Net Cotton Content / On Life and Marketing, Creativity and Ethics

A Letter to the Cast and Crew of Our Town

Last night, after another great show, we gathered at Katzinger's for a private cast party. Diane Warren opened her deli for us late at night, and placed that bounty before us, because she so respects the work we have done — and our product, the gift we have given our neighbors. Diane (and Eric and Michelle) and the entire Katzinger's team told us in food and hospitality:

Please, eat like actors, where "eat like actors" doesn't mean starving artists, but rather the city's best pastrami and corned beef. And pickles. Oh, those pickles. As actors, especially in Our Town, we are teachers. And as teachers, we can so mistakenly be undervalued by society. Diane Warren joined the applause we hear every night, and the laughter, and the engaged silence, and the tears, by saying: "No. What you are doing is worthy. As worthy as the best my business can offer you." ("What'll you have?... What can I do for you?")

Of course, we all thanked the Katzinger's team. And we thanked each other.

But, you have taught me (under threat of Aran Carr) to follow the script, and I found myself thanking you without a script. I was simply not prepared for that moment.

Please accept these words, as another attempt at expressing my thanks to you:

You gave me such a beautiful photograph of the production. Thank you. I've been looking at it overnight. Of course, it's beautiful: it shows the faces of the actors with Ian, Aran and Matt. Our eyes are shining. And in those eyes, I can see reflected, in the larger photo in my heart, the beautiful faces of the entire crew, providing expert sound and light. And props. And pickles.

At Katzinger's, Sara Courtright asked me, just before you gave me that photo, "Has this experience been what you wanted? Did you get out of it what you had set out to get?" I told the folks at the table that I didn't know yet. ("Do I believe in it? I don't know. I suppose I do.")

Of course, I have no doubt that my answer is yes, but "yes" doesn't do justice to the experience. I will need many days, weeks, perhaps my lifetime, to fully weigh all the emotions and growth. To more fully appreciate just what all of us have done here. To measure the size of the gift we have given more than a thousand members of the audience. And the gifts we have given each other and ourselves.

Yes, it will take weeks for the swelling to go down. Not in my head. (My ego will never recover. I must now become a World Menace.) No, it's the swelling in my heart. Since the final week of rehearsals, when I started to see, like you started to see, the larger scope of just what we are doing here, my heart has been popping out of my chest.

For now: Yes, Sara. Yes. This experience has delivered on every wish I had, every wish I might have had, and every wish I didn't know I could have. Every star delivered. Friends were gathered. They came to support the production, but left with the meaning of life. Emily saw the truth. And Simon said it outright. ("Yes, now you know. Now you know.")

Last night, I said something to you that might have sounded outrageous, but I firmly maintain it here:

There has never been a better production of Our Town. As proof of this outlandish assertion, what would you change to improve our production?

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Except perhaps, I would raise and seat the congregation at the wedding on cue. I'm sorry to have created such a tradition. ("Sumep'n went wrong with the separator. Don't know what 'twas.")

Friends, truly, this is no ordinary Our Town. This is the very heart of Our Town. ("Once in a thousand times, it's interesting.") I don't mean to say we are such big shots, that we are Broadway. No, no, no, to the contrary: our Our Town reminds us (and our audiences) that sweetness and bittersweetness and life come in the smallest, most genuine moments. In a world where bigger is often mistakenly considered better, we are producing these fine little moments, like diamonds. (As Emily says about the patent device that waters the stock, "It's fine.")

During that long wait for the opening of the first act, I look at the stage and I see two tables covered with these diamonds. Or are they little pills? Yes, this drug comes in a tiny pill. Better sit down. There are some side effects.

We learned enormously, with Ian's extraordinary teaching — so generous, so effective, so precise, so dear. I hope that I carry into my classrooms and life what I have learned from Ian as a teacher. Of all your wonderful performances, none has so taken my breath away as his work on our stage. I hope I am forever changed by his role modeling.

When I first realized that it was time again for Our Town, my friend Emily Rhodes suggested I seek advice from Matt Slaybaugh. You know how it is when you receive a new name. It sounds funny. You imagine the experience, but it is just a flat image of the unmet moment. ("You're just a little bit crazy.") We met for an ice cream (after finding the coffee shops too noisy) and I told him my tale, why I was compelled to do Our Town. He patiently listened. We chatted about theatre.

At the end of our ice creams, he said, "I like your reasons for doing this show. I'm willing to produce it. I want to produce it."

