The Mysterious Affair at Styles (In Motion)

Before the proliferation of smart phones (after which time everyone became a cinematographer) capturing random moments on video was a bit more rudimentary. As I have been recalling the ten years since my play adaptation of The Mysterious Affair at Styles premiered, certain video "memories" have popped up on social media.


Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Opening Night
Alcazar Hotel, Cleveland Heights
Producer Daniel Hahn whipped out his flip-phone to record a record turnout for the Great Lakes Theater outreach tour (above). Over one hundred and twenty people attended opening night at the Alcazar Ballrooom. I promise, this is due to the enduring popularity of Agatha Christie, and not my reputation.

The first image is that of director Lisa Ortenzi, who did such a marvelous job getting this show on the road.

 

Thursday, March 1, 2012
Nordonia Hills Branch of the Akron Public Library

Ten years ago I had not yet acquired a smart phone, but I did have a laptop and used that to create this time-lapse document (above) of how our company of five brought in and put up the quite impressive and heavy set. 

Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Lorain County Community College

The second night of performance, Daniel brought his family camcorder and recorded the entire performance at LCCC. It's handheld, so of course it's a little shaky. In this clip, Captain Hastings bids farewell the his audience. Don't worry, no spoilers, and we do get to see the entire company emerge for curtain call.

“The Mysterious Affair at Styles” adapted by David Hansen from the novel by Agatha Christie is available from Playscripts, Inc.

Process XLVIII

Joseph Beuys

Technology was not my friend this week. Not only for my Thursday night in-class presentation on Joseph Beuys, but also my Friday morning Styles seminar for seniors. Just to remember, never incorporate YouTube into my PowerPoint, it creates a variety of confusion.

It’s not that I was reliant on the app, but how long do you try to figure it out before flying without it? It’s frustrating. It makes me look unprofessional, and I hate that.

We were to choose an artist to present and our professor had presented us with a list but I was stuck. Choose someone I was already familiar with? That didn’t seem like learning, so I asked him to suggest someone, and he chose Beuys.

I’m not going to recap what I learned here, suffice to say there is a world of art out there with which I am shockingly ignorant. How could someone be so enigmatic and significant and yet I had never heard of him?

Last night 10 Minutes to Midnight: 9 Quirky Plays for the Holidays opened at Cleveland Public Theatre to a sold out house. I think my experience deserves its own post, for now I just wish to point up the program’s content warning on the website:

Content Warning: 10 Minutes to Midnight includes adult language, and themes of domestic violence, religion, sickness, and drug use.

My two, two-minute plays alone include adult language, sickness and (egads) religion.

Holidays and holiday shows can be fraught. The Mysterious Affair at Styles is Christie’s “World War One” story, and so to close my session with the seniors at Vitalia yesterday morning, I shared the animated short "December 25, 1914" from Simple Gifts. It brought women my mother’s age to tears. But they said it was beautiful.

Dobama '96 Trading Cards

Twenty-five years ago I was working as the public relations director at Dobama Theatre. This was an accident. That summer I had been tapped to create the Night Kitchen, a series of late night theater programs for “the kids.” It wasn’t a salaried position, so when the recently-hired p.r. director suddenly quit, the artistic director looked to me and asked if I wanted a job.

I have been into marketing my entire life. When I was a kid I made greeting cards, and designed boxes of cereal. During the Guerrilla years I was responsible for contacting the media and read up to learn how to properly create a press release, where to find contact information for the papers and stations, who to call and when and what to say and how to say it.

My first big assignment was the holiday ask. You know how every non-profit contacts you around this time of year to hit you up for the annual fund. It’s a time of giving, it’s all the last month you can get those tax-deductible donations in.

"City of Terror" Trading Cards
Mark Beyer
(Raw #2 1980)

This year, my first in this new position, I had a brilliant idea -- brilliant in that I stole it from Françoise Mouly, Art Spiegeman and the crew at RAW Magazine. An alternative comics anthology from the 1980s, in one edition they included “City of Terror” baseball-type trading cards, complete with bubble gum. Each copy of the magazine included only one card, artist Mark Beyer had only created eight different cards but they were numbered as high as #76 to give the impression there were many more.

