"A Christmas Carol" Writing Contest (2022)

Actor Lynn Robert Berg greets and awards a
writing contest school winner on stage
at the Mimi Ohio Theatre.

Since 1989, Great Lakes Theater has produced a writing contest for sixth, seventh and eighth grade students in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, in association with the annual production of Gerald Freedman’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

This past season was my tenth year shepherding the program, which involves engaging English Language Arts teachers throughout the district to participate in the program, contracting the readers who will choose the most original and creative works from the written entries, and making arrangements for all participating students to attend one of two free student matinees of the production.

The past two holidays seasons have been disheartening, to say the least, as there was no stage production of A Christmas Carol in 2020 (though GLT did produce an excellent radio adaptation that year) and while the show went on in 2021, the fact that vaccinations were not yet available to students twelve and younger made student matinees untenable.

The writing contest continued, however. But with remote instruction and without the promise of matinees for students, participation was depressed, which is entirely understandable. For me, however, it was one more of a raft of disappointments during a very difficult period.



In order to revive interest in the contest this year, GLT offered writing workshops to any teachers interested in receiving them. This past fall I conducted twenty such hour-long workshops at schools across the city. While exhausting (and taxing on my voice) it was very inspiring to be able to make a direct connection with so many students – in person – and to engage them in the craft of creative writing.

Here’s the thing; I always wanted to write. When I was a child, I wrote. But my efforts were never promoted. They were never fostered. Not by my parents, and my efforts were outright derided by my brothers’ friends. There was always someone to tell me what I was doing wrong, no one took me aside to show me how to do it right. It took me a long time before I realized it was something I could do. Someone I could be.



In these workshops, there wasn’t a lot of time to cover structure, apart from the basics. What we did was brainstorm, create characters with motivations inspired by themes present in Dickens’ work. When a student offered up a character, I would ask questions about who they were, and where they were, and what they – the character – wanted. And then I asked them to write about that for a few minutes, then we would go further.

When all the entries were submitted, and six grand prize winners were chosen from over a thousand written entries, five of the six had participated in one of these writing workshops. But so many of the stories were so well written this year, whether they had received a workshop or not. Stories about love and acceptance, and grief and anger, about loss and doubt but also confidence and hope.



These kids, my kids, all of our kids, have been through so much these past years, and there is all this talk about how they are behind, in their education and in their socialization. But reading these stories, and hearing their voices as they reacted to a live performance at those student matinees of A Christmas Carol, I see so many strong, resilient, and thoughtful young people.

Read the Grand Prize Winning Stories from the 34th Annual Great Lakes Theater "A Christmas Carol" Writing Contest (2022)

The Sparrow (book)

Driving to work I saw a woman at the bus stop wearing a sweatshirt reading, “Bad Choices Make Good Stories.” Mary Doria Russell’s acclaimed novel, The Sparrow (1996) tells the story of a man with the best of intentions who paves his own road to hell.

Sandoz

When radio signals are found to be emanating from the Alpha Centauri system, the Society of Jesuits send a team to explore this “new world.” As always happens when civilizations meet, mistakes are made.

Our protagonist is Emilio Sandoz, a priest and the expedition linguist. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Sandoz had a rough upbringing and through the intervention of the Church was one of the few in his family to escape a cycle of destitution and crime.

When the expedition reaches the source of the transmissions, the planet Rakhat, the once skeptical Sandoz comes to believe that God has indeed chosen him to first meet the natives of this planet and to unite His children.

Tragic misunderstandings follow and Sandoz eventually returns to earth; tortured, maimed, near death and in despair. He is torn between the belief that either there is no God, or that God exists and and that He is (as Jeb Bartlet would put it) a feckless thug.

Russell

The Sparrow was Russell’s first novel. The year 1992 was the quadricentennial of the arrival of Columbus in the Americas. An anthropologist, she was unconvinced by all those who speculated that if the early settlers from Europe had only not been so ignorant, the Western experiment may have gone much less tragically -- that is was a mistake we would never make again.

The book was summer reading for me in 2001. My wife and I were taking a vacation in Britain. The trip was last-minute, we hadn’t intended to travel anywhere that summer. We intended to have a newborn child. Deus vult.

