Last Tuesday, Mer and I headed up to Cleveland again for another education evening at Playhouse Square. The folks at Playhouse Square offer education sessions for selected plays. They bring in teachers, and feed them a simple but good meal (sandwiches, fruit, and many cookies), and give them background on the play they will see that evening, which is also for free. Playhouse Square treats teachers well.

Mer gets to go because she is an English teacher, and I get to go along because I coach an improv group, and so there is a theater tie-in there. This particular evening we were going to see the play Red, which is a play about the mid-twentieth-century artist Mark Rothko. While Rothko’s style evolved over the years, he is best known for colorful stripes on a solid-colored background.

The lecture we heard covered how Rothko’s style evolved from his early work, which was impressionistic but still resembled recognizable objects (like people), through early experiments in abstract art, to his full-blown style of color use with simple shapes. Rothko was trying to experiment with painting to see if he could elicit an emotional response from people by painting objects that had no real-world representation. Part of how he achieved this was in scale – most of his later works were huge, and he preferred them to be viewed very close up (eighteen inches or so). Rothko wanted the painting to take up the entire visual field of the viewer. The art lecturer also showed us some of the things that Rothko’s contemporaries were doing, so we could put his work in context. It was well done.

After the lecture, we went over to the theater for the public pre-show talk. The talk filled in some more background on Rothko, and was bold enough to ask the question, “What makes this art good?” as opposed to the response, “My five-year-old could have done that.” It basically boiled down to intentionality. Even abstract artists put thought and technique into their works, and so the work represents something the artist wishes to say. The young man giving the talk allowed that this was true whether the artist was famous or not. It made me feel better about the work that Rothko did.

The actual play, Red, was excellent. It covered a small portion of Rothko’s career, when he had been commissioned to paint a series of paintings for an upscale restaurant. At the time, it was the largest commission ever given to an artist ($35,000, or about $350,000 in today’s money). The set was fixed – it was a single large room where Rothko worked on his paintings, and there was a lot of open space for the two actors to work in.

The two actors played two characters – Rothko and a fictional assistant, Ken. Ken was a young artist who was hired by Rothko to help prepare canvases, mix paint, clean up, and so on. Ken’s function in the play was to act as a foil to Rothko, as someone for Rothko to interact with so that we could see and hear what Rothko was thinking and working on.

The young actor playing Ken did a fine job, although I felt his line delivery was too forced from time to time (he was occasionally too loud for the particular situation). The actor playing Rothko was jaw-droppingly masterful. He was not an actor on stage to me; he was Rotko. He was a huge stage presence.

The play ran about ninety minutes without intermission, and it never dragged. The actors actually did prepare a canvas by painting the entire canvas red, on stage, in about two minutes. It was very high-energy. The interaction between the towering presence of Rothko with his paid help was always gripping, even if Rothko sometimes abused his help terribly. Again, the set-up of the play was fictional, but it was historical fiction in that the play was extensively researched for nine months by the playwright.

All of this for free. Bravo, Playhouse Square!

Last Saturday was Mer’s day to be in charge, but she let me go running in the morning. I ran sixteen miles, about eleven of which were with my running partner Jim. So I had quite an appetite when I got home, which was good, because Mer was taking me out to lunch.

We went to the Hartville Kitchen, where we met up with Aunt Mary. Aunt Mary had just gotten back from a trip to Florida to see Mer’s parents, so we had a good amount to catch up on. The food at the Kitchen is always excellent, and they have wonderful chili that I had missed badly. In a rare moment of restraint, I skipped dessert after Mer told me we were going out later as well.

After lunch, we headed back to Aunt Mary’s place, and we all talked while I configured her new laptop. I like being able to visit while doing something useful. We left at about 4:00 and headed back home briefly.

Mer informed me that her dinner plans with someone had fallen through, so we could go anywhere I wanted to go. I had not been to the Old Whedon Grill (in Hudson) for awhile, so we went there, where we had the rather wonderful time of eating on the patio on a warm St. Patrick’s Day. That was pretty great. After supper, we walked over to Cold Stone Creamery to get some ice cream (for the second night in a row).

Mer then took me into Cuyahoga Falls, to a church, where we met up with Dubbs. We were there to see a musical called Tetelestai. Tetelestai is a Greek term that is translated “It is finished,” which is one of the last things that Jesus says on the cross before he dies. The musical was a Passion play, covering the end of Jesus’ life and his resurrection. One of our students had a small role in the play, which is how we knew about it, and I was excited that Mer had remembered to see it.

The play was quite good. The huge (seventy-plus) cast of people were all volunteers. The actors playing Jesus and Caiaphas (the High Priest of the temple) and Judas were all excellent. The play covered all the major events that happened to Jesus while he was in Jerusalem, and did a good job of interpreting the text.

The music was piped in, probably from a computer. It was well done, if a little dated-sounding at times. Tetelestai was written in the 70s, so a few songs sounded very 70s-ish, with prominent bass guitar riffs. While not bad at all, it could be a bit distracting at times, such as when Jesus was on the cross, and the music was causing the teens in front of me to dance in their seats and laugh. I don’t think that was the effect the producers were going for.

