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Finally. That’s what I have to say. Finally.

Several articles have been written recently regarding the possibility of a new home for the Cleveland State University Drama Program, these follow on a proposed master plan discussed a year or so ago. The gist of the new plan includes moving the program to the Allen Theatre, right down Euclid Avenue, positioning the CSU Drama program right in the middle of Playhouse Square.

As Steven Litt, of the Plain Dealer, writes: “Meanwhile, the university and Playhouse Square are discussing a project that would turn the nearby Allen Theatre into a new home for the CSU’s drama program. It would cost at least $10 million and would divide the Allen into two or more performance spaces, while keeping most of the historic 1921 theater intact.”

Further, as Tony Brown postulates, “Here’s a possible future: A 21st-century showcase for the best college drama from Northeast Ohio’s major centers of higher education.”

Why major centers? Funny that you ask. Case Western Reserve University’s MFA Acting program has an agreement with the Cleveland Playhouse to provide a venue for the young stable of actors at Case. But this points to the absence of anything comparable for the playwrights in the CSU or NEOMFA program. And believe me, as a MFA playwright I know what a difference having MFA actors would make. I don’t want to knock undergrads, but there’s cutting your teeth and there’s cutting your teeth. Beating this metaphor to death: some of the undergrads are still drooling and figuring out what the little calcium nubs in their mouth are; but the MFA actors are outright chewing and tearing into things. I’ve seen some of their stuff, including a very good Tom Stoppard piece (The Real Thing). But this doesn’t just include playwrights and actors, this includes lighting, sound, costuming, set-design, and more…

But, I digress. It is a hope that these MFA programs can be merged (or at least come to an agreement) and the addition of the Allen Theatre could serve as a strong catalyst. Don’t get me wrong (again) I don’t dislike the Factory Theatre. It has an upstairs blackbox space that is nice and a very large theater space that is, in my opinion, not made available enough for the MFA playwrights. But the Factory Theatre was just that: a factory. A cotton factory. The Allen Theatre was always a theater.

Further, if Brown is correct, “The university [CSU] would manage the Allen as a downtown venue for a consortium of college theaters across the region to show off their work.”

And I say the more the merrier. This tangentially connects with my earlier piece on this year’s Ingenuity work–there is something magical about a gaggle of artists in one place. Ideas radiate, ricochet, and energy pulsates. And to be in Playhouse Square adds a touch of legitimacy (respectability?) for those who would otherwise seek the general run-of-the-mill, anemic theater fare.

Again, according to Brown, “Last week, [Michael] Schwartz [president at CSU] put the Allen on the front burner for his final year at the university when he announced his retirement next June.

“When I got here in 2001, we were at the very edge of Playhouse Square but had virtually no contact, and that made absolutely no sense whatsoever given our location and the voracious appetite for theater in Northeast Ohio,” Schwartz said.

“I am going to do something about that.”

… He now envisions a theater management program, a technical-theater training school, and a new scenery and costume manufacturing shop operated jointly by CSU and Great Lakes Theater Festival, which is now renovating Playhouse Square’s Hanna Theatre into its new performance home.

Other quotes follow, including Timothy Chandler, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Kent; Charles Fee, Producing Artistic Director at the Great Lakes Theater Festival; and Thomas Schorgl, President of the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture. A good beginning to a necessary partnership-building that can make something like this happen. Taken along with the idea I mentioned in an earlier posting, regarding a voucher program I read about in American Theatre, there are great possibilities for building a theater community in Northeast Ohio that can be truly vibrant.

God knows, that certainly is the kind of theater environment I’d like to be in the midst of!

I sat down next to Barbara Becker when all of us (Raymond, playwrights, actors, and directors) were meeting to discuss how Little Box would work. She was kind enough to move her papers and let me sit. I was struck by her genuine nature, she is a lovely person. She is also an attractive person who is quite fit. I was therefore surprised, after the Little Box meeting, to see her stand up and limp around: well, not just limp, it is a serious impediment. This brings us to her play.

