Process XLI

Okay, Anton. Whatever you say.

I was rushing to get a paper completed by last Thursday, only it is really due next Thursday. So, I have a paper due next Thursday which is mostly complete, so that’s good.

My work will appear in a certain collaborative holiday project but that hasn’t been announced yet so instead I’ll just mention it here to be all oblique and shit.

We spent the week in rehearsal learning the Hamlet residency, which was awesome because I love Hamlet and it is exciting when I’m in a room of people who agree, or at least listen to me go on about it because they haven’t really formed their opinions yet.

I finished the first draft of the play I am writing for workshop, which is dynamite because the only the first half is due this week, so again. Ahead of the game. I am writing every single morning.

Next weekend, Chennai Art Theatre will be reviving their production of I Hate This (re-titled What Happened) at Indianostrum in Pondicherry, India. Pondicherry (or Puducherry) is a three and a half hour drive from Chennai, so they will be reaching an entirely new audience, and I wish them a strong turnout.

As for me, I’m taking the boy to NYC next weekend. Some time ago he expressed a strong desire to witness the musical Hadestown, as he has never before asked to see a specific production, I thought that if we could we should.

And tonight. Tonight, we return to the Hanna Theatre for the first time since January, 2020. Sara Bruner is directing The Tempest, she who played Ariel in the GLT production fourteen years ago, the one in which I played Adrian, Shakespeare’s least-consequential named character. We’re masked and vaxxed, and it will be a celebration.

Play a Day: King Lear

This is a year of many auspicious anniversaries.

Thirty years ago I performed my first Shakespearean role, that of Friar John in Romeo and Juliet. Twenty-five years ago I directed my first Shakespeare, which was also Romeo and Juliet. In that production I provided a recorded voice over for Prince Escalus.

Twenty years ago I directed Hamlet, and did a walk-on as the Ghost of Hamlet’s father.

I have performed a few other Shakespearean roles. Petruchio in the Guerrilla Theater Company production of The Taming of the Shrew. Bardolph in Henry IV for Cleveland Shakespeare Festival. Pistol in the Merry Wives of Windsor at Great Lakes Theater, and also in The Tempest as Adrian.

What? You don’t know who Adrian is? He is the least-consequential named character in all of Shakespeare. He has a name, "yet--" he does nothing and provides absolutely no information we do not already know. In this production his signal contribution was to get his head bitten off by a harpy.

The fact is, in spite of being regarded as a Shakespeare guy, I have performed very little Shakespeare. This summer, however, I will be playing one of my very favorite roles, that of the Earl of Kent in the True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King Lear and his three Daughters, or as more popularly known, King Lear.

As Adrian with Dougfred Miller as Antonio
The Tempest, Great Lakes Theater (2007)

Is it just me, or is this play going through something of a renaissance in the 21st Century? Is it because the Baby Boomers are entering their final years and want to redefine him for a new age?

I have had the opportunity to witness a couple iconic performances of King Lear in my time. In 1990 we and a college group visited London and Stratford and saw Lear performed by John Wood, who most Gen X Americans would know as Professor Falken from the motion picture War Games. The two standout performances were that of the non-yet-famous Ralph Fiennes and Alex Kingston as Edmund and Cordelia, respectively.

Several years later, Toni and I were in London and saw Ian Holm play Lear at the National, following his long hiatus from the stage. On that trip I picked up a copy of the book Shakespeare Made Fit: Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare edited by Sandra Clark.

In that I learned of Nahum Tate’s adaptation of Lear, in which he created a much happier conclusion, one in which Edgar and Cordelia (who never speak to one another in Shakespeare’s original) fall in love and overthrow Edmund to live as King and Queen of a united England. Published in 1681, “Tate’s Lear” was the favored version until around 1863, when William Macready staged the first truly popular restoration of Shakespeare’s original tragedy.

David Troughton as Tom, right
With Penelope Wilton
The Norman Conquests, BBC (1977)

It was Tate’s version that was to be my third Shakespearean production, announced for Cleveland Shakespeare Festival’s 2000 summer season. When it became necessary to abridge that year’s production schedule from three productions to two, Tate’s Lear was cancelled. We had a wonderful cast who were tremendously disappointed, and it still pains me to remember that I let them down, having made the proposal myself not to move ahead with the production.

