"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.

Ten Amazing Productions in 2025

"John Proctor is the Villain"
by Kimberly Belflower
stage door with Sadie Sink
at the Booth Theatre

The American theater is dying. Long live the American theater! So far, so good, we have made it through another calendar year without a single Cleveland theater going under, due not only to the great work we produce, but the strength of our audiences. It is glorious to see.

I had the opportunity to catch many great shows this year, not as many as I hoped, but I was immensely satisfied. Here's a list of shows I really enjoyed, presented in chronological order.

Experts in a Dying Field (Test Flight)

Every single time I see a production in the James Levin Theatre at CPT, I recall that it must be the physical space in which I have ever seen the most live performances. Since 1992, and that was some time ago, when I attended The Chapel of Perpetual Desire presents a Liturgical Circus of Religious Fervour and Live Sex on Stage! I have either witnessed, participated in or produced something in that room several times every single year.

"King James" by Ravij Joseph
Cleveland Play House
Photo: Roger Mastroianni

And many times it has been something like this, a new work with an experimental edge, in this case a series of interpersonal vignettes written and performed by Jonathon Morgan, executed by an ensemble of cheery performers. I like spending time in the same room with people like that.

King James (Cleveland Play House)

Speaking as someone who has written his share of plays that take place in Cleveland, I was very excited to see this two-hander by Heights High graduate Rajiv Joseph. Every story has to take place somewhere, why not here? Why not at the same bar on Coventry where my wife and I spent so many of our twenty-something nights? That it succeeds on its own merits as a tale of friendship and basketball is why it’s justifiably being produced everywhere, but I’m very glad to have seen it with a Cleveland audience.

"The Wolves" by Sarah DeLappe
Dobama Theatre
Photo: Steve Wagner

The Wolves (Dobama Theatre)

My wife and I have raised two high-functioning people into young adulthood, folks whose adolescence was marked by the trauma of encroaching authoritarianism and global pandemic. DeLappe’s play about a girls high school soccer team so carefully tracks what I have seen in my own kids and their contemporaries, what they have been pressed to accomplish and what they have to put up with, should be necessary viewing for anyone who underestimates this generation.

John Proctor is the Villain (Booth Theatre)

I’ve already said many things about this play. This stage direction from the play script says it better:

they scream so loud and for so long
it’s a lifetime of screams
it’s awesome

"Twelfth Night"
Cleveland Shakespeare Festival

Twelfth Night (Cleveland Shakespeare Festival)

Twelfth Night is my wife’s favorite Shakespeare, and it’s certainly one of my top five. It’s a remarkably flexible text, and in production a skilled director can emphasize many different characters, and choose a variety of justifiable moods. The final image of the production at Great Lakes Theater this spring was of the twins, Viola and Sebastian, giddily engaging in cryptophasia. We saw a production in Montreal ten years ago that closed on three characters who were left without a partner – Feste, Sir Andrew and Antonio. Lisa Ortenzi’s production for Cleve Shakes was ideal for free, outdoor theater. It was funny, silly, bright, and very fast.

The Right Room (BorderLight Theater Festival)

We did it, thanks to the folks at BorderLight we produced a play that takes place in a hotel room in an actual hotel room. I got to watch the final dress rehearsal in the Presidential Suite of the Crowne Plaza Hotel – which was also the only rehearsal in the actual performance space – but I did not have the opportunity to experience it with the audience, there was no room. But I could hear it, and that was a lot.

"Sincerely, (the diary play)"
by Bryanna Lee
The Vagrancy

Sincerely, (the diary play) (The Vagrancy)

The day after The Right Room, I managed to see six shows at BorderLight, including this memoir play by Bryanna Lee. And when I say memoir play, I meant that literally -- the entire script is masterfully shaped from found documents (journals, video recordings, medical records, text messages) into a self-elegiac narrative about adolescent hope and betrayal.

Sunday in the Park with George (Great Lakes Theater)

Sondheim doesn’t make it easy. There is a reason this one isn’t done often. It’s challenging in so many ways. I was so excited to have the opportunity not only to see it performed live (for the first time) but also to share it with my entire family. The wall of beautiful voices at the conclusion of each act brought me to tears.