Months later, still wrestling with the presumption and preposterousness of precasting myself as the Stage Manger, I mentioned to Acacia that I felt awkward about claiming the role without an audition. She smiled: "Oh, but you did audition. When you met Matt over the ice cream cone, you were auditioning. Whenever he meets someone, he's watching, figuring out where on the stage they should go and in what role. You auditioned. And you passed the audition. If you hadn't, Matt would have simply finished his ice cream cone and that would have been that."

In the program, Matt writes of agape-love. I first read "agape" as when your eyes and mouth are open, and your eyebrows are high enough to pick up Cleveland. I could understand that. I've been agape with love. But Alisa said, no, Matt is writing of "agape," spelled the same, but from the Greek, and I had to visit the dictionary to understand. It's a love that is brotherly, divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active, volitional, and thoughtful. Yes, I came to Our Town and I got more than this lousy tee shirt. I learned a new kind of love.

Here we are for this brilliant moment together, living life in its fullest. ("Saints and poets, maybe. They do some.") What does it feel like for you? For me, it is scary. I am thrilled seeing life for what it can be. Hearing each night's audience of friends beyond the curtain between acts, glancing at them as I sweep the stage, still separated from us, like in Plato's cave, but closer to the truth than I've ever heard. And Mrs. Webb's eyes, when she fixes on Emily, and so nearly sees her, and yet, alas, just misses her — or, perhaps, not? Perhaps she does see. Perhaps we really do see each other just fine.

A friend, who came to the show from the east coast, told me this weekend that Wilder didn't want to answer any questions for us. ("Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?") Wilder dodges the answer. He wants us to live in the question, my friend teaches, because life is found in the question, not the answer. In Wilder's text, "yes" isn't really better than "no." What's better is asking the question. ("What do you say, folks? What do you think?")

For Wilder, and for me, the answer isn't the goal. The search is the goal. That's why I'm straining away. And glad about it.

I've had Our Town for more than 25 years. Now it's yours, too, especially for those of you living in Our Town for the first time. Welcome to Our Town. May Wilder's themes and his wonderful words haunt all of us forever.

All along, I've tried to understand, "The morning star gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go."

And now here we are, facing our final performance, wonderfully bright the minute before we have to go.

Again, yet again, let's light up the sky.

Why Our Town won't have subtitles...

...when I'm on stage.

"Stay loose and play tight."

Here's a beautiful message, reprinted with permission, I received this morning from Parker MacDonell.

A weekend recording artist and entertainer, weeknight music publisher, and the official banker for Our Town, Parker is a member of the Old Bohemians, the presenting sponsor of this evening's opening night performance of Our Town.

Parker is a role model for both business and artistic sides of life. Read his words, please, because they apply to you, too, if you are exploring the outer reaches of your ability:

Artie - tomorrow is your debut (at least in this century) as Stage Manager in Our Town. Tonight you are going to have dress rehearsal, then you will go home and practice your lines one more time with Alisa. Then you will try to go to sleep, and my wish for you is that sleep comes easily so that you are as alive and aware as possible tomorrow. We are very much looking forward to being there with you tomorrow night.

"Stay loose and play tight" is now my standard exhortation to myself and those with whom I am about to go on stage. I heard it for the first time in 1978. I was playing in a band called Sonora (that name alone should help you get to sleep tonight) in Los Angeles. One of the guys in the band, Dave Sheils, had an older brother who was an agent with the William Morris Agency. Big stuff, that agency. So Dave was always bugging his brother Peter to help our band.

One day Peter calls me — I was the business manager of said band as well as the bass player — and said, "I got you guys a gig. Any time that Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley play in California, you guys will be on stage as their back up band." Wow! All we had to do was join the union. No problem.

But get to rehearse with these 50's rock stairs before the show? We did not. Instead, we were told to learn every song from Chuck Berry's "Golden Hits" album, which we dutifully did, and be prepared to think quickly on stage.

Our first gig with Sir Chuck was at Knott's Berry Farm, a poor man's Disney Land in Orange County, CA. The show was scheduled for 8 p.m., so we were there and set up far in advance.  Maybe we thought we'd get a little rehearsal at the sound check. No such luck. Instead, as the crowd was starting to chant "Chuck, Chuck, Chuck" at 7:55 with the curtain still down, we looked around and said, "Where is he?" At exactly 7:58, the back door to the stage opened, and there he was, guitar in hand, all alone.

He walked over to his amp, plugged in his guitar, turned all the knobs up to 10 — I swear this was before Spinal Tap — and played an out-of-tune E chord. The crowd stirred, sensing that the Great One was in the building. He walked up to the mic, turned it 180 degrees so that he was facing us with his back to the stage curtain, and said, "Have I ever played with you guys before?" 

