Closed Loop of Consanguinity | BorderLight 2026

Carol Laursen & Emily Liptow

I am always so grateful to have the opportunity to catch something I missed the first time around. Emily Liptow and Carol Laursen were developing Closed Loop of Consanguinity at Cleveland Public Theatre as part of Soft Launch last winter (where our elder child was also presenting) but we missed it. Here it is again!

Carol and I met at Ohio University and we performed together in Michael Frayn's Wild Honey in 1990, and later in Eight Impressions of a Lunatic for Red Hen Productions. I have directed her In Shakespeare. We are both citizens of Cleveland Heights, her children were child-minders for our children. I love Carol.

Closed Loop of Consanguinity is a brief, semi-improvised dance and movement piece in which the two artists explore the space and objects and each other and at times even the audience. The event begins with a voiceover inviting the audience to switch seats, to have a different perspective, and I kept thinking of that as I watched them, asking myself what their perspective was at any given moment.

After the show an audience member I was speaking with wondered what "consanguinity" means and I told them it's having a common ancestor, to be connected by blood.  I also admitted I looked that up before the show.

Consanguinity is on a double-bill with In Visible Orbit, created and performed by Greenhouse. They perform strenuous choreography to anxiety-inducing music, allowing us to bear witness to the physical toll the work takes on them, at the same time how dedicated they are to the performance. It's a celebration of grace and exhaustion, pain and exhilaration.

While I was there I ran into playwright Eric Coble. He strongly recommends H.O.P.E., Natasha Mirny's modern interpretation of the myth of Pandora. 

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

My Life in the Theater (Part III)

A couple weeks ago, we attended a dance concert, the Cleveland Dance Festival in the Westfield Insurance Studio Theatre in the Idea Center. Looking about, I saw a couple hundred people I had never seen before, which was fascinating. I always recognize at least a few folks in any theater audience.

But those would be theater people. These were dance people. A completely different population. It was fascinating.

Dance is weird. Non-verbal performance – abstract, movement based performance – it can be alien, and that by itself is disquieting to me. We use words to describe our world with specificity. But dance is an entirely new language, a visual, physical language.

Freshman year, one of the very first exercises we were asked to prepare for Acting 101 (I don’t think it was called Acting 101 but you get me) was to lip-synch a song from a musical. I chose "Heaven on Their Minds" from Jesus Christ Superstar. Our instructor, a grad student, then picked apart our choices.

Why that song? Why hide your eyes with sunglasses? Why spend so much time standing still in a pose, wagging just one finger?

That last one stuck with me. We can be myopic about our bodies, we think we are making a “Grand Gesture” when we point with our finger. We feel our entire self projecting through what is, in visual reality, a very tiny part of your body, the tip of your index finger.

Use the whole self! Do not neglect one single part of yourself! Be aware of your entire person, and use your entire person! Know how you appear to others.

At the same time, I was also taking a modern dance class. It’s the only time I have taken a course in dance, and as with so many other courses, I was exposed to a whole history of artists of whom I had been entirely ignorant; in this case, it was those who had broken with classical, traditional, acceptable forms of movement for something entirely new and different, to discover another way to communicate, to express through movement.

And I was learning it all for the first time, and it was awkward. Lanky, six foot teenager, flailing about, sometimes literally flailing, attempting grace. Not aspiring to it, merely attempting.

You can’t fake it. I would soon become aware of just how many of my achievements to date had been accomplished by faking it, by not doing the work, instead relying upon my experiences to simulate knowledge, wisdom, or understanding.

Acting is pretending, but you can imitate what you don’t know. And you can’t pretend to dance.

To be continued.

Play a Day: At the Barre

SMJ

For Friday, I read At the Barre with book and lyrics by SMJ, and music by Sarah Flaim and posted at New Play Exchange.

A love story about loving someone else and loving yourself and loving your body whatever shape it takes. Catherine is a ballet dancer and Shawn is a mime, each pursued by inner voices (made manifest by other actors) who wrestle with their personal and professional drives and desires.

If the stage directions and suggested choreography are appropriately followed this would be a hilariously absurd feast of physicality, describing the hardwood jungle of New York dancers and the desperate fantasticness of New York bar life. And there are songs!

Who should I read tomorrow?

The Great Globe Itself: Quick Changes

This is freaking awesome.

Rehearsals keeping moving forward, and as we add layer upon layer of business, our three gentlemen just soak it up and grow and grow. 

Bizarre accents? Sure, no problem. By the end of the 1613 scene you will wonder why Shakespeare isn't always spoken like this.

Big dance number? No problem. They can do that, too.

Right now we are incorporating the numerous costume changes into the production. Esther has made herself available to witness and assist, as decisions are made as to what is and is not possible in, say, a six-second costume change.

How about a little tune to cover your costume change?

Tomorrow sound designer Richard Ingraham will begin to incorporate sound cues. I LOVE sound design! It's all becoming one rich tapestry of music and noise and history and humor.

We open in six days.

Double Heart: Dance Call

 Soldiers, we!

Tonight was a big, exciting night! There were racks of costumes waiting for us, and we tried on everything. Also, too: this show is a romance, yes it is. And that means dancing. Choreographer Carli Taylor-Miluk arrived and we spent the night merrily learning folk dance moves and creating our the saturnalia gay to celebrate the soldiers, or what have you, does there really need to be a reason for a party?


"Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick)" is available from YouthPLAYS.