Process LXIV

May 2021

Last year I made a good decision which seemed a little stupid at the time; I took a summer class. It didn’t occur to me that sixteen weeks of instruction would be condensed into six, and what that would mean. Thank goodness we did not have a theater camp, or journeys planned, or what was merely very challenging would have been impossible.

As a result, however, I do not need to take any classes this summer. I need two more classes, which I will take next fall. Then my thesis, then I am done. That is a year from now, and yet. I mean, wow.

Now, can I turn my focus outward for a little while. There is housework to be done, some projects that have waited for more time and good weather. Physical and mental health. I do not have any plays scheduled for development or production any time in the near future. That can be a downer.

Free your mind. Hang onto your ego.

On Solo Performance

Clyde Jevne in "One-Man Hamlet"
(Theatre Inconnu, 2011)

The best production of Hamlet I have ever seen was a solo performance created by Dr. Clayton Jevne, Founding Artistic Director of Theatre Inconnu (Victoria, British Columbia). Titled One-Man Hamlet, it was one of the several productions I attended at the Minnesota Fringe in 2003.

“... Nick, Denny and I went to see One-Man Hamlet at Bryant-Lake. That kicked ass, the man is a freak, and not only that, but a Canadian freak and we sat in the dark eating cheeseburgers and drinking pints of Summit and watching this guy charge around the stage with music stands with balloons on them representing all the different characters, it was a whoot.” - I Hate This Blog, 8/9/2003

The cheeseburger was only part of what made it special. The Bryant-Lake Bowl in Minneapolis is a bar and grill, bowling alley and cabaret theater all under one roof. We’d placed orders before the show and fifteen minutes in, a server brought my dish and it was passed down to me by friendly audience members.

"I Hate This (a play without the baby)"
(Red Eye Theatre, 2003)

I wasn’t the only one served. This is totally a thing that they do at Bryant-Lake.

“... Denny and I are going to see Heretic [a solo performance by Niki McCretton] this evening at 6. Toni got to see [Staggering Toward America, a solo performance by Rik Reppe] this afternoon ... and I did my last performance.” - I Hate This Blog, 08/10/2003

That would be my last performance for I Hate This. My trip to Minnesota nineteen years ago was the first time I brought my solo performance on stillbirth to an audience of almost complete strangers.

“Forty people in the house, a strong Sunday afternoon showing … Clayton the One-Man Hamlet man was in the house, and his lovely wife. Our midwife's daughter made the show! And there were rumors ... maybe Matthew Everett made it (and his mom) [more on that here]. I am grateful for the attention.” - I Hate This Blog, 08/10/2003

The solo performance is a particular kind of drama, but it can be so many different things. Ten years or so ago there were several traveling shows in which one guy would tell all of The Lord of the Rings or the entire Harry Potter saga in a single evening, which is a kind of parody. It’s for the fans, but it’s also meant to be hilarious.

Jevne’s One-Man Hamlet is much more than that. It is very funny, to be sure. But he’s playing something like an addled street performer with the least expensive props possible and what is remarkable is how he just keeps going, playing all the characters, telling the entire story. 

My favorite part is how he takes all of those moments that a character describes something that happened in the recent past (Ophelia telling her father what Hamlet did in her closet, Hamlet telling Horatio about the pirates) by opening a foot locker pulling out puppets and miniatures.

Sometimes a solo performance is in the service of a familiar tale, like Jevne’s, or when we saw local artist Terry Canendonk perform I Dreamed of Rats, his adaptation of the Inspector General. Or it is autobiographical, like Reppe’s Staggering Toward America, in which he told the true story of his journey across the nation after 9/11. He becomes the people he met along the way, but it’s no different than a good friend telling a great yarn over a fire. There’s a personal connection necessary in these kinds of performances, and Reppe’s personality was big and he embraced the crowd with it.

Nina Domingue
"The Amazing and Absolutely True Adventures
of Ms. Joan Evelyn Southgate"
(Cleveland Public Theare, 2002)

While we’re on the subject of solo shows I saw almost in Minnesota almost two decades ago, Heretic was yet another kind of one person performance, a play with one character, and little or no text. Utilizing video, a big open stage and a large aquarium, McCretton is a woman who has been exiled to the surface of the moon for the crime of having religious belief, and may not return until she has filled the fish tank with her tears.

It’s a flex, standing on stage, by yourself, for an hour or so. You are the only person holding the attention of an entire audience.

