Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) (revisited)

This year marks the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, a collection of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays. There are many plays that can only be found in the Folio, and so it cannot be overstated how important it was that those involved decided upon its creation.

It was published seven years after the Bard’s death, and to commemorate that anniversary, in 2016 the Folger Library (holder of the world’s largest collection of the First Folio) sent copies of the Folio to all fifty states for display. To this end they held a competition to see who would get to host the book.

Great Lakes Theater, the company I work for, partnered with the Cleveland Public Library and several other organizations to create the winning proposal: The First Folio was coming to Cleveland! It didn’t hurt that the book would be in residence during the Republican National Convention, ensuring even more visitors.

One of the events proposed was a forty-five minute adaptation of a Shakespeare title, which would tour area libraries. The last time the city held a political convention was in 1936 (two of them, in fact) the same year Cleveland held the Great Lakes Exposition, and it was there that you could view a 30-60 minute adaptation of a variety of Shakespeare’s plays, every hour, on the hour at a scaled-down reproduction of the Globe Theatre. Surely, I could also write such a brief adaptation.

Photo: Carolyn York

However, it had to be portable, and I would be limited in the number of actors we could employ. I do work best with strict parameters. The task I set for myself was to cut an entire play down to only four characters. Not just four actors, playing a number of roles, but only four characters. I wanted our audiences, many of whom might be seeing Shakespeare for the first time, to be able to focus on a simple, streamlined story.

The result was Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio). I had the title before I’d written the adaptation. Is it told by Malvolio? Not really. Does it matter? I say that it does not. But we needed to put that proposal together, and I wanted to make it clear this was not going to be a strict interpretation of Twelfth Night.

Recently I have been digitizing a lot of materials at the office; prompt books for outreach tours, going back decades, and that included this one. I hadn't read it in the past seven years, and I really like it.

Part of my affection for the script is my memory of the performers, Chelsea, Chennelle, Luke and Shaun, all actor-teachers at that time, and some of the loveliest people in the world.

But I also really love what I did with the text. I made the story as a 1980s teen romantic comedy. Imagining them as high school students made it easier to streamline the Olivia-Orsino-Viola bizarre love triangle (get it?). 

Photo: Carolyn York

Taking place over the course of a single day in high school, Orsino and Viola (presenting as a boy named Cesario) were given lines from Toby Belch and Feste, making their friendship even more playful as they prank this hipster version of Malvolio.

I only changed one or two of Shakespeare’s words. Orsino says “Awesome!” more than once, and Olivia calls Cesario boyfriend, not husband (Sebastian does not appear.) Let’s say I was reshuffling Shakespeare, not only editing this play, but borrowing from other sources.

We expanded upon Olivia’s grief at the recent death of her brother as well as Viola’s plans to pass as a man using text from As You Like It, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Measure For Measure, Richard III, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Venus & Adonis. I found it all very satisfying.

The reason I shelved it and forgot it, however, was that I never thought of this as my play. I didn’t post it to New Play Exchange, or feature it on my website. Upon review, I have changed my mind about this. It is an adaptation, and it is mine. It would make a great one-act for a small cast, especially for high school aged students.

"Twelfth Night (As Told To Malvolio)" is available at New Play Exchange, or contact me directly.

Top Ten Events of 2016

Obligatory "Hamilton" sidewalk selfie.

There are those who have suggested that 2016 is the worst year in recent memory. They are generally referring to the deaths of numerous pop culture figures from the 1980s and the election of Donald J. Trump.

My father died this year. In fact, two of my great friends from my youth, their fathers also died this year. Everything else can go hang, it has been a year of personal mourning, it’s all subjective, ask the children in Aleppo how this year has gone. Kind of puts the death of the inventor of the Red Solo Cup in perspective.

Every year sucks. Every year is amazing. Here is my entirely subjective top ten list (in chronological order) of the most amazingly awesome things that happened to me this year, and only a few of the incredible people with whom they happened.

1. I Hate This (a play without the baby): This one-night-only, 15th anniversary performance, directed by Chennelle Bryant-Harris, was an eye-opening rediscovery of a work I thought I knew, and I got to share it with a wonderful audience.
2. Cleveland Marathon: Chris Fornadel and I survived the CLE Half Marathon through an absurd, freak mid-May snowstorm. Could not have done that without this hilarious running partner, but that was crazy.
3. Last Frontier Theater Conference: Playwright Kevin Armento was an inspiring and encouraging lead panelist for my new script. Also glad I got to see a performance of his Good Men Wanted at the conference, his personal philosophy of writing is one I can get behind.
4. Cavs Victory Parade.

   

   The Chosen One.

5. Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio): Celebrating the First Folio in Cleveland, I adapted and directed a 45-minute version of Twelfth Night with some of my very favorite young actors, which we toured to Cleveland public libraries around the city.
6. Saw fucking Hamilton.
7. Cleveland Playwrights Festival: Playwrights Local presented a script-in-hand workshop of my new work, The Way I Danced With You, directed by Melissa T. Crum, who, with Chennelle, has been instrumental in my development of this script. Response was very positive and the entire weekend of events was an instructive experience.
8. Tony Kushner & Sarah Vowell: This Think Forum event, ostensibly an open discussion about the life of Abraham Lincoln, the evening was a bleak, hilarious and ultimately reassuring post-election balm.
9. Reception: My wife and I began holding a salon of arts and ideas at our home late in the year, and we seem to have discovered a wonderful coven of brilliant hopeful minds.
10. 28th Annual Great Lakes Theater A Christmas Carol Writing Contest: Always a delight and an honor to help shepherd this contest for Cleveland middle school students, this year’s winners all felt particularly poignant, their interpretation by performers from GLT's production A Christmas Carol delightful. Have you listened to the broadcast yet?

He judges my blogging.

This list only mentions a few people and barely scratches the surface of the productions, festivals, parties, personal moments, journeys, concerts, school, neighborhood and campaign events, and all the details which make up a year well-spent.

There was so much pain in 2016, from the very first day (when I have have to admit I was terribly hungover) to this day. Well, not today, actually, today has been pretty calm and relaxing. 

I hope you have also been blessed with good times this past year, walking between the raindrops (as they say) and wish you great and wonderful things in 2017.

How I Spent My Summer (2016)

Son: I was expecting New York City to be a lot less like Cleveland. #nyc #cle #win

— David Hansen (@dhansenx) August 9, 2016

The Cleveland Summer 2016™. This year the wife decided not to over-program the kids. For years it was necessary to book the kids into as many camps as possible.

When I was a boy my mother’s work was the home, and so she was there and so was I and with the exception of a trip to Maine and maybe a couple weeks at day camp, I was mostly left to my own devices, watching TV or playing behind the railroad tracks in the city dump.

We each used to work year round, so our small children had to go somewhere. Sport Camp, Art Camp, Science Camp, Zoo Camp (they hated that one) or even our Theater Camp, Camp Theater!

Now that the wife is a high school teacher, and acclimated to her position, she declared that there would be few if any camps, spontaneity would be the call of the season, and that she planned to “bite the ass of this summer.” (That’s a reference to the movie Big Night, which by the way was released twenty years ago. Twenty years. Jesus.)

And bite the ass of summer we did, with plenty of swimming at the pool and sleeping in. No, I did not get to North Carolina as they did, but it was a fair trade. I went to Valdez, Alaska for the Last Frontier Theater Conference. Not so much like summer camp, more like a very full week at school. After it was all through I made an absurd number of “friend requests” in a single day. For every one I thought, I didn’t talk to you enough. I am glad to at least stay in touch in this way.

While I was away, I watched the Cavs return from a 3-1 deficit, or rather I received real time messages from the wife on their progress during the day and caught bits of it at the Best Western as it was rebroadcast in the Alaska Time Zone.

If it hadn’t gone to Game Seven (go ahead, watch that last minute again) I would not have been able to watch “The Final” with my family in Cleveland. And I cried. God help me, I wept over a sporting event. Not for me, not really, because I’d never been that invested in winning a game or a championship. But I was overwhelmed with happiness for all those who I call my neighbors across the region who feel pathetic or depressed because we have lost so much, so many times, and take it personally, that we as a city have internalized and even accepted this sense that disappointment is just what happens to us.

I was happy for them, for all of them. I am sorry Dad missed it.

The wife and I went downtown that Wednesday for the parade, not without a little trepidation but now we can say we were there, two among a reported 1.3 million. Can’t say I expect to experience anything like that again.

While they were in Topsail Beach, I labored every day to stain the deck and in the evenings rehearsed Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio). Trucking our mini-tour from east side to west, the set (one school desk) all packed up in my tiny car in celebration of a very old booking sitting in the main public library downtown. We were just concluding our final performance right there in that library, in the center of town, as the maelstrom that was the Republican National Convention and a whole lot of kooks moved into our city.

In spite of weeks of dread and concern that there would be violence in our streets the likes which have not been seen since Chicago ‘68, the police and activists and media kept it cool. There were an non-traditional number of essays of congratulations in the paper and websites across the nation, thanking Cleveland for being so darn polite, remarkably hip, and a great place to visit.

And as Sunday is to the weekend, August is to the summer, beginning lethargic and slow, excitement peaking early and then just kind of stretching on interminably until it’s time to go to bed.

