Adventures In Slumberland (performance)

Steve Wagner Photography

Adventures In Slumberland opened a week ago, on Saturday, November 30. The houses have been well-attended, the response from children (and adults) has been very positive. And we have gotten some great attention in local media.
  

Director Ali Garrigan and I had a lovely conversation with Dee Perry at IdeaStream this week. I get a bit tongue-tied by Ali keeps things pretty grounded as we discuss the psychology of Slumberland. Excuse me for saying so, but listening to this interview really makes me want to see this show.

Also, we never mention that fish. Also, too, we remember to mention Santa. You forget what kind of impression he makes, but children have been spotted leaning forward, wide-eyed when the man with the bag makes his brief appearance.

  CoolCleveland "If you have kids, you need to check this out." - Sarah Valek Review

In her warm and enthusiastic review, Ms. Valek does point out that this Talespinner show (and she has seen all of them) "doesn’t have as strong as a storyline as past performances." I can't disagree with this, and excuse me for saying I meant to do that but that was one of my plans for Slumberland, that it resembles the episodic nature of a comic strip while also, eventually, getting somewhere.

Rave and Pan "It's quite a treat." - Christine Howey Review  

Christine Howey mentions that Imp "speaks in a non-identifiable foreign tongue," and that was thrilling to me, because (and I believe Ms. Howey actually got this) Imp was a character I was most concerned about. McCay's original version is a grotesque racial stereotype, but while most adaptors have chosen to just leave him out, I thought he filled a necessary role as third. Third Marx Brother, third Stooge, or my case, third child.

Lauren B. Smith as Imp

Imp exists to embody the strange, unfamiliar nature of Slumberland, but that also means to know things that the outsider (Nemo) cannot know, and to comment on things without being understood. The children understand Imp, without actually understanding the words. Lauren is so marvelous with the character, and communicating Imp's language, it is flattering that Howey refers to it as a "foreign tongue" when all it is is entire sentences in English written backwards.

The play script of "Adventures in Slumberland: A holiday play of Little Nemo" by David Hansen and adapted from the works of Windsor McCay is available from Amazon

Around Noon

Dee Perry and I producing the radio drama
adaptation of"I Hate This" for Around Noon (2005)

This Friday, June 28, 2013 will be the final broadcast of WCPN 90.3 FM's award-winning, northeast Ohio arts and entertainment program, Around Noon. The good news is that Dee Perry and her crew are moving to the 2 PM time slot, Monday through Thursday, with a new program called The Sound of Applause.

I guess this is a thematic melding of WCPN and the PBS station WVIZ and that station's long-running arts show Applause, which has been hosted by Dee since the two stations merged into Ideastream in 2001.

Change can be good. And people can complain. I remember when WCPN made the radical switch from largely jazz programming to mostly news and talk in the mid-1990s, and what a fuss people made at that time. It was forward-thinking, however, and as much as I am sick of talk radio, the NPR programs broadcast on WCPN and locally produced shows like The Sound of Ideas do provide for moderation and common sense discourse which is unavailable elsewhere.

And then there was Around Noon. I remember when I was public relations director at Dobama Theatre, and were were first contacted by the program in early 1997. I mean, they contacted us, looking for stories and interviews, because this was going to be a daily, hour-long radio program about arts and culture in the region. Usually it was me, begging attention from the print media, which even then, with two weekly papers and a full-functioning daily, appeared to regard arts coverage as some kind of charity work.

Cleveland Historian John Vacha and I chat with Dee about "It Can't Happen Here"
October 24, 2011

This was unique, this dedicated arts reporting, and it still is. It is a shame that in order to accommodate the new schedule they must drop their Friday shows (and for Ira Flatow of all people, I can't even listen to him) especially as they fall right before the weekend. But it's a gift, and in today's media climate, the people of greater Cleveland are lucky to have it.

Today is my wife and my fourteenth wedding anniversary (ivory, sweetheart, we'll skip the presents) but on our fifth anniversary (June 26, 2004) we joined 2,700 of our friends in getting naked in the shadow of the Steamship Mather for photo installation artist Spencer Tunick, and we worked with the folks at Around Noon to make an audio diary of the entire event. How cool is that?

Spencer Tunick: The Naked Truth
Best wishes to Dee and to the producers of The Sound of Applause, for many, many more years of excellence in arts reporting.