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1Oct

The state of the arts critic

Posted by: CanvasCLE Categories: Stages
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As theaters and local entertainment resume, what kind of press will they be met with?  

AJ Abelman Photography

By Bob Abelman

It is safe to say William Shakespeare had no critics in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Sure, there were supporters, sponsors, detractors and promoters, but there were no professional theater critics scuttling out of the Globe to meet a deadline for the morning edition. Newspapers and a large, literate audience to read them did not surface in earnest until the late 1700s.

And even then, those who chose the theater as a profession – as artists and critics – were not deemed particularly newsworthy. In London, theater critic was an occupation pursued only by what has been described in one historical text as “managerial toadies who were puffing their own wares, opportunistic knockers (or) unclassified eccentrics.”  

In the United States at that time, theater criticism was described as “fly-by-night news-sheets and scurrilous pamphlets popping up everywhere, mingling blind-item theatrical gossip with detailed analysis, often willfully and malevolently inaccurate, of plays and performances.” 

As a Cleveland critic myself for the past 20 years, I know first-hand that this perception of the profession has changed very little.

The rise of modern criticism

Western arts journalism evolved largely in the coffee houses of London and saloons of the United States in the aftermath of the industrial revolution in the mid-1800s. The growth of cities, rail transportation and leisure time by an increasingly large privileged class gave way to the development and support of arts institutions and museums. And the growth of newspapers and magazines led to the well-educated and highly opinionated arts journalists they employed.  

“Comprehension without critical evaluation is impossible,” said Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, an 18th and 19th century philosopher.

Also, arts criticism grew exponentially when artists began to make works that were not sponsored by the church or state, whose commissions demanded ideological and often stylistic conformity. Artists had become freelance free-spirited producers for a market that was not always there. Finding, informing and intriguing a market required objective evaluation from a credible source, which reinforced and bolstered the role of the critic. 

“La promenade du Critique influent” (“The Promenade of the Influential Critic”) by French lithographer Honoré Daumier from Le Charivari magazine, June 24, 1865. Reprinted with permission from Bob Abelman and Cheryl Kushner’s “Refereeing the Muses” (Peter Lang Publishing, 2013), and via open access through the National Gallery of Art.

The role of the critic

“We read critics for the perceptions, for what they tell us that we didn’t fully grasp when we saw the work,” noted Pauline Kael, the late film critic who wrote for The New Yorker.  

Andrew Sullivan, former editor of The New Republic and columnist for The Sunday Times in London, suggested that “Many readers were bemused by Marcel Proust and James Joyce until (American literary critic) Edmund Wilson wrote about them. When Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting For Godot’ opened, the audience was puzzled until (English drama critic) Harold Hobson’s famous review came out. … If they had not been there, our artistic world –  our inner lives – would have been more anemic.”

Without the “consciousness that only a critical infrastructure can supply,” wrote American novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick in an article in Harper’s Magazine, “readers and writers are doomed to talk at cross-purposes, or at random; it takes a corps of influential critics to unite individual reactions into a common discussion. Indeed, superior criticism not only unifies and interprets a literary culture but has the power to imagine it into being.”

And so, over time, the critic has earned a certain sovereignty over art history, or at least great influence in creating the canon of art by naming modern movements and their influential artists, and evaluating their works. In the early 20th century, the professional arts critics’ opinions were revered and often feared by their respective industries. They not only helped inform audience opinions, they also dictated sales, kept the arts the topic of discussion, and – for critics the likes of George Bernard Shaw (theater), Clement Greenberg (fine art), H.T. Parker (music), Carl Van Vechten (dance), James Agee (film) and Northrop Frye (literature) — shaped the arts themselves.  

“At best, the critic is an artist whose point of departure is another artist’s work,” wrote the late theater critic Harold Clurman.

Just a few decades ago, in the most arts-centric cities in the country with access to the most powerful publications in the world, critics were an elite corps of taste-makers, culture shapers and standard bearers. In 1973, Newsweek ran a special issue on “The Arts in America” and writer Arthur Cooper heralded in “the era of the critic as superstar.” Critics often molded the arts by pushing artists to raise the bar on the quality of their work or the amount of creative risk being taken.

Of course, sometimes the artists pushed back.

Pushback

In Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” it is no coincidence that he makes the profession of critic the most grievous insult among the many exchanged between the two main characters in his avant-garde play. Similar slights have appeared in many other works, including Ken Ludwig’s 2011 whodunit comedy “The Game’s Afoot,” where a theater critic is stabbed to death in the opening act, and in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2006 film “Lady in the Water,” where a film critic is unceremoniously eaten by evil forces.

In the same year as that Newsweek special issue, in a New York City restaurant, actress Sylvia Miles dumped a plateful of food on New York magazine critic John Simon’s head after he wrote unflattering comments in his review of her off-Broadway performance in “Nellie Toole and Co.” Simon, ever the stickler for minute details, wrote that the plate consisted of a fine pâté, steak tartare, brie and a mediocre potato salad.

