On Adaptation (revisited)

The Odyssey (2026)
Directed by Christopher Nolan

As we drove across the country this summer, for our annual visit to Maine, my wife made plans to spend the night in Albany, arriving in time to catch a screening of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey. She taught that poem to first year high school students for several seasons, so she is quite familiar with the work, while I am not. But I like Nolan, the cast is (as the kids say) stacked, and I was looking forward to it.

Not only did I enjoy the film, I was moved. Like, seriously, when was the last time I was made to deeply feel something, watching a movie? I experienced a deep melancholy, a feeling of great loss. I was troubled. I still am. I’ve been thinking about it for two weeks.

And the memes are killing me, particularly those that focus on Robert Pattinson.

Those trolls who were prepared to bury it at the box office may have been excited to learn that Emily Wilson, scholar and recent translator of a best-selling version of The Odyssey also hates it, but for diametrically opposing reasons. They hate that it has a diverse cast, she says it isn’t diverse enough. They say it has a “woke” message, she says it has no message at all.

Anyway, it’s a fucking blockbuster, on track to break one billion in global box office on its third weekend in theaters. What are ya gonna do?

Adaptations are a puzzle, transforming a piece from one medium to another. What to keep, what to lose, what to emphasize, what to ignore. And what to outright change – and that’s certainly going to be contentious to someone.

Nosferatu by Jim Shepard (1998)

This summer I have been reading Nosferatu, Jim Shepard’s 1998 novel about German film director F.W. Murnau. Drawing from historic record, it is fiction told (largely) from Murnau’s first person perspective, about his upbringing, his time as a pilot in World War One, and becoming the celebrated director of Nosferatu, The Last Man and Tabu. It is also the story of one man’s struggles with passion and guilt in a time when his relationships were literally a crime.

Adapting Bram Stoker’s supernatural saga Dracula into a visual medium to create Nosferatu at the nascence of the motion picture era was an artistic challenge, and several of Murnau’s experiments with light and shadow are iconic while other seemingly clever tricks with slower frame rates and reverse exposure today seem a bit silly, taking the edge off Max Schreck’s horrifying performance as the titular character.

In Shepard’s novel, the director laments to his journal the static nature of the camera – early cameras were huge and heavy – and how he wished it could move. In a later film, The Last Man (also known as The Last Laugh) Murnau either pioneered or pushed forward many schemes to get the camera to do just that; to pan, to track, the zoom, to swing, even. If those methods had been available to him in 1921, who knows how much more affecting his vampire film may have been.

The Machine Stops (2026)

Last week (still on vacation) a few of us headed out to see a local theater production. The day before, the wife and I took a wrong turn through a village and I was surprised to see a large banner advertising a stage adaptation of The Machine Stops, the early 20th century science fiction short story with which I have a long personal history, producing a radio drama of Eric Coble's stage adaptation for our NPR affiliate, and even making reference to it in And Then You Die.

Sticking out of the program was a letter-size page of director's notes explaining his thoughts about the story and how this production came into being. Hot take? Don’t do this. Telling people what to think about the thing they are about to see just before they see it is never a good idea.

That's what your blog is for.  

Reading it over – after the performance – did clear up a few questions. It was originally a thirty-five minute adaptation, rich with movement and sound and style and passion, performed by high school students, created for a high school theater festival. The costumes, lighting, the ensemble choreography were all very effective in telling E.M. Forster’s classic tale of a future when mankind has chosen to live underground, apart from one another, all of their necessities served by the Machine. And it was all right there in this production – especially powerful were the constant droning sounds of the Machine, created entirely by the voices of the ensemble, making their sudden absence all the more startling when, well. Spoiler alert. The Machine Stops.

Unfortunately (checks director’s notes) in order to serve an adult audience, and to expand the slight original material to an hour, the production had been expanded to include laborsome tangential stories meant to incorporate modern relevance, to wit; opinions about Covid, quarantine, and Liberal government overreach.

