Play a Day: Tastes Like Chicken

Joe Barnes

For Tuesday I read Tastes Like Chicken by Joe Barnes and available at New Play Exchange.

"Happiness means doing what you want, when and where you want to do it."

Well, no it isn't, and that's the point of this scathingly dark comedy which pokes holes in the devastating effects of the late twentieth century and America's descent into solipsistic navel-gazing and self-pleasuring self-analysis.

I blame the Baby Boomers, but you know that.

Joe Barnes is the most level-headed, knowledgeable and unbiased source of international political news and commentary I am connected to on social media. He is my Super Ego is trying times. Which makes it all the more hilarious that he composes hilarious and intentionally politically-incorrect burlesques like this one.

A dysfunctional family satire about the abdication of personal responsibility, and how easy it is become a complete sociopath when there is someone there to reassure you that it is all right. The social contract is flimsy and fragile, and also flammable.

And there you have it. Thirty plays in thirty days! It has been a tremendous month, and I have a lot to think about and process. But there is also work to do. I have put off any writing this month, tomorrow morning I will resume my pages, and return to projects which have waited patiently while I read.

Applications, submissions, proposals, play scripts.

What should I write tomorrow?

Play a Day: King Lear

This is a year of many auspicious anniversaries.

Thirty years ago I performed my first Shakespearean role, that of Friar John in Romeo and Juliet. Twenty-five years ago I directed my first Shakespeare, which was also Romeo and Juliet. In that production I provided a recorded voice over for Prince Escalus.

Twenty years ago I directed Hamlet, and did a walk-on as the Ghost of Hamlet’s father.

I have performed a few other Shakespearean roles. Petruchio in the Guerrilla Theater Company production of The Taming of the Shrew. Bardolph in Henry IV for Cleveland Shakespeare Festival. Pistol in the Merry Wives of Windsor at Great Lakes Theater, and also in The Tempest as Adrian.

What? You don’t know who Adrian is? He is the least-consequential named character in all of Shakespeare. He has a name, "yet--" he does nothing and provides absolutely no information we do not already know. In this production his signal contribution was to get his head bitten off by a harpy.

The fact is, in spite of being regarded as a Shakespeare guy, I have performed very little Shakespeare. This summer, however, I will be playing one of my very favorite roles, that of the Earl of Kent in the True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King Lear and his three Daughters, or as more popularly known, King Lear.

As Adrian with Dougfred Miller as Antonio
The Tempest, Great Lakes Theater (2007)

Is it just me, or is this play going through something of a renaissance in the 21st Century? Is it because the Baby Boomers are entering their final years and want to redefine him for a new age?

I have had the opportunity to witness a couple iconic performances of King Lear in my time. In 1990 we and a college group visited London and Stratford and saw Lear performed by John Wood, who most Gen X Americans would know as Professor Falken from the motion picture War Games. The two standout performances were that of the non-yet-famous Ralph Fiennes and Alex Kingston as Edmund and Cordelia, respectively.

Several years later, Toni and I were in London and saw Ian Holm play Lear at the National, following his long hiatus from the stage. On that trip I picked up a copy of the book Shakespeare Made Fit: Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare edited by Sandra Clark.

In that I learned of Nahum Tate’s adaptation of Lear, in which he created a much happier conclusion, one in which Edgar and Cordelia (who never speak to one another in Shakespeare’s original) fall in love and overthrow Edmund to live as King and Queen of a united England. Published in 1681, “Tate’s Lear” was the favored version until around 1863, when William Macready staged the first truly popular restoration of Shakespeare’s original tragedy.

David Troughton as Tom, right
With Penelope Wilton
The Norman Conquests, BBC (1977)

It was Tate’s version that was to be my third Shakespearean production, announced for Cleveland Shakespeare Festival’s 2000 summer season. When it became necessary to abridge that year’s production schedule from three productions to two, Tate’s Lear was cancelled. We had a wonderful cast who were tremendously disappointed, and it still pains me to remember that I let them down, having made the proposal myself not to move ahead with the production.

Ironically, perhaps, one of the other two productions that year was a compact and modern production of Love’s Labour’s Lost, directed by Eric Schmiedl. Referred to as “The GQ Love’s Labour’s,” Eric had cut the text down to just the lovers’ story (no Don Armado, sorry, no Holoferenes) punctuating the narrative with a few passages from popular magazines describe what the modern person wants in a relationship.

My relationship with Eric goes back to our tenures briefly overlapping at Karamu in the early 90s, later we were in the Cleveland Play House Playwrights’ Unit. He has directed me in Sarah Morton’s Night Bloomers, Eric Coble’s The Velocity of Autumn, David Sedaris’s The Santaland Diaries, and now we are entering the rehearsal process for a streamlined, studio production of King Lear at the Beck Center for the Arts.