(Yes, Douglas Adams put it much better, but we have no American equivalent for “tea time.”)

In brief, we left town. Visiting Maine for the first time without father surprised me in many ways, in fact I surprised myself by become overwhelmed by emotion heading out by car before we had even left Cleveland Heights.

Schlepping our bags into Barnstable that first night in, the sun already set followed by a heavy rain, his absence was larger. Everywhere I looked in this most familiar of places, he was not.

But my brother was and his family, and later cousins and more friends and our time was full and active. We returned by way of Lexington, MA and some friends who used to live in the Heights, and then to see Harris and Liz in Westport, CT.

We took a day trip with their family to Coney Island, and the following day just the four us us went into the city, for shopping on Fifth Avenue, a trip to the Met, Pokemon Go everywhere, and to see Hamilton.

Yes. We made it happen. Months ago the wife and I decided to just bite it and get tickets, and for a time when we knew we would be in the area, anyway, with friends to provide housing and no additional transportation costs.

We also knew that by August most of the cast would probably have moved on, and so they have, but the new company members are remarkable and have become new favorites of the girl, who follows them all obsessively on Snapchat.

Some day I am sure I will have more to say about the performance, but I am myself dealing with the disconnect that comes with looking forward to something for an extended period of time, experiencing it … then having it pass. And it shouldn’t be like that, because it’s a play and the play continues and the album remains and who knows, perhaps we will see it in Chicago next year, or Cleveland.

And here I am sounding like one of those lunatics who catch Les Miz every time they have the opportunity, I mean, what is wrong with those people?

That night, a storm struck Cleveland Heights, what they called a microburst, downing numerous large trees and bringing down power lines with them. Fortunately our tree was not affected, though we did need to pitch everything in the fridge … which was an excellent opportunity to clean the fridge. See? Lemonade.

Returning home meant returning to work and to school, and to soccer games and music lessons and normalcy. And here we are.

Going back over my notebook, one which has taken most of the year to fill, one observation I made on the puddle-jumper to Anchorage, reflecting upon my week:

“Just realized I’m from the big city.”

Boy Camp 2016

A low-key first night, but not without activity. First order of Boy Camp 2016, the boy needed a haircut. From there we proceeded to BD’s Mongolian Barbeque. Why? Because the girl won’t step foot in that place due to her peanut allergy. The boy has always been curious about it.

We ate way too much, so after window shopping at Big Fun for a few minutes we dragged our back ends home to watch Believeland on Netflix, the “Happy Ending” cut.

Believeland, a film by Andy Billman, lays out the humiliating defeats of each of Cleveland’s three major sports franchises in painful details, against the backdrop of urban decay and despair and unfortunate 1980s and 90s Midwestern hairstyles.

We played poker for a bit and then made an early night because I needed to take a friend to the airport first thing this morning. Of course, “early night” this summer means before midnight. We still had to watch the final Cleveland installment of The Daily Show.

After a relaxing morning and taking care of a few errands, we set out for the rest of the day. First up, the U.S.S. Cod, our resident World War Two submarine, located pretty much in the same location as a World War One submarine during the Great Lakes Exposition.

Thou lumpish, hasty-witted maggot-pie!

Then we headed to the library to join two actor-teachers, Shaun and Will, as they began conducting a Shakespearean comedy workshop in Brett Hall.

Had we really performed Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) right there in that space, at that time, only one week ago? Crazy.

Boy Camp traditionally (though not always) commences with bowling. It’s always been at that place in Solon, but since we were already downtown, we made a spontaneous decision to go to Corner Alley on East 4th.

Yes, I know it’s fucking expensive. This is not your son.

Souvenir vendors up and down Euclid Avenue we selling the last of their RNC booty, but otherwise, downtown looked much more like itself, without any security barriers or barricades and none the worse for wear.

From there we moved to the near west side for dinner at XYZ Tavern (Broccoli tempura is totally a thing) and knocking around at Superelectric, which is the coolee-coolest place to have fun, be stupid 1970s nostalgic, and really not spend a lot of money.

I wanted to try all the different pinball machine, but the boy had seen a “shuffle bowling” machine at Corner Alley that didn’t work and when he found they have one at Superelectric he didn’t want to play anything else.

Assassins (Near West Theatre)

The major event for our evening was Assassins at Near West Theatre. A community theater in Ohio City, they recently opened a brand new facility right on Detroit in the heart of Gordon Square. I was excited to see this "problem" musical of Sondheim’s (aren’t they all, though, after all) performed by a large cast of performers between the ages of 16 and 25.

Really. They produced Assassins during a national political convention. Word!