Really, I want you to imagine enjoying a seamless and well-executed multidisciplinary performance that comes to an abrupt stop every ten minutes so that company members in street clothes can drag a chair and a table onto a well-designed set, and perform seemingly unrelated and obvious agitprop under a nondescript spot before moving on. It’s crazy.

I bet the original high school version went over like gangbusters, and those young people deserved it.

There have been several summers when I would be here, on vacation, and also using that time to conduct research for plays. One year I was reading books on the Globe Theatre, and the voyage of the Sea Venture and H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Another, it was all about the Lusitania, the “Great Silence” and even more about World War One. Those were for assignments, or commissions, what have you. Most of the adaptations.

This summer I have been reading and re-reading a certain novel, and like The Machine Stops, it is another work of early 20th century science fiction. This one was, shortly after it was written, adapted into a classic silent film, one which I would like to adapt into a stage play. 

And there are perils in adapting early science fiction: Do you play it straight, which (depending on the work) may seem dated, and lack the desired sense of immediacy? Do you entirely update it, as many modern films have done (see: Spielberg's War of the Worlds or Will Smith in I, Robot) and become something entirely other than what fans of the work are expecting? And how much do you push your idea of what the message of the story may be, to the alienation of certain audiences, as with The Odyssey, or this local production of The Machine Stops?

It is a voyage upon which I look forward to embarking.

See also: On Adaptation (2011)

Poochu's Productions presents "I Hate This (A True Story)"

Karthik TMK

One month ago, Poochu’s Productions produced my play, I Hate This (A True Story), at the Alliance Française de Madras in Chennai, India. Directed by Denver Anthony Nicholas and performed by Karthik TMK (and also by Abinaya R, more on her in a moment) this was not the first time these two men have presented this play about my experiences with stillbirth.

Four years ago, Denver, Karthik and I had a few email conversations about their producing the play in Spring 2021. They asked for a number of perfectly reasonable changes. The production would be performed in English (once referred to as India’s "subsidiary official language") and take place in America, but there were certain passages which would not be understood, culturally. Also, some of the names were unusual – a woman named Toni, for example – and could those be changed.

Most significantly, in my opinion, they asked if the several characters who I would traditionally have performed myself be performed instead by another performer, a woman. When we adapted the play into an audio drama in 2005 – was that really twenty years ago? I digress – I felt it would be easier to understand if every character had their own voice. But I always thought of it as strictly a solo performance.

Abinaya R

But that’s me. Theater is nothing if not an expansive art form. I was intrigued. And why not? They know best how to present this play to their audience, and I don’t. For this most recent production they cast Abinaya R, with whom they had most recently worked with in a production of Doubt by John Patrick Shanley.

Part of the design concept for this production of I Hate This was to emphasize the idea that while Karthik is telling the story now, today, Abinaya represents the past. He wears colors, she is monochromatic, dressed in black, her face and hands made white and gray. He looks at her, she never sees him. I was struck by this upon her first reveal, as the mother on the phone. She appears in a pool of light, far upstage. She looks so small compared to him in that scene, almost as though she is in a thought bubble.

When Denver and Karthik first produced this work, I was asked if they could change the title. This title, I HATE THIS, is the original sin of this particular work, as far back as 2002 it was suggested to me that the phrase might present a barrier to attendance. I took the risk. They were right, but I do not regret my decision. The show needs a content advisory and I believe the title serves that purpose.

Karthik TMK

As they strove to return to live performance following the first wave of COVID-19 infections, Denver felt that the original title would alienate audiences, and we agreed upon the much more digestible title What Happened. In the play that is asked as a question, as presented here it is simply a statement. This is what happened. For this new production, they decided it was now acceptable to use the original title, with the subtitle "a true story."

I have my own reasons for having written this piece, and why I keep returning to it. I am grateful to Playhouse Square and University Hospitals for producing the film (starring James Alexander Rankin) which continues to be used as an educational tool and an instrument of comfort for the bereaved. However, those few times (so far) that companies or individuals have inquired about producing the piece independently, I am always deeply curious as to their interest, or intentions.