Cleveland has not been exempt from such bad behavior, even though the market is smaller than New York and the critics are less powerful. In 2006, then-theater critic Tony Brown wrote a negative review of the Cleveland Play House’s production of “Rabbit Hole” for the city’s only and the state’s largest daily newspaper, The Plain Dealer. During a nasty curtain speech at a subsequent production, then-artistic director Michael Bloom called out the critic in the crowd. When Bloom walked out of the theater after the speech, Brown was close behind. The two met in the lobby and the artistic director took a swipe at the critic but missed, much to the chagrin of the season ticket holders who were hoping for a better fight.

“If Attila the Hun were alive today, he’d be a drama critic,” said playwright Edward Albee.

The disappearing critic

Print journalism has been in a state of crisis and decline over the past 15 years, reeling from a digital revolution that has seen decreased subscriptions, diminished advertising and which spearheaded the move to less profitable online platforms. The New Yorker reported that more than one in five newspapers in the United States have shuttered, and the number of journalists working for papers has been cut in half.  

As collateral damage, the ranks of the arts critic has similarly dwindled. The roll call of the fallen reads like a high profile who’s who, including the chief film critic and longtime theater critic at Variety, two veteran film critics at Newsday and The Village Voice’s full-time film critic, who was laid off before the storied New York alt-weekly eventually shut down in 2018 after a 63-year run (it returned online and in print quarterly this year). Ruth Reichl was one of the last towering food critics until her magazine, Gourmet, folded. Steven Leigh Morris, the longtime theater editor and critic at the LA Weekly, survived six rounds of layoffs before he was let go and his position eliminated. 

Literary critics and classical music critics fell by the wayside when McClatchy, the third-largest newspaper chain in the country, cut 10% of its workforce. In the last decade, longtime TV critics at major-market dailies – including the Dallas Morning News, Seattle-Post Intelligencer, New York’s Daily News and the Houston Chronicle – had been either let go or reassigned.  

New ownership by ever more extractive, cost-cutting private equity firms and hedge funds no doubt added to the casualty list. As the Chicago Tribune’s Lori Waxman noted in her recent op-ed “Where Have All the Arts Critics Gone?” – “when money is tight, arts coverage is often the first to go.”

In Cleveland, Scene Magazine senior writer Sam Allard observed that “The Plain Dealer/Cleveland.com is utterly devoid of cultural criticism” after the latest series of layoffs of arts journalists in April 2020, including the movie, TV, book, theater, dance and dining critic. “The classical music writer is now freelance,” adds Allard. “There is no comedy columnist or humorist, no nightlife columnist, no gossip columnist, no ‘minister of culture.’ There is no pop music critic.”

Scene’s arts and entertainment coverage has also constricted dramatically, particularly during COVID-19. The music editor, Jeff Niesel, who reviewed concerts, interviewed local bands and touring acts, and assembled the weekly concert listings, was among those laid off in the pandemic’s wake. And much of Allard’s resource-intensive feature reporting and investigative work, which includes film criticism, has been reverted to daily blogging responsibilities. “Arts criticism,” he says, “is only valuable when it’s thoughtful, which tends not to fit into this equation.” 

“The tragedy isn’t just that knowledgeable, experienced, caring voices on the arts are being jettisoned wholesale,” says Mark Dawidziak, former TV critic at the Plain Dealer, “but that they are being tossed aside at a time when their voices are most needed.”

Criticism amid COVID-19

Since the closing of arts venues due to COVID-19 beginning in March 2020, it’s been estimated that, nationwide, almost 1.4 million performing arts related jobs and $42.5 billion in sales have been lost. The arts scene in London between 1603 and 1613 suffered similar devastation when festivals and playhouses were shut down for a total of 78 months – more than 60% of the time – because of recurring bubonic plague outbreaks. When theatergoers reluctantly returned, they found that the quarantined Shakespeare had written “Measure for Measure” and put the finishing touches on “King Lear,” “Macbeth,” and “Antony and Cleopatra.”

Only now are some Cleveland theaters, galleries, halls and museums reopening for business, and audiences – like their Elizabethan counterparts – are finding revised performance seasons that include original and innovative works created during quarantine and reflective of their recent struggles to survive. But audiences are still hesitant to return to indoor venues, citing health concerns as the overriding factor.

“I worry that without numerous, diverse voices writing about and bringing greater visibility to the arts, it will make the work of professional theaters to bounce back and thrive considerably more difficult in the years to come,” says Nathan Motta, artistic director at Dobama Theatre in Cleveland Heights. 

In light of the past 15 months and their devastating impact on the arts, perhaps arts critics still employed and with access to sizable audiences will find their writing to be more personal, more empathetic, and less adversarial. Perhaps it will be a while before we see our next negative review.

Not according to some of our area’s most high-profile working critics – specifically the News-Herald’s Mark Meszoros, the Akron Beacon Journal’s Kerry Clawson and Scene’s Christine Howey.   

Some, myself and Clawson included, feel an obligation to chronicle how arts organizations have adapted to connect with audiences during the pandemic and call attention to the financial challenges they’ve faced. But few feel particularly compelled to overtly advocate for the arts as we begin to review, believing that audiences will return when they are psychologically and financially ready to do so. “I certainly want to see the Northeast Ohio arts scene thrive,” notes Meszoros, “but my primary obligation is to my readers.”    