And the performances were delightful, the design was tremendous. My major issue, unfortunately, is with the show itself. I had seen it once before perhaps a dozen years ago, and am a great fan of the Off-Broadway cast recording starring Victor Garber. The recording by itself tells a tight and compelling tale, clearly playing out the American obsession with guns and fame. A couple things trouble me about the production presented in full.

One is all the scenes that don’t feature music. All the pre-Kennedy assassins, who all killed their targets (except Giuseppe Zangara) are treated to set pieces with great Sondheim songs. John Hinckley, Jr. and Squeaky Fromme get a duet as well, but Fromme also participates in a few scenes with Sarah Jane Moore which are goofy (women, what are ya gonna do) and Sam Byck has two rambling monologues which, though amusing, merely explain the mindset of a deluded murderer which is already and much more successfully communicated through the songs and  lyrics.

The show now seems awkwardly dated. We are living in a time when gun worship is a society endangering mental illness. It’s not enough to discuss these figures from history in the context of their megalomania. Also no longer relevant is the special significance given to the legend of Lee Harvey Oswald, as though that assassination was more elevated, more significant, more holy than the rest.

This is the point of view of someone who personally experienced the event in 1963. No one under fifty has that experience. The assassination of John Kennedy was no more devastating to the people of his time than that of James A. Garfield to his. I mean, don’t tell a Baby Boomer that, you’ll never hear the end of it.

"Time Of The Apes"

The addition of a new song after the 1990 Off-Broadway production, Something Just Broke, was new to me. The penultimate number, it expresses the horror and sadness that grips the nation in the wake of such a loss. However, as the rest of the show is so arch, so satiric, and so dark, dealing exclusively until that moment with the assassins themselves, it felt a little late in the game to present earnest, real world grieving from everyday citizens.

After the show we considered ice cream, but Sweet Moses was packed. Besides, we were totally exhausted. No, we did not get around to everything he wanted to do this weekend. We did not make bacon dippers or chicken and waffles. But that didn't keep him from telling me what a great day it was.

Sunday morning we watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 because that is what you should always do on Sunday morning.

Twelfth Night: The Final

Orsino
Photo: Catherine Young

The Great Lakes Theater touring production of Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) in celebration of the First Folio has concluded, the set and costumes packed away until such time as they are required again.

There were high school teacher colleagues in attendance these past two weeks expressing interest in having the show visit their school. Why not? The duration (less than forty-five minutes) fits neatly into most school periods. If all four of our actors weren’t already booked as members of the residency program, that would work out quite easily. If the show is wanted, we’ll make it happen.

Transporting the play to sites on the near east side last week, to Shaker Heights and to Tremont were great fun, each a different experience in how the performance conformed to the space. Best of all, however, was when we produced a three day stand in Brett Hall this past weekend in the main branch of the Cleveland Public Library.

This has as much to do with time as place. You may have heard there’s lotsa stuff happening in Cleveland this week. That was part of the reason the Folger Library chose to send us the First Folio in July, for maximum visibility and impact, the arrival of the Republican National Convention.

What the RNC has also provided, however, has been an opportunity for the city to engage in the kind of public works which might otherwise be shouted down as a waste of money or a diversion from issues that might better be addressed. I do not agree with these opinions, they are the kind of argument people are always using to prevent progress.

To take one example, the redesign of Public Square was completed a few weeks ago and the park (I keep referring to it as a park, is that all right?) has opened to the people. It’s beautiful, and folks are coming and they are enjoying it.

Olivia
Photo: Catherine Young

For most of my life, Public Square has not been a destination for anyone. There was no there there, it was a site for demonstrations and for people to congregate who had little else to do. Yes, there was always the Soldier and Sailors Monument, and following its renovation in 2010 has itself been a glorious and historic site to visit.

I remember this thing that happened once. For a fee our high school marching band was part of a parade to gain a certain radio station broadcast rights to the Cleveland Browns. The station's plan was to start at Public Square and march down to Municipal Stadium and harass Art Model as he met with the interested parties at the stadium.

The entire event felt sketchy to me, our marching band for rent like this. I recall observing the dozens of people who had gathered downtown for the parade. It was the early 1980s. “It’s cool to see so many people out here,” I said, out loud. I was a sophomore. One of the seniors told me, “Hansen, don’t be an dupe. Look at them. None of these losers have a job.”

Just this past Saturday I sat with my kids on the steps at the large field watching guys plays Frisbee, my daughter sat in the shade of a tree and drew in her sketchbook.

