I Hate This (a play without the baby): The Silver Collection (In Performance)

Maybe you can tell from the title of this blog post that I am tweaking my own tendency toward alternate or sub-titles to my works. Or perhaps I am just doing it once more.

Some time over the summer, when I was on my own for several weeks, I got this idea in my head, probably while running. I have lots of ideas when running, sometimes they become realized.

I have always wanted to do a house performance, or at least as far back as 2010. I read about them, then I sought them out. We produced the Love In Pieces project in 2014, and more recently I have enjoyed – and later, participated in – works produced by Micro Theater CLE.

What does it mean to invite strangers into your home for a live performance? Not that anyone this weekend was a stranger, exactly. And even those who were, well. We are now a bit more familiar, I think.

Anyway. As I was having this time on my own, and as I was looking for an opportunity to perform I Hate This once more, it all came together and I made myself that commitment. The commemorate our first pregnancy, and Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, we were going to do this.

I asked Josh to update his multimedia program, found both stage and house managers to run the show and serve the guests, and asked the Preeclampsia Foundation if I could promote this as a fund raiser, a suggestion I am grateful to have been well received.

The thing about the script is that it is now truly a memory play. When I was first taking this piece around, I was commenting on things that had only recently happened – including 9/11. And a couple things which were true in 2001 no longer are.

While working over the script, I tried to eliminate the delivery I remembered, to focus on how I feel about these things today. I also have the advantage of not having to project my voice. Not at all. A normal speaking voice. Telling an old story.

It took some work to clear out the living room and even then, ten seats was quite a squeeze. Sunday, Josh and I ran the cues and made adjustments to time and sound. Monday we brought in Geneva, the SM, to learn the cues and run the whole show, cue to cue.

I was relaxed, I had fun, even. Though, there was one moment, it is an extended, direct address with a single audience member. As I concluded, he gasped. I asked if that was all right. He said it was fine, just a lot.

Tuesday night was dress rehearsal, before paid audiences received the entire treatment (open bar, handmade snacks, etc.) I had invited company members from The Right Room, and some of the actor-teachers. It went well, there were a few surprises, pleasant and not, like when the cat turned on the Roomba. I did feel myself falling back into old forms of delivery, and I wasn’t happy about that. And it is something to be so close, and to look them all in the eye.

Wednesday night, opening night, was a bit of a party, we had a certain fellow solo performance expert sitting in the front row and she was laughing at all the darkest stuff and that was really something special. Her laughter made others feel free to laugh and it made all the difference.

Know what else made the difference? Our house manager-cum-bartender Char was in the (literal) house starting that night and their charm and skill kept things bubbly before curtain. Also, Toni had made cheese stuffed dates and fruit and cheese skewers (thank you Marchant Manor, support your local business) as well as puff pastry with tomatoes from City Fresh.

Thursday was the experienced crowd, and by that I guess I mean they were older. Also, many of them had seen the show before, like, most of them. They had come to see this show again, one of them for the third time, having seen it first in 2011 and again in 2016. What’s that like? Geneva has shared performance photos with me and they are striking. I used to look that way, now I look this way.

I look like my father. I look so much like my father now.

After the show, I head upstairs to change out of the costume while audience members are invited to stay and continue the conversation. After the dress rehearsal Toni joined me and it became a kind of Q&A, which was only appropriate as there were many younger folks there who don’t actually know me personally that well and didn’t know her at all. But I’ve been trying to avoid the after event becoming an extension of the show, I just want to see the people.

Thursday night, we were all telling our September 11th stories.

One of the unique elements of this production is my proximity to the audience, which allows me to speak in my natural voice. No projection, I can even mutter on occasion. One audience member this night said they were particularly focused on my breathing, which was a wonderful thing to learn.

Friday the crowd was older, the laughs were fewer … this is to be expected. You do not know who in the audience may have experienced some kind of child loss, but the older the audience the higher the probability, of course. I keep this in mind. It’s the Bette and Boo effect (see link) or as the good doctor put it, some people “don’t think stillbirth is funny.”

The show continues to change. When I mention how we handed out “handmade red paper and pens” at the boy’s memorial, I hand out actual paper we had commissioned from Dissected Relics and also Sharpies. Members of the first audience gave me a note; they didn’t know what they were supposed to do with the paper.

I ad libbed to the Wednesday night audience that they too could write “secret messages to our boy” and they did! On Friday, after the show, I was asked about the birdbath we burned the messages in back in 2001 and it’s still there in the garage, and the team thought it might be nice to have a place to set the messages at the end of the show.

For the final two performances, the set included a small birdbath.

Saturday night was a mix of ages and experiences, or at least you might think so. Again, everyone has a different connection to child loss, as parents, and also as siblings. For me, the event was highly charged as my former spouse Diana was in the (literal) house, and though we have made our way back to being friends we haven’t been in each others’ presence for over thirty years.