That fall I saw Russell speak at Wooster College. She said one of her inspirations was the tale of one who lost his wife in a traffic accident. He’d fallen asleep at the wheel and the passenger side of his car was sheared off by a truck. His wife was killed, he was barely touched.

It was entirely the man’s fault, you see. His wife had asked perhaps twenty minutes before the accident if he was tired, and suggested they stop, but he wanted to press on. After the tragedy he said he was grateful to be an atheist because while he could comprehend the senselessness and grief of this horrifying loss, he couldn’t imagine believing in a God who would have any reason for this to have happened.

At that time I was still reeling from our stillbirth, and I took comfort myself in that thought. Many had told us that God loved our son so much He needed him in heaven. Its is a sentiment I still find heartless and repellent.

Carroll

John Carroll University

A twentieth anniversary edition of The Sparrow was released this year. The story moves back and forth between two timelines; the events as they occur and also as they are recounted decades later. Though we receive some biographic background on Sandoz, the action truly begins as he and another character meet for the first time in a coffee shop near the campus of John Carroll University in 2016.

Russell's tale begins twenty years into her own future.

She also set this important opening bit in University Heights, which is totally awesome because all great and terrible journeys begin in the Cleveland area. (Ms. Russell lives in Lyndhurst.)

Reading fiction set in the not-too-distant future can be challenging as certain technologies have or have not developed or come to pass. Fortunately this was composed just as the Internet was gaining prominence, an element which must be the most significant detail absent from most twentieth century works of science fiction.

We can’t all be Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game, 1985) or E.M. Forster (The Machine Stops, 1909) to name two authors who predicted the “world wide web” but Russell was keen enough to note that most if not all information and media was soon to be transferred through what is here commonly referred to as "the nets.”

Most prescient are the existence and everyday use of ROM-tablets which you and I today would actually refer to as simply a tablet.

Pitt

The book has been optioned for a film on two previous occasions. Universal wanted Antonio Banderas to play Emilio Sandoz, and though I personally would have found him a bit too Hollywood handsome for a character I see as a slightly diminutive scrapper (he is described many times as being less than average height) theirs was a much better choice than the man Warners Brothers tapped -- Brad Pitt.

Pitt was looking for good projects for his new production company, and while I admire his work in practically everything I’ve ever seen him in, simply put he’s not a Latino. Ten years ago, and basically since the film industry began, this wasn’t an issue. Today it is, and thankfully so. People of color and their allies have made great inroads, pressuring film corporations who adapt novels and comic books to cast popular characters with actors who represent their ethnic heritage.

Just this week Disney announced they are scrapping a treatment of their live-action adaptation of Mulan which was told from the point of view of a white European sailor. Word is they are now looking specifically for an Asian director.

Russell’s description of Sandoz’s difficult childhood in La Perla is rich and significant, and deeply important to his character. The decisions he made, not the largest of boys or men, that he survived his childhood and stayed out of prison with his remarkable intellect and toughness. That this man joined the priesthood and his ability with languages took him around the world, and then across space. She created a proud Puerto Rican to be the hero of her story. Not Brad Pitt.

Muñoz

Javier Muñoz

Reading the book again in 2016, I had a very clear picture of Emilio Sandoz, of what he looks like. I cannot remember who I pictured fifteen years ago, but now I couldn’t think of anyone else. It was Javier Muñoz, who we had seen play the title role in Hamilton on Broadway last August.

Once the designated alternate for Lin-Manuel Miranda, Muñoz is now the star of the biggest show on Broadway. He has been praised for bringing a “cutting carnal edge” to the role and has gained the nickname Sexy Hamilton.

His comfortable sexuality combined with a fierce determination now drives the show in a way Miranda did not. Don’t get me wrong, Miranda’s ambition in the role is undeniable, but so is his inherent childlike sweetness which is even more apparent now that he has cut his hair after leaving the role. Did you see SNL last week? The guy looks like he’s 25 again. Sigh.

The defined line of his cheek gives Muñoz the look of hungry yearning and he has a wide smile that is both inviting and challenging. Sandoz has a habit of putting his hands to his head and pulling his fingers back through his hair, and Muñoz has that hair. In my imagination, Javier Muñoz became the face of Emilio Sandoz.