Public Square

Earlier, we sat with my mother at a table at the recently opened Rebol, a cafe located right there on the Square, having lunch. My mother has lived on the West Side her entire life, primarily in Lakewood. She remembers the golden days when families walked Euclid Avenue for shopping, my father worked for Cleveland Trust, working in the tower which is now The 9. She knows downtown. But Public Square?

Mom looked up from her dish, on this cloudless summer’s day, kids a few yards away splashing in the fountain, the boy and I playing ping-pong at their outdoor table, and mused, “I never pictured myself eating lunch right here.”

She had just attended the final performance of our Twelfth Night. She took a bus downtown, saw a play at the library, met us on the corner and walked to the park for lunch, like you do, downtown in any major city.

Mom was one of three company mothers at the play on Saturday. Chelsea’s mom was also there, and Shaun’s folks. Each of Chennelle’s and Luke’s parents were at Shaker last Saturday. It was an exciting close, to be presenting the play so close to the actual book, the reason the production had been commissioned.

It was great fun to create this particular production, inspired not only by the John Hughes teen comedies and dramas of the mid-1980s, but also, for example, Just One of the Guys -- which is itself based on the plot of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Orsino & Viola
Photo: Catherine Young

During the pre-show speech I claimed that despite the abridgment, every word is from Shakespeare … well, most, uh, almost every word is from Shakespeare. There were also references to and song cues from Robert Palmer, Dream Academy, The Hooters, The Cure, Level 42, The Smiths, Duran Duran (two songs), Bronski Beat, Prefab Sprout, Whitney Houston, Spandau Ballet and Prince.

Why so 80s? Do you know that often as a warm-up, introductory exercise our actor-teachers wil ask, “What is your first name and what era from all of world history would you choose to live in if you could?” And when they do, a startling number of today’s high school students say they wished they lived in the 1980s.

I know, right?

Then there’s me. I graduated from high school thirty years ago, in 1986. It seemed auspicious to set the play a neat thirty years ago. It wasn’t a great year by the standards of popular culture. Science recently determined 1986 to be the worst year in the history of pop music, by which they mean that never before or since have so many songs in the Top 40 sounded so alike, or relied so entirely on electric keyboards.

That was also the summer the movie Howard The Duck was released. I saw it in the theater, twice, because I wanted to like it (see also: Lea Thompson.)

Whatever, okay? Just bogus. Time periods make me focus, and when I focus I can tell a coherent story. Fortunately, as I had intended, a great deal of our audience was in my age cohort -- or teenagers, and would you believe the kids today totally know the song Notorious and who Madonna was.

Interestingly enough, fall 1986 - my first semester in college, mind, I was not longer a high school student myself - was right when fashion turned to a darker palette, when those artists who were wearing white in 1984 were suddenly wearing black.

Malvolio & Olivia
Photo: Catherine Young

I was so excited when I saw this reflected in Zack’s costume design. A hipster like our Malvolio may have been wearing colors a few years earlier, but here he is almost monochromatic. The “yellow stockings” would not have been as out of character in 1983.

And poor Shaun. Zack crafted the perfect early-mid-late eighties ensemble for him, with pleated pants and a sweater vest festooned with geometric shapes. I, too, had a sweater vest then. Teenagers in sweater vests, like we were all about to have breakfast at Denny’s with our senior discount. That would be perfectly ironic today but we didn’t know what irony was.

Most enjoyable, I believe, was the opportunity, the challenge to take a play as richly complex and funny as Twelfth Night, to edit it without losing the color of the language, to streamline the story without losing the emotional impact, to be able to eliminate certain beloved characters without feeling you were really missing them, and most of all, to create a romantic comedy that made people both laugh and applaud the efforts of all four protagonists.

In adapting the piece to a playful, high school setting, we could make the emotions high while keeping the stakes relatively low. In the end, four paired off into two, and it was at once surprising and also made complete sense. Everyone has a date for Homecoming!

Like Joe Barnes said, I am such a fucking romantic.

First Folio - The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare is in residence at the Main Branch of the Cleveland Public Library through July 30, 2016.

America Hurrah! (1966)

There’s that episode of Mad Men where Don’s second, younger wife, the aspiring actress, takes him to see an Off-Broadway play. The play is very modern (his wife is very modern), the actors are in contemporary dress, but wearing clear, plastic masks which make them appear uncanny.

They are not telling a traditional narrative, they are not recreating a scene from life on stage, there are intercut monologues, stories told with direct address, describing perhaps a single incident from many points of view. The set consists of featureless blocks. The actors sit, stand, turn, fall to the floor, roll over.

Don is either unimpressed by or made unhappy by a monologue by one of the actors about how he likes to drink beer while watching television commercials. This character talks about commercials, and he makes commercials sound awful. They make him ill. Don makes commercials for a living.