I proposed we include Dobama Trading Cards with the annual fund request. I would design a sheet of nine cards (“Collect all 60! Trade with your friends!”) each would feature one production photo from the theater’s history on the front, with data about that production on the back, even including a small note about what was featured on the next card, a card which did not actually exist.

Clever me, I even made one of the cards an ad for our upcoming show in the Night Kitchen, the improvised Realistic World.

This was my first big mailing job, and the most intricate use of Photoshop I had attempted to date (that’s PhotoShop 2.0) Our technology was very basic in those days, we only had PCs in the office, so I was designing this on my Mac at home, then driving to the Kinko’s in University Circle to use their laser printers. When I messed something up I would have to go home to edit it, then drive back out to Kinko’s to see if I had gotten it right. 

These things weren't even in color. It was a nightmare. I had a nervous breakdown. Joyce was extremely supportive. She also had to press me to complete the job on time because it was only the single most important mailing of the year. And we did, we got it out. 

I never proposed anything as irresponsibly clever for the rest of my tenure.

Play a Day: Dividual (BONUS)

Dividual (2019)

dividual adj.
di·​vid·​u·​al | \ də̇ˈvijəwəl\
1 archaic : SEPARATE, DISTINCT
2 archaic : DIVISIBLE, DIVIDED
3 archaic : divided among or shared by a number
"the moon … her reign with thousand lesser lights dividual holds" — John Milton
Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Paul Manganello is a Detroit-born theater artist who first journeyed to Cleveland to join the company of the Great Lakes Theater "Classics On Tour" production of Jabberwocky. He auditioned with a piece from his own solo performance Zealous Whig, about Italian philosopher (and friend of Thomas Jefferson) Filippo Mazzei. I was immediately impressed by his witty writing and comic timing. His turn put me in mind of a young Robert Benigni.

Before rehearsals for Jabberwocky had really begun, he joined me for a visit to Cleveland Public Theatre's Dark Room where he presented part of a new piece he had been working on in front of an audience of supportive strangers, and even sang at the (permanently?) on-hiatus Reception. In short time he developed a fondness for the CLE, and saw in us the potential for hi native Detroit. He even posted on Faceboook about our revival, telling friend back home, "Cleveland can do it, why can't we?"

Zealous Whig (2011)

Last year Paul and his brother Jim as the team "Fratellanza" brought their performance The Judge to CPT's Test Flight series of new works. This was the first time I had an opportunity to see the breadth of physical comedy and elegant movement he brings to his original writing.

This weekend Paul, along with long-time collaborator, friend, and musician Michael Malis, have brought another new work to Test Flight, titled Dividual, and I was asked to provide a third eye to the proceedings (Paul called me a "Total Theatre Person," which I liked) witnessing what is truly a work-in-progress over the brief time they have in the Levin Theatre.

These are a few notes on the week so far.

Monday, April 8

Paul and Mike walked me through the piece, describing the set, the possible projections. Mike played samples of the score and other recordings and Paul read the text. The piece will be about thirty-five minutes long -- it is on a double-bill with Rich Stimac's Zoodiac.

The story concerns data mining, and in particular one fellow whose job that is. I was struck by the modern sense of alienation our phones serve us, in contradistinction to our desire to use these scrying mirrors to connect.

The Judge (2018)

There were moments where I hoped for clarity, and the three of us discussed how these might best be provided.

Tuesday, April 9

This evening I got to watch the first act, performed on stage with music. Stools, microphones, a rug, an array of electronic music producing devices. Also a bicycle helmet, which really pulled the picture together (you think I am being sarcastic, I am not.)

I had to imagine the lights, but the images were clearer, we began making up names for the protagonist's workplace. "The Hole" or "The Machine." Michael's soundscape lifted Paul's performance, and subtly provided voice to an unseen character.

