never know how an audience will respond. Some public audiences don't want to be asked questions following the performance, and as moderator I have to take care not to be too pedantic. I mean, I have to be a little pedantic. I am a pedant.

Me and Ted.

Several weeks ago - feels like months - my high school drama coach, Ted Siller, attended a performance in Oberlin. That was a complete surprise, and a happy one. He did this once before, when I was performing I Hate This at Dobama Theatre in advance of the Minnesota Fringe Festival. That was in 2003. 

Ted turns me into Death.

It's hard to reacquaint yourself with the mentors of your youth, you start sounding like a teenager. Regardless, he had very supportive comments following the show, this show I have directed, and it got me thinking of my journey as a director and what I have and have not learned.

My first production was in Kindergarten. Seriously, I told my teacher I wanted to do a play and she asked me what I wanted to do and what I described to her was Stan Freberg's Little Blue Riding Hood. The rest of the afternoon was spent casting the play and my providing lines for everyone and ... I'm not making this up, this really happened.

But my first real attempt at directing was part of an evening of one acts my sophomore year. Sobczak and I performed Woody Allen's Death Knocks. I didn't think much about it during our "process" which at this point consisted mostly of memorization and not much blocking. The day of the first performance, when people had made "wallies" for us for people to sign in the main hall, and everyone was talking up the event, I was struck by a sudden, urgent philosophical quandary:

Who said I was allowed to do this?

It was the first of many times I would be struck by my own completely blind arrogance. For I was not merely director in this case, I was also kind of the producer - I made this happen. You act in a play, and it blows, you can blame everyone, the director, the playwright, the other actors. You direct it, you own it, baby.

At school, there were as many opportunities to direct as act or do anything else. I took a course in Directing 101 (I am sure it was not called that) which was remarkable only in that it further emphasized my ability at that time to do as little serious work as humanly possible. The course was further complicated by the fact that the grad student conducting the course was also herself directing me in her thesis production and I was falling short there as well.

Later that same year I directed my own script, Breaking Point, based on the daily comic strip I had published in the college paper. As a result of that experience - directing my own play - I have entirely avoided directing my own work for over twenty-five years.

It is easy for me to judge myself harshly (and it's on video so I can confirm this) it is neither a very good script nor particularly inspired directing. At that point in the game I would have been much more richly served by doing one or the other. There was little opportunity to edit, though I am glad I took time to rewrite the entire ending, due to the kind, persuasive advice of my stage manager. If I could have sat back and watched, I would have rewritten quite a bit more.

It was several years before I would write another full-length script to be produced - The Vampyres - and at that time I took great delight in editing. Delight is the wrong word, what I mean is it was like having someone reach down my throat and yank at my stomach, but having been told, "This opening monologue doesn't work, rewrite it" at least I was able to concentrate on doing that and it was better. Even better when the piece was a remounted several years later, I cut the monologues altogether and that was much better.


The first time directing Shakespeare was a precarious moment in Guerrilla Theater Co. history and I had to do some convincing and spent a lot of cigarette time bringing people into my camp, into believing that a production of Romeo and Juliet was something I really should do. Once it was agreed upon, I was struck by a sudden, urgent philosophical quandary:

Who said I was allowed to do this?

There was no reason to believe I could DIRECT SHAKESPEARE, it was pure arrogance on my part which is really the only way to attempt anything. Jumping off the high dive is arrogance, submersion is antithetical to being a mammal, who do you think you are?

This production marked my directing phase, as I moved from Guerrilla to Night Kitchen to Bad Epitaph, in ten years time I directed around a dozen productions, without guidance, without mentorship, no one said I was allowed to do this. Some of it worked, some didn't, who cares. My attentions moved to arts education and writing. I found it much more satisfying and a lot less stressful.


I think what I could never enjoy was thinking of directing as a gig. Since 2004 my directing jobs have been by choice, and not assignment. Directing Henry VIII for CleveShakes in 2012 was a gas because there were no expectations, none at all.