And fewer still feel the need to adjust our critical expectations and evaluations based on a “pandemic curve” – that is, the financial struggles of the past 15 months, the difficult rehearsal protocols and the decreased budgets. Says Howey, “I owe the theaters and all the creative people involved my honesty, and that’s what I attempt to provide.” 

Playwright Oscar Wilde once warned an age without criticism is “an age that possesses no art at all.” He never could have imagined an age when the arts are eager for resurgence, but there are few critical voices to herald their return. 

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19Aug

SignStage theatrical program brings deaf, hearing actors together

Posted by: CanvasCLE Categories: Stages
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Bridging the sound barrier

Story and photography by Jane Kaufman

Ask William Morgan to interpret his spoken words into American Sign Language, and there’s a hesitation.

While ASL and English are related, they don’t share a common sentence structure. A direct translation of either language won’t quite make sense.

“In English you say, ‘What’s your name?’ In ASL, you say, ‘Your name what?’” explains Morgan, artistic manager of SignStage, a program of the Cleveland Hearing & Speech Center in the University Circle neighborhood of Cleveland that engages deaf, hard of hearing and hearing students in acting as a form of communication and expression. “It becomes a little more signed English.”

In fact, Morgan says, there’s an expression that refers to signing and speaking English at the same time by a single speaker. It’s called simultaneous communication. The sign in ASL for sim-com is an “S” formed with the right hand enclosing the left hand’s “C.” The sign appears to be a bit of a visual entanglement – perhaps because sim-com is an imperfect form of communication. It challenges the speaker to think simultaneously in two quite different languages.

These inherent complexities in theatrical productions with both deaf and hearing casts, crews and audiences may contribute to the sense of closeness and shared ingenuity at SignStage as they close the gap between the hearing and deaf communities, producing shows that attract both. Back after a pandemic hiatus, the group is preparing its next production starring both deaf and hearing actors. 

At SignStage, each actor’s spoken lines are signed by an interpreter; likewise each actor’s signs are voiced by a different speaker.

Through his work at SignStage, Morgan says he hopes to create “really strong bonds between deaf and hearing people.” Those bonds take hold in an environment that values each person’s contributions to the fabric of the production and where, taking a cue from deaf culture, honest communication is honored.

William Morgan, artistic manager of SignStage, front right, leads the cast in rehearsal.

History of performing, educating

SignStage’s mission, according to its website, is to create programs and performances that promote awareness and demonstrate the value of cultural diversity between deaf and hearing communities. SignStage performs and holds theatrical residencies at schools and provides workshops in gesture communication skills and theater-based education programming incorporating ASL.

In July, SignStage players were in rehearsal for “Dancing Hands Jukebox,” an anthology of songs, scenes and playlets of both previously performed and newly written original material. For example, it will feature a scene from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” which SignStage put on in 2019, as well as dance routines and songs.

At the first rehearsal, about a dozen actors – both deaf and hearing people of all ages – gathered to hear a synopsis of the show and begin rehearsing what’s likely to be a show-stopping and humorous take on Katrina & The Waves’ recording of “Walking on Sunshine.” Two of the cast switch off to interpret for Morgan, who is hearing, as he directs the cast. 

There is a great deal of smiling and chuckling during the rehearsal as Morgan gestures broadly to convey the story, mood and vibe he hopes to create in this piece of the show, in which actors play nursing home residents startled awake by the music who begin to line dance. They then break out into improvisational dances, solo or together, and then fall back into a stupor.

SignStage began in 1975 as Fairmount Theatre of the Deaf at the Coventry Village Branch of Heights Libraries in Cleveland Heights. Founded by Brian Kilpatrick, a deaf actor, and Chas St. Clair, the troupe staged plays and interpreted them in ASL. 

In 1979, the company moved to the Cleveland Play House. Under the name Cleveland Sign Stage Theatre, there were performances at the Brooks and Studio theaters. At that venue, the program won four local Emmy Awards and two Cleveland Critics’ Circle Awards. 

After falling on difficult financial straits in 2000, Morgan, who was then artistic director, worked with trustees at Cleveland Hearing & Speech Center to bring SignStage under its auspices. That transition came to fruition in 2007. 

One recent and successful show was “The Ugly Duckling Doesn’t Quack,” which went on national tour and then was staged in Chagrin Falls in 2018. Based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, Morgan added a new dimension to the main character: deafness. That alteration allowed SignStage to educate its audiences about how a deaf child learns to speak.

Personal experience

When Jaison Anderson learned he landed the lead role in SignStage’s production of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in 2019, he was surprised and nervous. The Maple Heights resident has hearing loss and had never acted before he auditioned for the show. A friend who is an interpreter suggested he try out.

“Honestly, I liked everything about it: the cast, how it was arranged, and everything was fun,” says Anderson, who now teaches ASL at Oberlin City Schools. “I mean, we worked hard. We worked together. The group was amazing – amazing people, and we all put our ideas together.”

Jaison Anderson and Erin LaFountain work on choreography for “Dancing Hands Jukebox.”

Anderson says in rehearsals he learned to sign more broadly than he does in communicating one on one in order to get his message out, in much the same way a hearing actor needs to project. He also learned to face the front of the stage to be seen.

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” as it turns out, was one of SignStage’s most popular recent productions.

“It was almost magical in a good way,” Morgan says. “These actors, they put it together.”

