The Times: Boy Howdy!

Meanwhile, this is happening.

Noble Sissle and his Syncopated Sizzlers!

The Double Heart tour ventured to Fairview Park Library last night, and onto the Akron Public Library - NW Branch this afternoon. However, this does not mean I get a "night off", rather I will head back to Lakewood for my first experience seeing a complete run-through of These Are The Times.

Technical rehearsals begin for this Big Box show (as with every other Big Box show) on Sunday, four nights jam-packed with activity, incorporating video, lights and costumes into what is already a frenetic, wide-ranging piece. I haven't counted all of the different characters represented by these nine actors, but there are at least fifty.

I have no idea how long the play runs. That's part of what this entire shin-dig is about, having the opportunity to see what it is. Is the first act even close to one hour? No idea, there is just no idea to clock this thing without standing it up and moving it around. The decision not to include any additional sound cues at all is, I feel, a good one, because I want to be aware of every pause. Recorded music between moments would only serve to make things take more time.

Tomorrow will be the final rehearsal in the rehearsal space, before loading out for CPT. Of course, I will miss that, Double Heart will be playing the Nordonia Library. As playwright, I am haunted by the words of Sinclair Lewis:

I haven’t slept for weeks! Nobody can say I haven’t given everything to the Federal Theatre, now it is all terrible. Come to New York and postpone the play a week. It is all terrible. It is all a failure.

Whoa-ho-ho!

Double Heart: Workshop Players

There is nothing to compare to Workshop Players. Not only do they provide a staff which helps us load-in, set-up, knock-down and drag out, not only does Dawn provide tasty, hot soup, but the audience, for four years running, have laughed harder, louder and longer, cooed and awed, a near-exploded at everything we have brought them.

A good reason for this is the intimacy of the space, 90 seats on three sides of a deep, tiny stage, a stage which challenges our blocking and makes us rethink the show, first as we adapt the set and entrances prior to the show, and then making up new moves as we go, to best use the entire space provided.

In addition are the devoted WP audiences, who as so in touch with the work and ready for a good time ... I mean, the space has no lobby, so the theater doesn't even open until forty-five minutes prior to curtain, and with it the house, but all the seats were full shortly after doors opened, so they were happily chatting and enjoying themselves for a full forty-five minutes before we began. For an hour-long show!

Marion L. Steele High Drama Club

Finally, there is the fact that a large contingent of the drama club from Marion Steele High School always attends, many of them about the embark on their spring production -- which this year is MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING -- dressed up for an evening out, and full of youth and excitement.

One problem, however, is that James seems to have hurt his hand pretty badly during the load-out. He had a nasty cut before he left, but then I saw this on Facebook when I got home:

Oh, dear. Glad that isn't his swordfighting hand.

Double Heart: Costume Quick Change

David Hansen, James Rankin, Emily Pucell-Czarnota, Annie Perusek

Yesterday we performed at Cleveland Heights-University Heights Main Public Library. Want to know how we get in and out of those costumes so fast? This is how we do it.

Tomorrow we perform at the Fairview Park Public Library at 7 PM. Please join us. 

 

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

Double Heart: Cuyahoga Valley Art Center

We play large spaces, we play very intimate spaces. Cuyahoga Valley Art Center holds perhaps 40, as does the Nordonia Branch of the Akron Public Library, where we will appear next Thursday.

Thanks to Elizabeth Fry for these photos. Tomorrow we travel to Cleveland Heights-University Heights Main Library, performance at 2:00 PM. Please join us.

Double Heart: Firestone High School

Cuyahoga Valley Art Center

From Lakewood Library, to Cuyahoga Valley Art Center to Firestone High School -- three very different performances spaces with three very different crowds, in size, in age, but not in appreciation. Things continue to go very well for the tour. A gentleman last night said it was the most stimulating live performance he'd ever seen.

And then there was the person from an earlier venue who thought the entire first scene is about masturbation. I feel it is my responsibility to inform everyone at this time that I would never send a play into a high school or retirement community that makes reference to masturbation.

The entire first scene is about piss.

One person near the beginning of the run stated he didn't care for the politics of the play. I was stymied. What politics? I would never make a political statement in any of my plays, in fact I think theater an entirely inappropriate place to discuss anything of substance at all.