This is the thing - I have had to make up everything as I go along. I have learned from directors I have worked with as an actor, but not as an assistant to a director, nor as a stage manager. When the time came to edit Romeo and Juliet, I started with the cutting from a production I had performed in in college - adding bits back I missed and removing others that did not interest me.

When I directed Hamlet in 1999, I started by watching a video of Richard Burton's Broadway production from 1964, making cuts based upon that before then deciding upon my own. It felt like cheating each time, as though I were some Shakespeare fraud, that I didn't really know what I was doing.

What I was really afraid of was removing something someone else would think were important. That in my ignorance I would excise the most important piece from the show, and that it would be apparent to all.

By the time Henry VIII came along, I wasn't afraid any more. I just cut what did not interest me, that didn't tell the story the way I wanted to tell it, end stop.

... I'll come in again.

The Great Globe Itself was the first play I have directed for the outreach tour.  I found it an intense experience, working for three hours (with one short break) with three guys - two of whom I'd never worked with before - to tackle a dense but ridiculous script, telling a somewhat oblique story that spanned four centuries and played fast and loose with true history.

It's what I do.

My script, my direction. At least this time I was able to step back, at least somewhat, to perform some judicious cutting at the outset, once I heard it repeated a small number of times. There were even more cuts after we had opened, one or two lines which offended. With their absence, those complaints stopped. It is a process, and better to make adjustments than to say "it opened, it's out of my hands."

Living Together

Which brings me back to Mr. Siller. He was always extremely accommodating to those who wanted to produce special projects - like an improv show or an evening of one acts. My brother was super involved in Thespians, acting, participating in competition, even directing Alan Ayckbourn's Table Manners (one part of the Norman Conquests trilogy) his senior year, a full-length production between the fall comedy and the spring musical.

When I was a senior, I decided I wanted to attempt everything he had, if I could even going so far as to direct another play in Ayckbourn's trilogy, Living Together - because I do not have the capacity for original thought or ideas.

This wasn't for a grade or extra credit, it was for bragging rights more than anything else, but Siller did request I create a rehearsal journal, which, much like my journal for Directing 101 a few years later, was largely perfunctory. It was the basis for my application to Macalester where I pretty much said, I did this thing and therefore I am qualified. You will notice I do not have a degree from Macalester.

The Great Globe Itself

Learning to direct has by and large been a process of learning how to work with other people. To make plans in collaboration with others, but also to have big ideas and to be excited about bringing them to fruition. For me it has always been a matter of wanting to see something on stage and then doing everything I can to make that happen.

Working with Arthur, James and Rod on The Great Globe Itself was a unique experience, and I will miss the time we spent collaborating on this production. They were each of them focused on their performances, and I am incredibly grateful for the talent and intelligence they each brought to this new work, helping me make it into the production I wanted to see. Collaboration in effect.

The Great Globe Itself: Middle School

Three Globes (Hudson Middle School)

We pushed the tour schedule back a few weeks this year, from a mid-February start to one at the beginning of March. Afforded an additional week of performances, we searched for additional high schools and soon discovered March is a terrible, terrible time to add special events to a high school calendar. It's all testing, all the time, or preparation for same.

So we turned to middle schools. Most of our tours are suitable for all audiences. Double Heart was a romance, and spoke frankly about some very personal issues (see Time Out review for details) so it stands out as an example that may have been inappropriate for adolescents. However, some material may not interest a vast audience of 11-to-13 year olds. Our Agatha Christie tour was very popular, but would it have held their attention for an hour?

We will never get to find out. But the decision was made months ago to bring two middle schools, in Cleveland Heights and in Hudson, onto the tour schedule. It just so happened they followed one day after another this week.

Monticello Middle School

Monday afternoon's performance at my own daughter's school, Monticello Middle School was very lively. The entire school was invited - over five hundred kids - and when the characters of Clement (2005) and Sam (1936) made their entrance through the house, it was as though every kid popped out of their seat. In their post-show comments, numerous students remarked on how funny they found the play, and many asked us to return some time in the future.