Cat on script.
November 9, 2025

Ten November (reading)

I was introduced to this script by Steven Dietz over twenty years ago, and kept ruminating on a possible production. Living on the Great Lakes, the Edmund Fitzgerald has a kind of personal significance and I have wanted to tap into that. The fiftieth anniversary of the disaster seemed like the last opportunity to acknowledge this. We have a charming little house, full of clutter and love, and don’t have people over often enough, and so created a haunting evening with a cross-section of friends to tell the story.

I Wear My Dead Sister's Clothes (Cleveland Public Theatre)

We end where we begin, in the Levin Theatre. Amy Schwabauer (with director Ray Caspio) has brought this monodrama about grief and things through an extensive development process and I finally took the opportunity to see it at a Monday night showing. I love Monday night theater. We're thinking of developing a new theatrical memoir and just as I was questioning the importance of death narratives, I saw this and feel entirely justified (again). So you all have that to look forward to.

How I Spent My Summer (2025)

Bridal Falls, Goat Island, NY

Three months. Summer has been ending earlier and earlier, this year it began earlier, too.

To celebrate our eldest’s graduation from college, we planned an international journey, a vacation in Spain. We hadn’t taken our children on a transatlantic expedition since they were very, very young, not since I brought I Hate This to the UK. They don’t even remember that trip, only in photos.

First, however, a snag. I thought I had a valid passport, and I did, but it was due to expire. We noted this days before our departure. Renewal necessitated an urgent drive to Buffalo, which was in its way a not unpleasant prelude to the season, which included a fine cocktail in the hotel bar, and a rainy day stroll in Niagara Falls State Park, waiting for my ID to be processed.

Fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes in the presence of Bridal Falls. I live for moments like this.

Bilbao, Spain

When folks ask what my favorite part of our Spanish vacation was, you will forgive me for saying it was the opportunity to spend ten, responsibility-free days in the company of the three people I love most in the world. Social anxiety issues aside, our kids are excellent travelers. They are not only open to interesting, sometimes unplanned experiences, unusual spaces and food, they are also very good communicators and check in when they need a break. I am also better at this than I was as a young person, and that is thanks to them.

Our eldest’s achievements inspired this excursion, so the emphasis was on art. We saw the Prado, and the Reina Sophia. We attended the Guggenheim Bilbao, and finally the Segrada Familia. However, we also took in a little jazz with the boy, happening upon a barside trio outside the Guggenheim, and the David Pastor Quintet in Barcelona. I tagged the bandleader on my socials; a brief interaction revealed the connection between him and the head of the boy’s department at UC. Small world, indeed.

Great Lakes Theater Camp

I am always seeking new and better ways to lead, instruct and create. This is as true at our annual summer arts camp as in any other arena, and not only did the team put on some pretty amazing performances, I was developing new ideas as how to best curate an all too brief playwriting workshop, and how best to showcase the work.

We had about a half hour, every day (which is to say, for only six or seven days) for a small cohort of middle school aged campers to write short plays, which then received staged readings by high school aged campers. Everyone agreed the work was good, and I have some powerful thoughts about how to make the experience more exciting for all involved next year.

Peter Voinovich
"Churchill at War"
Actors Summit Productions

The eldest and I turned out for the No Kings protest where I spotted Fred Armisen casually walking past om his way to the opening of the SNL exhibit at the Rock Hall. By his gaze he seemed either impressed or bewildered by the Free Stamp.

We’ve also been attending a lot of Guardians games. It’s been a season of ups and downs, for the time being I’m withholding judgment. I have also had the chance to meet up with old college friends (emphasis on old) including seeing my roommate Peter onstage for the first time since, well, college, playing Churchill in a solo performance in Akron.

Much of my mental energy has been focused on The Right Room, of course, and my physical energy as well. While rehearsals were taking place I was acting as de facto sound designer and also curating and even creating props for the production.

Zach Palumbo, Nicole Coury
"The Right Room"
In Rehearsal

The BorderLight Festival was remarkable. I posted about our performances last month, it was all up and over on the same day. The next day, a Saturday, I saw a half dozen shows. 

Highlights include Impact Award Winner Sincerely, (The Diary Play) by Bryanna Lee, She Was a Conquistawhore by Rachel O'Hanlon-Rodriguez, performed in The Snug at Parnell’s (where Give Me Your Keys produced my play Step Nine two years ago) and Eric Coble’s The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus, masterfully performed by Tia Shearer Bassett.