Kent is such a desirable role for a man my age, and I hope I can do him justice. He has the first line of the play, and it is entirely unassuming, one of the rare circumstance in Shakespeare when the action just starts, right in the middle of a conversation, Kent speaking with the Earl of Gloucester about a point of interest which has marginal bearing upon the issues of the narrative.

He is pressed into action, having to suddenly bridge a confounding gap and is forced into action he couldn’t have considered five minutes previously. He is not particularly remarkable, except for his absolute devotion to those he loves, sharp wit, and his ability to kick a young man’s ass.

David Troughton as Earl of Kent, right
With Linda Kerr Scott and John Wood
King Lear, Royal Shakespeare Company (1990)

I have seen two men whose performances as Kent rest upon my shoulders. The first was David Troughton, whose work I had first seen when he played Tom in the BCC production of Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests. Why a ten year old would be watching a British comedy about intimate relationships you can blame on my brother, regardless I remembered him when our school group visited Stratford that 1990.

Troughton was a then-member of the RSC, and in addition to leading workshops and acting as a mediator between our team and the company, he and his wife Alison welcomed us into their home and they were just remarkably kind and thoughtful people.

He and Ciarán Hinds conducted the final battle between Achilles and Hector (respectively) from Troilus and Cressida for us during a stage combat workshop. I saw him play Holoferenes in Love’s Labour’s Lost onstage, and he was Kent to John Wood’s Lear.

It was a remarkable week.

Most recently, I saw the production at Great Lakes Theater, directed by Joseph Hanreddy. That was four years ago. Hanreddy has done such marvelous work with our company, and this was no exception, a towering performance by Aled Davies in the lead role. His Kent, his "Caius" was Dougfred Miller.

I first met Doug the summer of 2005, when we played Merry Wives of Windsor at Great Lakes. Doing summer shows, my birthday often overlaps rehearsal or performance (this has happened numerous times) but I don't tell anyone. There's too much, I want it to be about me. That July 26 I walked into Becky's after rehearsal, on my own, prepared to drink a solitary toast to my own 37th anniversary. Doug was there at the bar and invited me to sit with him -- I hadn't really gotten to know anyone in the cast yet, and he expressed a deep, sincere interest in me, which was very gratifying on such a day.

Dougfred Miller as Earl of Kent, right
With Cassandra Bissell
King Lear, Great Lakes Theater (2015)

The next year we created a great moment together on stage for The Tempest -- the one in which I played the least consequential named character in Shakespeare. Doug was Antonio, the usurping Duke. Director Andrew May had stage these moments where Ariel was literally playing with us -- we were like puppets on strings. She paused us as I (as Adrian) had made a fist, as to strike Antonio. We were released and I hit him, Doug (as Antonio) reeled from the impact, as our "strings" were cut, sending us crashing to the floor.

Not remembering having been in this state, I rose from the floor, rubbing my hand as he rose rubbing his chin. We looked at each other -- and then away. A marvelous take. If anyone in the audience caught the exchange, I have absolutely no idea.

A performer possessed in equal measures great compassion, dedication to craft, an unparalleled wit and god-like sense of comic timing, his Kent was to me emblematic of Doug's work at its finest.

As we begin rehearsals for King Lear this evening, I enter the only way I could, following the example of such generous men, with humility and hope.

Beck Center for the Arts presents "King Lear" directed by Eric Schmiedl, May 31 - June 30, 2019.

Play a Day: Brujaja

Melissa DuPrey

For Monday I read Brujaja by Melissa DuPrey and available at New Play Exchange.

Set in La Doña, a botanica or shop for alternative medicine and practices, this script is an elegant story of modern America with deep, multicultural roots.

Ours is a land of seekers, we have always sought secret knowledge to assist us with our dreams. But medicine and science has led to Big Pharma, as desire for truth and enlightenment turns to organized religion.

And so there are always those who seek answers elsewhere, and for good reason. Unfortunately, suspicion and mistrust can also lead to disaster and pain. Yes, the drugs that were originally created to help us can also kill us, but so will the measles.

"You cannot pretend to know all the answers," says the mother to the daughter, and it is an important lesson. As DuPrey's brief play reminds us, we cannot ultimately hold back change, but that we have each other to guide us through difficult times.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Nutshell

C. Denby Swanson

For Sunday I read Nutshell by C. Denby Swanson and available at New Play Exchange.

The word theater derives from the Greek for to behold, or "seeing place."

The character based on the true life individual Frances Glessner Lee informs us "the word autopsy derives from the Greek for seeing oneself."