Hudson Middle School

The entire eighth grade at Hudson Middle School joined us on Tuesday, and our contact teacher there, Mrs. Lawler, had used our Teacher Preparation Guide to bring her kids up to speed on the history and issues related to The Great Globe Itself. After the performance, she gave me a tour of her classroom and all the different projects they had created, related to the production.

Romeo & Juliet Globe (Hudson Middle School)

Students have been very generous with their praise in their written evaluations:

"I liked the mixture of humor and seriousness."
"The actors were very good!"
"Overall I enjoyed this play and I would totally come to another play."
"This play was fun to see instead of being in class."

 Our performance at Monticello concluded just as the school day concluded, so there was no opportunity for a a Q&A, except for  few students who didn't need to catch a us and stayed behind to chat with us.

Hudson Middle School

At Hudson we had the opportunity for a nice long talkback. I asked a few warm-up questions related to the production before letting the students as whatever they want from me and from the acting company. One questions I asked on Tuesday was, "If you had to describe this play to someone who has not seen it, what would you tell them?"

There was an awkward silence, with a few giggles, before a student in the balcony raised his hand. He spoke in a thoughtful, cultured, if put-on voice ...

"The play ... (he took a considered pause, more giggling from the audience) ... was about the magnificent Globe Theatre ... (another measured pause, more outright laughter from the audience) ... a place where men ... dance together ..."

And then we all just lost it.

The Great Globe Itself: Week Two

Full house at University of Akron!

The first, full six-day week of performances is almost at an end. Our gentlemen have performed The Globe across all counties, from Oberlin to Cah-hoga Falls, with stops at libraries and retirement communities, for one audience of nine earlier this week to a packed room at the University of Akron Student Union Thursday afternoon.

Every couple of years Great Lakes has had the opportunity to present the outreach tour as part of the university's annual Shakespeare In The Spring programming, and were all delighted to learn there would be cake.

During the performance, one of our hosts was inspired to create an impromptu sign, reassuring students that the meatballs were harmless:

Get it? If not, you haven't seen the show yet.

We had a great discussion afterwards, debating whether the show does or does not include ghosts, and James contributed to the eternal humiliation of John Fletcher. 

Down at The Globe.

Response to this new work has been very positive, and there were dudes at the show yesterday who were virtually crying during the dance scenes. Here are some random comments from the U of A:

Q: What did you enjoy most about today's performance:
"The entire performance was outstanding."
"The actors are just funny guys."
"The jokes about (Cardinal) Wolsey."

The Wolsey bits? They're the best part of the show!

Many thanks to Dr. Hillary Nunn who coordinated our tour stop, and all those who organized the event, it was a beautiful Spring-like day in so many ways. The van is loaded up, and today we wrap up this second week of the tour at the Cleveland Sight Center at 1 PM. Join us!

Say cheese.

The Great Globe Itself continues through March 31.

The Great Globe Itself: Talking Heads

Inspiration comes from many places. Last Wednesday night, at Workshop Players, it became a bit of a running joke during the discussion, exactly what the inspiration for this play had been?

Because I had originally been inspired by my mentor Bill Condee and his emphasis on theater architecture, coupled with my own undergraduate experience performing largely on the university’s thrust stage.

Only my original inspiration had actually been inspired by John Vacha’s account of young Sam Wanamaker, and how his work in Cleveland in 1936 had inspired a lifelong dream of creating a new Globe Theatre.

Except I was really actually originally inspired by the idea of Mark Rylance’s three-man Tempest, and my desire to see three men perform a warm-up dance call to BAD II’s single The Globe.


Every one of these things are true, inspiration comes from everywhere. However, each individual scene did not begin to properly take shape until I gave each of them a title from a song by Talking Heads.


Arthur was the first to catch this, as each scene has a heading in the script – Burning Down the House, Once In a Lifetime and This Must Be the Place. Each of these phrases are spoken during the play, as part of the dialogue, so audiences aren’t even supposed to notice it.


What’s the point? None, really. I like Talking Heads. I am particularly fond of This Must Be the Place. Only recently did I search David Byrne’s description of what the song means, it’s one of the few love songs the band ever created, and it is composed entirely of non sequitrs, unrelated phrases people in love might say to each other, entirely out of context.


