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I’ve been lax in my posting. I went over to convergence and participated in Booty Candy by Robert O’Hara, which is a hilarious play and well-directed by Terrence Spivey. Very meta, culminating at the end of the first act with a mini playwright conference in which each playwright discusses his or her play, scenes from which we’ve seen already, including a cross dressing pastor (Dreamin’ in Church/Michael May), Bootycandy (Wesley Allen/India Nicole Burton) the eponymous name of the male genitalia that might fall off if not cleaned properly; Genitalia: a phone conversation, a mocking gesture to the obscure names some black children receive (India Nicole Burton/Rochelle Jones), and Drinks and Desire (Wesley Allen/Nate Miller), a drinking scene of desire and repression. The play is a retrospective of the character Sutter (Wesley Allen) a young black man coming of age and coming to terms with his being gay. The scenes that make up the play are episodic, but they are truly funny and the acting is fantastic throughout. The play runs one more weekend.

I went to The Revisionist by Jesse Eisenberg at Dobama. I thought the play was ‘one note’ in terms of its dramatic action, but the acting was great and it was a pleasure to see Dorothy Silver. It was directed by Leighann Delorenzo who always does a great job.

My good friend Jared Bendis had his MFA thesis production at Case’s Department of Dance. I had forgotten the power of dance to create a dreamlike experience. The choreography, of all the pieces, was wonderful. The production was of several pieces, called Momentum, Jared’s pieces were Chroma and Château de Rêves, a dance piece with a stunning large scale multimedia show of Jared’s photographs from his travels around Europe. The pieces that left the deepest impression included Dark Covenant, with artistic director Gary Galbraith and Richard Oaxaca, reinacting through movement the story of Faust. Oaxaca has an impressive production history and physically is as close as you’ll ever come to seeing a chiseled marble statue spring to life and gracefully dash across a three dimensional space. The piece Until Death do us Part was impressive in altogether quiet way. And In Ancient Waters was magnificent, creating a dreamlike other world in which men and women seem to merge into fantastical beasts. Andrea Alvarez is an equally graceful and powerful dancer, and she choreographed many of these pieces as well.

Took my daughter to the Kids Comic Con at Lake Erie Ink, where she got to participate in an all day conference dedicated to different aspects of creating comics and graphic novels. There were many break-out sessions that were of interest to her, especially “action in comics” and how it is conveyed both in the West (pow, bam, etc) and in manga, which blurs frames foregoing the more obvious approach used in older comics. Her interest increases and we just picked up a digital tablet and Manga Studio 5 so she can draw (or trace) her work directly to the digital realm.

So, here it is! 20 years in the making. I’m going off script today to not talk about playwrights or plays or theater but instead to announce the release (Kindle format) of my book.

I started writing this book, or a version of it, when I was an undergraduate in college and it was fully underway by 1995. The book has been professionally edited on two occasions, substantially re-written at least three times, professionally reviewed by Kirkus_online_020115, and the cover art done by the talented Amanda Almon. My photo for the book jacket was done by Steve Mastroianni, another talented friend, and my good friend Jared Bendis has assisted in too many ways to enumerate. I’d also like to thank Atbosh Media for publishing the work and taking the leg work out of all the formats, isbns, lc numbers, etc. And last but certainly not least, my wife Kirsten, who read the book more times than she probably liked and who contributed significantly to my consideration of layout and design elements.

The print version of the book will be available from both Ingram and Amazon in the next several weeks, and then I will begin attempts at consignment distribution to local stores and I’ll start pushing for it in local libraries.

Huzzah!!