It was a happy reunion, though I think that she was much more interested in seeing my wife. They have a great deal of catching up to do. That evening went the longest, a half dozen of us sat in a circle and chatted for almost two hours.

I was asked how I would feel if this was the show I would be remembered for, and I came to terms with that a long time ago. It’s why I keep coming back. And it’s a story I love to tell. Tonight, we're going to tell it one more time.

You can donate to the Preeclampsia Foundation today, please follow this link to contribute directly to them in support of I Hate This (a play without the baby): The Silver Collection.

Twenty-Five Years On

Click on to enlarge.

Last night, we were celebrating the twenty-fifth birthday anniversary of our first born. We all worked together to create a now traditional meal of our favorite things; spaghetti and meatballs, steamed artichokes, also cocktails and the wife created an incredible almond cake. Our elder living child, in residence for the year, was also present and we FaceTimed with the younger in Cincinnati.

We have a box of items from that time. Like a lot of folks, we hung onto things that made us feel connected to the boy we had lost. We don’t always go through them on March 20, but a quarter century is a benchmark of some kind. We looked through the letters, little baby blankets that had been knit just for him, programs and newsletters, the kitchen calendar from 2001. On May 29, his due date, with two different pens, Toni had first written “baby?” and later, “Memorial”.

My wife asked about a letter we had received back in the day, from a man who told us about having lost his son with the same name as ours twenty-five years earlier than that. I knew right where it was, not with these items. It was filed away in the attic with documents from those years when I was performing I Hate This (a play without the baby); drafts, programs, articles, and also correspondence.

I Hate This was first produced at Cleveland Public Theater in February, 2003, just a month after our first living child was born. It was only one weekend of performances, but the Plain Dealer ran a preview piece that ran up attendance. It also provided awareness of the production beyond attendance.

Playwright's Notes
"I Hate This (a play without the baby)"
Cleveland Public Theatre, 2003

The letter Toni had remembered was from a man who lived elsewhere, whose ex-wife had told him about this play, the details of which must have struck both of them as remarkable. Their stillborn child also arrived at 30 weeks, also named Calvin. The unwelcome advertisements, about which he said, “Tragically funny now, but it was certainly good at the time to have a target for all the rage I felt.” No cap.

He went on to share a personal story, which began, “I went to have lunch at Cal’s grave … when he turned 15 …” So, not twenty-five, only fifteen, at that time. But even that figure seemed absurd, so far into the future. Our Calvin would be fifteen in, what … 2016? That’s not a real year, that’s the setting for some pulpy dystopian tragedy.

It hit me so hard, reading that letter. This was not some passing phase, this unwanted corner of my life was never going to end. And yet, here we are. Life is good. And we keep on.

Process LXXIII

Read all the way to the bottom for a special video announcement.

Is transcribing an interview writing? Is editing a transcribed interview creative writing? Is it not simply reiterating what was said? To date I have conducted fifteen interviews on the subject of women’s reproductive rights, spoken to a variety of women on the subject. 

And now I, one not born with a uterus, will edit these conversations into a play for performance on a stage.

Is this writing? And do I have the right to do this? Is it appropriate for me to compose a work on the subject of abortion when it does not affect me directly.

Of course, it does affect me directly. It affects members of my family and so it affects me. But it does not affect my physical person. Me, I am not threatened by this particular violation of civil rights, the right to bodily autonomy.

However, if I put forth the words of those who are – not my words, theirs – am I not doing right by them?

Workshop met in person on Monday night at a local tavern and before class started we spent about a half-hour, the three of us shooting the shit about David Mamet and August Wilson and ill-fated adaptations and whether or not a playwright should give any consideration at all to how some future director interprets their script I realized, “Oh! This is the class!”

We did read and received comments on the monologues we have created, and it does appear that progress is being made.

Also this week, I began to dig into the attic for my creative nonfiction project, reading letters my grandparents sent to each other during the early thirties, when my grandfather was a commercial sailor on the Great Lakes. Grandmother reported the several miscarriages she suffered during that time while he waxed poetic about the lakes and the many cities where they made port: Lorain, Detroit, Chicago, Duluth.

Reading my grandmother describe in details the physical manifestations of her losses, the week I Hate This premieres at Playhouse Square, and also conducting these many interviews about pregnancy and abortion have been overwhelming.

For example, before class on Thursday I was on my way across town and decided to stop in at an abandoned cemetery, seeking the grave of a child who lived an hour. Yes, I did.

The Future: September 2001

James Alexander Rankin
Photo by Cody York

You know this story, or one very similar to it.

It was my second week as an actor-teacher for Great Lakes Theater. We were in rehearsal, playing a warm-up exercise. Someone’s cellphone went off, and instead of turning it off, this someone answered it and started talking. This has always irritated me in remembering it, that that was unprofessional. Inappropriate.