Ironically, perhaps, one of the other two productions that year was a compact and modern production of Love’s Labour’s Lost, directed by Eric Schmiedl. Referred to as “The GQ Love’s Labour’s,” Eric had cut the text down to just the lovers’ story (no Don Armado, sorry, no Holoferenes) punctuating the narrative with a few passages from popular magazines describe what the modern person wants in a relationship.

My relationship with Eric goes back to our tenures briefly overlapping at Karamu in the early 90s, later we were in the Cleveland Play House Playwrights’ Unit. He has directed me in Sarah Morton’s Night Bloomers, Eric Coble’s The Velocity of Autumn, David Sedaris’s The Santaland Diaries, and now we are entering the rehearsal process for a streamlined, studio production of King Lear at the Beck Center for the Arts.

Kent is such a desirable role for a man my age, and I hope I can do him justice. He has the first line of the play, and it is entirely unassuming, one of the rare circumstance in Shakespeare when the action just starts, right in the middle of a conversation, Kent speaking with the Earl of Gloucester about a point of interest which has marginal bearing upon the issues of the narrative.

He is pressed into action, having to suddenly bridge a confounding gap and is forced into action he couldn’t have considered five minutes previously. He is not particularly remarkable, except for his absolute devotion to those he loves, sharp wit, and his ability to kick a young man’s ass.

David Troughton as Earl of Kent, right
With Linda Kerr Scott and John Wood
King Lear, Royal Shakespeare Company (1990)

I have seen two men whose performances as Kent rest upon my shoulders. The first was David Troughton, whose work I had first seen when he played Tom in the BCC production of Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests. Why a ten year old would be watching a British comedy about intimate relationships you can blame on my brother, regardless I remembered him when our school group visited Stratford that 1990.

Troughton was a then-member of the RSC, and in addition to leading workshops and acting as a mediator between our team and the company, he and his wife Alison welcomed us into their home and they were just remarkably kind and thoughtful people.

He and Ciarán Hinds conducted the final battle between Achilles and Hector (respectively) from Troilus and Cressida for us during a stage combat workshop. I saw him play Holoferenes in Love’s Labour’s Lost onstage, and he was Kent to John Wood’s Lear.

It was a remarkable week.

Most recently, I saw the production at Great Lakes Theater, directed by Joseph Hanreddy. That was four years ago. Hanreddy has done such marvelous work with our company, and this was no exception, a towering performance by Aled Davies in the lead role. His Kent, his "Caius" was Dougfred Miller.

I first met Doug the summer of 2005, when we played Merry Wives of Windsor at Great Lakes. Doing summer shows, my birthday often overlaps rehearsal or performance (this has happened numerous times) but I don't tell anyone. There's too much, I want it to be about me. That July 26 I walked into Becky's after rehearsal, on my own, prepared to drink a solitary toast to my own 37th anniversary. Doug was there at the bar and invited me to sit with him -- I hadn't really gotten to know anyone in the cast yet, and he expressed a deep, sincere interest in me, which was very gratifying on such a day.

Dougfred Miller as Earl of Kent, right
With Cassandra Bissell
King Lear, Great Lakes Theater (2015)

The next year we created a great moment together on stage for The Tempest -- the one in which I played the least consequential named character in Shakespeare. Doug was Antonio, the usurping Duke. Director Andrew May had stage these moments where Ariel was literally playing with us -- we were like puppets on strings. She paused us as I (as Adrian) had made a fist, as to strike Antonio. We were released and I hit him, Doug (as Antonio) reeled from the impact, as our "strings" were cut, sending us crashing to the floor.

Not remembering having been in this state, I rose from the floor, rubbing my hand as he rose rubbing his chin. We looked at each other -- and then away. A marvelous take. If anyone in the audience caught the exchange, I have absolutely no idea.

A performer possessed in equal measures great compassion, dedication to craft, an unparalleled wit and god-like sense of comic timing, his Kent was to me emblematic of Doug's work at its finest.

As we begin rehearsals for King Lear this evening, I enter the only way I could, following the example of such generous men, with humility and hope.

Beck Center for the Arts presents "King Lear" directed by Eric Schmiedl, May 31 - June 30, 2019.

Play a Day: Miranda from Stormville

Adam Bertocci

Seven plays in seven days!

For Sunday I read Miranda from Stormville by Adam Bertocci, and available from New Play Exchange.