The play depicted on this episode of Mad Men (season five, episode nine: “Christmas Waltz”) is a real play. It is America Hurrah by Jean-Claude van Itallie, which opened almost fifty years ago in November, 1966.

"America Hurrah" on Mad Men

Admittedly, I would not even know about this particular play (we didn’t read it in college, it was not something produced when I was at school) had it not received a twenty-fifth anniversary revival at Dobama Theatre in 1994. America Hurrah was first produced in Cleveland at Dobama in 1969.

We have a paperback of the script on the shelf, and I was delighted to find it includes photographs from the original production at the Pocket Theatre. The design team at Mad Men, whose efforts to authentically recreate the time period have been exhaustively discussed, did a picture-perfect job of presenting the play for the program.

It was startling, almost touching. When do we see that, a theatrical moment painstakingly reproduced to be incorporated into an alternate narrative? First thoughts include the "Rocky Horror" scene in Fame (1980) or the "Sleep No More" episode of Gossip Girls.

I mean, we are talking about plays here.

The wife recently shared with me a collection of books on playwriting, books she has incorporated into her high school curriculum. I have been feeling a bit stuck this season and she thought they might help. I was curious to see one was written by van Itallie (The Playwright's Workbook) and so that’s the one I started with. After all, it features a highly impressive quote on the cover;

“Jean-Claude is the only playwriting teacher I ever had.” - Tony Kushner

Well, if he’s good enough for Kushner.

When I was at Last Frontier last month, I was struck by the quality of the work. Almost exclusively I was interested in the stories being told, by their plot and to an even greater extent their emphasis on good structure. And I was reminded why theater. That watching a profound event play out in real time by living, breathing people, capable of error or change, right in front of you, remains and will remain a necessary thing.

The works read and performed in the Play Lab during the day, and those we saw as fully-produced productions onstage in the evenings, were a healthy mix of the realistic, absurd and dreamlike, satiric and poetic, historic and fantastic. Above all I was impressed by the words. The words were all very good words. I felt the present and future of American theater is in good hands.

The Fantasticks (2016)

However, I have also recently been thinking about the kind of playful insanity that struck many theater creators mid-century, and the manner in which they intentionally threw off long-standing traditions of realism to embrace the artificiality of theater in a very obvious way.

This past spring, Great Lakes Theater produced the musical The Fantasticks. As was the case when GLT produced The Mousetrap a few years earlier, many I spoke with assumed they had seen this play somewhere, at some time, only to discover they only thought they had. The Fantasticks and The Mousetrap are each titles which hover just above the eyebrows, and about a half-inch back, nestled in the post-forebrain like some in vitro memory. You can picture it, but you were never actually there.

The Fantasticks tells a very simple story, which can easily be described as a tale where a young Romeo-and-Juliet-type couple are permitted to get married and start a life together and discover how challenging that can be. The production is intended to be highly presentational, with a set that resembles a nearly-bare stage, and modern dress. In the Off-Broadway production (still playing) that means the original early-1960s modern dress, at the Hanna the design was gently influenced by the present day, reflecting a geeky, retro charm.

Clare Howes Eisentrout & Pedar Benson Bate

The show has a narrator, who (as Shakespeare’s Chorus might describe, “prologue-like”) lays down the ground rules so the audience understands that what they see is a representation and in no way meant to be taken as literal. Perhaps in 1960 this was shocking. By 1970 you would find it a bit dated and by 1980 downright condescending. Today it is merely a quaint convention, mellowed by time. Oh, I remember this, I love this kind of stuff. Please go ahead.

I was delighted by the GLT production. Previously only familiar with that one song (you know the song) I was surprised to find there were a couple others which I really enjoyed, most notably They Were You, which is a lovely, lovely song. Having said that, I am not sure I would have been impressed with the text had the performance been in other hands. When you decide to present a play without a representational set, and your costumes are designed to resemble every day street clothes, it truly pushes the performers to be the central focus. And the words.

Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio)

This month we are presenting a forty-five minute adaptation of Twelfth Night, a production designed to be presented in area libraries. The library itself is meant to be the set, the only additional piece of furniture is a high school desk. Our four actors are in familiar dress (it’s set in the 1980s) and while they have been tasked with sharing teenage emotions, their primary goal is to present the poetry of Shakespeare with speed, passion and clarity.

Those up for a good time and a brief entertainment have been enjoying these performances very much. Anyone longing for Shakespeare sung in languid, mellifluous tones in Mid-Atlantic accents and draped in Renaissance-era costumery will be disappointed.

