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We’ve entered the giving season, so I thought I’d write about one organization, other than Playwrights Local that is, to which I’m giving my money.

I’m writing about a black box theater in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland. A theater company that changed my theatrical life, and radically altered my perception of how intimate, how powerful, how threatening, and how exhilarating theater can be.

I was introduced to convergence-continuum in 2007, when Mike Geither took me to see Chris Johnston’s play Spawn of the Petrolsexuals. The experience was fundamentally altering. Chris wrote a play about a dystopian, bombed-out landscape in which homeless superheroes fought brutal, oil-hungry Commandoids that I can only compare to the Enclave, for those of you familiar with Fallout. There was Angerboy, and Freegrrl, Ingen and Holyman. It reminds me, now looking back, of an early Eric Overmyer play, like Native Speech. The set the convergence created was a character in the play: fabricated steel structures, junk scattered, a broken television set, the massive east wall that was used as movie screen, a motorcycle, a garage door that really opened on Scranton Road, garbage cans, and the trap door near the west wall that leads to the cellar.

Lucy Bredeson-Smith, playing Darkangel—-a sort of black sorceress –- opens the trap door leading down to her underground lair and, as soon as she opens the door: the image of Darkangel looking down is on the movie screen east wall. I watch her descend away from me in the theater. I watch her descend toward me on the screen.

It was too meta. I was IN a B-movie and IN a real theater experience all at the same time. My head swelled to explode. The production was well-executed, but the feeling was raw. I went back two more times to see Chris’ play because I’d never seen anything like it. And this is what I hear whenever I take someone to convergence who has never been to convergence. The person who accompanies me is blown away, overwhelmed with a theater experience that they’ve didn’t know was possible: to be that close, to be that much a part of the experience, to feel so intensely.

Convergence is a true ensemble company. It’s made up of passionate, wholly committed actors, directors, light designers, sound designers, playwrights, video designers, costumers, set designers, painters, box office managers, and musicians—all volunteers: virtually impossible to believe in many ways. And they are all successful!! Critically acclaimed productions! Awards for acting, design, productions! And all working for the production itself, and not some small rapacious little thing like money or notoriety or any self-proclaimed “groundbreaking” aesthetic.

So, besides this… why give? convergence-continuum, the theater company, doesn’t own The Liminis, the theater space, in which they create their magic worlds! The Liminis space itself, that was so unique to the production I described above—-the garage door, the trap door, the movie screen wall—-all of the three-dimensional feast of experiences possible in a location—-is at risk.

What if theatre weren’t a mirror reflecting the familiar, but an opening into unknown territory? What if there were no fourth wall? What if, instead of going to the theatre to watch a play, you crossed the threshold into the world of the play to experience it? Theatre that expands the imagination and extends the conventional boundaries of language, structure, space, and performance that challenges the conventional notions of what theatre is. What sort of theatre would this be?

convergence-continuum

I’m giving to convergence right now. Please give to them as well.

Fortunately, Wellman keeps things hopping in Scene 8 as Santouche stumbles into a gunfight alongside his buddy Fisheye at a saloon—well, I should say “along with” as Santouche sorta forces Fisheye to join up with him and then forces him to go into a viper’s nest via the back door. That’s no matter, Santouche has a score to give and Blackmange is the stick to cut it in.

Here the moral code of the American West is on full display: get the drop on someone and fuck’em in the ass. Santouche is an expert at this. Defying the offered seriousness of the situation it turns out that Blackmange is having a birthday party of all things. I can see the pointy, colorful hats and party favors tongue fucking the trilling inside of my brain from here. Fisheye offers a quick rundown on the weapon situation before being strong-armed by Santouche through the kitchen to flush out the party. As Santouche waits his old fling By Way Of appears to tell Santouche that Blackmange knows the location of his lady friend, Isle of Mercy. But Santouche is an arrogant dirt bag with blood on his mind and only wants to see Blackmange lying laying? Lying – he’s dead—so hasn’t he been placed? For real, tho. Lying in the dirt, red staining the dusty, walked-bare patch of scrub in front of the saloon. And so, Santouche continues cutting off his nose to spite his face. He calls By Way Of a man and then proceeds to call out Blackmange and gun him down…killing Fisheye in the process. Yowza.