Then we got the heck out of town.

Zach Palumbo, Nicole Coury
"The Right Room"
BorderLight Theater Festival
Photo: Daren Stahl

I try not to look forward to our annual journey to Maine. It will come, as it (almost) always does, but once it’s gone, so is the summer. This year, however, we were joined not only by the children but also their partners. It was a joyful and relaxing celebration of family and fellowship, replete with day trips and afternoons on the rock just reading, great food and drink and conversation.

Our last night on the road, stopping in Little Falls, New York, I had another chance to indulge in falling waters, writ small.

Now we’re back and home and at work and August has barely begun. But this weekend we’re going to Cedar Point.

The Right Room | In Performance

Charles & Mathilda
(Zach Palumbo & Nicole Coury)
Photo: BorderLight Theater Festival

The BorderLight Theater Festival is closed for 2025, and with that, so too our run of The Right Room in the Presidential Suite at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Playhouse Square. For those in the room, and for our young company, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The audience only saw the bedroom; the bed, a couch, a few armchairs. They, the audience, were asked to sit in one of eight, ordinary, cushioned chairs. They were also asked not to relocate those chairs, and to make sure their personal items were stashed underneath. They were also advised that though this play would be intimate, it would not be interactive; do not touch or speak to the actors, and they will not touch or speak to you.

Once they were settled, the characters entered through the same room the audience had. Throughout the performance they accessed the bathroom (lines delivered when folks were offstage in the bathroom were amusingly louder than those delivered in the room itself) and occasionally dipped into a closet – but it wasn’t an actual closet. It was a door into the adjoining suite, blocked by a curtain.

The suite (or living room area) was our green room, it was larger than the bedroom. The east end of the Crowne Plaza is rounded, with a view overlooking East 14th and Euclid, the Chandelier. The audience could see this as they entered, but most sat with their backs to the windows for the show. If you can imagine, the entire suite wrapped around the end of the hallway. The door to the suite faced the door to the bedroom itself.

Just as the actors were lining up for entrances at the top of the first performance, facing the suite door, ready to cross the hallway to the bedroom door, I was standing off to one side behind them. Suddenly, the actors playing Fanny and Mason both turned their heads to look at me. And in that moment I saw my biological grandparents, people I never had the chance to meet or even know about, young and attractive and with their whole lives ahead of them. I wasn't expecting that.

Their real names, by the way, were George and Martha. Truth is stronger than fiction.  

BorderLight show pages included the opportunity for audience members to rate and review the productions, and we received many wonderful comments. Here are just a few:

“Each character was incredibly human; in turns flawed, lonely, searching, funny, sad, excited, passionate, confused, and affected by people and a past they only partly understood.” - Amelia B.

“The staging was deft and I was never at a loss of where to look or what story was being told. A truly immersive theater experience that has to be seen to be believed.” - Philip F.

“Jasmine Renee’s direction was outstanding. Pulling off clear storytelling in such an intimate space is no small challenge, and she nailed it. Serenity Grace Tate’s costumes were spot on, and I was comforted to see that Julia Fisher was engaged as Intimacy Director... I hope his play has a life beyond the wonderful Borderlight Festival. We all need to find ourselves in the right room.” - Daniel H.

On a related note: Today is my birthday, and by tradition, I am on vacation. In the office, birthdays are celebrated with cake and ice cream, and about ten years ago they began celebrating mine in my absence. 

It started with a photo of the staff having ice cream at a place on the square, the gag becoming sillier with each passing year. One year they were all crammed into my office … with ice cream. During the quarantine, a picture of an empty breakroom with hats and noisemakers on the large table.

This year? A staff picture in a room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel with a note reading, "We're finally in the Right Room!"

In case you were wondering, I truly love where I work.

The Right Room | Final Dress Rehearsal

Bradley Hughes & Kayce Kvacek
as Leif & Lucille Larsen

Last night an invited audience witnessed the final dress rehearsal for The Right Room. Today everyone is taking a well-deserved rest — or scurrying about taking care of last-minute details — before tomorrow's ticketed performances at the Crowne Plaza Playhouse Square, presented as part of the BorderLight Theatre Festival.

I cannot adequately express how happy I have been with this experience. The acting company is ideal, the members of production working in tandem, attending to every detail, calmly addressing every challenge, and it all came together so lovingly last night as the show progressed without a dropped moment.

