Miles Davis

Sam Firsten opened Cleveland's own Cotton Club in June, 1954 at the corner of East 4th Street and Huron, featuring local son Jimmy Scott as emcee. The joint was established to showcase local jazz ensembles, though within a year Firsten was also booking national acts.

In November 1955 Firsten brought in the Modern Jazz Quartet, featuring Miles Davis and Teddy Wilson, not only to play night gigs but also Sunday matinees for teenagers - soda pop only, thank you. At this stage in his career, Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) had only recently kicked heroin, a plague which was currently affecting peers such as Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and Art Blakey.

It has been suggested that touring the Midwest made it easier to stay away from drugs and from the hustling he had been engaged in during the early 50s to pay for his habit. The soda pop did not hurt.

Sources:
Jazzed in Cleveland (Joe Mosbrook)
Wikipedia

On the Waterfront

On the Waterfront was directed by Elia Kazan and starred Marlon Brando as a dock worker who acts as a whistleblower against elements of organized crime among longshoremen. In 1954 this film, its director, leading actor and "Supporting Actress" (in a lead role) Eva Marie Saint won Academy Awards for their work.

In 1952 Kazan had testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and named eight members of the Group Theatre who had been Communist Party members or sympathizers during the Depression. This act was part inspiration for Arthur Miller's The Crucible, and led to Kazan's being ostracized from the Hollywood community for the rest of his career.

In 1999 Kazan received a lifetime achievement award, which was fairly controversial event as many members of the motion picture community, including plenty who did not live through the events in question, chose to sit and not applaud.

Many have suggested that this slighting of Kazan was inappropriate, especially as Hollywood warmly welcomed Charlie Chaplin home for a lifetime achievement award after years of exile as a result of the Red Scare. As Los Angeles film critic Kenneth Thran put it, "We applauded when the great Chaplin finally had his hour. It’s now time for Elia Kazan."

Because having a personal political philosophy is exactly the same as identifying others' political philosophies before a hostile government committee. But I sarcastically digress.

Kazan chose this project in response to his own persecution by those who judged his actions, not least of whom his collaborative partner, Arthur Miller. Marlon Brando as failed boxer Terry Malloy, doing odd jobs for a corrupt union boss, gently tending his flock of pigeons, is a troubled and sympathetic figure, raising pigeons and trying to get by. The most familiar, oft-imitated line is "I coulda been a contender," but it's what Brando says next -- the plaintive, "I coulda been somebody" -- that rings mournfully in my ears. Terry's decision, after he witnesses a murder, to testify in court against the union bosses, is the central conflict of the movie.

How this down-and-out lug daring to finger murderous gangsters compares with the artistically and financially successful Kazan identifying those who never committed a crime, I don't know. But we all like to think of ourselves as the underdog. Especially the gangsters, you know?

Sources:
FilmSite.org
ModernTimes.com

Potter Village

DID YOU KNOW ..?

Potter Village is the neighborhood within the seven connected streets of Castleton, St. Albans, Boynton, Radcliffe, Haselton, Woodridge and Edison (in the area between Monticello and Taylor). The name “Potter Village” comes from the fact that this neighborhood was once the location of a large farm owned by a family named Potter.

Beginning in 1923, the area was redeveloped into a residential neighborhood. At that time, the developer described it as “one of the most beautiful sections of the Heights.” Nevertheless, the neighborhood was mostly unpopulated until the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Today, almost 90 years after the establishment of the area as a residential neighborhood, these quiet tree-lined streets remain “one of the most beautiful” places in Cleveland Heights. - Jim Goodluck, Potter Village Good Neighbor Association

Potter Village is not to be confused with Forest Hill, that expanse of land between Cleveland heights and East Cleveland which was once the domain of John D. Rockefeller -- home of Forest Hill Park and the Historic Heights Rockefeller Building ... Speaking of which, have you been to Rockefeller's for a cocktail or an intimate dinner yet? You should.

Whenever I mention where I live, someone invariably asks if its part of Forest Park, and I have to report that no, I live adjacent to Forest Hill in the less-fashionable South Of Monticello District ... or "SOMO." That was before our neighbor Jim discovered the neighborhood already has a name.