Abinaya R

For Karthik, it is the opportunity to play something dramatic. Most solo performances for men are comic (I have heard this before, even from high school students seeking something different to perform for competitions) and he was looking for something which would allow him to be vulnerable on stage, and tell a story that would move people.

Denver told me about the first performances of What Happened/I Hate This, four years ago, when a young woman who saw the show was inconsolable and sobbing following the performance. A few years later, Denver’s company was holding one of their monthly Enter Stage events, a kind of open mic for artists to perform their own monologues. A young woman told a powerful and personal story of having suffered a miscarriage. When she was asked about this after her presentation, she said that it was her who had been so emotionally overwhelmed by my play, because of her own loss – and that the experience had inspired her to tell her story on stage, something she may not have done otherwise.

Director Denver Anthony Nicholas (center)
with Karthik and Abinaya

I have written several plays which have been published, rights for production handled by others without my participation. There’s a production of Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street next weekend in Louisiana. It's going to be dinner theater and if the photos are any indication, I would love to get there for the food alone. I Hate This is not currently published, so there have been far fewer independent productions.

But when they come, when artists have found the script and reach to inquire about production, it means that our story, mine and my wife’s story of how we incorporated loss into our lives, that it is being told to an entirely new audience. And the fact that that story might have an impact on someone who lives and loves and grieves on the other side of the earth, that is truly remarkable.

Sources: 

Notification No. 2/8/60-O.L, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, April 27, 1960

"What’s in a monologue? Enter stage & find out" by Rupam Jain, Indian Express Indulge, August 18, 2023

The Toothpaste Millionaire (production)

Kierstan Conway & Quincy Brame as
Kate & Rufus in "The Toothpaste Millionaire"
(Talespinner Children's Theatre, 2024)
Photo by Steve Wagner

Adolescence doesn’t need to be the worst time in a person’s life, but what a person goes through at that stage of development is exacerbated by our systems of education, which (often, though not always) sequesters kids who are eleven, twelve and thirteen years old on their own and all together. It was horrible for me, and it was horrible for my kids, in spite of our best efforts.

However, when working as an arts educator, whether it be in schools or extracurricular programming like summer theater camp, I like working with middle school aged students best. They respond to the work so powerfully, and it is because, as I see it, they are knowledgeable enough to delve deep into complicated concepts, but still young enough to want to play.

At the start of Jean Merrill’s book The Toothpaste Millionaire, the main characters, Rufus and Kate, are both entering sixth grade. My wife had asked why, if the play adaptation of the book that I was writing was intended for an elementary school audience, that the characters should be in middle school? And my answer was, because it is meant to be aspirational.

As Merrill said in a 2006 interview, “I hope (the book) inspires them to imagine themselves doing things like that. Just because they are kids, it doesn’t mean they can’t have good ideas.”

And after all, the audience for all those High School Musical movies and shows aren’t really high school students, right? Those are watched by the middle school students.

The first time I attended a run-through for the Talespinner Children’s Theatre production of my stage adaptation of The Toothpaste Millionaire, I was delighted by the sense of play that Ananias Dixon (Director) and Diwe Augustin-Glave (Assistant Director) brought to the proceedings. The kids, as written, are witty, and aware, but as performed, are excited and enthusiastic, and not jaded or snarky (as many TV tween characters can be). And so very playful! Which is the point, after all.

Quincy Brame as Rufus Mayflower
(Talespinner Children's Theatre, 2024)
Photo by Steve Wagner

When it came to adapting the book into a script, one of the things that really helped me was creating a calendar of events. The book was published in 1972, and needed to be set at that time. You could update Merrill's story to the 21st century, I suppose, but the world has changed so much in the past fifty years, media, technology, economics, the law, it would really be an entirely different story, and I wanted to tell this one.

Merrill’s plot is uncomplicated by personality conflicts, the kids – and their adult mentors – work together to make Rufus’s dream a reality. They set a goal, achieve it, and then set another, bigger goal, all within the span of two years, which in this version takes us from 1970 to 1972 not exactly an inconsequential period in American history, but what period is. And some of that history, which Merrill did not include – because to her, it was just the present – seep in around the edges of the play (see: references), but only to the extent that an adolescent might be aware of them.