As described by Becker herself in the Little Box description:

Ictus is a journey through a foreign country and through the world of catastrophic illness. An athletic, healthy, thirty-five year old woman experiences a severe stroke or brain attack while traveling through Italy on vacation. In seconds her life is derailed. Unable to speak or swallow and paralyzed she must find a way to put her life back together as she struggles through rehabilitation of her paralyzed body. The brain is the center of the self. How do you put your life back together if everything that makes you you is damaged or out of commission?

Ictus is derived from the Latin, icere “to strike with a weapon” and one can almost hear a warrior boasting, “I brought him down with one fell stroke…” such is what happened to Becker, as she ably demonstrates in her work.

The stroke happened while she was in Italy, far from any hospital. One of the daunting statements, and I hope I’m getting it right, is that a portion of your brain the size of a pea dies every 5 minutes that the brain is denied blood and oxygen. It was 5 hours before she got to a hospital that could treat her. As she notes in her play, “that’s a lot of peas.”

Thematically, the trip to Italy works very much in Becker’s favor, as does her constant use of Italian throughout. The trip to Italy and our trip through her stroke work off each other to show the foreign character of the experience: you are not in world that you know anymore; the things you took for granted are no longer things that you may assume, everything is foreign now.

Ictus stars Laurel Brooke Johnson who’s seen some movie and tv work. She does a fantastic job demonstrating the physical difficulties faced by Becker: walking, speaking, struggling to stand, etc. And does a compelling job demonstrating the anguish and frustration that surely must have dominated, and still must dominate, Becker’s daily life. Johnson also has a blog.

Structurally, the play presents a linear timeline of events that take up at least a year, from the trip’s promising start in Italy to her return home from the Cleveland Clinic. It is framed by a timeless space in which Johnson (Becker) examines five or six pairs of shoes set on chairs about the stage. These shoes are from her own life and represent events and stages of her life: running shoes she wore in marathons, dress shoes for various occasions, etc., all the phases of her past life: her once normal life. The final frame sees her in the same place: shoes all around, but this time a new pair have been added: the right shoe larger than the left (presumably for a brace). One thing I found neat was the physiological, if you will, examination of the shoes—the wear patterns—how these changed. It was done at both the beginning of the play and at the end. What was most striking was the final analysis where the pinky toe area of the right shoe is examined: it shows wear—where dragging it across a floor has caused excessive damage.

I am reminded here of my one time next door neighbor as a boy: Mike Stout. Mike had been impacted by polio as a boy and one of his legs (and subsequently his foot) was smaller than the other. He too had to purchase shoes of the same style but in different sizes for each foot. I always wondered at this. Wondered at how one would go about purchasing shoes in this way: did he have a special shoe store that he went to? Or did he have to explain at every store why he wanted to break apart a perfectly good pair? Or did he have to buy two pairs, knowing he would never use two of the shoes?

I think the framing device works to great effect. I think the linear portion works fine, too, but at times it is a bit of a strain—as the audience member is going through highly narrated events in a point-by-point way. There is great potential for dead time here and, in fact, there are points that the piece drags—either the rhythm/pacing needs to be examined or something needs shortened. However, these faults are ably compensated in theatrical ways: for instance, a projector and screen is used as a visual aid to many segments that have the effect of adding energy to the piece. For instance, right after the stroke Becker is forced to write everything (as she cannot speak) and the projector shows, in tremulous scrawl, the words she puts on the pad of paper. There are other comic points, too: when they are testing her ability to recognize objects and emotions and she is asked “is this man happy or sad” and the projected picture is an absurd fellow with a smile that seems as much gas as genuine emotion. There are other elements of staging that add energy to the presentation as well.

Overall, I like this piece and I think Becker deserves a lot of credit for putting up what is extremely personal and her equally personal ruminations on the event. Her examination is insightful and elements are cautionary: value what you have. This is made more poignant, I think, by the fact that she is so young and this happened; yet the reality is that many of us will face something similar in our own lives—as aging and the decline of the body is a fact each of us faces.