Which brings me back to Mad Men. Don was offended by the content, which he took as a criticism of his business, or of his character. Additionally, he may have been unimpressed or even uninterested in sitting in a chair for two hours only to have to watch people dressed exactly the same as he (a suit, a tie, leather shoes) just saying things directly to him, and not presenting an active story he might get lost in.

But then, as the camera cuts from the stage to the audience, we the viewers are also seeing the people on stage and also the people in the audience watching them. The audience in the television program is dressed the same as the actors on stage. The actors on stage are performing a play as part of a television program, performing the role of actors telling stories of modern life (from fifty years ago) as actors from today are sitting in the audience, performing the roles of people (from fifty years ago) whose own fictional stories are part of another story that Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner chose to write about and comment on and that we watch on television today, just as the stories of real people (from fifty years ago) are what the playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie chose to write about and comment on in his play America Hurrah, which premiered fifty years ago.

Well played.

Twelfth Night: On Tour

Martin Luther King, Jr. Branch Performance

We tour! Yesterday and today we celebrated the wit, wonder and words of William Shakespeare with some wonderful audiences, and look forward to more performances this next week.

On Friday, Great Lakes Theater opened it’s mini-tour of Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Branch of the Cleveland Public Library. The MLK Branch is on Stokes Blvd., adjacent to University Circle and the Cleveland Clinic, and yet I was curious as to just how many would choose or decide to enjoy Shakespeare at 1:00 PM on a weekday.

The company with the ArtWorks Team

Well. Word got out and while we were surprised and delighted to see many familiar friends and supporters in attendance, it was also delightful to see the library staff not only chose to bring their squad from day-care, which composed half a dozen or so kids in the Kindergarten age-range, but had prepared them all week by talking about stories from Shakespeare!

Also, I had the good fortune of running into Ray McNiece that morning at the art museum, as he was leading teenage members of Young Audiences’ ArtWorks art-based job training program, and suggest they join us, and they did - some dozen or so students, several of whom were already familiar with members of our cast from GLT’s School Residency Program.

Our set.

We also had at least one audience member who walked over from their office at the Cleveland Clinic on their lunch break.

I had great fun editing Twelfth Night, shaving the work down to the central love triangle of Orsino, Olivia and Viola, and also working to incorporate the Malvolio storyline without adding additional characters. I pulled speeches from the First Folio to further illuminate the (personal) emotions of Olivia and Malvolio and also to give them more stage time -- my first cutting was merely thirty minutes long and most of it was Orsino and Viola.

Today we followed up with an afternoon performance at the Shaker Heights Public Library, and even though it was a gorgeous summer day, we still had a large turnout of folks who came indoors for a little bit to enjoy our program.

Unlike the MLK Branch performance, which was in their second floor gallery space, or even the reading last month in Brett Hall (where we will return for regular performances at the end of this week) the gig at the Shaker Heights Library best represents my original concept for this production of Twelfth Night.

Don't You (Forget About Me)

Once it was decided that the tour would be Twelfth Night, and that it would be presented in libraries, I began thinking of it as a romantic comedy which takes place in a library. The library itself would be the set. And what is the best-known story which takes place almost exclusively in a library? Well, that would be The Breakfast Club.

I mean, really. What other story takes place entirely in a library?

So I conceived of a version of this play which was modeled after a 1980s John Hughes movie ... though it's really more like Just One of The Guys, which was itself inspired by Twelfth Night. And today's performance, with a backdrop of actual books and bookshelves, was just what I'd imagined.

Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) will next be performed at the Tremont Farmer's Market on Tuesday, July 12 at 6:15 PM.

Complete calendar of  events presented by Great Lakes Theater in partnership with Cleveland Public Library for First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's First Folio Preview Night

"Sneck up."

Friday night the company of Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) presented a script-in-hand performance to an audience of donors and trustees for Cleveland Public Library and the several organizations partnering to present Shakespeare's First Folio in Cleveland.

'Twas a splendid evening, which also included a lecture and book signing with Andrea Mays, author of a The Millionaire and the Bard -- a history of Henry Folger and how he developed his obsession with the First Folio and became its greatest single collector -- as well as refreshments and chat.

The production doesn't officially open until July 8, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Branch of the CPL. The original plan was to just read my adaptation, with music stands and reading stage directions out loud. But at the this stage of the game, it made more sense to wear the costumes, use the few sound cues we have so far and play it.

I did have a certain trepidation about presenting this abridged version, as it strays from the complete Twelfth Night in several significant ways -- and I'm not talk about the 1980s teen romantic comedy vibe. The only characters are Malvolio, Viola, Olivia, and Orsino. There are no twins, for example. No Toby Belch, no Feste.