When first proposed, the script ran about 75 minutes. As BorderLight conditions called for an hour max, it was necessary for me to lose a not insignificant number of pages. The result is a tight, streamlined piece which nonetheless lost none of those moment I most treasured. It's a better script. If I were to later expand it to, say, an eighty minute piece, I'm not sure I'd just put everything I've cut back in.

Having eight audience members in the room with us last night, it became apparent just how intimate this piece will be; how close the audience is to the actors, and they to the audience. This may sound obvious, but these audience members are right there in the room with the characters, just as the characters — those who cannot see each other — are with each other. It's such a fascinating dance!

Rachel Gold & Cole Tarantowski
as Fanny & Mason

The post-rehearsal response was positive and generous, and none more supportive than my spouse, my favorite critic (no, really, she's an actual critic) who provided me with some welcome and much appreciated perspective. The company should be confident they are doing great work, she let me know it's a great play.

And here we are. The festival is open, and tomorrow this wildly talented team of artists is going to present this play that I wrote, The Right Room, three times in the same evening, in an actual hotel room. And I have to remind myself this is also the story of a story, a story I have spent the greatest part of my long life believing would never told, that I never knew could exist, let alone that I could actually tell. And to tell it like this.

I don't actually wish my parents could see it. But I kind of wish they could see it.

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025

The Right Room | Production Biographies

Jasmine Renee (Director) 

Directing work in Cleveland includes Measure for Measure with Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, Alice in Wonderland Jr. for Fairmount Center for the Arts, and Shrek the Musical at Fairmount Center for the Arts. Jasmine served as an Actor-Teacher for Great Lakes Theater and is a Teaching Artist with Fairmount Center for the Arts.

Julia Fisher (Intimacy Director) 

Julia (she/her) is an intimacy director and playwright whose work has been seen in professional theatres throughout Northeast Ohio. She is a Certified Intimacy Director through Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, where she worked for two years as a Teaching Artist and Curriculum Developer. She currently serves as Dobama Theatre's Resident Intimacy Director, and she has intimacy directed over 40 productions across Ohio. This is Julia's fifth year creating art for BorderLight, where she and her collaborators won the Near West Theatre Emerging Artist Award in 2022 and the Producer's Choice Award in 2021. www.juliachristinefisher.com

Lindy Warren (Stage Manager) 

Lindy is grateful to assist with this unique production. Production management work includes The 39 Steps at Idaho Shakespeare Festival and Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Great Lakes Theater. For six years, she has also served as director of the youth musical program at Lakewood Congregational Church. She spent two years as an actor-teacher with Great Lakes Theater, bringing Shakespeare to schools across Northeast Ohio. Lindy thanks you for supporting the arts and live theater!

Serenity Grace Tate (Costumes) 

Serenity Grace (they/them) is a Costume technician and designer with a BFA in theatrical costume technology from Kent State University. They have worked as a craftsperson and First hand for Great Lakes Theater since spring 2022 as well as filling various roles for Playhouse Square and touring productions throughout Northeast Ohio.

Bradley Wyner (Music) 

Bradley has worked as a music director at Cain Park (Rent and School of Rock), Blank Canvas (Hedwig, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, One Man Two Guvnors, many others), plus Cleveland Public Theater, Dobama, Kalliope Stage, Cleveland Play House. Proud of his many years as a teaching artist (Case Western Reserve, Cleveland School of the Arts, and more); students have gone on to careers as teachers, non-profit leaders, journalists, artists, musicians, and actors on stages from Broadway to Cleveland. Bradley also works as the Director of Education at Milestones Autism Resources.

David Hansen (Playwright) 

David (he/him) has participated in Cleveland’s theater renaissance as a founder of Guerrilla Theater Company and artistic director for Dobama’s Night Kitchen and Bad Epitaph Theater, as well as an actor and director at theaters across Northeast Ohio. BorderLight Festival audiences may have seen his plays Step Nine (2023) and The Toothpaste Millionaire (2024). He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Cleveland State University. David is Education Outreach Associate for Great Lakes Theater and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. www.davidhansen.org

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. 

The Right Room | Cut Dialogue

We are deep into rehearsals for The Right Room, which opens (and, as it happens, closes) on Friday, July 18 as part of the BorderLight Theater Festival in Playhouse Square.

