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So, I’m always harping on Clyde at convergence to use the blog that was set-up to provide patrons an inside view of how a play is staged: from the selection, to the dramaturgy, to the actual decisions made leading to production and even a section maintained by the actors who describe their experience. This is a long way about saying that I need to put my money where my mouth is and do the same thing for my own production.

My thesis play, Patterns, is being put up at CPT. It will be staged three times on March 11, 12, and 13. Information available online at CPT. Enough of the commercial plugs. This process is exciting because it supports a vision of playwriting education that moves beyond the classroom and into the “real world”. It is a process that requires a vision to support it and the students in the NEOMFA program are fortunate to have the support of both Mike Geither, at CSU, and Raymond Bobgan, and CPT. Mike has been a strong advocate for playwrights in the NEOMFA program and has strengthened the relationship of the playwright with the local theater community, including my own staged production at convergence-continuum in 2008. I know that Mike envisions even more of these relationships as the program matures and as time goes on and partnerships emerge such as that between CSU, the Cleveland Playhouse, and Playhouse Square.

Patterns is one of three plays in what is being branded as the NEOMFA Playwrights Festival and it will provide a nice closure to my MFA experience. My two fellow playwrights: Michael Parsons and Jennifer Willoh will be staged in succeeding weekends.

During the first group production meeting it was explained that the model for the festival was Big [BOX] +; Big BOX is happening right now at CPT and I strongly encourage people to attend. The plus (+) as explained to me includes the fact that CPT is paying actors, hosting the audition process, and providing the space for rehearsals. Additional resources are being provided regarding production costs but it has been unclear to me what those are at this time.

Patterns is being directed by Brian Zoldessy, who so far has been a great person to work with. I googled Brian and learned about his extensive career on the local theater scene as well as his rather harrowing experience with a kidney transplant a few years back; which makes his contribution and work on this project all the more amazing.

I was hesitant, at first, as I’m sure he was, as it is always difficult to define the playwright/director relationship, especially when you have never worked with a person. My experience has been limited to working with one student director (Drew Kopas) and one professional director (Clyde Simon); so expanding the portfolio of directorial relationships came with reservations and concerns. Again, Brian has been great and demonstrated his commitment to the project when we met at the Phoenix Coffee in Cleveland Heights and he broke out chess pieces, diagrams, and sticky notes to demonstrate how he saw characters moving in the three dimensional space of the stage. Brian discussed configurations of the space, movement of characters within the space, concerns over where characters would be when not active in the space, and so on. Needless to say, it was a productive meeting and gave me confidence that the director was both interested and concerned about the play. It was interesting to listen also to Brian’s interest in teaching the audience to see the play based on certain light cues (which I included in the script) as well as audio cues, which I did not. Other things of interest included subtle things like the color coordination of hair of actors (related characters) in the play, and so forth. That is, Brian had not only become familiar with the play, but was crafting a vision of his own for the play. That is both delightful and challenging, as I must remind myself that theater is a participatory art form in which many people have role and that the director’s vision is just as important as the playwrights.

Soon after that meeting, I went home and examined the actors required for the characters in the play (I have 21 characters distributed across 7 actors) and looked again at the timing of their presence on stage, and set along my character breakdown as well as my description of the play:

What do you author and what authors you? One young woman’s life is explored via the metatheatrical act of play creation. By combining myth, fairy tale, personal history, dress making and play making, layers of conscious reality are laid bare and meaning in one woman’s life is prodded, crucified, drawn and quartered, and reconstructed again and again and again.

I look forward to upcoming meetings and will post more as we move along.

The Allen Theatre renaissance that has been discussed in Tony Brown’s article on Sunday in the Plain Dealer is indeed excellent news.  There is absolutely no doubt about how powerful is the combination of the Cleveland Play House and Cleveland State University, as well as Playhouse Square and a host of investors.  With the existing theater spaces as well as the participation of Case Western Reserve’s MFA acting program the stage is set, literally, for a formidable arrangement of spaces, players, actors, directors, technicians.  What else could there be?  What possibly could be missing from the theatrical feast?  Oh, yeah, playwrights.