A fantastic conversation between Santouche and By Way Of ensues. It truly rivals the ol’ Who’s on First routine in the absurdity of its winding around. Mingled, again, with a bit of ‘Shut the fuck up, Donny”, straight out of Lebowski. The conversation winds down with an accusation by By Way Of toward Santouche about his letting Isle of Mercy go out alone. Then she tells Santouche that she knows a man who can make a stiff talk. (Joke btw about Santouche not being able to recognize a stiff when he sees one.)

Scene 9. By Way Of Being Hidden, Santouche, the corpse of Blackmange, The Wizard. Dude is dressed old school primitive. Garlic and onions. Rattlesnakes. Serious and pompous all the same time. A magic balled-up paste is stuck on Blackmange’s tongue and BAM… Fanny’s your aunt! Blackmange spills the beans on where to find Isle of Mercy—with the Guyanousa. In this scene Santouche tellingly bemoans the fact that you “Can’t get no peace from a man / Even by killing him no more.” The Wizard lands joke number four about a stiff. If Santouche can’t recognize a dead man when he sees one, how can he know anything about himself—or being alive, for that matter?

The Wizard expresses the greatest bit of optimism about America that I’ve read in a long while, or perhaps I’m reading it where none exists:

“…. This is America. Therefore
Anything can happen. … …
Aside from which, the object is
Not to restore the poor stiff
From across the murky deeps of
Styx, which is ridiculous;
But a more pragmatic and wholly
American one: namely to bring
Him temporarily back from across
The shadowy waters of Lethe.”

The “Him” ain’t accidental, either.

What did Blackmange do that has caused such a great hatred in Santouche, you ask?

“Spit in my eye. Told me off
In front of people. Went and stooled
On me good.”

‘Stooled on me good…’ I hate it when that shit happens. Resurrecting a man is called The Con. On whom it is perpetuated is hard to discern. Another stiff joke on Santouche. The Wizard conjures the spirit of Blackmange, we find stuff out, and then The Wizard takes off. In parting he advertises his other services, which includes that “on a good day I can / Throw a close election.” I have a feeling we’ll see The Wizard’s work again.

In Scene 10 Santouche confronts Crow’s-Foot at his newly established Church of Christ Fornicator, which may be the best name for a church ever. The only problem for Crow’s-Foot is that he tries to sell Santouche his Isle of Mercy. My favorite line, by far, is :

“With the Lord doing it in your heart, you’re gonna
Have a big edge on the next man, my friend, and in this
Evil son of a bitch’s world, full of conniving wildcats,
You need every bit of edge you can get.”

A philosophy which Santouche entirely embraces, even though he fails to recognize it in someone else—a tragedy (Thank God) of the type. God knows when they all get together a swarm of locusts ensues.

But Crow’s-Foot is reformed. He no longer sees the “world as a vast, gray country/ Full of liars, cheats, scoundrels, fools who all looked/ Alike. Monsters even… a nightmare lit up only by / The fires of vengeance and hatred.”

As the scene rolls, Crow’s-Foot recognizes the dangerous rage and anger in Santouche and tries to make off—however, he takes out the wrong watch on which to check the time. Santouche notices and that’s all there is for Crow’s-Foot.

Scene 11 is filled with the rage of sexual betrayal in Santouche. It begins very nicely with the Chorus singing a disturbing lyrical ballad to Santouche, and bemoaning bad pop culture. Then we get on to the main course.

Santouche and Isle of Mercy have it out. She pays him off. Isle tries to give Santouche the money three times, with the anger, tension, and confusion rising between each attempt. It end with her throwing the money at Santouche and leaving him. What else can Santouche do but shoot her in the back? She asked for it. She has no respect. And the play wraps to the opening scene. But hark! What is that? A yes, an afterword. Sort of. The play ebbs out with the First and Second Child who were with Isle of Mercy four scenes earlier chanting: “You gonna kill everyone, mister?” at Santouche, who, because he can’t catch them (an presumably kill them) sits down and absorbs their taunts. The taunts that Wellman is throwing back at a certain portion of our “culture.”