This is a new work, and because of that and also because it needs to fit neatly within a one hour timeframe, there need be editing. That is good. I like editing. The work is not done. Even when it is done, it is not done.

It is not surprising to me that dialogue between the two characters from the 1990s might have be a bit too ... trivial? Let's say dry. Or ironic, don't you think? And possibly unnecessary.

For time, and also comprehension, we cut the following exchange about infidelity.

Characters:

Steve (M, 26)

Aubrey (F, 24)

Time: Fall 1994

Place: A hotel room, Independence, OH

STEVEN

I do worry I am what they call a serial monogamist.

AUBREY

I don’t like that term. It sounds pathological.

STEVEN

Like serial killer.

AUBREY

Serial anything, like a radio drama.

STEVEN

A serial.

AUBREY

Yeah.

STEVEN

I’ve been eating a lot of cereal.

AUBREY

We’re the generation that can eat cereal for dinner.

STEVEN

Who waits for dinner?

AUBREY

I don’t worry about it, I think that’s a natural state for man to be in.

STEVEN

Serial monogamy.

AUBREY

Yeah.

STEVEN

I like the way you say yeah.

AUBREY

Yeah.

STEVEN

Yeah.

[Waving their hands:]

STEVEN & AUBREY

Yeah!!!

STEVEN

I could deal with the monogamy, it’s the cheating I can’t abide.

AUBREY

Don’t cheat, then.

STEVEN

The first time I heard the song “Tempted” I thought, oh! Cheating is a thing you can do.

AUBREY

I mean, there’s “The Piña Colada Song.”

STEVEN

Yeah! Or “Careless Whisper.”

AUBREY

Tipper Gore was right.

# # #

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. 

The Right Room | Actor Biographies

Nicole Coury (Mathilda)

 Performance credits include I’m Alive … and Always Will Be (Lang) with Nightbloom Theatre Company, Aida (ensemble/fight captain) at Karamu House, Language Archive (Emma) and Ada and the Engine (Ada Byron) at Clague Playhouse, Bedroom Culture (Mia) at Cleveland Public Theater, Acts of Clay (various) at Wizbang Theater and Executing Eve at Convergence Continuum.

Rachel Gold (Fanny)

Rachel is a Cleveland-based actor, director, fight choreographer, and educator. Acting credits include The Body Play (CPT), Grand Concourse (Seat of the Pants), Little Women (Dobama), and multiple roles with Great Lakes Theater and Cleveland Shakespeare Festival (CSF). She serves as Artistic Director of CSF, where she directed King Lear, and has also directed The Tempest (Beck Center) and radio plays with Radio on the Lake Theater. This fall, she will guest direct at her alma mater, Baldwin Wallace University. Rachel’s work spans classical and contemporary theatre, with a focus on dynamic physical storytelling.

Bradley Hughes (Leif)

Bradley is currently a BFA Acting Major at Baldwin Wallace University. His recent credits include: Twelfth Night and King Lear at the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival; Three Sisters, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, Measure for Measure, and The Dining Room at Baldwin Wallace University; and The Rescue of John Price (workshop) at The Oberlin Wellington Rescue Theatre Project.

Evan Joslyn (Steven)

Evan was most recently seen as Malvolio in Cleveland Shakespeare Festival’s production of Twelfth Night. He spent the past school year as an Actor-Teacher with Great Lakes Theater, and will spend the next with Montana Shakespeare in the Parks as part of their educational outreach tour of Richard III. As an immersive playwright, Evan’s second collaboration with Columbus Children’s Theatre, In the Land of Oz, will be produced this fall. He received a degree in theatre from Denison University and furthered his training at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey and Gaiety School of Acting. 

Kayce Kvacek (Lucille)

Kayce is a Cleveland based actress and playwright. She received her BFA from Boston University and has trained at The Academy for the Performing Arts and LAMDA (London). Some of her favorite roles have included Viola in Twelfth Night, May in Fool for Love and Camille in Horse Girls. Her first one act play, Ships in the Night, was accepted to the Boston Playwrights 24 Hour Play Marathon and has since been published & performed across the country.