The camaraderie and shared creativity Anderson found at SignStage are two of the intangibles Morgan hopes to foster as deaf and hearing communities bridge the sound barrier.

Morgan says one of the surprises in landing his first role in deaf theater in 1997 was how “blunt” people are in the deaf community. If he put on weight, he says, he might be told, “Wow, you got fat.”

Members of the deaf and signing community often have a natural facility for acting because ASL depends on facial expression as an integral part of the language, he says.

“They have a real connection to the deep, deep emotion,” Morgan says. “They’ve got the expressions easily. You don’t have to show them or even ask them, and they recreate it.”

‘Higher level’ of communication

Like most theater companies across the country, SignStage took a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ramping back up for the first time in July since the pandemic took hold has been challenging for Morgan.

The theater where he hoped to stage SignStage’s next production has decided not to reopen just yet. So, Morgan has improvised and will offer the next production, “Dancing Hands Jukebox” by videotape.

Cast members of “Dancing Hands Jukebox” rehearse their routine for “Walking on Sunshine.”

Julianne Kuchcinski and her son Matthew Kuchcinski, 16, travel from Twinsburg to be part of the production. Both are veteran actors of SignStage.

In “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Matthew played Augustus Gloop. A hearing actor, he signed the role. His mother, who is also hearing, voiced the part for him. 

The two practiced signing daily during that rehearsal process and in the car on their way to rehearsals.

“I started learning sign language right out of high school,” Julianne Kuchcinski says. “I’ve done it for many years. Never knew why, I just did it for fun. And it wasn’t until I found the audition notice for ‘The Ugly Duckling’ that I thought, ‘Now I know why.’ It’s just an awesome community of people. Every show has been just amazing. … You’ve got the people who are completely deaf and the people who know very little sign language, and yet we can get along, and we can communicate to the best of our ability, and it’s just an awesome family experience.”

She says she enjoys working with Morgan because he’s supportive.

“He’s very animated,” she says. “When he’s showing you what he wants, he’s like doing it right there, and it gives you a good role model to follow. And yet, he’ll let you put your own little touch to it.”

Morgan hopes audiences note the beauty of signing as they take in the show.

“You see things you’ve never heard at a SignStage production,” he says. 

With its rich emotional content, Morgan has great respect for the language of ASL as well as for the deaf community. He is also aware that what he’s doing is, in a way, sacred work.

“It’s almost like you’re lifted up to a higher level in communicating,” he says.  

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27Nov

‘Shadow of the Run’ brings immersive theater to Bedford’s historic district

Posted by: CanvasCLE Categories: Stages
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Gwen Felton, playing the Lady of the Lake, does a scene with actor Adam Kirk, who stands in as an audience member during rehearsal for “Shadow of the Run Chapter 1: WanderLust.”

Story by Jane Kaufman

Henry Bernstein Photos / Three Driveway Media

In the 1930s, Cleveland was terrorized by a set of gruesome serial murders. Victims were decapitated, bled and dismembered.

Dubbed the torso killer or the mad butcher of Kingsbury Run, the killer was never identified despite the best efforts of then-public safety director Eliot Ness and his team.

That macabre subject serves as the backdrop and foreground for a series of immersive theater projects designed by Shadow of the Run LLC, a for-profit theater company based in North Canton.

Immersive theater is just that: Rather than having the invisible fourth wall or proscenium arch separating the audience from the action, audience members take part in some way.

The company’s first show, “Shadow of the Run Chapter 1: WanderLust,” was staged in four buildings and in open air of Bedford’s historic district in July and August.

Bedford Town Square, where “Shadow of the Run Chapter 1: WanderLust,” was staged.

In it, 21 actors interacted with 14 audience members – individually and as a whole – who walked in groups from scene to scene in a theatrical experience that challenged them to drink, smell, listen and observe, and play a role in the flow of the scenes. During its run, the show played 12 times an evening with start times staggered 20 minutes apart.

“WanderLust,” the first iteration of an upcoming series of theatrical experiences, created a back story for the Lady of the Lake, the first victim of the torso slayings. The culminating project of Shadow of the Run will be a full-length warehouse-sized production by the same name. That final project was the first piece written but won’t be staged for at least a year and a half. In the meantime, the theater company is in the midst of staging a series of smaller productions.

‘An actor prepares’   

Michael Sharon, a retired lawyer who lives in Cleveland Heights, played the apothecary in “WanderLust.” As part of his research into the healing art, he found an apothecary shop in Bedford within walking distance of the historic district where the show was staged. The owners allowed him to use fox bones.

During his scene where audience members were directed to visit his shop and engage, he asked them to “cast the bones,” or pour them from a canister onto a table. As some might read palms or tea leaves, Sharon says he used the pattern the bones formed to determine how to customize sachets for audience members seeking protection.

“The spirit in the bones would tell me,” he says.

Michael Sharon, who played the apothecary in “Shadow of the Run Chapter 1: WanderLust” says immersive theater presents special challenges to an actor, which he enjoys.

The Lady of the Lake was a so-called Jane Doe, and writer Beth McGee imagined her as a young woman from Bedford striking out for Cleveland. Similarly, Sharon, who acts in traditional theater as well, created a back story for his character as the town attorney and sometimes apothecary, the maternal grandson of Romani, who taught him about herbs and sachets.