Allen Theatre Ceiling, Photo by Lisa Dejong

I really do feel impassioned about the opportunity that is opening up in Cleveland and the true and powerful force this represents for Northeast Ohio and the performing arts generally.  Coupled with the wonderful boon that the Cuyahoga Arts and Culture grants have been to this region (especially in a time of dwindling corporate and foundation donors), there is no doubt that performing arts represents a form of economic engine that can drive the revitalization of our communities—and God knows that stretch of Euclid Avenue really, really needs something.  For the truth of the economic cornucopia that performing arts offers neighborhoods, we need look no further than the Gordon Square Arts district and all the work that James Levin and Raymond Bobgan and of Cleveland Public Theatre and Near West Theatre and a host of others.  As I noted in my article on Theater Impact nearly a year ago, and as was mentioned in a Plain Dealer article by Steven Litt in 2007 (Energizing Detroit-Shoreway; Theater renovations, new building at the heart of neighborhood revitalization. June 24), theater has a definite economic impact on a region and especially on a neighborhood.  A fact discussed in various NEA reports as well (American Participation in Theater, AMS Planning and Research Corporation, Research Division Report #35, National Endowment for the Arts, Santa Ana, Calif. : Seven Locks Press, 1996).  The Gordon Square Arts District is poised to raise $30 million dollars itself for the renovation and reconstruction of the theater district on the Detroit Shoreway, and this $30 million dollar investment in the downtown theater district will turn Cleveland in to a powerhouse of theater with a true potential to rival Chicago as Brown notes about the Loop theater district there.

And I am pleased that what Tony Brown wrote about nearly two years ago, with regard to this possible merger and renovation, is coming true, as will some of what I wrote about then in another article.

What I continue to be sorely, sorely disappointed in is the lack of interest in playwrights or writers in general in this process.  I have learned over the years that you don’t wait for someone to ask you to come to a meeting or party or group—that you need to get off your ass and insert yourself into the mix and into the dialog and I guess, as much as anything, I’m asking aloud who should be inserting themselves into the conversation on behalf of writers?  Cleveland State University is a member of the Northeast Ohio Masters of Fine Arts (NEOMFA) program—a consortium of 4 schools: Akron, YSU, CSU, and Kent.  The CSU campus is the home site of the MFA playwrights unit.  This unit has turned out some fine writers already, including Michael Sepesy, a fine writer who has performed his work in the New York Fringe Festival and had many positive reviews of his work at CPT.  Michael Oatman, another fine, dynamic, and outrageous writer who’s work was recently featured in the New York Times, who is now a playwright in residence at the University of Nebraska, and who co-authored Warpaint which was a finalist for the John Cauble Short Play award and was produced at the National Kennedy Center American Theatre Festival in April, 2009 in Washington, DC.  Additionally, I’ll blow my own horn briefly as having authored a play that received Best Original Script by a Local Playwright, 2008, Rave and Pan.  There are others, including Michael Parsons who runs Theatre Daedalus in Columbus, OH, along with another talented writer in Jaclyn Villano. And, unfortunately, the dark side—with other fine writers like Peter Roth and Katie Buckels leaving Cleveland to find more receptive environments, such as Carnegie Mellon and Pace University respectively.

It is just unbelievable that MFA playwrights are not being mixed into the fold along side MFA actors and new theatrical spaces—and all of this brought together in a formidable tempest of creative production.  Why is Cleveland always waiting for winners and not reaching out and grabbing hold of its own fucking piece of the fated future and forging it into a dynasty—why must we look to Chicago for a Steppenwolf and a Mamet or Gilman, etc., who seems to look sideways at New York for something else? Well, I take that back, we can learn from Chicago: learn how to generate a strong theater environment for all theater artists, so that new work emerges from new playwrights using a system of powerful theater companies.