"No sir, Mr. Berry, sir, we have never played with you."   

"Okay, I want you to watch my right foot. When I put that foot down, you start to play. When I lift it up, you stop playing.  Down is start, up is stop. You got that? Okay, I want you guys to stay loose and play tight."

With that he launched into "Johnny B. Goode" as the curtain went up and the crowd went crazy. There was only one problem. On his record, he played the song in B flat. (One of the little secrets to his unusual sound was that he played in the flat keys instead of the usual guitar keys of E, A, G and D.) But because he was at least 50 years old at the time of this story, he had decided to play this song in a lower key to make it easier to sing. So while he was playing in A flat, we were in B flat or some other key unrelated to A flat. It sounded a little like that piece that Charles Ives composed for two marching bands who were to march past each other playing the same tune in two keys that were as far apart as two keys could be (a flatted fifth from each other). What worked as 20th century atonal music for Charles Ives did not work so well for the song that NASA chose to put on the Voyager spacecraft as a representation of earthly rock 'n roll for any extraterrestrials who might find the Voyager.

Finally, our piano player Jim King yelled out the correct key and we got into the groove with Chuck. He played this song and two others with his back to the audience to tumultuous applause. Then he turned his mic stand around and said to the audience, "Thank you. With your permission, we will now begin our performance."

You will be great. You, unlike my friends in Sonora and Chuck Berry have rehearsed your work with each other. So, my friend, my wish for you tomorrow and the rest of this week is that you stay loose and play tight.

Peace,

Parker

Thank you, Parker, my friend.

Let's dance our way into dress rehearsal. Here's Sir Chuck and some crazy kids with all the latest moves...

Why invest so much time in Our Town?

I've tried to tell you why I'm devoting so much time to Our Town.

Still you might wonder.

This week, several friends have sent me the same piece from The New York Times. It's nice when people forward items to me, especially good writing that they found meaningful.

But it's downright weird when several people send the same thing. That suggests, "This is more than interesting. It is somehow about you."

It's a short column from the op-ed page of the Times, describing the breakdown of neighborhoods and what we can do to know our neighbors.

Which reminds me.
Speaking of neighbors, and several of them sending you the same thing...

When it rains hard in our neighborhood, my mother's basement is sometimes filled with rainwater.  That's bad.

Sometimes it's worse. Much, much worse. More than rainwater. Chunky style.

Not wanting to volunteer (or be paid) to go down there and clean it up, I never want a lot of detail. A glance and errant sniff down the steps was all the detail I needed. I'm satisfied to say, "Gosh. That's a shame." Or, if it's particularly ripe, I might add a sympathetic, "Bummer. That's disgusting."

During the years, we've exhausted all the technical language for this delicate situation. We've said "sewage" and "feces." We've laughed about it, using the very coarsest language, which is always fun with one's mom. (My mom, anyway.)

But then we wipe our eyes and look down the stairs. And it's all still there. Laughing never makes the real poop go away. (Note to survivors: please put that on my tombstone.)

So for a while we chose to refer to the visiting floaters in a more poetic way, a way that embraces the contribution of the entire community.

We called it, simply, "meeting the neighbors."

After all, where do you think this detritus came from? Topeka? I don't think so. It's from John across the alley or Jack over the wall. Of course, it didn't come across the alley or over the wall. It was borne on little water wings beneath the homes, like drone gondolas. But this ain't Venice, friends. 

Actually, in the end, my mother determined that it also wasn't "meeting the neighbors." I don't know how she determined this. I don't want to know.

No, it wasn't "meeting the neighbors," she decided. It was "know thyself."

"Now we'll go back to our town."
That's an actual line (no charge) from Our Town, opening tomorrow to more than 800 advance ticket buyers and who knows how many buy-at-the-door folks.

Part of the reason I'm devoting so much energy into Our Town is because of the theme in the Times article that is finding its way to me.

I'm trying to give us all something to chat about. Something that will help us reveal ourselves to each other. (Just not in my mother's basement.)

So we can really be neighbors. So we can know each other.

Here it is, "Won’t You Be My Neighbor?" by Peter Lovenheim of Brighton, N.Y.

Our Town on NPR Morning Edition

So, by now, you know the story of our production of Our Town.

Yesterday, our local PBS Morning Edition on WOSU radio broadcast the story in a lovely, heart-warming audio feature by the talented and thorough Jennifer Hambrick.

Click here for a link to the broadcast. Don't read it. It makes even better listening. (Just click on the "Listen | MP3"  button near the photo of the guy with the bowtie.)