Zach Palumbo (Charles)

Zach is a Cleveland-based performer whose favorite roles include Eugene in Broadway Bound (Beck Center), Feste in Twelfth Night and the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz (Ohio Shakespeare Festival), Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors, and SpongeBob in The SpongeBob Musical (Blank Canvas Theatre). He’s premiered works at Cleveland Public Theatre, including Savory Taṇhā and Experts in a Dying Field, and performed with Karamu House, none too fragile, and others. He’s also a music director with credits at Clague Playhouse and CWRU. His rock opera Future Perfect, co-written by David L. Munnell, premiered at BorderLight Festival in 2024.

Dani Schmaltz (Aubrey)

New to Cleveland, Dani is an Actor-Teacher at Great Lakes Theater. Previous acting credits include: The 39 Steps at The Appalachian Center for the Arts, Energy Game Changers educational tour with The National Theatre for Children, world premiere musical The Suffragist at Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and The Nerd at St. Croix Festival Theatre, and Dry Land at Rising Fire Theatre.

Cole Tarantowski (Mason)

Acting work in Cleveland includes A Midsummer's Night Dream with Cleveland Shakespeare Festival where he played Demetrius, Acts of Clay at Wizbang Theater, and he played a role in Karfuffle in Parmadoro 2 as part of the 2024 Micro Theatre festival. Cole also has begun his journey as a playwright, with his first full length play, Handlebar Brakes being recently presented as a staged reading at Cleveland Public Theater as part of their Test Flight theater festival.

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. 

The Right Room | Character Biographies

Fanny was born in 1910, in Vermillion, Minnesota, the fifth of eight children. Her mother, a school teacher, passed away when Fanny was fourteen years old. A home-girl (in the former meaning of that term) she had two sons – the first she had placed for adoption when she was 25 – before marrying at the age of 36, to a man with whom she had a third son. She died in 1979, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, at the age of 69, and was buried in her hometown. She was never reunited with her first child.

Mason was born in 1913, in Hastings, Minnesota. He fathered a child that was born in 1935 before marrying another woman the following year, and together they had three children. A career in the Minnesota state house was brought short by his alcoholism, and he pursued a life in teaching and high school administration. He died in 1999, in Bellingham, Washington, at the age of 86. There is no evidence to suggest he was ever aware of the existence of his first child.

Lucille was born in 1904, in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1932, at the age of 28, she married Leif. They suffered two miscarriages and a stillbirth before adopting sons from the Willows Maternity Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri in 1935, and again in 1938. A registered nurse, she was employed by the Maternal Health Association, the forerunner of today’s Planned Parenthood of Greater Cleveland. She died in 1982, in Bay Village, Ohio, at the age of 78.

Leif was born in 1904 in Fevik, Norway, immigrating to the United States in 1927, and receiving American citizenship in 1931. He married Lucille in 1932 in Lakewood, Ohio and they adopted two sons. As a younger man he was a merchant seaman, later a member of the IBM Division of Cleveland Trust Bank. He died in 2005, in St. Petersburg, Florida, at the age of 101.

Mathilda was born in 1935, and brought up in Lakewood, Ohio. She married Charles in 1959, with whom she raised three boys in Bay Village, engaged in a traditional, suburban lifestyle as housewife and mother, supporting school organizations and a local food pantry. Following the death of her husband, she resumed a relationship with Archie, her high school sweetheart. Archie was holding her hand when she died in 2020, at the age of 84.

Charles was born at the Willows Maternity Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri in 1935. His adoptive parents raised him (largely) in Lakewood, Ohio. Graduating from Miami University, he was employed by Cleveland Trust/Ameritrust before forced retirement at the age of 53. He married Mathilda in 1959, and they raised three sons in Bay Village, Ohio. He died in 2016 in Lakewood at the age of 80, never having shown any outward interest in his biological heritage.

Aubrey was born in 1970 in Athens, Ohio, to a teenage mother, who raised her as a single mom after Aubrey’s biological father left when she was four, before her mother remarried in 1980. She graduated from high school a year early, moving first to Atlanta, and then to New York City before she turned 18. She moved to Cleveland in 1995, where she established herself as a writer and editor, a high school teacher and bookseller. With Steven she bore three children, the first stillborn.

Steven was born in 1968, in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in the suburb of Bay Village. Shortly after graduating from college he entered into a brief, two-year marriage. He married Aubrey in 1999, with whom he had three children, the first stillborn. He has been an underground theater artist, an arts educator, marketing director, actor, director and playwright. Since 1991 he has lived in Cleveland Heights, the city of great writers.

