The Bully of Baker Street: Week Three

Newton D. Baker Elementary

In the past three weeks, Classics On Tour has already staged twenty-nine performances of Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street! They have nineteen more (and one workshop) to go!

In addition to the many schools the Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street tour is visiting, we are also taking the show to fifteen libraries and other public venues.

At a few public libraries, the audience has been almost entirely made up of adults, fans of the great detective in all of his permutations. The big people are no less enthusiastic about responding to the questions the characters ask them during the performance and seem to understand they are attending a show meant for children.

Post-show discussions run in different directions with these audiences, as adults have questions not only about the show, but about the purpose of the show. About the theme of bullying, and how our student audiences have responded.

Pioneer Drama Service
(Published 2021)

On our post-show evaluation, audience members are invited to share their thoughts about what they most liked about the show, and also what they liked the least. One woman, a senior citizen, wrote, “Too preachy!” And I suppose it is. You could say it’s meant to be.

During the post-show discussion, one audience member in Lakewood, after first making clear that she was very happy to see a diverse cast, wanted to know how intentional the casting was. A generation ago it would have been the politically correct thing to just say the casting was “color-blind” and wasn’t intentional at all. 

But that isn’t true, and our acting company addressed that with their response. Because the play is, in fact, a little preachy, and because we knew we would be sending the play into schools with a predominantly African-American student body, the picture of who is doing to lecturing and who is being lectured to -- and also who is doing the bullying -- these were all issues we wanted to take into account when creating the company.

Chagrin Falls Intermediate School

One comment that has confused me was the person who wrote on their evaluation “No Politics!!” I’d like to know what they meant. There is nothing overtly political in my script. Is Vicky being called a “nasty girl” a political statement? Is Vicky’s pride in becoming an American immigrant a political statement?

If these expressions are thought to be political, whose fault is that?

To be continued.

UPDATE: "Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street" is now available from Pioneer Drama Service

Entry Point (2019)

Writing down the words.

For the third year, Cleveland Public Theatre has produced Entry Point, a kind of weekend fringe festival where you can experience anywhere from one full length to maybe five, fifteen minutes vignettes in the course of a single evening.

These are all new works, or work in development, staged simply but professionally, and an important part of each of the three nights (Thursday through Saturday) are the tightly curated and brief post-performances feedback sessions.

Two years ago I was an actor at Entry Point, in someone else’s piece. Last year I wrote a piece with Chennelle. This year I was invited to facilitate a couple evenings of post-show discussion.

The post-show talkback, for better or worse, has become a modern theatre event, or perhaps I should say add-on, or thing. The pre-show discussion (usually more like a lecture than a chat) is a staple at companies like Cleveland Play House, Great Lakes Theater and Dobama, providing context and knowledge for the show. These are quite popular even though they can turn a three-hour evening into a four-hour one.

The post-show talkback is for the die-hard theatergoer (one who would could to sit some more rather than immediately grab a drink, which is what I usually need to do) to discuss the issues raised in the production, or in the case of a new work, to provide a response which the creator may find useful.

The post-performance discussions I managed on Thursday and Friday evenings were very different experiences. There were fewer folks in general on Thursday night, and the moment I stepped out to begin at least half of the audience got up to dash onto the next thing, which is fine, you can do that, but I was left reaching for a response from a small number of people.

I’m okay with silence. My job is teaching actors how to lead discussions with reluctant or disinterested children. But I was taken aback by the large number of those who did not even choose to remain.

(Full disclosure: I, too, will dash from post-show discussions, especially when the audience is mostly white; confirmation bias is a thing and I don’t need to sit among a bunch of middle-aged Caucasians affirming their own personal goodness. But, I digress.)

Because this is a creative process, and a creative evening, which Raymond, the artistic director, makes very clear at the beginning of the evening with an opening speech in the lounge which has become a delightful tradition. The audience is here to bear witness. It’s why you drove in this weather to get here.

Friday was much different, with full houses, and even at those performances at the end of the evening that had fewer attendants (folks were ready to get that drink on) they stayed and responded with enthusiasm and spirit. There’s a part where the facilitator is to write down words that the piece inspires (see photo, above) and I could barely keep up, they just kept coming at me. The playwrights must have been delighted.

The biggest challenge for me was the taking in of commentary without offering my own viewpoint. In the residency program we engaged the comment, and then play devil's advocate, pressing for alternate viewpoints of challenging assumptions. The job here was to encourage thought, field response, and move on. I deeply hope these post-performance events were helpful to these artists.

Yesterday afternoon Cleveland Public, in association with Howlround and the Dramatists Guild presented a brace of panel discussion in the James Levin Theatre, and it was exciting to see how full the audience was, especially with the impending storm.

Next up: Who Owns The Story?

This Is How You Got Me Naked (revisited)

Graphic: Tim Peters

When I chose to read Catherine Weingarten's play This Is How You Got Me Naked last Sunday morning, I was unaware that this script was her MFA thesis at Ohio University, nor did I know the annual Seabury Quinn Jr. Playwrights' Festival was this weekend and that this play was one of the featured productions, but I did know I was heading to Athens for the holiday weekend and that meant there was a good chance I could actually see one of the new plays I have read as part of my month of play reading performed on stage!

This is so totally why I am doing this.

However, walking through Uptown Athens at night, on a beautiful spring night, when class is in session, by myself, is a very weird thing for me to be doing. Each corner is crammed with memories, but they are ancient memories and I am very aware that I am a very middle-aged man, with a very white beard.

Don't make eye contact with the coeds ... don't make eye contact with the coeds ...

I had a fast pint at Jackie O's before the performance, sitting at the bar, not making eye contact, free-writing into my notebook. I came up with a brief dialogue about how I used to get hit on my older men when I would bring a small sketchbook to a bar and draw cartoons. It's like, I have this so I don't have to talk to people, and yet it makes people want to talk to me.

No one tried to hit on me at Jackie O's.

Balm In Gilead (1989)

It was exciting to return to the Forum Theatre. Most of my undergraduate work took place on that stage. The playwright held a seat for me right in front of the vom, and I could picture myself slouching in there during Balm In Gilead, smoking actual cigarettes.

The performance of Naked was just hysterical, it's one thing to read funny and another to play funny. Bonus, the characters are played by actors the correct age, you have to wonder with future productions how often the actors will be a tad too old, like the nearly-thirty teenagers in all those 80s sex comedies.

Bonus, too: There was a post-show discussion featuring O.U. sociology professor Dr. Thomas Vander Ven, whose works include The Morning After: The Definition and Management of Post-Intoxication Illness in a University Student Sample and Getting Drunk and Hooking Up: An Exploratory Study of the Relationship Between Alcohol Intoxication and Casual Coupling in a University Sample.

His comments were illuminating, he spent years skulking college parties, doing anthropological footwork, and much like myself he was hyper-aware of being the old guy with a notepad. But he came away with fascinating insights on the positive, social benefits of the collegiate hookup.

We know the bad things, and they are bad (when did blacking out become a badge of honor?) but for many young adults, the party is where many have their first opportunity to display basic adult competence, what he calls "drunk support."

Remarkably, put into a large social context, Catherine's play took on greater significance, especially the character of Jackie (played here by Kristin Yates and totally endearing) who navigates the annual "Dress To Get Laid" party with skill, bravery, resourcefulness, and after all, success.

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.