But once I knew that the first scene would be about (spoiler alert) the original Globe Theatre burning to the ground, I noticed two other of their singles were could be said to describe the action of the following two scenes. This made writing them easier, gave the action of each of specific focus. The titles were a touchstone, the scenes aren't actually about the songs.

We had a great performance at Beachwood Public Library this afternoon, the audience was very generous and responsive. I live the libraries, there’s such a diverse age range in the audience. Tomorrow we travel to Kendal at Oberlin, performance at 7:15 pm. Please join us.

The Great Globe Itself: Opening Week

Art is never finished, only abandoned.
- Leonardo Da Vinci

The tour has opened, The Great Globe Itself is on the road. We have had warm and receptive audiences at Talespinner Children's Theatre in Cleveland, Workshop Players, Inc. in Amherst, and Berea-Midpark High School. There have been many laughs, some surprising, but all received with great enthusiasm from the acting company.

This was evident from the final dress rehearsal, for which we crammed about a dozen close friends into the rehearsal room. It was surprising to me how much of the written work was actually funny (nothing can be proved to be funny until a human being actually laughs at it) but also how successfully our performers are selling it.

From the first, the strongest reaction we have received are for the accents, especially the Original Pronunciation. However, OP is not the sticking point I was afraid it might be. The opening moment, when characters from all time periods represented in the work enter, introduce themselves, and their words overlap, hopefully give the audience an indication that OP will not be the lingua franca of the entire show.

There are several moments in which the actors use, move into or move out of the audience space. This has been a unique challenge in every venue, and one I was looking forward to seeing. At Workshop, a tiny space with audiences on three sides, it is almost as though we were in the Globe itself, and as I have experienced in tours past, the actors had great fun throwing the blocking out the window, to use the entire playing area.

High school audiences can be a little logy when the performance is first thing in the morning. They folks are Berea-Midpark were polite and receptive, laughing more quietly to themselves than out loud, until Mark Antony's oration, when they seemed to wake up and buzz and feed James's performance with response and applause.

Marion L. Steele High School Thespian Troupe #1422 (2015)

Since we began attending Workshop Players as a stop on the tour, Valerie Farschman has brought her drama club to see the show, every year since 2010. This year, however, we were also happy to see students from Garfield Middle School (Lakewood) in attendance. Each group of students came prepared with great questions about the production and our acting company.

One sixth grader, a girl my daughter's age, was very curious about the conclusion of the performance. Why does the retiring artistic director say he is "surrendering his power"? We discussed how (spoiler alert) the character of Prospero surrenders his power to leave the island at the close of The Tempest, so too an artist must eventually abandon their work. I was struggling to remember who said that bit about how art is never finished, merely abandoned but I couldn't remember who that was, he probably wasn't very important.

In the play, during the 2005 section, we make reference to a certain British science fiction program that was "rebooted" that year. Why? Because time and space are themes of the production, and as every scene is about what happens before the house opens, I was trying to think of small talk that night pass between to modern, professional actors.

I knew this brief conversation might get a few chuckles from our younger audience members, but I wasn't prepared to see them practically bouncing in their seats with giddy disbelief and excitement. It's as though they were watching this play about all of these things they may have never seen before, and suddenly the characters were talking about them.

Great Lakes Theater 2015 outreach tour The Great Globe Itself continues through March 31.

The Great Globe Itself: Property Design

For those not engaged in the art of theater, any part of what appears on stage, any thing, which is manipulated or acted with, by an actor, whether it be handkerchief or vase of flowers, if it is handled or used in some fashion, it is no longer a costume or set, but a property, or "prop".

Terry Martin is Prop Master for Great Lakes Theater, and he also designed sets for all of the outreach tours I have written, including On the Dark Side of Twilight, The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Double Heart. We met when he designed the set for Bad Epitaph Theater Co's. production, State of Siege in 2003.

