Double Heart: The Alcazar

Happy company!

Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick) opened at The Alcazar last night to a capacity crowd, there were over 100 people and not enough chairs to go around. Fortunately the grand ballroom has some comfortable window seats where the overflow crowd was able to find a good place to sit, while others were content to stand. Thank you, Cleveland Heights. You are my city.

Sigh no more.

Reaction from the opening night audience was very positive, we were called out for a second curtain call and I do not remember that happening at any tour I have participated in. While the audience at tonight's performance at Lorain County Community College was not as large as last year's, it was still a marked improvement in attendance over previous years. Word continues to build about these annual performances, and I guess the word is good!

Remember the page.

Both evenings there was at least once audience member who were outspoken enough to take issue with the actions of certain characters in the story, but I was looking forward to that and we have been able to turn them into some great, open discussions. On Tuesday night there was a question as to whether I (as playwright) wasn't belittling a tragic situation by having one of my characters behave selfishly. It was my position that creating a character who acts in his emotional self interest is not the same thing as endorsing that behavior.

Tonight one found it hard to believe that certain characters could enter into a Shakespearean comedy (Much Ado About Nothing) weighted with the kind of emotional baggage created in Double Heart. My question is, what was the capacity for forgiveness? Are there things that cannot be forgiven, ever? Can time, in fact, be a healer?

I mention these two examples because I like the criticism. But I also like all the praise which has been provided to the script. They like it, they like the poetry. You would imagine that trying to write a play in iambic pentameter, modeled on Shakespeare, would be considered presumptuous and arrogant, but mostly I think people are just impressed and enjoy the effort.

Tomorrow we have a private performance at a local high school. A Catholic high school. Very curious as to how all the dirty jokes are going to be received.

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

Double Heart: Final Dress

Annie runs lines backstage.

Yesterday was long and full and strangely relaxing. We loaded out the entire set in a half-hour, and loaded it into The Alcazar in roughly fifteen minutes. There isn't a single piece of the set that cannot be carried by one individual. Those familiar with previous tours (say, Mysterious Affair at Styles) would be astonished, and perhaps burn with rage and jealousy.

That's the entire set. That's it.

Our final dress was witnessed by the Great Lakes Theater Shakespeare Society, and a more supportive crowd we could not find. It was reassuring to witness the reactions from an audience before we open. Is the funny funny? Well, apparently, yes. Yes, it is. And it moves. Many remarked after how much we managed to pack into one hour.

GLT Artistic Director Charlie Fee was on hand, and had much to say about the historical basis for the play, especially as it relates to the sea wars between the Ottoman Empire and Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Much Ado About Nothing is not specific about which wars Benedick and his fellow soldiers are returning from ... but I do.

In fact, it was a comment from director Lisa's ten year-old niece (who watched a double run-through on Sunday) that the play gave her quite an education in the Civil War, which she is studying in school right now. They describe battles and laws, but they don't get into the details of what happens to individuals or the general populace when war breaks out ... but I do.

Tonight we open at The Alcazar at 8 PM, the performance is free and open to the public. Please join us.

Double Heart: Scenes from a Tech Rehearsal

Sound designer Richard and director Lisa hammer out sound cues.

 Costume designer Esther and performer Annie work on hair.

Rehearsal stage manager Diana and rehearsal assistant Ellen keep track of everything.

A playwright learns his lines.

On Collaboration

“F---ing synonyms.” - James Alexander Rankin

Notes on a Wednesday evening rehearsal:

Why I love this collaborative work, and having experience creating theater so many talented, wonderful friends. There’s a four-line gag between Benedick and his disgusting companion Pene. It is the drinking song I mentioned yesterday, the soon-to-be-legendary Privvy Song.

James and I have been messing with it, in fact Carli worked with us on choreography last week. But I wasn’t happy with the tune. I mean, it shouldn’t really be a tune, not really, but our ditty sounded tuneless and arbitrary. I wanted some guidance from someone who knows something about music. And drinking. So I called Ali.

She sent me an mp3 last night, she sang it herself. It’s perfect, just what I wanted. Ali is so awesome. James and I worked the choreography again with this new version last night and it is so much better.

Yesterday afternoon Daniel and I visited the Alcazar to conduct our annual pre-show presentation and discussion with interested residents. How will audiences react to this new “prequel” to a familiar and much-loved old play? If our theater fans there are any indication, they are excited about it!

Following each performance during the tour we conduct a brief takback with the audience. I provided Daniel some sample questions yesterday, dealing with the content of the work. Why do people find it so difficult to be honest about their feelings? Do men and women handle their feelings differently, and if so in what way? How do you cope with tragedy?  I would like to have the chance to talk about these things with people who come to see the show, and less about my creative process in writing it. I like talking about the work I have done, but then then discussions all become about that. There’s a lot of personal investment in the content, and I am curious about what audiences will find in it.

We run lines prior to rehearsal, there are so many freaking words, and paraphrasing may be an issue. But with the playwright present at all times, it is hard to get away with that. As with Shakespeare's verse, if you have the meter it usually comes out right.