In 2009 after the collapse of the housing market and just before our eldest was about to start first grade, my wife took it upon herself to put out a call to the neighborhood to have a block party. At that time there were foreclosed or abandoned houses two yards to our left, three yards to our right, two across the street and two on the other side of our backyard fence. We wanted to know who our neighbors were, and at that time we'd been here almost sixteen years and really didn't know.

It's two years later. Last weekend we held our third annual Castleton-Potter Village block party with all of our friendly neighbors and friends. All those houses I mentioned now have people in them. Our youngest starts first grade in a week. The world spins.

Artist McGaw Sketches Federal Players

"It Can't Happen Here"
Cleveland Press, Wednesday, October 28, 1936
Artist: John McGaw

... why does everyone look so creepy?

The LIT

The Poets' League of Greater Cleveland was founded in 1974, to raise awareness of Cleveland area poets, and to support their endeavors. By the 90s they had expanded to include efforts of all literary writers, and became The Poets' and Writers' League of Greater Cleveland.

Excuse me for being a snark at this point in history, but who was the literary genius who gave a thumbs-up to the unwieldy monicker Poets' and Writers' League of Greater Cleveland? In 2007 the name was changed to something with more a satisfying mouthfeel -- The LIT. Soon after, the (former) PWLGC journal Ohio Writer was relaunched as MUSE.

For the first few issues of MUSE, LIT director Judith Mansour commissioned artists to create striking cover graphics, and invited local writers to write an introductory essay inspired by this image. I was asked to create something to compliment the July 2008 cover.

The image featured above is The Field Trip (Ancient Offering) by Thomas Frontini.

"Thomas Frontini's oil paintings are based on the premise that no matter how we may change and advance technologically, human consciousness is stuck in instinctual traps. Since this sad fact dooms man to a never-ending cycle of repeating past mistakes, Frontini translates dreamlike visions into parables of warning." - Elenore Welles, ArtScene Monthly Digest

Yes, that's what I saw, though I wrote my piece before I did any research on the artist. I saw a beach, a panda, a bowl of artificial food product, and a blonde girl about my daughter's age holding a damaged doll. The assignment was due around Father's Day, and that was also an inspiration.

This is what I wrote:


Click to download a PDF.
After 37 years, due to "mounting financial obligations and a significant reduction in funding support from all sources," The LIT will dissolve, the responsibilities of its workshops programs and perhaps even MUSE to be assumed by the Cuyahoga County Public Library. More info in cleveland.com.

"Doremus Jessup can never die."

Be a Corpo! Kick the crap out of somebody.
Now, if you have read the stage adaptation of It Can't Happen Here, you have most likely not read the one which was performed by the Federal Theatre Project as part of a cross-country effort to open the same show on the same night - October 27, 1936. That version was co-authored in great haste by Sinclair Lewis and John C. Moffitt. Lewis was unhappy with the outcome, and revised the script for publication.

Lewis' 1938 version (available from Dramatists Play Service) has sixteen characters, performed in six scenes spread across three acts.

The original 1936 version, presented in Cleveland at the Carter Theatre, features no fewer than 27 names characters as well as numerous extras, performed in fifteen scenes - most of them entirely different sets.

It is this version, one entirely impractical to stage as a full-production but entirely within our means as a staged reading, that we will present on Monday, October 24 beginning at 7 PM at the Cleveland Public Theatre.

At first I thought, what the hell, just do the later version. It is a tighter script, no doubt. But there are several strong artistic and practical reasons to stage the original version.

First of all, what a unique experience! An historic occasion deserves a little reach.

Second, it doesn't matter that there are more actors, a staged reading is easily double-cast.

Third, the revised edition streamlines the course of events, but leaves out a great deal of outrageous detail, including the decent into madness of President "Buzz" Windrip, and the fate of Pastor Paul Peter Prang, a character loosely-based on (or entirely meant to represent) Father Coughlin.

SPOILER ALERT
But the real selling point for me is the ending. The 1938 edit leaves Doremus Jessup and Eppingham Swan face to face, each certain to die very shortly, but a shining ray of hope hanging over the proceedings as his daughter and grandson safely pass into Canada. The original version was much more dire, with Jessup escaping a concentration camp to an unknown fate while the imprisoned Prang prays over the dying form of a fellow inmate, while at the same time its Jessup's daughter Mary who holds the gun on Swan, allowing her boy to escape.