Come and get 'em

I don't like thinking that I'm selling tickets to my own show.

I am, of course, selling tickets to my own show, but I don't like thinking that. It seems too self-absorbed, even for me.

Sure, we're all self-absorbed, up to a point. But when that point is the point of selling tickets? Well, that's pretty far gone in my book.

So I keep telling myself, "This whole show was my idea. In for a dime, in for a dollar. I must make sure that the rest of the cast sees a full enough house for each show. So I'd better sell some tickets."

Yes, I'm selling tickets. But it's not for a celebration of me. It's a loving and ethical effort to benefit the rest of the cast.

Yeah. Right. Sure.

I mean, really. I have friends and family coming across the country to see this show. I didn't ask them to come. It's terribly inconvenient for them.

And some folks are actually sponsoring the show. They reacted to my passive-aggressive solicitation by offering money. Egad.

I do appreciate their financial and geographic generosity, and — it's true — I'd rather they come see Our Town (June 26-29) than come, eventually, to my funeral (date TBD). After all, we need the ticket revenue to pay for the extraordinary scenery. And my life insurance should cover my funeral. (Note to survivors: no tickets for my funeral.)

What I'm Learning When I Sell Tickets
It's said that my people are the people who can't take "yes" for an answer. Well, I'm having trouble taking "yes" for an answer.

When someone says, "I'll take one," or "I've already bought a ticket on the web," I have the same immediate silent reaction:

No. No! Don't come to the show. Don't call my bluff. I don't know my lines well enough for you to actually come to the show.

Inconveniently, I'm not good at taking "no" for an answer either.

If they do not say, immediately, "I'll take one," or "I've already bought a ticket on the web," I have the an equally inappropriate, immediate silent reaction:

What do you mean, you don't want a ticket? What, are you too busy to come see this show? Are you not ready for theatre? Is that the evening you are sitting in a chair covered in tortilla chips watching NASCAR?

These reactions might be silent, but any readers of eyebrows will know my heart and mind at a glance.

These Tickets Must Go
So I'm selling.

Alisa and I went to a lovely dinner party last night. Beforehand, getting dressed, I filled my pockets with tickets and fliers and pens and money to make change.

I was a walking Box Office. How tacky.

I was a Home Box Office, but in someone else's home. That ain't right.

At the party, of course, talk often turned to the upcoming play. The publicity has been strong. I didn't have to be the kind of bore that brings up his own play.

No, I am now merely the kind of bore that, once someone else mentions my play, I offer the tickets sticking out of my shirt pocket. And I tell the story of my motivation every time an additional person walks up.

I wasn't at the party to sell tickets. I was there to be among friends and to say farewell to a beloved couple that is leaving Columbus.

But it's frustrating to have people ask, "That sounds great. How do I buy tickets?" and all I can do is suggest they go to the website after they get home. I much prefer to say, "I have some tickets right here."

So I was packin.'

I sold 15 tickets at a party of 50 people. That's a 30% yield. Pretty good, especially because half the people there had already bought tickets.

Ticket sales this strong make me wonder where I'm going to move my family when the show closes.

Or if I might enjoy running for mayor of Columbus.

A Question I'm Trying To Avoid
Fifteen days from now, on June 30th, a bright, sunny, summer morning, a good friend of mine will ask, "When is the show? I'm looking forward to seeing it."

I will look down at my shoes. The question will make me sad.

I will look up and say, "The show closed yesterday. Yesterday was our final show."

"Oh, I'm sorry I missed it," my friend will say. "How was it?"

I won't want to answer. The answer will be too complex. I'll probably say, "It was great. The cast and crew were excellent. The audiences were gracious. I'm sorry you weren't there. It's too hard to describe."

And, then, I will return to looking at my shoes.

It will be too late to sell a ticket.

Why invest so much time in Our Town?

I have a variety of reasons for plunging headfirst into Our Town.

The primary motivation has been wonderfully recorded by Mike Harden in The Columbus Dispatch and Jennifer Hambrick in The New Standard.

But, as rehearsals continue, the motivations multiply. Here's a new aspect of my motivation.

All Those Books
For decades, I've walked past the bookshelves in our home. Titles catch my eyes, especially those that I don't know as well as I should. Many were assigned reading in high school and college. So, either I don't remember them vividly or, worse, I never really read them in the first place.

I look at these familiar titles with their unfamiliar contents — and feel a pang of guilt, at worst, or a longing for a missed opportunity, at best.

Among the titles: Our Town.