I'm really happy with the design for this premiere production, featuring delightful period costumes by  Jaclyn Vogel (which includes Rufus's iconic blue sweater, mentioned on the very first page of the book), and a functional and colorful set designed by Ren Twardzik with projections by Josh Smith.   

Next Saturday, July 27 at 3:00 PM, The Toothpaste Millionaire will be performed as part of Family Day at the BorderLight Theater Festival in Playhouse Square. Last year I had a short, site-specific play produced at BorderLight, and it was so exciting to see all of the vibrant creativity going on in and around Playhouse Square for that long, summer weekend. This year BorderLight is featuring over fifty shows, and workshops, and the Family Day concept is a new addition. If you’ve got kids, come downtown to join in the fun!

The BorderLight Theatre Festival will take place July 24 – 27, 2024 in downtown Cleveland.

Nelia Rose Holley, Kierstan Kathleen Conway, Julia Boudiab
(Talespinner Children's Theatre, 2024)
Photo by Steve Wagner

Source: "The Toothpaste Millionaire, 35th Anniversary Edition" (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) 

Twenty Twenty-Four

Thomas Whitely Cullinan
Promotional Photo for "Hamlet"
Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999
Photo: Anthony Gray

The next year will mark the twenty-five year anniversary of many important events. 1999 was (literally) another century ago, and at that time I was at once wrapped up in some of the most exciting adventures and also in therapy.

Numbers are arbitrary. However, I was very unsettled at the time about the impending millennium, and hey, I guess my fears were entirely justified. But at the time I was engaged in creating a new artistic endeavor, Bad Epitaph Theater Company, which debuted in April with a production I insisted on calling The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. With the recent passing of Tom Cullinan, I have been thinking more about that production than I have for a very long time.

I was also engaged in another sense, engaged to be married! My wife and I celebrate out 25th wedding anniversary this summer, and unlike Bad Epitaph, which lasted five years in fits and starts (or my first marriage, which barely lasted two) our romantic partnership has survived, thrived, blossomed, borne fruit … what I’m saying is that we are very happy in our life together.

A quarter century ago I had written one produced play, and I produced it. But since then have written fifteen more new works than have received a full production. It has been three years since my last, Savory Taṇhā (yes, a live zoom production counts, thank you very much) and so I am very glad that in 2024, Talespinner Children’s Theatre will produce my new play script, The Toothpaste Millionaire.

Ralph Hoopes & Tierre Turner
"The Toothpaste Millionaire"
ABC Afterschool Special, 1974

This will be an adaptation of the book by Jean Merrill (The Pushcart War) about a twelve year-old entrepreneur from East Cleveland. This is my first authorized adaptation, my Agatha Christie works were taken from her books in the public domain.

Published in 1972, Toothpaste Millionaire was a book I loved as a kid, because it tells my favorite kind of story; one of creation, promotion, and success. These were the same feelings I had in 1999, as the director and also marketer for a new theater company, producing what was at that time heralded as the “greatest poem” of the second millennium.

Millionaire is aimed at the late elementary school audience, kids aspiring to adolescence, it’s also packed with practical applications of math, and it’s also a history play, subtly acknowledging the mood of the times, and the shifting demographics in one American community.

We look forward, we look back. We always do.

Source: “Hamlet Alone, A Celebration of Skepticism” by Helen Vendler, The New York Times, 4/18/1999

Talespinner Children's Theatre presents the world premiere of "The Toothpaste Millionaire" in May, 2024

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.

I Hate This: Twenty Years On

James Alexander Rankin

Every five years from the death of our first child, there is occurs a unique occasion to revisit the play I Hate This (a play without the baby). 

In 2006 came a rebroadcast of the Ideastream radio adaptation. Five years after that, in 2011, Cleveland Public Theatre produced an evening featuring both solo performances I Hate This and And Then You Die (How I Ran a Marathon in 26.2 Years), back-to-back.

In 2016, Chennelle directed me in the show at the Reinberger Auditorium, a one-night-only performance. It was a revelation, coming back to do it then, with the eyes a new director.