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. 

The Right Room | Playwright's Note

The Willows Maternity Sanitarium

Once upon a time, the birth of my father was a tightly held secret; held by his biological mother, by the Willows Maternity Hospital, by the state of Missouri, and by the man himself, for he did not want to know.

Shortly following the death of my dad, through science and fortune, we learned the identity of his biological mother. And through recent investigations of my own, we also know the identity of his biological father. This came as something of a breathtaking revelation.

My mother once suggested I write a play inspired by the letters dad’s adoptive parents wrote to each other when my grandfather was a merchant seaman. And in part, I have finally done what she asked, and much more.

The Right Room is inspired by this lineage and these discoveries; how a child was conceived, adopted, chose a mate and how I came to be.

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025

On Site-Specific Theater

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025

Let us define our terms.

Dr. Suzy Woltmann defines immersive theatre as “a performance art movement that aims to transform audience members from passive recipients to active participants.” Furthermore, she highlighted features of immersive performance which may include:

• Blurring the line between audience and performer
• Leaving the stage behind
• Including sensory experiences
• Shifting between the personal and the collective

An immersive experience can often be described as site-specific theatre, though those terms are not necessarily mutually inclusive. The folks at the Australian Performing Arts Conservatory states that site-specific theatre “breaks free from the confines of a traditional theatre where actors perform on stage. The performances take place in unexpected locations, from bustling city streets and historical sites to warehouses and parks.” Site-specific performance can:

• Create a more immersive experience
• Add a layer of authenticity and depth to the performance
• Allow creative teams to innovate and experiment with storytelling techniques

Site-specific performance is not, of course, a recent thing. By any basic definition, we may assume theater originated any place people were, and only later did everyone decide it needed to happen primarily in what we call a “theater.”

Sleep No More (2011)

But it is because of this codification of theatrical traditions that producing a play in a non-traditional space became something of a novelty. In early years of this century, for example, Charenton Theatre Co. produced a string of site-specific performances across the city of Cleveland, staging Albee’s Zoo Story on a park bench, Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology on a tour of cemeteries, and James McLure’s Lone Star in a number of local drinking establishments.

Site-specific and immersive cross over when they engage the audience in some unique, sensory way. Perhaps the most famous recent example of this was Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, which was set in a vast warehouse made to resemble a stately and crumbling hotel through which a masked audience was welcome to freely wander, handling sets and props and even on occasion, the actors – this last was not specifically encouraged, but it happened. A lot.

Inspired by this, a team of us created the Love In Pieces project in 2014, in which we produced Sarah Morton’s play of that name inside an actual house. Due to space limitations, an evening’s audience was between sixteen and twenty people, and they were split into four groups, each group of four or five experiencing one of the four, ten-minute scenes, before being escorted to the next one.

In 2023, the Give Me Your Keys company presented my play Step Nine as part of the BorderLight Fringe. Director James Rankin had asked for a play for two men to be performed in an actual bar, and I provided him one. Thirty or more crammed into the Snug at Parnell’s in Playhouse Square as two actors spoke at normal, human volume, forcing the crowd to lean in, as if eavesdropping on a private conversation.

I had not planned to apply for BorderLight myself this year, until I read the application and found this note about submitting a site-specific adaptation.

Site-specific Adaptation
Are you willing to adapt your performance to a site-specific location? For example, an alley, a hotel room, a park, a car, a loading dock, or a public street. Artists are also encouraged to suggest a site-specific adaptation/production. (emphasis mine)

Nicholas Chokan, Jason Leupold
Step Nine (2023)
BorderLight Theatre Festival

A hotel room? I have spent the past year writing a script that takes place in a hotel room! I took it as a challenge – a challenge to them. If they could really find a hotel room in which to produce my new play, then by God, I would present my play there.

And so, I am happy to announce that my new play, The Right Room, will be performed as part of the BorderLight Theater Festival 2025 this summer, and produced in a room at the Crowne Plaza Cleveland in Playhouse Square. One single hotel room will represent four different hotel rooms, in four different cities, in four different eras, to tell one very epic narrative. Epic – but intimate.

Source: 

“What Is Immersive Theatre?” by Suzy Woltmann, Backstage, May 8, 2023
“The Role of Site-Specific Theatre in Contemporary Performance Art,” Australian Performing Arts Conservatory, September 19, 2024