In his role, Sharon had one-on-one encounters with members of the audience, quite different from delivering lines from a stage. A hallmark of immersive theater is that it requires a heightened and intimate level of audience interaction. 

Sharon says he enjoys the experience and prefers it to traditional acting. Dealing with the unexpected may be important for actors in this sort of theater, but timing is critical.

“I have done litigation during my career, and it does help,” he says. “Anybody who’s got the ability to think on their feet is going to be better served in this type of theater. A good actor is going to live in their character a little bit.”

Logistics and special effects

Every scene had to run like clockwork in ‘Wanderlust.’ A synchronized soundscape provided cues to the actors about when each scene needed to close, a device commonly used in immersive theater.

“Everything was done meticulously so that we know where every given patron and actor is at any given moment,” says Ben Needham, production designer. 

Because of the close proximity of the audience, special effects must hold up under scrutiny, including makeup and prosthetics, says Christine Woods, co-owner, designer and escape room designer; the final production will include two escape rooms. 

“There’s the saying in theater – it only has to look good 30 feet away and four feet up,” she says, adding that maxim doesn’t apply to immersive theater. “People know that it’s not real, but you don’t want it to pull them out of the experience.”

Another challenge in setting the stage and preparing the actors is conveying the rules of engagement to the audience.

“We want people to be able to intuitively understand the rules,” Woods says. “That’s always a challenge because this is still a young medium where we’re still trying to learn from other people.” 

In immersive theater, actors will sometimes invite experience through touch.

“We’re trying to make sure that they engage but don’t engage in a harmful way,” she says. “There are some spaces where it’s OK to touch things. And there are other spaces where that’s a real antique and we don’t want to mess with it.”

Lighting can help, as can staging.

“The more we can do with managing their attention in a way that they aren’t even interested in touching that thing over there, the more we win,” Woods says.

“We were fortunate enough to have the resources of the Bedford Historical Society at our disposal. So we had a series of buildings that were all from the 1800s that we were to actually put our show inside of,” Needham says. “So instead of creating a train station from scratch, like we would in theater and film, we actually were able to use a historical train station for one of the locations. It was really well received because no one had seen anything like this.”

After the show, audience members often spent hours comparing their different and shared experiences.

How it started

Created in London in 2000, the concept of immersive theater first came to the attention of Adam Kern in 2009, when American Repertory Theater brought “Sleep No More” from London to the Old Lincoln School in Brookline, Mass.

At the time, Kern was in graduate school working on his Master’s of Fine Arts at the American Repertory Theater Moscow Art Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

“Getting to see my classmates and friends work on that production led me on a trip to kind of see more immersive theater,” he says. “I also worked with an immersive haunted house called Blackout. … Those two things combined, and seeing immersive (theater) around the country, just made me want to be involved in it.”

After the North Canton native returned from Los Angeles in December of 2015, he wanted to launch immersive theater localy. He decided to reach out to McGee, a theater professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, whom he met in 2002. At that time, they were working on “Big River” at the Porthouse Theatre in Cuyahoga Falls and later collaborated on other theater projects. 

A week after he returned to North Canton, Kern called McGee to ask if she would write the show.

“And without missing a beat – and I don’t know why because this hadn’t been a fascination for me or anything – I said, ‘Well if I’m going to write an immersive theater piece in Cleveland, I want to write it about Eliot Ness and the Cleveland torso killer,’” McGee recalls. 

Six months later, her full-length piece, ”Shadow of the Run,” was finished, and the company launched in late 2017, with four co-owners: Kern, McGee, Needham and Woods. Based in North Canton, the limited liability corporation is a bit unusual for an arts organization. It is structured as a business, and it pays every member of its cast and crew.

Max Elinsky plays chess in a scene staged in Bedford this past July and August.

Art as inspiration

McGee says her inspiration for the topic came from a 2010 multi-media installation called “An Invitation to Lubberland” by Duke Riley shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland. That installation focused on Kingsbury Run, a river that has been diverted underground. In the 1930s, the intersection of Kingsbury Run and the Cuyahoga River was home to a homeless persons’ camp.

“And that’s where the torso killer was preying on people,” McGee says. “I was fascinated by that history by going to the exhibit, and that’s what I think fueled my idea.”

Casting ‘Wanderlust’ proved particularly challenging, says Kern, the director, because the green light for the show came less than two weeks before it went into rehearsals. He says future shows will be easier to cast now that local actors have been exposed to immersive theater.

“We had a lot of actors come through as audience members and reach out to us saying, ‘Hey, when can I do this, how can I audition?’” Kern says. “So, I think a little bit more time and notice and we will not have any issue with that. But for a first-time company, it was a little scary having to go into a first rehearsal casting two or three roles.”

Liz Samsa stands on the railroad tracks in downtown Bedford where “Shadow of the Run Chapter 1: WanderLust” was staged.

What’s in store 

The hope is to stage the full warehouse-sized, “Shadow of the Run,” as an ongoing or permanent production in Cleveland, possibly in 2021, Kern says.

A pop-up show, “Railroaded: A Shadow of the Run Story” will be staged, tentatively from Jan. 9 through Jan. 12, 2020 at a location to be announced. 

