Forest Hill Park Footbridge

Under Construction, 1939-40

For better or for worse, I am a runner. There are a number of short routes which take me from my home in Cleveland Heights and through the neighborhood or the city, though many of those will include inclines which, depending on the day, can be welcome or not.

Some time ago I realized how close I was to Forest Hill Park, which spans both the Heights and East Cleveland. It’s almost exactly a mile there (and a mile back) and once there, I can take a few different paths to create a 5K, a four or even five miler. And the entire route is mostly flat.

Once upon a time, Forest Hill was the home of John D. Rockefeller. Featuring a bluff from which you could view the city of Cleveland, the estate was a summer retreat for the family until the mid-1910s. In 1939, J.D. Rockefeller Jr. donated the property to both cities for public recreational use. It was at that time that Works Progress Administration funds were employed to create a footbridge to span a 350-foot valley, through which runs Forest Hill Boulevard.

It’s a lovely bridge, built with a steel skeleton and faced with locally quarried Euclid bluestone. More recently, a cage-like addition was added to the middle section for safety. It has also kept the bridge free from tagging.

Photo: J. Mark Souther

I will often take the bridge from East Cleveland to Cleveland Heights and back on my runs, and once even incorporated the bridge into a script I wrote, a play which is intended to be performed live via cellphone, while running through the park.

Over recent years, the bridge at either end had been damaged, the stone walls knocked over, possibly by careless motor vehicles in the park, or in some cases, probably pushed over by mischievous hands.

A couple years ago, however, repair workers replaced and repaired the damage and now they look good again. I stopped in the middle of a run in October, 2021 to thank and compliment the guys who were employed for the project, for their work.

Sources:
Cleveland Historical

Cleveland Memory Project
Daddy Runs Fast Blog
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

On Virtual Performance

Last Spring, KrisP. Production, a professional company and actors studio based in Hong Kong, put out a call for original plays written specifically for digital performance, never intended to be produced on a stage, for a short series they call LIMITATIONS.

As it happened, I had just completed a short work as a class assignment that had the same stipulation, and so I submitted that. And it has been selected for production!

The Runner was written to be performed as a continuous live stream; cinéma vérité executed on a platform like Facebook Live. Inspired by the John Cheever short story The Swimmer it is about ageing, regret, masculine toxicity and includes certain supernatural elements.

I am very excited and intrigued to discover how they realize the material. I had played with the idea of producing the script myself this summer, but we have all, fortunately, been very busy. Will they produce it live? The call for submissions encouraged some kind of audience participation, which it has. And a “sensory” experience, which it does.

Hong Kong is a twelve hours difference from Cleveland. I’d love to watch some live, experimental short play performed over breakfast!

Timing "The Runner"

In spite of the Delta variant making its way across the U.S., many here (including, it must be said, me and my family, who are all vaccinated) have been behaving as though the pandemic is over. This is never so apparent as in the theater community, as Broadway has plans to open shows in a little over a month, and all our local theaters are now announcing their 2021-22 seasons.

With the great reopening of American theater has also come the great dismissal of so-called “virtual” theater. Some speak as though they would be happy never to see a play on a screen again. Or more to the point, that unless it is performed live in front of you, it is not even theater.

I find this distressing. Not only because I wrote and produced live performances during the recent shutdown. Not only because this thing really isn’t over yet, and anyone who thinks they may never again have to spend a year (or more) indoors again may be in for a world of disappointment. But also because as an audience member, the performances I saw, live and recorded, as well as though I participated in, gave me life and brought me hope. 

And as much as I have enjoyed the live, in-person performances I have already taken in during the past month, I am not so ready to dismiss the virtual performances that carried me through.