“No one needs fixing. Just love or some cheeseball shit like that.”

My daughter started calling me “poppa” a couple years back, which I thought was sweet until I realized she was inspired by the name Eleven calls her captor in Stranger Things. Nowadays she calls me “Pops” which I have to say is pretty awesome.

In this keen adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a nineteen year-old Miranda calls her father Pops, too. He is in the throes of Alzheimer’s, and it is against that backdrop, of grappling with an elderly parent whose fix on reality can change by the moment that new relationships form and others break apart.

It is an existential struggle for our female protagonist, thrown into an uneasy partnership with “Will Ferdinand,” the son of a man of prominence, on his way to Atlantic City, now lost in New Jersey. Unlike Shakespeare’s ingenue this young woman is wise beyond her years, though still burdened by an inability to break free of circumstance.

Bertocci has a remarkable facility with words, and he takes delight in messing with the works of Shakespeare. We met several years ago, when he attended Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick) in New York City. He told me he appreciated the hidden jokes in the script that only a Shakespeare enthusiast like himself would get, which was pretty flattering.

Hip Shakespeare dorks must, must also read his Two Gentlemen of Lebowski, which GQ calls "a blast," and they are not wrong.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Inventing Meaning for "The Tempest"

There is a strong resemblance.

Now my charms are all o’erthrown

And what strength I have’s my own.
- Prospero, The Tempest (Epilogue)

Writing is like magic.

Picture the aging William Shakespeare, summoning to him the spirit of creativity, a tricksy spirit which reveals to him the true story of a shipwreck I the recently “discovered” Bermudas.

Shakespeare sees himself as master of this island, drawing to it this doomed vessel. Aboard, lords and gentlemen who have shown disrespect for his writing, but also a fine husband for his younger daughter (already 26 and without prospects).

At that same time, he struggles with his Bête Noire, that which inhibits his creation; lust, anger, drink, vulgarity, struggles to keep this Devil down in the hole. He plays with the nobility, terrifying them with monsters, treating them as toys.

Finally he composes a great play for his child and her man, forgives his ignorant enemies and critics, sets down his pen and paper (“staff” and “book”) and chooses to retire from writing.

Wouldn’t that make a good play?

The Aliens (2014)

Alexander V. Thompson in "The Aliens" at Dobama Theatre

Too much information? Or too little? How much do you want to know about a play before you see it? On our drive back from a performance of Seven Ages at Lorain High School, Emily was all excited to learn we are producing The Tempest at Great Lakes Theater next year because she has never seen it. Never even read it. And she decided right there not to read it, to experience an entire Shakespeare from beginning to end with no foreknowledge. That will be an adventure!

(Why so excited about The Tempest without knowing anything about it? See: Neil Gaiman.)

I whole-heartedly support her decision. I like to be surprised. However, it is also true I do not like to be confused, or left confused. A little confusion is a good thing, it can be a mystery, it makes you think.

It also makes people talk during movies. Who is that guy? What are they talking about? Is she gonna die? When we get to talky bits in SHIELD, the kids get distracted and that’s when they make comments and I have to shush and remind them the talky bits is when we learn what the hell is going on.

Seven Ages was written to stand alone. Yes, you might get more out of it if you are familiar with As You Like It, you already have an idea of who these characters are. But the introduction explains all you really need to know; four people, hiding from danger, telling stories. One woman is dressed as a man and three of them must keep her gender a secret from the fourth. That’s it, easily spelled out, and on with the storytelling.

The first two performances a few adults in the audience expressed concern that the kids might be confused by some of the segues from one tale to another, because they include oblique references to As You Like It. I found only one such reference to the court of Duke Frederick, removed it (one sentence) and since then no one has expressed any confusion with the segues at all. To the contrary, the writers have been praised by audiences for how it all hangs together.

However, Lisa wanted to provide some context to the student audiences, explaining the origins of the play, how it was written, where the inspiration comes from. I told her I thought this was too much information to be providing the students prior to the show, that they would have the wrong impression from the get-go. She reluctantly followed my request, and our first student audience was confused and disengaged.

I was wrong.

Since then, each of our student audiences have received a very basic explanation of what it is we are trying to do with this play, how Jacques’ “Seven Ages” speech was the inspiration, and what they could expect -- seven stories. Those matinees were very successful. The students at Lorain High were most attentive, they got all the jokes and had many interesting questions or comments about the stories after the show.