He and Miranda worked together on In The Heights, and Muñoz first took over the lead role in that show on Broadway from Miranda as well. It is my fantasy that Miranda would secure the rights for The Sparrow to adapt into a musical, but that he create the lead specifically from Muñoz to play.

Currently, however, the rights are held by AMC which may or may not eventually produce a series.

Calvin

I remember the night I finished the book, lying in bed at my brother’s home in Battersea. I lie awake for maybe an hour in the dark, staring up into the starless sky through wide open window at the head of our bed, contemplating Sandoz’s loss, his feelings of abandonment, the destruction of his hope and his complete and utter sadness. I did not revel in the feeling, but it did provide a certain perspective. As the story draws to a conclusion we do believe there is the possibility of hope. There must always be hope.

The title comes from the New Testament, Matthew 10:29. The King James Version reminds us, "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father."

The Annunciation Triptych, Rogier van der Weyden (1434)

Hamlet also refers to this passage in Act V, scene 2, when he warns Horatio against acting to alter fate. "There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow," he says. His audience would have known the verse.

Some say the same man composed both lines, but well.

The message is, nothing happens without God being aware of it. Without His knowledge. Without His knowledge and His implied consent.

To wit; “That baby was never meant to live.”

In I Hate This I recount a moment my brother and I had before "The Annunciation Triptych" at The Cloisters (in the Heights!) The vision of the Holy Ghost, tiny and white like a fetal baby Jesus, sailing down towards the unknowing Mary, the baby clutching a cross, heading into the womb “equipped with the means of his own death.” In this image I understood the verse in its Biblical context, with Jesus as the sparrow, in this painting falling to earth.

Why did Jesus need to die? Why does anyone?

Deus vult. God wills it.

Sources:
In Hamilton Javier Munoz Puts A Different Spin On The Title Role, Ben Brantley, The New York Times 11/30/2015
'Mulan' Mania: Disney, Sony Hunt for Asian Directors to Helm Rival Action Pics, Rebecca Ford, The Hollywood Reporter, 10/12/2016
MaryDoriaRussell.net

Like Family (book)

In the summer of 1998, when the wife and I visited the family perch in Flood’s Cove, Maine, I picked up her copy of Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone for my porch read. Can’t remember why, it wasn’t because Oprah had recommended it. But I did know it was the fictional tale of a girl coming of age during the late sixties and early seventies.

Just recently I had directed Sarah Morton’s Eighth Wonder of the World, a solo performance about coming of age traumas in Cleveland Heights. While we were on vacation that same summer the wife and I took a drive to Rockland to see a movie, The Last Days of Disco. I don’t know which storyline you were most interested in, but all I remember was the women. If it is a story about women trying to deal with the world, I want to hear it.

I am not going to pretend it is because I sympathize. Maybe I do, but I wouldn’t protest it. What I am, is fascinated. Women interest me. Men do not. Why should they, I know men. I hear about men all the time. Men are tedious. I grew up with two brothers, no sisters, girls are alien and frightening and delightful and they are pretty and they don’t talk about sports (much.)

Recently I was listening to the Book Review podcast and the editor in her late-20s was curious about why a woman would write a book like Allison Pearson's I Think I Love You, which involves a midlife reawakening to her adolescent passion for David Cassidy. This young, Millennium Generation editor woman didn’t get the David Cassidy angle, that whatever he meant to a generation of girls so very long ago, he doesn’t hold the iconic power of a Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley or Justin Bieber.

Justin Bieber? Really? I get it, she does understand the iconic power of a David Cassidy -- only not yet. Because Justin Bieber is a David Cassidy, and not an Elvis or a Frank. And you have to be of a certain age to appreciate a certain stratum of pop culture. (I just spent the weekend with a number of women in their late 40s, I know of what I speak.) But if you are good at it, you may be able to illuminate a very specific time and era in a manner which makes it transcendent.

I mean, we’re all supposed to do that. All us writers.

As a pre-teen, I loved girl protagonists, like Harriet the Spy or I, Trissy. Trissy was a horror story from which I could not tear my eyes, detailing something I could not even comprehend at that point in my life -- the story of parents undergoing a divorce from the point of view of a girl about my age.