Before I departed, leaving them to their work, we threw ideas around for a certain non-choreography and I was excited to know how that was going to look tomorrow.

Wednesday, April 10

The Jabberwocky (2017)

And like that, it's a show. The screen, lights, hat rack -- and an audience! Members of Zoodiac company were there to watch as Paul and Mike stumble through a technical ("stumbling" is a theater term, no one literally stumbled) and their response was very positive.

Both shows are putting final touches on the evening, we three had time to discuss voices, how best to distinguish between characters, but the lighting brought many elements of the narrative into sharp relief.

The isolation. The longing for connection. The grand bargain we have all struck trading our privacy for magic.

It is time for an audience. Will I see you there? Will we connect?


Cleveland Public Theatre presents "Dividual" as part of Test Flight, April 11, 12 & 13, 2019.

Play a Day: Click

Jacqueline Goldfinger

Today I read Click by Jacqueline Goldfinger, which was recommended on the New Play Exchange homepage.

Plays about future technology are fascinating. We as theater artists are utilizing the most primitive of art forms to present, communicate, discuss devices and systems which do not yet exist, engaging the human imagination to fill in the gaps. CGI in film must show exactly what that world will appear like, or it fails, in theater we have no such limits or criteria.

On your imaginary forces work ... if you follow me.

Because we are not (as is the case in this text) not concerned with the technology so much as the effect it has on the human condition. The subject of this play is very troubling, as I have two adolescent children moving into the world armed and/or hobbled by such modern devices.

Ideally, our dramatic works will assist in the creation of a set of ethics, mores, rules. It remains to be seen.

Kindle Paperwhite

Let us assume that when I am not updating my Centennial blog on a regular basis, it means that instead of musing about writing, I am I the process of actually writing.

This is not actually true most days of the year, but let us assume it is so.

However, most recently, certainly this year, it has been so. My New Year’s Resolution has endured, I scribble for at least a half-hour each morning. That is far from the three hours of scribbling I would be doing if my sole profession were writing, but it is a half-hour daily more than what I used to attempt.

And when I say scribbling, I mean writing exercises, short meandering stories and complete nonsense. You should try it, and by that I mean every single day. That is in addition to the writing.

In calendar year 2014 I have now written the first drafts of three new works. Yes, I have. And it’s only August. A couple days ago I filled holes in The Great Globe Itself and have scheduled a reading for Wednesday. It is a mess, but truly my own, no one would mistake for anyone else’s. Leaps in time, historic references and lots of them, music, dance and a little magic. It’s what I do.

Unfortunately (perhaps) the homestretch occurred during vacation. You can’t choose when these things are going to come together. I needed to relax, some perspective, and enough time to read, write, and not write, without feeling too much pressure. But with the deadline fast approaching, a little pressure. There has to be a little pressure.

The unfortunately is because I spent a great deal of time in front of this screen, tapping away and re-reading when I should have been kayaking, swimming, fishing, playing D&D or just plain wandering around with my wife and children. These things did happen, just not in the quantities I would have preferred.

Waah. As I have to remind my son, there are children in Afghanistan who don’t even have screens.

The great good news was that I received as a belated birthday gift a Kindle Paperwhite from my brother and his family. My son objected. “But … you can’t play games on that!” That is correct, my son. Like my iPod nano, which still works and was a gift to me eight years ago, it does one thing, and does it very well.

Perhaps it is the novelty of the thing (a light, elegant thing, a pleasure to hold, so beautiful to look at) but I downloaded two books and read each of them in roughly two days each. Because screens. Even elegant, beautiful screens. But I can’t Minecraft on it, so I just keep reading. Because mellow, handheld, glowing screen. I love screeny screen screen.

Meanwhile, the reading fed the writing, sitting, staring at the sea, discovering how point A meets point G. The book reports come later, for now I have a 46-page script … with an extensive bibliography. Wish it luck.