My good friend Nina Domingue has written and performed several solo shows, most recently The Amazing and Absolutely True Adventures of Ms. Joan Evelyn Southgate, which opened to a full house at Cleveland Public Theatre last weekend. Watching Nina play is a masterclass in catching and keeping an audience, not only skilled in portraying all manner of characters, but also staying in tune with and reacting to the assembled.

I have written and performed two solo shows. This spring I have been writing an essay, meant to be read aloud, about my mother’s death, called Falling. I have no idea what I might do with it, though I am glad to have written it.

Cleveland Public Theatre presents "The Amazing and Absolutely True Adventures of Ms. Joan Evelyn Southgate" performed by Nina Domingue and directed by Nathan Henry through May 14, 2022.

End of Play (Week Four)

Yeah, so. #EndOfPlay. I charged into this month fired up to get a lot of writing done. And I did it. The past week I have really wound down, relaxing, taking care of other business. Also, we have residency auditions coming soon. Also, the semester is almost over. Also, this. Also, that.

Scenes From a Night’s Dream: Following the first reading I took the opportunity to expand several moments in the second act. More clarity, more context, more history. Language and slang.

Next Monday this will be read, this slightly revised first draft. I am excited for that!

Falling: Tuesday night we were sent to breakout rooms to workshop our illness narrative, and I received helpful observations from two classmates, one who I only recently met and another who is familiar with my work because he is another playwright.

It was suggested I employ a central metaphor. But there is a central metaphor - the title, falling - but I never included it. That, and many other suggestions will be employed this weekend. Then I will record the entire thing to video.

The Wytches: Work on this script has been interrupted, until I can engage a few more of the participants of last month’s workshop. I believe I will be able to resume in May.

And that’s all she wrote! Pens down.

Scenes From a Night's Dream: First Reading

dissociation n. the disconnection or separation of something from something else or the state of being disconnected. In psychiatry: separation of normally related mental processes, resulting in one group functioning independently from the rest, leading in extreme cases to disorders such as multiple personality.

No matter the project, be it for a writers group, as a commission, or the final project for one of MFA classes, I will hold a pre-reading reading with a cadre of close friends and colleagues to hear it in a safe space. Last fall that was in my living room, a year before that via Zoom. But it always happens.

Sunday night a delightful crew of friends (not an unsurprising amount either present or former actor-teachers) gathered on our patio, in perfect weather, to read Scenes From a Night’s Dream.

Random thoughts: Given all the messed up things that happen, some people were most upset by the dead goldfish. “The party downstairs” also set some on edge. The second act is too short (my opinion) which affords the opportunity to address some confusion as to what the company - "Morpheus" - actually does.

New rules: When holding a post-reading discussion (or in fact, the talkback following the workshop of a new work) the playwright must not answer any questions. You’ll never learn anything about how your play works if you do.

We started and I immediately got one question directed to me and I said, Oh. I’m not answering any questions. What followed was something like forty-five minutes of the assembled going over everything that had just happened.

The disconnect, the dissociation, the dream.

Last fall I mentioned how Mark Ravenhill was sharing 101 tips on playwriting over Twitter. That has developed into the 37 Plays podcast sponsored by the Royal Shakespeare Company where he interviews other playwrights and they discuss their own tips on writing. 

This week, writer and director Chinonyerem Odimba brought up Ravenhill’s Tip #12: There’s something cruel about constructing a play, putting characters in situations that are everything from awkward to very painful. Don’t shy from this cruelty but use it responsibly, explore all its ramifications and don’t use it cynically or for effect. 

This is a thing. I don’t normally indulge in cruelty in my plays. Or not since The Vampyres, anyway. And yet, I failed to provide any kind of content warning as we began reading. I immediately regretted that as we started reading. Sometimes people make light of or in fact scorn or ridicule such advance warning, but those people are children.

Now, I have a page of notes and an entire week to tweak the script before we read it in class. So glad!

UPDATE: A workshop of "Scenes From a Night's Dream" will be presented as part of the 2023 NEOMFA Playwrights Festival at Convergence-Continuum, February 16, 17 & 18, 2023.

Process LXIII

Mary Todd Lincoln
(William H. Mumler, c. 1870)

As the semester winds to a close, I am confident in how well things have proceeded. I lost an entire week due to illness, and yet I am ahead of the homework game. I needed to complete at least 120 hours for my teaching internship, and I think I passed that finish line sometime, I don’t know. Today.