As the 20th anniversary approached, his 20th birthday, during COVID, I had the idea to make a film. Just using the camera in my phone, recording scenes here and there, on the fly. Some guerrilla filmmaking, as it were. Shoot some monologues in a hospital room one week, at the museum the next. And for this project I would again engage Chennelle to direct -- and employ a new actor to play me, someone age-appropriate for the person I was in 2001.

Folks have requested a film since the beginning. Hospitals much further afield (I was once contacted from the UAE) or those not interested in a live performance but who would like to use the play as a teaching tool. It had never seemed practical before, but now I thought I'd just make one.

I had only just gotten in touch with Chennelle about this video project when I was contacted by Daniel Hahn at Playhouse Square. They have been offering online productions since the beginning of the pandemic, and were looking to create something original. Would I have any interest in their producing a video recording of I Hate This?

I do not believe that anything happens for a reason. But they do happen.

Chennelle Bryant-Harris

Last week we had a couple nights in the space, to rehearse. It was a blessing. Rehearsing in-person for the first time in thirteen months.

James Rankin will perform. Listening to him read it, I had forgotten how it builds. I lived inside of it for so long, I just haven't thought of the writing.

Chennelle had requested I redraft it as a screenplay, which was very helpful for everyone involved. In doing so, I changed a few words or phrases here or there, to adapt it for another voice to speak. But James has already acquainted himself with the script, and asked to change some back.

I have cut a variety of passages since the first performance, eighteen years ago. Some of them for the better, but I wonder. I am glad for the opportunity to wonder.  

Our cinematographer, Ananias J. Dixon, has already become something of a co-director, or perhaps a co-conspirator. It was a joy to watch him and Chennelle jump out of their seats to swirl around James, collaborating to negotiate how the camera is going to swim and move around James, to be his confidant in this story. It will not be a static recording of a stage play. There will be magic.

Playhouse Square presents the premiere of the video adaptation of "I Hate This (A Play Without the Baby)" in the Westfield Studio Theatre on Saturday, October 15, 2022. 

The Women of Baker Street

Irene Adler

Five years ago courts concluded (and not for the first time) that the stories and characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle written prior to 1923 are in the public domain, freely available for any artist to write about or interpret without fear of copyright infringement.

(The Doyle estate did go on to press the creators of the 2015 film Mr. Holmes that they had used details about Sherlock’s retirement referred to in stories written after 1923, which illustrates how legal issues continue.)

I could adapt almost any of the classic Sherlock Holmes adventures. I have chosen instead to create an entirely new mystery, one which will, ideally, fit neatly into the established timeline of events as set down by the original author.

Why a new adventure? Simply put -- women. The only recurring female character in Sherlock Holmes is Mrs. Hudson, the landlady at 221B Baker Street.

Contemporary adaptations, like the BBC series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and the two Guy Ritchie films, chose to inflate the character of Irene Adler into that of Holmes’ romantic opposite, though she appears in only one Doyle story and the characters have no such relationship.

Today we expect, in fact require, strong female characters. This is not a matter of political correctness, it is merely a fact. My daughter never held any interest in the Star Wars films until Rey was introduced. I never told her which books to enjoy, she always gravitated toward compelling women (Hunger Games) and has entirely avoided weak ones (Twilight).

"Treasure Island"
Great Lakes Theater (2019)

Our last two outreach tours, freely adapted by Eric Schmiedl from the classic novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Treasure Island, illustrate the challenge in finding compelling female models in 19th century adventure tales. You can cast women to play Huck and Jim Hawkins to great effect (and we did), but the actual women characters in these stories are only docile mothers and silly girls.

Having decided to create compelling women for this Holmes play, the question was how to do this and still maintain the authentic structure and feel of a Sherlock Holmes narrative. Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, Moriarty, Mycroft -- principals characters all. In order to introduce new characters, most would need to be absent, to make way. How to do that without losing what is intrinsic to the legend?

Of course, what is most iconic is the man himself. But could we create a female narrator -- not a women playing Watson (as Lucy Liu does in the successful, modern American TV adaptation) but a new character entirely? How will that work?