Meanwhile, I am still trying to get all my silly voices straight.

The Times: Youth Culture

These are "The Times"

Elia Kazan said that 90% of directing is casting. Maybe John Huston said it. Who knows? The point is, it is true. By the same turn, it can be said that 90% of producing is choosing the right director. By this turn, there is an 180% chance of Times being a very good show, indeed.

Last night I attended my second rehearsal for this Big Box production, and as scheduled it was a rehearsal of the second act ("The Times") and not the first ("Centennial"). As much as I am looking forward to seeing all of the great work I have been hearing about from that act, the great thing about last night was seeing how far the four main central characters have come in only one week.

Tonight we resume rehearsals for Double Heart, and I will not have another opportunity to attend rehearsal until Valentine's Day.  Yesterday, Eric posted on Facebook that it is a month before The Times opens. A month? Bags of time!

The great thing about writing plays that feature young characters (Times, Double Heart) is that you get to work with young performers. The great thing about being surrounded by young performers, if that you can fool yourself into thinking you are also young.

 Your eyes, they make me INSANE.

Double Heart: Countdown

One week from tonight Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick) will open at The Alcazar in Cleveland Heights. As Daniel says, The Alcazar must hold a record for the most world premiere plays in Cleveland ... at least during the 21st Century.

Pretty ladies in pretty dresses.

We have a dance, a fight and a drinking song ... well, it's not a "drinking" song, per se ... in fact, it's the opposite of a drinking song, if you follow me. There are many beautiful sights and sounds, and some not so beautiful, in fact, the opposite of beautiful -- but we all look very good. And ideally, we will sound good. The text has been frustrating me the past two days. I have been striving to pick up the pace and not eat too much of the scenery. Good luck, as the kids say, with that.

But it is very sweet. We have a night off this evening, I will be visiting the folks at These Are The Times. I am counting on much of the text to drop in so, and have a great final run-up to opening. I am definitely looking forward to moving into a new space where making quick changes will not be quite so challenging. Did I mention I am playing four different characters?

Why, yes. Yes, I am.

"I Hate This" at Big Box (2003)

August 2002, the people at Dobama Theatre were kind enough to let me use their theater on Coventry for a staged reading of a new, autobiographic work I had written about my experience losing our first child to pre-eclampsia and stillbirth. Titled I Hate This (the play without the baby) what the people saw that night wasn't very different from the finished product, with me slouching about the stage tell our story ... I didn't have the piece memorized, there were various music stands about on which to balance the script as necessary. I was even wearing the green sweater.

The audience was invitation-only, but I did invite a lot of people. Friends and family, yes, but also a large number of theater people, writers, actors, directors, producers, from around town. I have never felt the need to create an "event" like this for a new script before, and I probably never will again. I was forgiven for my grandeur, everyone knew what had happened, though sure most didn't know these details, they wanted to support me and my wife, and to be a part of it.

One of the attendants was (then) CPT artistic director Randy Rollison. As it happens, his company was already in discussion to suspend the second half of their previously announced 2002-2003 season because of financial difficulties and to create a plan for the future -- which, for anyone who has been paying attention, was a decision which has worked out for them extremely well -- and was formulating an idea of still satisfying their mission for the rest of the season of providing exciting new work.

Having witnessed this reading, he asked if I wouldn't be interested in participating in a series of new works which they would call "Big Box" which that year meant inviting artists already in process of a new project, giving them a couple hundred bucks and use of the space. I said yes, absolutely.

The final weekend of February 2003, a scant one month from the birth of our first living child, we put this show on its feet. Following each performance we provided a talkback, where the audience would get to ask us very personal questions -- my wife participated in these -- and pop the lock on prenatal demise.

 
Post-Show Talkback
Saturday, March 1, 2003
Sorry the audio is so poor.

The day before the show opened, the Plain Dealer ran a piece by Tony Brown -- a preview piece. The show hadn't opened, so he couldn't review it, but he had read the script and talked to me (I remember the interview, I was on break between classes presenting the residency program at Bay High School, hanging on the phone in the English Lit. office) and produced an article which felt like an actual review. It helped a great deal in getting the word out, and encouraging people to take the risk on seeing the show, and I have always been grateful to him for that.

It also meant that folks heard about the show who do not live here. I received a letter from a man who lives in North Carolina, who had read the piece online, and wanted to thank me for sharing this story which had much in common with his own. He and his ex-wife had lost a boy at 30 weeks. Our sons even shared first names, only he lost his boy in 1987. He told me a story of planning a lunch at his son's grave that last September when he would have been fifteen. At the last minute he impulsively bought a stuffed animal to have a present to leave at the site. (We do those things.)

As he placed the gift on the stone, he thought he heard a fifteen year-old boy say, "Dad! That is such an age-inappropriate gift." It was reading that letter that I understood, maybe for the first time, even after coping with this for almost two years, that it would always be this way. This will never end.

My correspondent did add, however, "Life is good."

The script for "I Hate This (a play without the baby)" is available from Amazon.