Last night Brian and I went to see The Aliens by Annie Baker at Dobama Theatre (strong recommended, remaining performances tonight and tomorrow afternoon only). We arrived early to hear Nathan Motta, Dobama artistic director, and the director of this production, provide what they are calling a pre-show “conversation” though it’s not really a conversation, it’s a pre-show talk. For a half-hour, Motta provided very interesting background on the playwright, the history of this play and Baker’s other works, their importance and significance.

He also described the characters in the play, in some cases using the playwright’s stage directions, which gave the audiences clues as what to look for. This is what we strive to accomplish when presenting key scenes from Shakespeare in the classroom, as part of GLT’s residency program -- give the students something to watch for in the scene they are about to see. In that way, we make them active viewers.

But last night’s audience wasn’t full of students (though I was delighted to see a pack of teenagers there, on their own, seeing this play) we were adults. Granted, adults who voluntarily showed up forty-five minutes early for this information. Some of the information the director provided might be called spoilers -- not major plot points, but just the kind of things I like to figure out myself when watching a play or seeing a movie.

And yet, I feel this is an important step in keeping theater relevant in the 21st century. What media do we consume for which we have absolutely no foreknowledge? We have seen the trailers for films, that is largely how we choose them. And those are chock-a-block with spoilers. We read blogs, see commercials, have recommendations from friends, on books, TV shows, radio programs.

Why walk into a play and expect a modern audience to be satisfied to jump in with complete ignorance? Doesn’t make sense.

In my own works, I have tried to create “trailers” for plays, but they are devilishly difficult on a shoestring budget. We all know this. Even look at the online trailers for The Velocity of Autumn, they avoid showing actors speaking lines on stage as much as possible, because it just doesn't play the way it's supposed to on video. We get punchlines and audience reaction, which is the real selling point -- others enjoying it, not the work itself.


Tomorrow the tour visits Cleveland Heights-University Heights Main Public Library on Lee Road. They are usually quite a discerning crowd, because, you know. Heights. And yet, I believe I will be encouraging our moderator Khaki to be providing some much-appreciated pre-show context.

Seven Ages: Costumes

Costumes by Esther Montgomery Haberlen

Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick) was written to be a prequel to Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. It was my intent that it be reasonably and justifiably be considered an explanation of events which preceded Shakespeare's work, that nothing contradicts what comes later (unlike, say, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.)

With Seven Ages, we harbor no such pretensions. In devising a premise - time, place, characters - I told our playwrights that our scene rests somewhere in Act II of As You Like It, between scenes six and seven. I provided a general sense of who the four characters are who will be telling these tales, and that we would choose as time period the date in which the Bard's play was written, Fifteen Ninety-Nine.

But don't search too hard for continuity. Later in As You Like It, Jacques and Rosalind (as Ganymede) appear to be meeting for the first time, and unfamiliar with each other. It doesn't matter, we are not trying to expand upon the narrative of Shakespeare's play. It is a device through which four people tell stories inspired by the seven ages of man.

Set as it is, in one place, at one time, our costume designer Esther decided upon a period look, which is to say, the period in which it is set. Pretty novel, right? For Double Heart she took inspiration from Branagh's film version of Much Ado, or at least the time period, eighteenth century, rather than sixteenth, and there was a very good reason for that. They were colorful. If she had gone with sixteenth century Italian military wear and women's attire, things would have been very brown, and the ladies outfits restricting, which was not conducive to our youthful, racy love story.

The Tempest

Time and again a vocal minority of audience members lament that this company or that company (nearly every company, really) never performs Shakespeare "the way it is meant to be performed" meaning in Elizabethan dress. Time and again this does happen, however, though I do not know if they actually notice it (Great Lakes Theater's 2007 production of The Tempest was period, though I don't think that had any impact on ticket sales) but should all Shakespearean productions be in period costumes? Wouldn't that get a little boring? Besides, it is also very expensive to create and keep costumes from that period. The dresses are HUGE.

Having said that, Esther has designed and her company have built beautiful Elizabethan costumes for Seven Ages. I love what I get to wear, with a marvelous fur-collared cape and matching doublet, and I am even more taken with our Ganymede and his/her stylish green doublet and pants with golden slashes and accents.

Then there is a codpiece, which, once you have seen it ... you cannot stop seeing.