Now, as I read and re-read Our Town, memorizing and internalizing the language of Thornton Wilder, I realize that I am, as Jennifer Hambrick suggested, exorcising a ghost. The ghost is the false impression that I am so well read.

But how well read can a late bloomer truly become?
For now, Our Town will serve as a representative of the other books on the shelf, the other ones that sailed through my fingers and over my head when I was too young to really digest them.

Even if I don't know any other book so well, I will know Our Town intimately. I will know one book exceedingly well. I will know it cold.

So now, I know Our Town.

Once Upon a Time

This photograph arrived in the mail today, from Ann Klotz, the director of the 1981 production of Our Town.

First major story on Our Town

Today's New Standard, the central Ohio Jewish newspaper, has a wonderfully reported and written story on this month's production of Our Town.

In "Our Town: Isaac’s dream to revisit the production comes true," reporter Jennifer Hambrick ventures deeply into the backstory of the production. She calls sources in Texas and New York City finding new aspects of our motivation.

I am so grateful for this story. The theatre is so fleeting: up, down, gone forever.

This article will forever hang on my wall and in my heart.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Kissing Muffy

Rehearsals have started in full force for Our Town. We are blocking scenes, feeling our way through Wilder's brilliant script, and admiring the talents of others.

All of which reminds me of my first stage experience.

When I was a junior in high school, I was cast in Shubert Fendrich's Blazing Guns at Roaring Gulch (or the Perfumed Badge) at the Columbus School for Girls. You've never heard of this play, which makes it ideal for a high school production by first-time actors you know too well.

I played twins separated at birth, now reunited: a western outlaw and a British detective hot on his brother's trail. As the photos show, the brothers shared a lot of hair.

(Spoiler alert!) The play climaxes with lights off, so that the two can shoot it out, as I mangled both accents in the dark.

But That Wasn't The Moment of Highest Drama.
A big moment came early, when the legendary, late faculty director C. Edgar Fry welcomed us to the first rehearsal with a speech that started:

Congratulations on being cast. This means that, not only are you here today, but you are committed to being here at every rehearsal and every performance. Do you accept that commitment?

Before you answer, let me tell you this true story. I once had an actor who backed out during the last week of rehearsals. Don't worry. The show did, as they say, go on. We grabbed another student and taught him the role very quickly and he did a great job.

Then, after the show closed, I found out what colleges the first actor planned to go to and I called each and every one of their admissions directors to make sure they appreciated the gaps in his character.

If you drop out after today, I will do the very same for you.

Mr. Fry was a great teacher. And that was a lifelong lesson, well taught.

But That Also Wasn't The Moment of Highest Drama.
The biggest moment was later, during that first rehearsal.

We were on stage and it was time for me to kiss the lovely Muffy Melvin. (After 30 years, I hope this can be told and I not be scolded for kissing and telling. Plus, "Muffy" long ago returned to her given name and can disclaim her role in this story if she wishes.)

We arrived at the moment and — because it was only a rehearsal for goodness sakes — didn't consummate our dramatic union.

We just turned to C. Edgar Fry with the deer-in-the-headlights look. (This look has been the cornerstone of my career.) I know I wore that look and can only imagine that Miss Muffy Melvin did as well.

C. Edgar Fry responded typically, "The script says to kiss her. So kiss her."

Having never kissed Muffy Melvin before and full aware that I wasn't ever going to be invited to kiss Muffy Melvin under any real-life circumstances, I was more than a little nervous. "Now?" I asked.

"Now," directed Mr. Fry. Or he might call all my future colleges.

And There Was Muffy's Beautiful Face.
We obeyed Mr. Fry by doing the same thing. We planted our feet. We tilted our heads to the side, because we both recognized that my nose would be in the way. And, well, movie stars all tilt their heads when preparing for a smooch.

Problem was: we both tiled on the same axis. That is, I tiled to my right and Muffy to her left. So our noses were still aligned and the lips remained out of reach.

So we both corrected. But we both corrected at the same time. Muffy to her right, me to my left. Noses aligned. Lips away.

And again, to the other side.

And again, to the other side.

And so on, in a bit of a panic, until we resembled metronomes. (Are you picturing this? We just couldn't get skewed.)

Everyone laughed and Mr. Fry said:

That's why we are going to rehearse every bit of the play every day. We are not going to be surprised by anything when the show opens.

Oh, C. Edgar Fry, I salute you.
You taught me how to kiss Muffy Melvin. That's a skill I was not going to learn any other time.

I dedicate all my rehearsing until I am "off book" (lines memorized) to the fond memory of C. Edgar Fry. And to Muffy Melvin wherever you are.

For tickets, please click here.