And who is the bully of Baker Street?

To be continued.

Play a Day: A Maiden of Venice

Aleks Merilo

For Wednesday I read A Maiden of Venice by Aleks Merilo and available at New Play Exchange.

Perhaps more appropriate for the date of Shakespeare's death, which was yesterday. Alas.

There are those who will tell you that The Taming of the Shrew is a play about sexism, that Othello is a play about racism, and that The Merchant of Venice is a play about Antisemitism.

They are wrong. The Taming of the Shrew is a sexist play, Othello is a racist play, and The Merchant of Venice is an Antisemitic play.

There are those who would then tell you you need to look at these plays from an historical perspective, that words like sexism, racism and Antisemitism did not exist at that time. Neither did the words radioactivity, or bacterium, but they still existed even without names, and could harm you.

We still perform these plays, when we perform them, because they are Shakespeare. The words are so good, but so too are the characters. Katharina, Othello, Shylock, they are more interesting and nuanced and even sympathetic than the more stereotypical versions of type created by lesser playwrights of the era. But they are each of them brought low as a result of being who they are, and make no mistake, Shakespeare's audience thought their downfalls were hilarious.

Merilo has written an elegant take on The Merchant of Venice, told from the Jewish characters' point of view, with special emphasis on Jessica, the daughter to the money-lender Shylock. In this version his true name is Shalah, which means tranquil, secure, even prosperous. It is the Christians who use the other name, and insist upon calling him that.

We see and understand in Shakespeare's play the poor treatment Shylock receives, but as he represents and exhibits the worst traits stereotypically ascribed to his "race" the audience is left to understand that the Jewish people are in the situation they currently suffer (confined to their ghetto, limited to practice usury, verbally and physically abused on the street) because of these unpleasant, suspicious behaviors.

Merilo's story begins with Leah's death bearing Jessica, and patiently describes Shalah's trials in raising a child on his own, and enduring the privilege exhibited by the young Antonio, who, though he himself begins as a penniless ne'er-do-well, still believes himself higher than anyone who is Jewish.

This is also a very timely play. The sense of danger, fear, dread, that those who are defined as others must live with, every day. Just last week This American Life reported on one American town that was devastated when ICE agents rounded up hundreds of undocumented workers. So many today who wonder, "When will it happen? When will they come for me?"

Who should I read tomorrow?

The Famous History of Troilus and Cressida

Diomedes & Cressida (Troilus at left, seething)

Every three years, by accident is not design. I am contracted by the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival to direct one of the Bard’s lesser-performed works. Six years ago that was Henry VIII. In 2015, Timon of Athens. This summer, we will present Troilus and Cressida.

It’s fun. “Oh,” the people say, “I’ve never seen that one!” That’s right. No one has. I mean, they have, there are those that have, but most have not.

We learned of a couple who saw a Shakespeare play on their honeymoon and have made it their mission to see a production of every one of his (to date) thirty-eight acknowledged plays. Three years ago, they traveled from Cincinnati to see my Timon. It was number thirty-four on their list!

The advantage of staging the pieces few know is that I can do whatever I want with them. People would howl if you left “To be or not to be” out of your production of Hamlet. No one would notice if I left out “What is aught, but as ‘tis valued?” though that is a good line, one of the major themes, and I feel not bad at all giving it to a different character to speak.

Troilus and Cressida is lesser tale of the Trojan War, named for the fiery, brief love affair between one of the sons of Priam (Troilus) and the daughter (Cressida) of a Trojan priest and traitor. When, on the urging of the traitor for his daughter to join him on the side of Greece, an exchange is arranged for her and a Trojan prisoner.

Hannah Woodside as Cresida
Brinden Harvey as Troilus
(Photo added 6/10/2018)

The text suggests that Cressida easily takes up with one of the Grecian soldiers, though you could easily imagine she is actually trying to align herself to one who would protect her in a perilous situation. Regardless, Troilus spies their exchanges and assumes the worst.