Swanson's Gothic investigation of this near-forgotten mother of forensic investigation is rich with gallows humor, presenting an unreliable narrator whose live was dedicated to making the unseen seen.

The stories we tell about women, true and imagined, are about controlling women, their behavior, they are treated as symbols, not people, in order to mold their behavior. This is true of our folk tales, as well as our modern television procedural dramas.

It is also true of the stories we tell about people of color, though, as is the case with the violence against women forever captured in the crime scene dollhouse dioramas painstaking crafted by our protagonist, these injustices are hiding in plain sight.

I have read twenty-plays in twenty-eight days, four solid weeks of play-reading. Each day I meet a new playwright, and there are so many I have not yet experienced. It is a great joy to indulge in the work of fellow writers.

Tomorrow night we begin rehearsal for King Lear at the Beck Center. Tuesday I will close the month with a thirtieth play. On Wednesday I will resume my daily ritual of writing at five each morning.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Cooties

Alexandrew Recore

For Saturday I read Cooties by Alexandrew Recore and available at New Play Exchange.

If there is a theme for the plays I have been reading in April of 2019, it is the need for connection.

I should go back and check. They may all be about that. I mean, are all stories about that? They can't be. What about all plays? Maybe. Or at least plays I enjoy.

I don't like plays about men dominating everything. Those are plays I do not enjoy. I don't think they are plays I write. Maybe they are. I should go back and check.

Regarding today's script, which is titled Cooties. Anther digression which is not entirely irrelevant. The most popular sketch we ever produced as Guerrilla Theater Company was written by Beemer, about a boy and a girl playing in a sandbox, in which he keeps asking if he can put his shovel in her bucket. This ninety-second play was also titled Cooties, and though it is not the same play it could be.

Recore has recorded a whip-smart college roommate sex comedy, hysterical and at sudden turns touching and poignant. featuring crisp, hip and knowing dialogue, aloof and outrageous, with potential sex partners circling each other at arms length, like as if La Ronde were called L'amibe.

Ultimately, however, its about young people yearning not to be alone, expressed at times through verse and movement, with an audacity I envy. It is the comic strip I wanted to have written in college.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Am I White

Adrienne Dawes

For Friday I read Am I White by Adrienne Dawes and available at New Play Exchange.

"Resisting a thing brings up the opposite of what we want. Force brings about counter-force."

We listen to a lot of ska in our house, or at least it comes up a lot. The wife loves it, two-tone music. A celebration of diversity, an opposition to fascism, authoritarianism.

The original skinheads were an outgrowth of this, in Great Britain in the 1960s. SHARP, "skinheads against racial prejudice." Few Americans are aware of this history, and would be surprised to learn how many trappings of the white supremacist skinhead were simply hijacked from this entirely antithetical movement.

Appropriation comes in many forms.

Dawes play questions the very nature of race, and the madness that inflicts our nation as a result of our original sin -- not just slavery, but the self-hypnosis under which we put ourselves to create an artificial concept called "race" by which others are held apart.

Set in the months before 9/11, it was a startling reminder of a time before the general public was aware of just how vast and angry the white supremacist movement was, a time when it was unthinkable that a white supremacist could ever become President again.

Inspired by true events, a young person of color passes as white and through his time in prison, strong dream imagery and news accounts, learn how he came to develop the self-loathing which would lead him to reach for a place of prominence in a new family, a family fueled entirely by the hatred of people like himself.

Racial purity is a lie. Hitler's "fatherland" was for the crossroads for marauders and conquest, there is no one, pure race. So as long as one lies and is beholden to lies and believes in lies, why not crawl into absolute denial and pretend to be what doesn't exist in the first place?

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Spoons

Ben Firke

For Thursday I read Spoons by Ben Firke and available at New Play Exchange.

I was compelled by the keywords for this script which include not only "intimacy and "trauma" but also "The 2016 Golden State Warriors Blew A 3-1 Series Lead."

There are plentiful tales of the "whore with a heart of gold," the stories of sex workers that are entirely male oriented fantasy wish-fulfillment, to wit, "She doesn't care about any of her other johns, but she loves me."

Already this month I have read one script about sex work, Craigslisted (wow, was that only last week?) from a female perspective, breaking down that myth by clearly describing the needs and neuroses of someone who chooses or is economically compelled to walk that road.

Spoons walks a careful line down the middle, trying to present both male and female perspective, even if it leans heavily on his unhappiness.Which only makes sense, he is reaching out to her, he has need which he is paying her to fulfill.

But the playwright works very hard to make this her story, too. I can sympathize, that was the journey I took to make The Way I Danced With You more about her than him. As in my script, we are left uncertain as to where this relationship will go, an I was grateful for that.

Who should I read tomorrow?