The Witches (process)

"The Witches" at Pandemonium
(Cleveland Public Theatre, 2019)

History is marked with terror, in America as it is in the rest of the world. There are monuments and memorials to moments of great suffering and tragedy which are peaceful sites of reflection, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, or the Salem Witch Trials Memorial.

Then there are the museums, houses of artifacts and exhibits. Some are an attempt to rectify previously unacknowledged history, as they have been working to do at Monticello; some are meant to memorialize recent events like the National September 11 Memorial Museum in Manhattan. These efforts have also received their share of criticism.

What does it mean that there are for-profit tourist traps and wax museums exploiting such curiosities as Bonnie & Clyde’s Death Car, the actual mummified remains of mental health patients, and, of course, the Salem Witch Trials?

Two and a half years ago we workshopped the first scene I had written for The Witches at Pandemonium, the annual gala for Cleveland Public Theatre. It was there that I understood (once again) the inherent difficulty in pairing comedy with horror.

Salem Witch Dungeon Museum

We are attempting to walk the line between satire (n.: the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues) and the reality of misogyny, generational trauma, capital punishment, child abuse, and on and on. It’s not funny, this being burned alive business.

In spite of having to miss a week’s worth of rehearsals due to class, family obligations and the playwrights festival, I have been engaged in the process of revision, listening to our actors, trying to make it all clear. I can be obtuse, you know. Editing has happened.

I wrote speeches. Some work. Some do not. There were also a number of Hamilton references which in 2022 are embarrassing like naked baby pictures are embarrassing. No one wants to see that shit.

There’s a lot of stuff in the words, and yet, not enough stuff. There’s also jokes. I am going to be sitting in the back next weekend, paying close attention to what gets laughs – and what does not.

To be continued.

Cleveland Public Theatre presents THE WITCHES as part of Test Flight, a showcase of new works, March 3, 4 & 5, 2022.

The Witches: Second First Reading

Melissa T. Crum, Director

Nearly two years ago, we gathered in a private room at Parnell’s downtown for the first read-through of my new script The Witches, in preparation for a workshop production at Cleveland Public Theatre that spring.

Wednesday night, we gathered on Zoom for the second first read-through of my new script The Witches, in preparation for a workshop production at Cleveland Public Theatre this spring.

During the intervening time, things have changed. And it would be impossible to move forward with the draft we had started with in early 2020. There were questions asked which I found easier to ignore back then.

Adrionna Powell Lawrence,
Actor

Then there is the reality of the pandemic. The play takes place in spring 2022. It’s not something that can be easily explained away. How are we going to deal with this moving forward?

The story of “witches” in colonial America is bound up in religion and gender. The story of America is bound up in race. I started by writing a comedy about roadside attractions, which became a story about the world of non-profit, and then about so many other things.

But at its heart, it is still a comedy about roadside attractions. And what makes one venue a tourist trap and another a museum? And why do we take the most horrific moments in human history and choose to make something entertaining or "fun" out of them?

Jaime Bouvier, Actor

I started writing this several years ago now (everything was several years ago now) and what is most exciting to me is the idea that the very first few scenes I wrote, the catalyst for everything that followed, are becoming less and less relevant. Those scenes may not even appear.

Cleveland Public Theatre presents a workshop production of "The Witches" as part of Test Flight, March 3, 4 & 5, 2022

I Hate This: Westfield Rehearsal Period

James Alexander Rankin

Rehearsals for I Hate This have continued, in my absence. It’s good not to be there, so Chennelle and James can play and collaborate and make big choices and fail and achieve without concern for what the person this play is about might be thinking.

Adapting the script into a screenplay I actually returned a few lines that I had previously cut. There’s a joke about the things I didn’t say to an offending nurse. Only I couldn’t sell it as a joke, and it made the moment angry. But James can, and now it works the way it was supposed to.

There are things that I can write that I cannot perform. How interesting is that?