We go to the theater to make jokes about piss.


In general the praise has been high, and warm. Today at Firestone High -- normally our final date on the tour, but not so this year, and I regret that -- was another great audience. They have a strong theater arts program there, and every year I can expect not only attentive and well-read students, but that they also have a lot of interesting questions about the design, the process of writing, and how to pursue a future in the arts.

Double Heart: The Kendal

Kendal at Oberlin is one of my favorite stops on the tour. For one, I get to see old family friends. Joanne and Don took us "out" for dinner ... as it happened, all four of us arrived, without even discussing it, an full hour before call. So we had time to set up, and then relax, prior to the performance. As I was saying, Joanne was right there waiting for us when we arrived, she and my mother grew up together as little girls in Lakewood and it is a treat having family to receive you after a long drive.

One other thing I like about touring there is that this is Oberlin. There's a certain tribe that congregates in that community, and the residents at the Kendal are well-educated, many of them big fans of Shakespeare ... and they are opinionated. People can comment on the script all they want, and I am ordinarily prepared, I have confidence in the work. Here I am often caught off-guard.

The feedback in general, was not just high, but extraordinarily so. Men who profess to adore Shakespeare were very happy with the words and the meter, and told us so. There was a general appreciation for all of the fun, the action, the passion present in the play ... the mentioned passion on Sunday at Clague, too. Not sure I can take credit for that, the most of the really intense bits have few words, it's up to Emily and James to sell it.

But hey, there was that one kid who came up to us after the performance while we were packing the van at ECHS who had to ask if that kiss was for real. Because it looked real. Like they really meant it. I had to excuse myself and leave James on his own to sheepishly mutter it out.

One woman last night, asked why I chose to provide all the "low" characters with working class English accents, and wasn't I making some negative comment about class. She called Pene a "dirty old man" and I hate myself now for not protesting that "he's very clean." I also regret not mentioning Spartacus. I regret a lot of things. I did say, "Some of my best friends are English," but immediately regretted it.

Lisa has been beginning the discussions by asking whether or not Double Heart works as a believable prequel to Much Ado, which is all well can good when the answer is a resounding "yes."  But I could see one attendee shaking her head quite resolutely. When asked why she did not believe so, she said that the Beatrice in my play is certainly not the Beatrice from Shakespeare, however, she refused to elaborate.

I can guess why. Emily is not sure she agrees with me. My wife is absolutely sure I am correct. You will have to come see a performance and decide for yourself.

Tonight we travel to Lakewood Public Library, performance at 7:00 PM. Please join us.

Double Heart: Clague Playhouse

This afternoon we brought the tour to Clague Playhouse, which was entirely full. On Friday night we visited East Park Retirement Community in Brook Park. Though the audience was not strictly of-a-certain-age as was our friends at East Park, life experience was greater there than say, our fans at Elyria Catholic High. And while the high level of approval has been constant, the reaction to different parts of the production can vary greatly, and I feel largely based on this particular demographic.

In the original draft, the clown Pene disappears partway through, you know, like the Fool in Lear. Daniel told me we needed to see him again, and this should have been obvious -- he acts as comic relief near the end of the show, we need to see him again. However, though the tragedy is not his fault, sometimes pee and puke jokes just can't bring about a smile to an audience who finds the course of events to have been a little near the knuckle.

Talkback at Eastpark Retirement Community
(Thanks, Vern!)

The post-show discussions have been really interesting, a lot of personal reactions to the decisions the characters make. One of my favorite today, however, was when Margaret asked me to share some of the allusions to other works from Shakespeare. I threw out a few, but I couldn't remember all of them ... so here's a (partial) list:

• Much Ado About Nothing
• Romeo and Juliet
• Henry V
• Othello
• Julius Caesar
• Macbeth 
• Several others which inspired a word or phrase, that I can't even recall.

... also, too: Molly Ivins, the Firesign Theatre, Groucho Marx, Gilbert and Sullivan, The Tall Guy and Radiohead.

Tomorrow we travel to Kendal at Oberlin, performance at 7:15 PM. Please join us.