There are those who believe this play answers the question, “Did Shakespeare believe that Romeo and Juliet would have had a long, faithful life together, had they lived?” That answer is no.

However, that is not all Troilus and Cressida, the play, is about. It’s about all kinds of things, with a mythological weight thanks to a staff of characters including Agamemnon, King of Greeks, Helen, she whose face launched a thousand ships, Cassandra, the clairvoyant and unheeded, Nestor, the ancient and verbose, Priam, king of Troy, and Andromache, his daughter-in-law.

I have cut all of these characters from this production.

Rather, we will focus in large part on Troilus and Cressida themselves, who are not actually the primary focus of the full-length text, as well as the character of Achilles. War has bogged down. As Ulysses observes, this is due less to the Trojans strength, and more to the laziness, apathy and indulgence of the Greeks, as best reflected in the person of Achilles, who refuses to fight and spends hours in his tent with his lover, Patroclus.

Our production will reflect a modern superpower, one also accused of apathy and indulgence.

Rehearsals begin this weekend, the company largely composed of actors I have never worked with before, or even met before auditions. I am very excited to get started.

Cleveland Shakespeare Festival presents "Troilus & Cressida" opening June 15, 2018.

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles" at Chattanooga Theatre Centre

Poirot (Patrick Brady) & Hastings (Evans Jarnefeldt)
Chattanooga Theatre Centre
Photo by Brad Cansler

My stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles was first produced as an outreach tour six years ago, and published by Playscripts, Inc. a short time later. Since then it has been produced at a few high schools, college and community theaters, and most recently in a production at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

An interview on WUTC 88.1 FM (Chattanooga's NPR affiliate) was broadcast yesterday, a conversation between host Richard Winham and Steve Ray, head of the Theatre and Speech Department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the production’s director. I am not so widely produced as to be in any way accustomed or even prepared to listen to people with whom I am entirely unfamiliar discuss my writing thoughtfully.

One element of interest during their ten-minute discussion, one point which makes this book -- Christie’s first book -- different from the rest, is that it is her "Great War" mystery. It takes place during the war, not after, which required me, when writing it, to have a crash-course in history of that period, and the many ways the war affected all aspects of British life.

In particular, the character of Hastings -- the narrator of the novel and my adaptation -- is an outsider. Not only is he new to Styles, but he is also a soldier, the only one in the story who has witnessed the horrors of the trenches first-hand, and for him very recently.

In the WUTC interview, the director Steve Ray comments:

“There’s a couple of moments that ... you see that this family in the manor do not get what Hastings is going through … And one moment where it’s kind of up-front, where a character makes a kind of off-hand comment about the war and it just takes Hastings off-guard.”

Though I haven’t read the play in years, I knew exactly the moment he was referring to. What I could not remember was whether it was an exchange taken directly from the novel, or one I had created on my own. I discovered to my delight that it was the latter.

Mary (Courtenay Clovich) & Evelyn (Dana Cole)
Chattanooga Theatre Centre
Photo by Brad Cansler

Here is the passage from the novel which inspired that moment:

“The papers, of course, had been full of the tragedy. Glaring headlines, sandwiched biographies of every member of the household, subtle innuendoes, the usual familiar tag about the police having a clue. Nothing was spared us. It was a slack time. The war was momentarily inactive, and the newspapers seized with avidity on this crime in fashionable life: 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles' was the topic of the moment." 

- The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Chapter VIII: Fresh Suspicions

And here is how I represented that moment in the script:

JOHN: ...Ghastly though, the papers. Headlines glaring, “Mysterious Affair at Styles” and all that. Rubbish. Makes you wish the war would pick up.
HASTINGS: No. Not really.
JOHN: Hmn? Anyway.

Not to pat myself on the back too hard, I am also aware that I stole Hasting’s reaction from the first episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

FORD: Six pints of bitter, and quickly, please. The world's about to end.
BARMAN: Oh, yes, sir? Nice weather for it. Going to the match today, sir?
FORD: No. No point.
BARMAN: Foregone conclusion, then? Arsenal without a chance?
FORD: No, it’s just that the world's about to end.
BARMAN: Oh, yes, sir. So you said. Lucky escape for Arsenal if it did.
FORD: No, not really.