Then there are those moments that no longer work, or perhaps they never did, or they just won’t work here. “Don’t just play angry,” I say. Well, what about those moments which just seem angry, and without purpose? They teach nothing, they show nothing, they mean something to me, but to no one else. Can I let those go?

Yes. Yes, I can let those go. Now, I can let those go.

Attending a run-through on Friday night I was delighted by James’ elastic presence. He is very playful and passionate, with a fluidity and a dramatic flair that I do not have. He’s using his talents to tell our story, it is performative (and my goodness, that word has been receiving some abuse lately) and dramatic, and he has permission to do this and an audience can receive it in a way they could not if it were me.

I recently discovered that a young man in Minnesota is representing his high school at the state speech and debate tournament using a piece from this play in the “Serious Interpretation” category. Others have requested it, this is the first time I have been aware of anyone actually doing it. I wish I knew what piece he had chosen to perform!

The director and I shared notes after at Parnell’s, sitting out in the cool night air of Playhouse Square, watching drunken CSU students making their way in packs, up and down Euclid Avenue. I am vaccinated, so is she. The world has opened up a crack, and I hope we do not regret it.

Playhouse Square presents the premiere of the video adaptation of "I Hate This (A Play Without the Baby)" by David Hansen, directed by Chennelle Bryant-Harris and performed by James Alexander Rankin, in the Westfield Studio Theatre on Saturday, October 15, 2022. 

I Hate This: On the Writing

No excuses. No apologies. The facts are enough. The facts are awful. Let them be awful. It is hard not to apologize. But is that the way it happened?

Brian Cook’s production of I Hate This introduced me to the writing, and I am stealing that idea. We don’t know what “David” does. He says he was heading off to work, but he’s wearing jeans and a sweater.

Note: I was wearing jeans and a sweater. That sweater, and some long lost pair of jeans. I was in reality going to audition for an Ohio Lottery commercial, because at that time I thought I was an actor. I was asked to dressed somewhat artsy, hence, the sweater. Regardless, I did not make the audition.

“David’s” mother alludes to his being a writer, and a writer is what I always wanted to be, before I somehow got the idea that I should be an actor. I do not know why I decided to be that, unless it was an urgent need for attention, which is a bad reason to do anything.

Hartwick production design by Brian Cook

Now, as always, I am happiest when I am writing. It is what I always wanted to do, who I wanted to be. I should have studied English, but I digress. In this play, “David” is a writer, in And Then You Die, he is a cartoonist. Even when I was an actual cartoonist, I was more excited by the writing than the drawing.

Brian’s design for the Hartwick production included a great deal of paper. Paper spread across the floor, up the walls, even grew up the legs of the tables and chairs, the hospital bed.

Our design will be much simpler. But writing will happen. There will be writing.

I Hate This: First Rehearsal

"You are fucking cool as shit all of the time."

cool. adj., 1. moderately cold, 2. marked by calm self-control, 3. marked by indifference, disdain, 4. composed

The company.

We had our first rehearsal yesterday. This is the big question, how much storytelling? How much acting? The text is so familiar and the truth is I have lost the truth. I believed that in my "near-dispassionate" telling I was providing the facts without torturing the audience. And I was praised for it.

In our first two hours I was astonished at how many things I had forgotten. I mean, since the very beginning. Chennelle made observations which prompted stories which revealed truths I had misplaced.

It's in the text. I woke early, alone, our first night back. But I didn't just wake up. I heard my wife in the nursery, crying. That is what woke me up, that is the manner in which I woke up. I didn't need to "find" her, I followed the sound of her. It's right there in the words.

Then there's the other thing. The face I am entirely unaware I have. It's not something I am necessarily comfortable being made aware of. But there it is. Mr. Cool-As-Shit. Dad. That guy. I thought he was in the mix, but I even when I am accepting blame, I am making excuses. It is very, very hard not to.

What is inside has to come out. And what is outside has to be hard.

I Hate This (A play without the baby) will be performed one night only, May 7, 2016. Click here to make your reservation.