Terry has also designed the props for The Great Globe Itself, with tremendous assistance from Lexi and Rachel. In earlier posts I have described the concept behind the Globe Theatre set. One additional element in the set are signs which will help the audience understand which era the characters occupy, 1613, 1936 or 2005.

Terry was inspired to create these signs thanks to a photograph of the eighteen year-old Sam Wanamaker at the Old Globe Theatre in 1936. How clearer to show and convince, and the remind the audience that yes, they did seven shows a day, back to back, all week long, than to recreate this signpost?

There is also an important plot point, the show order for the day, which is represented on this sign. I wonder how many audience members will catch it before our character of Sam does during the performance?

Starting with sing concept, Terry created a lovely poster for the ill-fated 1613 performance of All Is True - or - The Famous History of the Life of Henry the Eighth (see top) and finally we needed a sign which said "21st century theatre". Anyone who has attended a performance as part of the Broadway series at Playhouse Square should be familiar with this:

The Great Globe Itself opens Tuesday.

The Great Globe Itself: Quick Changes

This is freaking awesome.

Rehearsals keeping moving forward, and as we add layer upon layer of business, our three gentlemen just soak it up and grow and grow. 

Bizarre accents? Sure, no problem. By the end of the 1613 scene you will wonder why Shakespeare isn't always spoken like this.

Big dance number? No problem. They can do that, too.

Right now we are incorporating the numerous costume changes into the production. Esther has made herself available to witness and assist, as decisions are made as to what is and is not possible in, say, a six-second costume change.

How about a little tune to cover your costume change?

Tomorrow sound designer Richard Ingraham will begin to incorporate sound cues. I LOVE sound design! It's all becoming one rich tapestry of music and noise and history and humor.

We open in six days.

The Great Globe Itself: Teacher Preparation Guide

This year we have expanded the number of schools the tour visits from five to nine. Two of these schools are middle schools, we traditionally visit high schools. Sometimes the material is a bit mature or complex for pre-teens, and we leave it to parents to decide whether to bring their children to the public performances.

The Great Globe Itself, however, is historic and humorous and should be a hit with middle school kids. At least, the middle school kids I know, and I currently know a lot of them.

Every mainstage production at Great Lakes Theater includes a series of matinee performances for students across four states, and for every production there is an original Teacher Preparation Guide. These guides are created by GLT staff, area educators and academics including relevant articles, discussion prompts and pre- and post-attendance activities.

We do not often create a guide for the outreach tour. The last time we did this (I believe) was for the Seeing Red tour in 2008. That play was a dramatization of testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and so we provided a guide detailing the history of the committee and biographies of persons represented or referred to in the work, including Hallie Flanagan, Ronald Reagan, Paul Robeson and Arthur Miller.

The Globe is chockablock with historical personages and steeped in true historical fact (that I mess with) and so we have created a guide to hopefully bring our student audiences up to speed. Most of this original material was sourced and scribed by our education intern Elizabeth Finley, who is a recent graduate from Malone University. We are all very grateful for Elizabeth's great work, creating  this very useful guide, which you can access from the Great Lakes Theater website.

The Great Globe Itself: Blocking

Three nights, three scenes. Each scene between sixteen and twenty minutes in duration, and that includes the dancing. We will easily bring that down and the entire show will be under an hour.

Last year (Seven Ages) we were costume light but prop heavy, this year it is the other way around. Working through the Great Lakes Exposition Tuesday last night we discovered we would need a clipboard and a baby, and that was about it.

Tomorrow we will be stumbling through the entire piece a few times (maybe twice?) but on Sunday we need to add costumes. During the 1936 scene alone each actor will cycle through no less than four costumes, Rod himself has five. The changes are going to be kind of a big deal.

It has been five years since we have had a cast of only three, the last time was On the Dark Side of Twilight (2010). There is a special kind of attention and focus that comes with such a small ensemble, we work for three hours and there is little down time – sitting time – for any of them. Each of them just has too much to do at any given moment.

By the end of the night this evening, The Globe was a glob, meaning we have given it a basic shape. Our gentlemen should have their lines down by the beginning of next week and they can truly begin embodying their characters and telling the story.