There were male role models, sure. Bilbo was a great inspiration, though not so much Frodo who is as much of a cypher as Harry Potter is. I read The Three Investigators, but did not coton to the Hardy Boys (blame Shawn and Parker for that.) Because Judy Blume was iconic girl lit, I was compelled not read it … but I wanted to. Very, very very badly.

These books were my glimpse into another world, where I was not wanted nor allowed. I do not know how much this has to do with my choice of love interests. All of my serious relationships have been with girls or women whose fathers were dead, departed or damaged. The only one who had what we call a normal family unit … well, that one didn’t go so well.

And with the lingering memory of Undone in mind, when it came to take something with me to Maine (because I needed to bring something) I noticed the wife had gotten Paul McLain’s Like Family out of the library. Perfect.

McLain has produced three novels; working backward, this year’s best-seller The Paris Wife, her first novel A Ticket to Ride (P.S.) and Like Family, her first novel, a memoir of her life as a foster child in Fresno, California.

Now I am conflicted. And disappointed. Not in the book, that I liked (and this is not a review.) Just by in people in general. Where is our communication?

Every book is its own universe, some share a basic set of rules, and when I am truly relaxed and let my mind wander and I can try and imagine which novels take place in the same universe, only in different places. Maybe in fantasy they can cross over, not with the characters interacting, but people from each story unwittingly crossing paths.

And if this a true story, and me and my characters exists in the same universe of the early 70s to the mid 80s, well no, these characters to not cross paths but they do inhabit the same world, speak the same language … or in most situations, speak the wrong language. As though every person is in their own isolated universe. Our narrator is unable to or does not have the words to express to those around her what she needs to know to navigate the world, this society, that house.

When you have been introduced suddenly into a new biosphere, that of an entirely different home, it is impossible for a child to know what to say. And yet, so it was in my own life. I just spent a week at my family’s ancestral vacationing seat, where we have been summering for over a century. For a comforting decade it has been just myself and my wife, with family, relaxing, kayaking, sunning, reading-and-drinking. But now we have the children, who, as everywhere else, move us out of our comfort zone into the wider world.

My girl is eight, and started where she left off with other girls in the cove she met last year -- the stepchildren of a woman who was a teenager there when I was a child. She has enough years on me to make no difference now and everything then, she was one of the “big kids.” There were rumors that she and one of my brothers actually tried dating one summer, you know, back then.

I watch as two of her older charges vie for the attentions of one of the boys. Making-out happens in the open, territory is marked, a victory is won, a heart is broken, the world spins.

As usual I sympathize with the girls.

Agatha Christie

After God, Agatha Christie (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) is the best-selling writer of books of all-time. Before God, He pales from the comparison.

1920 she debuted as an author with The Mysterious Affair at Styles, a book she had been working on for roughly four years. It was a very well-received first novel ("She betrays the cunning of an old hand." - The New York Times Book Review) and introduced the world to a legendary fictional creation, the fastidious and bizarre Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, a figure Christie herself would come to detest though she kept creating crimes for him to solve because he was so darned popular.

The most recent Poirot adventure in 1954 was Funerals Are Fatal (released in the UK as After the Funeral) which is notable as homosexuality is discussed as a possible motive for the crime, in this case between two women. It is described by one of the police inspectors as a "feverish female friendship" which is how I insist all lesbian relationships must be described from now on.

Christie was also a very successful playwright, though she never presented the character of Poirot on stage, sometimes even adapting Poirot novels for the stage, but eliminating him as a character. By 1954, her play The Mousetrap began its second year playing the West End where it remains to this day, the longest continually-running play in history with over a whopping 24,000 performances to date.

The Mousetrap at Great Lakes Theater
March 10 - 25, 2012

Yes, that's me.

Spicy Mystery Stories

WHOA!


Click on to enlarge

April 1936 Issue

"Zang took my body and blew the breath of a soul into it. Before Zang, I was nothing. Now I am all!"

Produced by Culture Publications (I love that) this title is among the "weird menace" or "shudder pulp" genre, as distinguished from its hard-boiled detective counterparts through its use of supernatural or extraterrestrial themes. They were horror stories, a descendant of the Grand Guignol for their use of torture and brutality. For their time they were rather pornographic.

Sources:
The Vintage Library
Wikipedia