Play a Day: Fairfield

Eric Coble

For Monday I read Fairfield by Eric Coble, and available at New Play Exchange.

Two months reading a new play every day, and this is the first time I have presented the work of Eric Coble which is odd because we are friends. I am friends with playwright Eric Coble. Everyone hear that? Me and Eric Coble. Yes.

We met in college, I was completing my fifth year as an undergrad and he began his MFA in Acting at Ohio University so though I think of him as older we are the same age. He stopped acting in 1996, I was the marketing director at Dobama Theatre when he walked on stage for the very last time in Eric Overmyer's Mi Vida Loca. Coble is an excellent actor and I am sorry no one else has the opportunity to see that.

Because he was committed to becoming a playwright! And he has been most prolific and most successful. I had the great good fortune to perform in The Velocity of Autumn opposite Cleveland legend Dorothy Silver at Beck Center in Lakewood, before it moved to the Arena Stage and then Broadway, a production for which Estelle Parson was nominated for a Tony.

The Velocity of Autumn
(Beck Center, 2012)

I am dropping all the names today.

For ten years Eric and I have been colleagues in the Playwrights' Unit at the Cleveland Play House, where I have been blessed to receive Eric's guidance, advice and good humor as I have made my own journey as a professional writer.

I have also had the fortune to experience several of his works in progress, including Fairfield, as well as seeing the CPH premiere production in 2015. In the spirit of #NewDayNewPlay, however, I did re-read it before writing my recommendation!

Fairfield takes place in an inner-ring suburb somewhere in the United States. Except the only city like this one in the United States in Cleveland Heights, a magical fantasyland where an almost equal number of white people and black people (and a not insignificant number of Jewish people) live side-by-side and get into heated arguments about race and racism and yet never actually set fire to anything and we don't leave because we love it here. Except for all the racism.

Fairfield
(Cleveland Play House, 2015)

Eric was a member of our school board when he wrote this play (we both live in Cleveland Heights, the city of great writers) and after the table read I asked if he wasn't concerned about how it might be received. He just gave that carefree smile of his and told me he wasn't running for reelection, anyway.

Coble has an incomparable way of taking difficult contemporary issues to outrageously hilarious extremes, and Fairfield is a classic example of this. He explodes modern conversations about race, while still presenting engaging and (with one obvious exception) sympathetic, well-meaning, occasionally delusional characters who truly want to do the right thing, even if they only help make everything spin more wildly out of control.

As one of the parents whose children attend Fairfield might say, Eric Coble knows how to "use his words."

This month I have been heartened to read thirty great works by thirty tremendous playwrights. So many of them were recommended to me by other playwrights, dedicated individuals who proudly promote each other's work.

I am taking a short break from writing, however, as I concentrate on an outdoor, summer production of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. Perhaps I will see you there!

Eric Coble is currently developing his new play, "The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus" at the New Visions/New Voices Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

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.

On Creativity

The wife and I went to see the Cleveland Play House production of RED at the Allen Theatre on Wednesday. My memory of the Broadway production were still strong, and I was looking forward to rediscovering it. The wife enjoyed it a great deal, leaving the theater with her head swirling. My original take on the script was that it wasn’t as powerful as it might have been, against the towering, brutish character of Rothko, assistant Ken (on paper) came across as the idea of someone who might exist, rather than anyone who actually does.

The most powerful impressions of when I saw it in 2010 was Molina’s subtlety of humor, the strength of his fragility, and the design -- the sound, the set, the light, and the paintings. Especially the paintings. As I found each of these elements wanting in this incarnation, the script came to the fore as the real star of the show, and I respect it a great deal more. And I actually thought Randy Harrison’s Ken was an improvement on the original,* pushing what I had previously dismissed as a requisite painful backstory into something necessary to the narrative.

I believe now that RED could be, and perhaps some day should be, performed with little or no set at all -- and none of Rothko’s paintings. The Broadway and CPH sets were almost identical, a realistic painter’s studio. On B’way, however, every scene featured a different Rothko, upstage, looming over the proceedings. When either player described the work, we could see it, but the paintings kept changing. After all, the artist is supposed to be creating over thirty different large-scale canvases. At the Allen we got one main one that stays for several scenes, a few others to the side which had to be viewed from a severe angle (Rothko would not have approved of that) and of course, the blank canvas that gets primed right before our eyes, a neat trick which is thrilling the first time you see it.

Most missteps in this production were directorial. The most glaring of which was choosing to put on painting on the “fourth wall” -- a painting wee do not see, because it is hung on the proscenium, invisibile to us, with the actors looking out at us to see and comment on it. At one significant moment, Rothko is inspired TO PAINT! He instructs Ken to bring him paint, to add pigment, Rothko is massaging a brush … what can be going on int that man’s head? In New York, he was facing upstage, at an actual canvas, one he has already informed us is unfinished, and in that moment, we, the audience, are thinking the same thing … Is he going to PAINT? What will he PAINT? Is this really going to HAPPEN?