Those who attended “WanderLust” can take part in an internet game or puzzle starting in late November or early December, leading up to “Railroaded,” Woods says. Others may take part in that game as well, although Woods says attendees of “WanderLust” may have a leg up.

McGee says “Railroaded” will center on the village at Kingsbury Run where some of the body parts were found.

“In the 1930s … Cleveland was considered a welcoming town to hobos,” McGee says. “There were three railroads that all crossed through that area of Cleveland, and so it was easy for the hobos to jump off and camp.”

McGee is just starting to write the script for ‘Railroaded,” having won funding in early November.

She says “Shadow of the Run Chapter 2: Calloused” will feature Eliot Ness as a character, tentatively scheduled for summer of 2020. 

The title, “Calloused,” comes from a quote by Ness.

“You think eventually that nothing can disturb you and that your nerves are impregnable,” Ness is quoted as having said. “Yet looking down at that familiar face, I realize that death is something to which we never become calloused.” 

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26Apr

NT Live offers a new platform for an old art form, from London to Cleveland

Posted by: CanvasCLE Categories: Stages
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FROM STAGE TO SCREEN

Story by Bob Abelman

A behind-the-scenes look at the NT Live Production of “The Madness of King George III.” | Tom Wren / NT Live

The notion that art imitates life – that creative work reflects and refracts the world around us – is as old as Aristotle’s “Poetics” (c. 335 B.C.), the earliest surviving treatise on the imaginative process.

A less romantic observation, but one that is just as true, is that art often imitates art, where the original imaginative idea of one person is emulated reverentially, borrowed unceremoniously or pilfered outright by someone else. While this practice is no doubt as old as Aristotle, it is most famously traced to William Shakespeare, who turned the pages of others’ literary works into bits and pieces of his own. 

It’s well known that Shakespeare took from Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmond Spenser and Arthur Brooke, among other poets. And recently, a long-forgotten, handwritten document from 1576 by one George North has been found to be the likely source for more than 20 monologues and key passages from Shakespeare’s plays, including “Macbeth,” “King Lear,” “Henry VI” and the “Now is the winter of our discontent” soliloquy from “Richard III.”

Ironically, IMDb – an online database of films, television programs, home videos, video games and internet streams – lists 1,095 entries that emulate, borrow from or pilfer in some form the works of Shakespeare. This number is steadily increasing thanks to the National Theatre in London which, in June will celebrate its 10th year of adapting theatrical productions for the big screen – an endeavor that has included much of Shakespeare’s canon.

“Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal, bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different,” noted author T. S. Eliot, who is known to have borrowed an occasional phrase, line or reference himself.

From stage to screen

Films rooted in works from the page and the stage have attracted film audiences for decades and account for nearly two-thirds of Oscar Best Picture winners. Some plays turned into movies – including “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1944), “Dial M For Murder” (1954) and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966) – have become film classics.

But stage-to-screen adaptations have not escaped the watchful eye of theater critics who argue that the effusion of drama and sense of spontaneity that sweeps across the stage during a live performance is lost on film. And rich dialogue – the bread and butter of stage plays – easily morphs into dull moments in this more visually demanding medium. 

A behind-the-scenes look at the NT Live Production of “Hamlet.” | Ludovic Des Cognets / NT Live

Stage-to-screen storytelling has also been harshly criticized for turning the playwright’s work into a product that best defines the vision of its Hollywood director. Even the films just cited are more often recognized as the works of Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock and Mike Nichols than that of Joseph Kesselring, Frederick Knott and Edward Albee, respectively. Author Virginia Woolf deplored the oversimplification of literary work in its transposition to film, calling the upstart movie industry a “parasite,” literature its “prey” and stage productions its “victim” in a 1926 article in The New Republic.  

The transference of musical theater to the big screen seems to have fared better, but even the highly successful 2012 film version of the Broadway musical “Les Misérables” – which earned $148 million domestic and $283 million worldwide – was met by disparaging reviews regarding its cinematic storytelling. The New York Times called out the overt intrusion of the camera, noting the film’s “inability to leave any lily ungilded” and the failure to “direct a scene without tilting or hurtling or throwing the camera around.” New York magazine called its production values a “tasteless bombardment” and The Hollywood Reporter referred to the film’s visual approach as “laboriously repetitive.”

Critics haven’t been any kinder to recent efforts to bring live musical theater to the small screen, including NBC’s broadcasts of “The Sound of Music” (“As lifeless as those alpine backdrops,” Variety), “Peter Pan” (“Fails to take flight,” NY Daily News) and “The Wiz” (“A hot mess,” The Daily Beast). The highly promoted $10 million production of “Hairspray Live!” in 2016 employed 13 digital cameras, a cast and crew of 700, and the massive soundstages of Universal Studios in California. And yet, with only 8.9 million viewers, it was the lowest rated of all the live broadcast musicals to date.  

That is, until Fox’s presentation of “Rent” this past January, which attracted only 3.1 million viewers. Fraught with what Time magazine referred to as “dizzying camera angles,” “hyperactive editing (that) rarely allowed for a moment’s pause for reaction shots or to let songs sink in,” and “a swooping Steadicam (that) killed the emotional impact of the show,” the production led to NBC pulling the live-TV treatment of “Hair” from its upcoming spring schedule.