The 1938 revision is more Hollywood. The original 1936 version is much more interesting, inspiring, and non-traditional, and by that I mean less obvious macho bullshit. The original script is a big, beautiful, sprawling mess. And I think it's better that way. And that's what we're going to do.

Sources:
All images from one of the New York City productions of "It Can't Happen Here," 1936.
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library & Museum

I Dreamed of Rats (play)

Terrence Cranendonk
"I Dreamed of Rats"

For the past several years, artists have been leaning on the boundaries of live performance by creating interactive or intimate theatrical events, plays where the audience either has a (sometimes very limited) choice in the manner in which they observe or engage with the performance, or are made part of the performance itself in some creative fashion.

One of the most recent, much-ballyhooed productions in 2011 has been the arrival in New York City of Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, in which an entire hotel is the setting for a remake of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Emphasis is placed little on the text, and more on the mood and atmosphere. Audience members wear masks, watching as actors murder, party and have sex right in front of them -- and the audience is permitted to get as close to the action as they like (so long as they don’t touch anyone.) One review noted how audience members would pick up things to look at them, like discarded letters, or rummage through cabinets or cases, and discover something relevant everywhere they did.

Over ten years ago I heard of the Neo-Futurists staging their version of Crime and Punishment, where every participant (audience member?) was handed a portable cassette tape player -- like I said, over ten years ago -- and had to follow whatever instructions were given them through their headphones. Which room to walk to next, whether to act as accused or judge. Each audience member went in on their own, though they may find themselves in a room with another audience member, whom they most likely did not know, playing their part in that moment’s scenario.

Nick Denny & I
"Voice In Head"

Nick, my brother Denny and I joined the audience of Voice-In-Head at the Theatre Garage during the 2003 Minnesota Fringe which followed the same model only with absurdist results. We had minidisc players (things change) and were given instructions to carry out throughout the proceedings. My brother told a surprisingly funny joke, considering he is very bad at telling stories, and Nick apparently had two minutes to tell the audience anything he wanted, and chose to praise me and my overwhelming talent and general goodness, and that if everyone that night saw just one more show the the Minnesota Fringe, it had better be I Hate This, which was opening the next evening.

 
I didn’t hear any of this, my brother asked me later if that embarrassed me or if I was moved or anything because I had this frozen mask on my face the entire time Nick was lauding my glory. I had to admit that for the entire two minutes this was going on I was receiving complicated instructions about how it was soon necessary for me to leap up, swirl around the room and deliver the worst fake-Shakespearean monologue I could muster.

Even more recently, the concept of salon performances have swept the theater world. Not simply the type of play where actors perform for an audience of one (although that is also a big deal deal right now) but situations where an actor or small company holds a performance in their own home.

The first I became aware of such an idea was in the early 90s when I first learned of Wallace Shawn’s The Fever which he introduced to select audiences in an apartment near Seventh Avenue. Wow. That’s exclusive, I thought. I wonder who was there. Given the opportunity to experience such a thing, I would not pass it up. Strange that I never had the nerve to do it myself.

Because really, I feel there is an emotional leap required to attempt such a thing, even now that it has become en vogue. And it has to be artistically requisite. A solo performance, sure, but that seems arrogant in the extreme. I have thrown a party where you have to sit quietly while I talk about me for an hour. A narcissist’s wet dream.

Last year I attended a performance of Kirk Wood Bromley’s It Was a Setup … performed for an audience of 20 in his living room in Gowanus, Brooklyn. It was an open, advertised performance, but only if you had a reservation would you receive the address. A play for three, a domestic drama, it was perfectly suited to the realist, well, real space and the confined proximity to the performers.

Yes, it took me twenty years to find and attend a salon performance.

A few weeks back my wife and received a Facebook invitation to Terence Cranendonk’s I Dreamed of Rats. Terry has been working on this piece for over fifteen years, a one-hour, solo adaptation of Gogol's The Inspector General. We attended last night, arriving just in time, at his lovely home in Akron, and joined an audience of eight for a startlingly good event. Terry has always been a member of the physical theater, and he is a joy to watch in performance. Surprise is humor, and his work consistently leaves me surprised and delighted.

And, as most nourishing artistic experiences do, last night’s event left me hungry, wondering what I will do next to fill it.

UPDATE: BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. Help support our production by dropping a donation on our GoFundMe campaign!