It is an electric moment of possibility, which I will tell you goes unfulfilled, with an explosion of anger and regret. However, in Cleveland, he was facing us, the audience. There was no actual canvas. Is he going to paint? Of course not, don't be silly, there’s no canvas there, dummy, there will be no painting.

These is one of those moments in the theater that I recall the voice of Roger sitting next to me in the audience, when I am so fortunate to attend a show with him, that he hear him mutter under his breath, “Bad choice …”

He does that a lot during other people's plays.

Directorial choices notwithstanding, it was in large a great night. And we had plenty to talk about on the way home. Because these are the stories I love the best. Stories about artists, and about the act of creation. Those are the plays I enjoy, and the films, about writers and painters, about designers and even about chefs.

Remember Suede? Suede remembers YOU.
My favorite movies include The Moderns (painting) Ed Wood (moviemaking) Big Night (cooking). This is why I enjoyed the first few seasons of Project Runway, to my own surprise, because it was about watching designers realizing their ideas. It’s why I can’t watch it anymore, because the producers emphasize headgames and physical exhaustion and the work is terrible.

We are currently trying desperately to catch up on this thing Mad Men. We started season two last night on Netflix. Now, I won’t pretend that my primary interest is not the same as everyone’s; the style, the music, the smoking and drinking, the dream that someone like Jon Hamm could actually walk among us.

But it’s also about ideas, and about creativity. About using art and words to shape emotions and to change the way people think. Sure. It’s about advertising. About selling stuff. And we can have a lengthy discussion about the difference between selling a philosophy and selling deodorant. The point is, I am drawn to stories that play out discussions and actions, the negotiation between people, to create art.

My wife and I were winding back through the previous season, I was trying to piece together how Peggy came to where she is at this point. The show takes its time, there are few sudden leaps in any direction for any of the characters. So, how did this reserved, plain-looking woman, get the attention of someone with as much power and ego as Draper. It may have come as a surprise to some that this meek woman wants something, we all do, we all want something. But there were clear lines at that time, and she crossed them to get where she wanted to be.

Then my wife reminded me, she was in the sample pool for lipstick. She was able to tell Don that in order to “understand” a woman, you should ask a women. Now, in the episode we saw last night Peggy uses the tired phrase “sex sells” and Don calls her on it. That’s not why he hired her, so that she could talk like just another man.

But he didn’t say it like that. He said it better than that. Because he’s Don Draper. And you don't even know you are.

Some who have witnessed The Velocity of Autumn at Beck Center have remarked about the manner in which art acts as a bridge between the estranged mother and son whose story it is. And this strikes me as odd, not because it is not true. I guess it is. As the person playing the son in question, I am so embedded into the character, getting from point A to point Z, I am not thinking of the larger how of how we communicate. It's just me and my mother, trying to reach each other, and not knowing how. And she paints, professionally. Or used to. My character is a searcher, a watcher. A life-long student. I hadn't thought of how it appears to others.

UPDATE 7/25/2019: The "original" Ken on Broadway, whom I was apparently so unimpressed with, was Eddie Redmayne. 

The Velocity of Autumn

Where is Pengo? What happened to his delightful blog entries, where is he?

Good question. Where am I?

Today, this beautiful, sunny 75 degree day I am in an all-day technical rehearsal at the Beck Center in Lakewood, preparing for the regional premiere of The Velocity of Autumn by local playwright Eric Coble.

Preparing for this Spring, planning for it with my wife, in addition to the annual outreach tour, which often takes a physical and mental toll (in spite of outward appearances, “acting” is very difficult for me) I was offered the opportunity to perform in this two-person, 90-minute play with Cleveland theater legend Dorthy Silver. My wife said, well … you can’t turn that down.

And so, two weeks after closing the outreach tour, we will be opening this play. At the same time, I have been training for a marathon. Yesterday I ran eighteen miles before breakfast. My thighs are very sore, and my calves. Spoiler alert, this show begins with my clambering rather awkwardly though a second-story window. I have bruises on my arms, my stomach, and my thighs. I am tired, sore and bruised.

And yet, I am so very glad I accepted this challenge and, now that I am feeling more confident with my lines, am becoming increasingly excited about the opportunity to share it with an audience.

The Velocity of Autumn had its world premiere at the Boise Contemporary Theatre a year ago, but this “regional premiere” is different, he’s rearranged it a lot, working to jack up the action without losing what the play is truly about.

From the BCT production. Dude has less hair than I do.

“Coble's dialogue is both playful and touching and had the opening night audience not only laughing but nodding their heads with understanding.” - Boise Weekly, April 13, 2011

It’s going to be a long week, I need to be careful to rest and take thing easily, giving necessary attention to each component, theater and work and home and family -- and me.

The Velocity of Autumn opens this Friday, March 23.