Clearly, art imitating art isn’t always an equitable exchange.

The advent of Electronovision

An early and monumentally unsuccessful effort to bridge the chasm in stage and screen storytelling modalities took the form of a production process called Electronovision. In 1964, producer/entrepreneur H. William “Bill” Sargent Jr. sought to capture live stage performance using multiple orthicon video cameras that recorded on tape 800 lines of resolution, with the high-definition images then transferred to film and distributed to cinemas. 

One of just a few stage-to-tape-to-film projects completed by Sargent captured a Broadway production of “Hamlet” at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, which featured Richard Burton in the title role under John Gielgud’s direction. The event was labeled “theatrofilm” in a promotional blurb in which Burton also claimed the Electronovision technology was creating the “theater of the future.” 

Unfortunately, a critic at Film Quarterly referred to the “Hamlet” production as “the worse movie of the year” due largely to the film’s “bad lighting,” “raucous sound” and an  inherent flaw in the black and white orthicon video cameras called “blooming,” where black objects had a white aura around them and white objects had a corresponding black aura. Also, the videotape editing of the period was very primitive, resulting in some epic hit-and-miss moments in the recorded production.

After one year, three films and $30 million in law suits over patent infringement, Electronovision Inc. closed its offices and the technology went the way of the Phantoscope, Silvatone and Kinescope.

A behind-the-scenes look at the NT Live Production of “The Tragedy of King Richard the Second.” | Marc Brenner / NT Live

NT Live and Cleveland Cinemas

More recently, the National Theatre in London attempted to overcome the complexities of live theater by taking a different approach to adapting them for the big screen, called NT Live. And Cleveland Cinemas, which is owned by Jon Forman of JRF Management in Cleveland Heights and operates a total of 46 screens at seven locations in Northeast Ohio, has been one of its local beneficiaries.

Inspired by the Metropolitan Opera, which had pioneered the concept in 2006, the National Theatre launched a live broadcast of its 2009 production of Jean Racine’s tragedy “Phèdre” to local cinemas. It did so with the intention of capturing the integrity of the stage work and replicate, as much as possible, the experience of actually sitting in the theater watching a live performance. The NT Live broadcast was seen by more than 50,000 people, which doubled in one night the audience for the play’s entire three-month run.  

“I recall watching that show myself,” says Dave Huffman, Cleveland Cinemas’ director of marketing. “There was a decent crowd for it and we felt like we were off to a good start.”

Since then, NT Live has broadcast live more than 40 productions while being performed in front of an in-house audience at the National Theatre, and on occasion, other theaters in the UK, the U.S. and elsewhere. To date, its broadcasts have been experienced by nearly 9 million people in more than 2,500 venues around the world, including the Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights and Chagrin Cinemas in Chagrin Falls.

Marketing researchers have found that, far from cannibalizing audiences of local professional theater, NT Live has on average grown audiences for local theaters in London and reported a 6.4 percent increase in local theater attendance in areas nearest an NT Live screening in the year following the broadcasts.

Art imitating art, it seems, can be synergistic. 

“And we find that they can attract people to our (independent and foreign film) theater that may not otherwise come to us,” Huffman says. “While most of the NT Live films skew a bit older, reflective of the theater-going crowd, when we’ve shown things like Danny Boyle’s ‘Frankenstein’ (featuring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller), we definitely see a younger crowd.”

Benedict Cumberbatch in “Hamlet” | NT Live

Method behind the madness

Five to eight high-definition digital cameras, including one that offers gentle tracking shots, are strategically positioned throughout the National Theatre so as to be unobtrusive in their presence and relatively inconspicuous in their coverage. Shots from various camera positions are subtly cut live into a single feed by a camera director, giving the cinema audience access to the best seat in the house at all times.  

For these productions, the theater itself is transformed into something of a live TV studio, and while adjustments are made for lighting, sound and makeup, few changes are made in staging in order to preserve the integrity of the original theatrical design and transpose the stage picture to the screen as effectively as possible. At most, the camera offers heightened intimacy and accentuates the nuances of the actors’ performances and the stage director’s vision. And the actors are always reminded that they are doing a stage performance, not making a movie.

Satellites allow the productions to be filmed live and simulcast across the UK and Europe. In the U.S. and Canada, the majority of venues show it on the same day as the live filming while others in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Mexico, India, Russia, Japan, China, Sweden and South America show it on a delayed basis within a few weeks of the original broadcast. NT Live productions are seen in 65 countries.

The National Theatre produces about 25 new productions each year, which vary from Shakespeare and classics to new plays, so the goal of NT Live is to offer a microcosm of its repertoire and showcase the diversity of what the theater can do.

“We used to think the ultimate success was someone seeing an NT Live, then coming to the theater,” says executive producer David Sabel on the NT Live website. “Now we see it as a success in its own right. Our audience isn’t just about the bricks and mortar. It’s much, much bigger than that.”

Early on, NT Live encountered skepticism about how the live broadcast would work.

“Most people, and I mean myself included,” adds Sabel, “believed that theater when it’s filmed becomes very static, very deadening and it’s so the antithesis of the art form.”  