Who can turn a glob into a globe?

The Great Globe Itself: Choreography

Rehearsals for The Great Globe Itself began in earnest last Wednesday. For three nights we met in our rehearsal room, and sat and read and talked. Actually, they did a lot of reading, and I did a lot of talking. But we all sat, looking at books and pictures, sharing stories and tackling several interesting English dialects – OP, Midwestern American, and a few modern of British.

Chuck, our dialect coach, worked one-on-one with each guy while the rest of us kept reading and studying. I threw so much stuff into this script, I have been anxious about how it would be handled by the actors, any actors. By the end of Friday night I was pretty confident that things were on track.

It’s weird, for several years now rehearsals for the outreach tour began in mid-January, with performances commencing the second full week of February. For years we have had a performance on Valentine’s Day -- we auspiciously opened Double Heart on Valentine’s Day itself. Yet we had yesterday off. If we had our traditional schedule, today we would have held our first Sunday afternoon show for an audience braving temperatures below 0° to attend this hot show. I am very glad we pushed the production back a few weeks this year.

Friday evening we took a little field trip … downstairs. I took our gentlemen into the only theater in Northeast Ohio that approximates the conditions of performance present in the Globe Theatre: the Hanna. Safety regulations prohibited our men from standing or working on the thrust stage, but they did have the chance to stand in the house and gaze up into the galleries, and to take in the stage as an Elizabethan audience member might, from all sides, from in the historic boxes.

Tonight, choreography! I have such vivid, happy memories of the dances Carli created for Double Heart. Critics in New York commented upon James’s and Emily’s dance together … sure, I wrote some good lines, but the dancing was how audiences believed they had fallen in love.

The men in Globe, they are not dancing to fall in love. They have work to do, their characters have work to do. Their characters are actors, preparing for a performance, and warming up. That is one of the pieces.

The other piece Carli has prepared is inspired by the curtain call dance, or “jig” which would have been expected from Shakespeare’s audience. If his text is to be believed (or rather, if you are to expect the opinions of certain of the Bard’s characters to be his own opinions) then Shakespeare hated concluding his performances with dancing. But what are you gonna do? The groundlings expect a jig and by gar, we're gonna give them one.

The Great Globe Itself: Set Design

Scale model: Terry Martin

This is a play about a building. The play is named after a building, the phrase The Great Globe Itself is from The Tempest, as Prospero describes how all things must eventually end, how life is merely an illusion.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

Indeed. The entire play takes place in our around one of three Globe Theatres. In our first meeting, scenic designer Terry Martin and I discussed how literal this set should be. We agreed what we did not want was for it to look like anyone's set for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged).

Not like this.

The word "rendering" was introduced several times, and in fact shortly after our first production meeting, when Todd and I were conceptualizing the production image with the folks at TRG, they themselves chose the word "rendering" to describe the item Arthur's character would be holding in his hand. This idea of the Globe in the form of a ground plan or blueprint had definitely taken shape.

May I offer you a Globe?

We will be rehearsing in a small office downtown, per usual. This is good, because if the set fits into the rehearsal space, then we know we can manage to squeeze it into pretty much any of our locations.

See: "Complete Works" poster in the background.

This has got to be one of the simplest, most elegant, and lightest touring sets we have ever had. And it is ideal, representing the Globe artistically as architecture.

Stage right presents backstage, the Tiring House, the storage in the Heavens, costumes and all that.

Stage left, the galleries, the public area occupied by audience members. Performers in the show refer to the galleries several times, but our work will be performed largely in non-theater spaces with one level of audience, on the floor.

Here we see the foreshortened "Heavens" - the ceiling over the Globe stage. These columns suggest the thrust of the theater's platform stage, but will work in a shallow stage space like that at Lakewood, but also provide a "launching pad" into the audience which will work extremely well at Workshop Players. I am very excited to see how this simply device will work in all of the different spaces, large and small.

Terry drew these designs himself, by hand, and though it is hard to tell from these photographs (because these photographs I took aren't very good) the surface has the patina of parchment. This is his original model, life-size!