Great Lakes Theater Costume Display
Foreground: Othello
Background: Macbeth
Brett Hall, Cleveland Public Library

Having said that, there is still the letter prank, the central love triangle, and the best parts of Shakespeare's tremendous comedic wordplay. Add to that the fact that I took the liberty of incorporating some very popular passages from other plays to complete the emotional arc for both Olivia and Malvolio, ruminations on love and death, including text from As You Like It, Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost, Measure for Measure, and Richard III, all verses which can be found in the First Folio.

By setting it during one day in high school. we are able to focus on these small sets of interconnected relationships. It's all a neat, swift forty-five minute celebration of one of the Bard's most beloved comedies, and it's even quite affecting. It's free, and the company consists of some of my favorite young actors.

We performed in the newly restored Brett Hall, where they have a lovely platform stage and somewhat challenging acoustics. We'll figure that out before the three lunchtime performances that will be presented there on July 14, 15 & 16. Sitting behind most of the audience, fiddling with my iPod for the sound and trying to keep an eye on my script. I was delighted to hear many great laughs. I hope we can attract a nice crowd to our neighborhood performances.

You can find a complete calendar of sites and times for Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) here.

The star of the event, of course, is the book itself, Shakespeare's First Folio, which can be seen now on the third floor of the main building in the Special Collections section. It's actually smaller than I had imagined, because the facsimiles I own are actually larger. Imagine one volume of the Oxford English Dictionary. It will remain on display in Cleveland in until July 30, so don't wait.

Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio)

Malvolio
Costume design by Zachary Hikle

Yes, we are almost one-third through the new year. And hasn’t it been remarkable? At the end of Twenty-Fifteen I blithely remarked, “Surprises are welcome.” Really, they’re not. No more surprises, please.

At the same time, I made note of dreams I had had about new works. In one I was receiving a staged reading of a play I had not yet written that went extremely well. This was several months before I received an invitation to go to Last Frontier. So that was not even a surprise, then, it was foretold.

Today is William Shakespeare’s birthday. He would be 452 today, which is far too old to be, so it is just as well he also died on this date 400 years ago, in 1616.

Olivia
Costume design by Zachary Hickle

When Shakespeare's First Folio comes to the Cleveland Public Library, we will be ready. Great Lakes Theater will be presenting Twelfth Night (as told by Malvolio) the first two weekends of July, in the newly renovated Brett Hall, just off the main entrance.

In this 45-minute retelling, we are creating a 1980s teen comedy love triangle between Viola, Orsino and Olivia, set in the (fictional) Elyria High School.

The text is entirely Shakespeare, and will also include passages from other of his works, like As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew and even and Hamlet, as well as some verses from the Sonnets. And it's free.

We’re having great fun with the adaptation, it’s fun to treat the 80’s as some bizarre, bygone era, which of course it is. My entire cast was born around 1990 ... so just as you might find in an 80’s teen sex comedy, all the teenagers are played by people in their mid-20s.

Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) opens at Cleveland Public Library Thursday, July 7.

Twenty-Sixteen

My hopes for the new year are for everyone else. My son will transition to middle school, my daughter to the rarefied arena of eighth grade. My wife is writing a new play for production. I would prefer the Presidential election not become much worse, but there is little hope for that. Civil unrest continues to rise, agents of death conspire to foment hate and oppression here and abroad.

In our small corner of the world we continue to make things bright, to love our neighbors, all of them, and to do that thing we do - create art. It is not on a grand scale. It’s the small stuff that makes every day worth living.

This time last year I was aware of two productions. As of today, I am aware of two productions. This winter the outreach tour will be my adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary, and this summer my adaptation of Twelfth Night (as told by Malvolio) will be presented in association with the arrival of Shakespeare’s First Folio in Cleveland.

   

However, at this time last year I was unaware that there would be a new production of I Hate This which would make me consider at the piece in a fresh light. Surprises are welcome, too. The moment has passed in which I feel the urge to press things too hard, to force an action. It has hardly been effective for me, anyhow.

Current events are horrifying, and dispiriting. Yet I am not in that place to comment upon them. My musings are much more philosophical (or cast in a negative light, merely wistful) but these questions must also be asked. We are all complicit. We are all connected. For now, I will keep my focus tight.

Best wishes for a good new year.

MORNING UPDATE: Two nights ago I had a dream that my new play was selected to receive a staged reading at a festival curated by Lin-Manuel Miranda but when the reading of my play began they were actually performing "Hamilton."

Last night I dreamed that another new play I had written - a different play, a play that does not yet exist - was receiving a staged reading at a local playhouse. And nothing went wrong! It was a successful reading in a successful dream.

Two dreams about new works, and they are both about readings, not productions. What does this mean? How will this fadge?