What Douglas Adams wrote as an affectless observation I reinterpreted as an understated reaction to a thoughtless remark, and I am totally cool with that.

Listen to the complete interview, "Chattanooga Theatre Centre Presents Christie's 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles'" by Richard Winham, WUTC 88.1 FM (1/31/2018)

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles" continues at Chattanooga Theatre Centre through February 16, 2018.

My stage adaptation of "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" is available through Playscripts, Inc.

The Secret Adversary: Adaptation

I am trying to write an essay on adaptation. Perhaps you have heard this apocryphal story, attributed to Michelangelo.

The apprentice asked how the master was able to take a formless marble slab and transform it into something as soul-touchingly beautiful as David.

Michelangelo took a drag on his cigarette and said, "Chip away anything that doesn't look like David."

With The Secret Adversary I have had a second opportunity to tell the story of an entire novel with one set and five actors. Writing the script I tried not to concern myself with the set - at all - but I did need to think about the players, and how many would be able to appear on stage at the same time.

Surprisingly, this book was much more challenging that The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in spite of the fact that I had limited two of my actors (myself and James) to play one character each, James as the narrator Hastings, who barely leaves the stage, and myself as Poirot. One actor played the other three other male characters.

left to right: Ray Caspio as Boris Stepanov, Brittni Shambaugh as Rita Vandermeyer, James Rankin as Mister Carter
Design by Esther Haberlen

But Adversary just has so many characters, it was challenging to narrow it down. Putting the pieces together, I tried not to think very much about how fast the actors would need to change behind the set. In fact, I was so negligent that up until today I still had a scene in which Ray would enter with a gun in Ray's ribs.

The thing about Styles is that if there are too few characters, there are too few suspects. I like to think I struck a decent balance there, and was able to maintain Christie's mystery until the last few moments.

Adversary isn't really a mystery, though there is a major reveal, though for most of the tale it is pretty obvious that if "Mister Brown" exists, he is one, the other (or both?) of two characters. The story is an international thriller, with the protagonists getting into and out of scrapes, flying entirely by their wits.

I had to chip away anything that wasn't a one-hour play, but not too much that it was no longer The Secret Adversary.

Thankfully, we once again have the great joy of working with Esther, who not only has a great love of the period (England "between the wars") but also a tremendous talent at creating fabulous looks actors can slip in and out of with great speed.

British Intelligence, Member of Parliament, ageing socialite, American millionaire, Russian royalty, German Bolshevik, Cockney thug ... and that's maybe half of them.

Rehearsals begin in ten days.

On Adaptation

ad·ap·ta·tion [ad-uhp-tey-shuhn] –noun
1. the act of adapting.
2. the state of being adapted; adjustment.
3. something produced by adapting: an adaptation of a play for television. - dictionary.com

In a theatrical adaptation, material from another artistic medium, such as a novel or a film is re-written according to the needs and requirements of the theatre and turned into a play or musical. - Wikipedia

When it rains ... it's nice. From the creative doldrums of early 2011 I have found myself in the enviable position of working on three commissions at once. For some of my colleagues (well, most of my colleagues) this is every day stuff. But it's new to me and I am grateful, for the work, for the validation, and for the expansion of my skills.

All three projects are different, though none stray far from what I am comfortable with, though all are in one way or another adaptations, which is to say, I am not creating work that springs entirely from my own mind.

One is a straightforward, abridged interpretation of a classic novel into a one-hour drama using five actors (whew.)

Another is a collaboration with another playwright, interviewing teenage subjects for creative interpretation into monologues to be performed by teenage actors.

The third is a collaboration with a public speaker, crafting her life stores into a solo performance.

Not bad, right? And yet it has been a challenge to keep my mind focused. It is a constant struggle to keep myself from spending time doing other things, like bloggi

See also: On Adaptation (revisited)

UPDATE 07/30/2026: The second and third projects never came to fruition. The first was "The Mysterious Affair at Styles."