Not anymore. C

On Screen

NT Live in Northeast Ohio

Upcoming NT Live broadcasts and the Cleveland-area cinemas showing them:

“All About Eve”

7 p.m. May 7 and 11 a.m. May 12 at Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights.

“All About Eve,” the stage adaptation of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Oscar-winning 1950 backstage film classic, touches on celebrity, gossip, roaring ego, ambition, vanity and insecurity. It tells the story of Margo Channing, a legendary star of the theater, and her biggest fan, the young and beautiful Eve.

“The Audience”

  • 7 p.m. June 3 at Cinemark Tinseltown USA and XD in North Canton, Cinemark at Valley View and XD in Valley View, Atlas Cinemas Great Lakes Stadium 16 in Mentor, Regal Cinemas Crocker Park Stadium 16 & IMAX in Westlake, Regal Hudson Cinema 10 in Hudson, Regal Richmond Town Square Stadium 20 in Richmond Heights and Silverspot Cinema Orange Village in Orange
  • 7 p.m. June 4 at Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights and Chagrin Cinemas in Chagrin Falls

For 60 years, the queen has met with each of her 12 prime ministers in a private weekly meeting. This meeting is known as The Audience. Through these private audiences, we see glimpses of the woman behind the crown and witness the moments that shaped a monarch. Academy Award winner Helen Mirren plays Queen Elizabeth II. 

“Hamlet”

  • 7 p.m. July 8 at Cinemark Tinseltown USA and XD in North Canton, Cinemark at Valley View and XD in Valley View, Atlas Cinemas Great Lakes Stadium 16 in Mentor, Regal Cinemas Crocker Park Stadium 16 & IMAX in Westlake, Regal Hudson Cinema 10 in Hudson, Regal Richmond Town Square Stadium 20 in Richmond Heights and Silverspot Cinema Orange Village in Orange
  • 7 p.m. July 9 and 11 a.m. July 14 at Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights and Chagrin Cinemas in Chagrin Falls

Benedict Cumberbatch takes on the title role in Shakespeare’s great tragedy. As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father’s death but paralyzed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.

“The Lehman Trilogy”

11 a.m. Aug. 18 and 7 p.m. Aug. 21 at Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights

According to the critic at the National Review: “The entire library of American cinema and theater contains few works that set out to celebrate or even dispassionately to chronicle, rather than savage or satirize, the details of how great businesses were made and the wonders they wrought. That’s why the three-hour staging of the history of Lehman Brothers is such a surprising – no, staggering – achievement. Housed in the suitably august Park Avenue Armory in New York City, ‘The Lehman Trilogy’ is one of the finest plays I’ve ever seen.”

“One Man, Two Guvnors”

7 p.m. Oct. 1 and 11 a.m. Oct. 6 at Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights

In this fast-paced, hilarious farce, the down on his luck and permanently hungry Francis Henshall finds himself employed by two bosses who must never meet. Francis enlists the aid of willing and unwilling audience members in his quest to serve two masters and finally get a good meal. The play, starring James Corden, premiered at the National Theatre in 2011, with a subsequent Broadway production in 2012. 

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1Mar

Cleveland Play House 2019-20 season announced

Posted by: CanvasCLE Categories: Art News
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Cleveland Play House recently announced its subscription series lineup for 2019-2020, which will mark CPH’s 104th consecutive season. 

  • “Into the Breeches!” (Sept. 14 to Oct. 6), a vibrant and big-hearted comedy, marks playwright George Brant’s return to CPH
  • Obie-winning playwright Dominique Morisseau’s “Pipeline” (Oct. 12 to Nov. 3) provides a look at the school-to-prison pipeline
  • “Every Brilliant Thing” (Nov. 23 to Dec. 22) is an intensely personal and uplifting story about the little things that make life worth living
  • “Clue, A New Comedy” (Jan. 25 to Feb. 23, 2020), making its Northeast Ohio premiere, is a murder mystery based on the cult classic film
  • “Antigone” (March 28 to April 19, 2020) will provide an urgent, contemporary take on the famed Greek tragedy
  • “A Doll’s House, Part 2” (April 25 to May 17), a play of fierce intellect and fiery wit, will make its Northeast Ohio premiere as well as serve as the anchor production of the 2020 New Ground Theatre Festival

In addition to the six-play subscriber series, “A Christmas Story” (Nov. 29 to Dec. 23) will return during the holiday season. 

“CPH’s 2019-20 season is a celebration of people coming together to make a more inclusive, joyous and compassionate world,” said Laura Kepley, CPH artistic director, in a news release. “In the plays, we will see people come together to create, to fight injustice, to honor family, to lift each other up and to blaze trails for future generations. There are also plays that focus on the forces that drive people apart. We look at the dangerous consequences of polarization and isolation that can drive us to dehumanize those on ‘the other side.’  

“We invite Northeast Ohio to come together at Cleveland Play House for a thrilling, mind-expanding and emotionally moving season full of comedy, drama, mystery and more!”

Subscriptions to CPH’s 2019-20 season are on sale now. Subscribers save up to 30 percent off individual ticket prices and receive benefits throughout the season. To purchase subscriptions or to receive more information, call 216-400-7096 or visit clevelandplayhouse.com.

Lead image: The audience at Allen Theatre (Cleveland Play House).

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