That was a difficult new work to bring to the finish line. I had a big, long cry in the shower after it was completed. That was a surprise. I haven’t cried like that in years. Not for two years. I was alone then, too.

As the semester winds down, I become wistful about online education. I have really enjoyed my illness narrative class; we have been covering a wide variety of often very affecting material. And in spite of our Zoom assemblage, I have become attached to this collection of students. They are all unique, compassionate, quirky, shepherded by our wonderful professor. I’ve loved this class, even though we have been attending from our personal spaces.

Then again, my personal space is a couch in front of a fire during the chilly Ohio months. Would I prefer traveling a half hour to get to a cinder block room downtown. I imagine not.

I will graduate in a year, and yet we are almost through. No classes this summer, fall quarter, next spring is all about the thesis. What will be my motivation to create, when there are no assignments with deadlines? Two plays a year, for two years. It’s a big deal.

And my brain, the reading, how will I keep up? When someone chucks a book at you and says read it, then write about it, then we’re gonna talk about it, that’s amazing. You make associations across narratives, connections between classes, and over the years.

Yesterday, reading Out of Nowhere Into Nothing by Caryl Pagel, I learned about William Mumler, so-called spirit photographer. He let people believe that his double exposed images revealed the ghosts who accompany us, watch over us, and comfort us. It’s bogus, of course, but it feeds the imagination. Tuesday night I had a dream that I was visited by the ghosts of my parents; they were dead, in my dream, I knew that. These were their spirits. It was a revelation. It was sad, it was also an adventure.

(Later she quotes Roy Scranton’s book Learning To Die in the Anthropocene, which was assigned to me in a different class this semester, another example of my current educational experience answering back to itself. Are there really so few books? Is the world smaller than we believe it is?)

I need to write about ghosts. Like, literally, that’s the next thing I need to do, write a few scenes with ghosts in them.

See also: Lincoln In the Bardo (book)

End of Play (Week Three)

Apparently the best thing for a writer is to have a serious cold. The second week of #EndOfPlay I got hella writing completed. Then I got well, went to Athens for a visit with our eldest, have been suffering headaches and insomnia and generally feeling uninspired and unhappy.

I want the weather to turn. I want to set up the porch and the deck and move my writing outdoors. I want to run.

And yet, work was completed. Here’s the rundown.

Falling (a monologue): Completed edits, turned in my assignment which was due Tuesday. Next week the piece will get workshopped in class. Once I create a final draft, I will begin recording videos of myself reading the text to accompany the assignment.

The Wytches: Not a lot of work on this this past week. I need to write two ghost scenes which talk to each other and reflect the present. They must reflect the present.

Scenes From a Night’s Dream: This was the big accomplishment this week, and it came not without a certain number of tears. My schoolmate (who has not yet read the ending) said the other day that she thinks it’s the best thing I’ve yet written for workshop. She might be right. I have avoided writing about myself in class, it’s the same old: who cares about my issues?

I have scheduled a reading with friends for this weekend. I have successfully held a pre-workshop reading every semester I’ve had a new play. It helps me attend the workshop itself with confidence. I have great friends.

End of Play.® is an annual initiative, created by the Dramatists Guild, to incentivize the completion of new plays, scores, or songs over the period of one month.

Process LXII

Received some wonderful news this week; I am a recipient of the Leonard Trawick Scholarship! Earlier this year I applied, including the first ten pages of my unproduced script No One Wants To Work Anymore.

The Leonard Trawick Scholarship was established to assist Cleveland State University students in creative writing and/or English and to honor Dr. Leonard Trawick for his dedication to the Poetry Center.

This is the first time I have ever received a merit-based, academic scholarship, and I am dead chuffed.

This week I have also been ill. It’s just a nasty, springtime cold. Every Covid test has proved negative, but it’s kept me out of public. I was able to use the day on Monday to finally break through and produce the first fifteen pages of the second act of my new work for the playwrights workshop.

We read these pages that night, and I was heartened by the fact that certain members of the class were even more unsettled by the second act than the first. That took some doing. And now the scenes are flowing freely. Maybe too freely.

Every scene feels more dangerous than the last. The complete, in-class reading is scheduled for two weeks from Monday. For my last two scripts I have had friends read it before the class gets to it. A fire pit may be in order. God, I love the Spring!