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Just watched the 1931 movie by G. W. Pabst and was utterly fascinated. The movie begins with a music piece that was familiar almost immediately to me, then I realized why: Tom Waits: “What Keeps Mankind Alive” (Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, & Bastards, Disc 3) So, I was drawn in to the movie almost immediately. In fact, I was amazed at how many of the songs I know without realizing it. It’s like reading Shakespeare and finding yourself staring at some cliche phrase you’ve heard a thousand times and then realize that this is where it came from. The fact that Brecht took this play from Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera is cool too. I read that in college and now am very much inspired to go back and read it again. (I must also admit to the humor of hearing it in German, and reading subtitles that refer to Soho and locations in London.)

My favorite scene, right now, is when Polly Peachum sings on her wedding night–against the backdrop of the moon and the ships.

One of the conventions in the movie, and I’ll have to check out Brecht’s play, is the narrator who periodically intervenes and provides foreshadowing. I think this is an interesting notion for a number of reasons, the best being tension. If your play is rolling and then a narrator steps in and talks about how Character A gets murdered, and Character A is currently alive, this 1) tells the audience what will happen and 2) makes them acutely aware that it will happen at some future point and they will tune in.

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!