I recall only now that it was his mother. If it had been my mother, I would have answered it, too.

The rest of us kept playing the game. Silly game, one meant for children. I could overhear the conversation my colleague was having. Something bad had happened, happened in New York.

I thought, I am now in the ignorance. Really, I thought that. This is my last moment of the innocent not-knowing.

It was a deep, blue Tuesday. And on that day the 21st Century truly began.

As I was composing the script about my experiences with stillbirth, the script which would eventually become I Hate This (a play without the baby) I included a scene about September 11th. It made sense to me then. The story begins in March 2001 and tells about what happened through the following twelve months. It is set in time, how could you not make mention of the most traumatic moment in modern American history?

On that day we, we actor-teachers, we first listened the radio, and then went downstairs to watch on TV in a local bar and grill, before finally drifting away. Rehearsal was over for the day. I called my wife, she was watching at the fitness center. She lived in NYC for seven years, we knew people there, we had been there less than a month earlier, and we were both still so fresh in our personal grief. Was she okay? She was fine. Disoriented, but fine. We planned to meet at home.

She had a therapist appointment that afternoon, and called to see if she was seeing anyone that day. Her doctor said, well, she had appointments after all. And didn’t it make sense, seeing as what had happened that morning, to keep them? The doctor even asked if my wife would like to invite me to join them, which was very nice, and so I did.

David Hansen
(MetroHealth Main Campus, 2005)

Trauma can trigger unrelated trauma. It felt selfish even then to make this about us, and our loss. People had died that day, thousands of people died horribly. But we were still in our recovery, and the shock of this other event was still a shock.

I tried to articulate this in my play, which I began writing in 2002. One member of our writers group thought it was a distraction from the main story, which was and is intensely personal. He said it took him out of our story to mention 9/11. The others disagreed, and I kept it in, but his sentiment was not unreasonable and it stayed with me.

I remember my first performance in the West Village in 2004, as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. I was aware of the fact that I might be reporting back to people personally affected by the tragedy what it had been like to watch it on TV. From Cleveland.

During the scene in question, titled “The Future,” I take the briefest of pauses after first mentioning the World Trade Center, a moment of silence in which one of the critics seated in the second row, literally five feet in front of me, loudly clicked their ballpoint pen to make a note. Ah-ha.

Directing the play for video this year, Chennelle asked if I would consider dropping the scene. She’d suggested a few judicious but minor cuts here and there, first when she directed my performance in 2016, and again directing James for the Playhouse Square video. Minor, but notable. She’d never suggested cutting an entire scene. I asked her to film it, and we’d see.

There’s nothing wrong with James’s delivery. In fact, it’s very good. But watching a rough cut of the video, I have decided that Chennelle is right, that the time had come for this scene to go. Because to someone who had not lived through that moment, it is distracting. There are details that tie the play to time and place, but that one is so vast. Mentioning it before was appropriate, because it was expected. Today, I agree that it is no longer necessary to include in this play. 

James Alexander Rankin performs "The Future"

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. 

Twenty Years On

William Sidman
"The Dead Sparrow" (1890s)

The events of March 19, 2001 are so close in my memory that it is difficult to believe that everything else has happened since.

Who was I, twenty years ago? A 32 year-old man, not exactly young, certainly younger than this. I had no steady employment, had none for almost three years. Managed a theater project. I had no children.

Twenty years ago I smoked cigarettes, every day. I drank beer and wine, but small liquor. I watched television from tapes, got my news from papers. Agonized at length over what the critics said, not just about my work, but about everyone else’s work.

I hated critics. I used to care about critics.

My concerns were narrowly focused. I was selfish, and took joy in that selfishness in so much as it meant I could concentrate on the two most important people in my universe, my wife and me.

I thought of myself as a writer, but I did not write. I had written one produced play - I had written one play, and had it produced. I contributed small pieces to other shows. But I did not write. I kept journal entries. I wrote about me.

I had no experience with children. I knew no children. I was terrified of children.

My experiences in education were poor. I did not possess a twenty year history with one company, I had not visited scores of schools. I did not know how to create a lesson plan. I knew very few people with children.

I had little patience. I had little compassion. I was not kind to people. My interests were small, I wanted to reach outside of this but I did not know how.

I had an illusion of the future. I had no vision for the theater company I was shepherding, no artistic philosophy of which I was confident. I was blithely ignorant of my place in the larger society.

And I did not know how a child would be part of this. We were in our thirties. If we were going to have a child (only one child) this was the time to have it.

Why? I did not know. Why did I want a child? I did not know. How did I imagine a child to be part of all of this? I did not know.

Everything I think, everything I know, everything I want. Everything I am part of. Every emotion I have. Every expectation of every morning. My awareness, my understanding, my self, my love, my happiness, my hope, my belief in the future. Me. I was born, the person I have become, whoever he is, started on that day, the day I learned my child was dead.