Speaking of the crucifixion, the play did a very realistic and gory portrayal of the act. Even in a play, the act of crucifixion was brutal, and really drove home the reality of how much Jesus suffered while he was dying. Happily, Tetelestai carried on through the resurrection, which shows like Godspell and Jesus Christ, Superstar gloss over or ignore.

There was a social time after the play. Dubbs had to leave, but Mer and I got to visit with a couple of students and their parents, and there were cookies. Mer had planned a food-filled day, but there was nothing wrong with that!

Last Friday, we had our second Fools’ show of the year. It was fairly late this year, but the schedule depends on when the auditorium/chapel is available, and so we had a mid-March show. Fourteen of fifteen Fools were able to make it, so we had a pretty full stage.

The audience was perfect – they were high-energy and really “into” the show. They laughed a lot, and they gave us good suggestions, and we had a fair number of audience members join us on stage for the last game (a game for which we traditionally allow audience members to come up and join us). It is really easy to perform in front of an audience like that. I’d guess we had somewhere between eighty and ninety people in the auditorium, but the size does not matter when they are pulling for you as this audience was.

We had a really good show. For the most part, the students followed the guidelines of improv and of the individual games. There were great moments on stage, and I was able to play in four games myself (normally I’m only in two or three). It was a fun evening.

Some of the things featured on stage were:

– An art show displaying new-found works by Picasso
– An answering machine full of messages from the aardvark king demanding cheese curls
– A platypus detective trying to find chocolate
– A game of questions inspired by bananas
– A game of musical chairs in which a lifeguard saves a kid from drowning, only to slip up and get fired
– A criminal who was helped by Mr. Gurnish (a teacher) in Mordor
– A future husband and wife going shopping for a cheap wedding dress
– A debate about the pros and cons of garbage disposals
– Two chefs battling it out for the best cookie dough

We had more skits as well. The evening went well, and we had lots of positive feedback. After the show, Mer and I went out to Cold Stone Creamery for dessert with the Churchills, which is a post-show tradition. We had not seen Zach and Londa for a few weeks, so we had a good time together (except I started having contact problems at Cold Stone, so I spent ten minutes in the bathroom trying to fish one out). It was a great show and a fun evening.

We slept very well, and went down to breakfast at 9:00. When I asked for hot chocolate, not only did they have it, and not only was it excellent, but they brought me a little cup of marshmallows, and a two-cup pot of hot chocolate. Bliss.

We got a table next to the wood-burning fireplace, which kept Mer warm and cozy. We had an excellent breakfast of yogurt, bread, and an egg-based casserole. After breakfast, Mer wanted to take advantage of the in-room whirlpool bath, so we did, and then I packed while Mer got ready for the day. Checkout was at 11:00, and as I loaded the car, there were a fair number of young women about the place. We asked about it, and the B and B owners told us they were having a bridal magazine photo shoot on the grounds, and later they were having a separate photo shoot in our room for lingerie. Later, when I suggested to Mer that the photo people might need a handsome man in the background, she smacked me.

The B and B owners were very gracious and took our picture in a few places around the grounds, and then encouraged us to wander the grounds, which we did for a short time. We wanted to make sure we had some more time in Frederick, so we did not linger too long. We got back into Frederick at about 12:30, and we wandered the canal area again to see it in the daylight. At one end of the canal is a community art center, which the B and B owners had recommended, so we checked it out. It was small but well done, displaying the works of area students, many of which were very good.

We wandered back along the canal, heading toward the park where we planned to eat our chocolates from the day before. There is a paved walking path along all of the canal (at least the parts we saw), so it was an easy and pleasant walk. It turns out that Frederick was the setting for a Civil War poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, entitled “Barbara Frietchie.” The poem was about a local woman who waved the Union flag as Confederate soldiers came though the town, and she told them to shoot her before her flag, and the soldiers left her alone. Mer remembered two lines from the poem:  “‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, / But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.”  So, it was a nice surprise to follow the canal and come upon Barbara Fritchie’s house and an informational placard about her and the poem. Mer felt vindicated that her memory had served her well.

We made it to the park, where we sat and ate B and B cookies and the chocolates we had bought. The sun was out, and it was in the low 60s; the daffodils were starting to bloom, and people were playing with their kids in the park. It was a wonderfully relaxing spot. After our snack, we wandered though the town some more, before heading back to the church to see a 2:00 matinee performance of Much Ado About Nothing.

Much Ado might be my favorite comedy; it is certainly the one with which I am most familiar. We got our same front-row seats that we’d had the evening before. One of the joys of repertory theater is getting to see the same actors in different roles. Again, the acting was excellent, and the comedy was spot-on.

Since Mer and I know this play pretty well, we got a chance to see how the limited rehearsal times lend to the energy of the play. There were a few times when I knew lines had been missed or spoken out of turn, but the actors covered for each other, and that was fascinating to see.

After the play, the actors had a talk-back, so we got to ask some questions about the process of staging plays like this. The actors admitted it was terrifying at times, but they loved that they could trust each other to help each other on stage, and they loved the energy and spontaneity of the plays. I was very impressed by the work they were doing, and I hope to get Mer back to Frederick again next year.

We left Frederick a little after 5:00, and so we got home at about 11:00, with a stop at a Perkins for a late supper. I’m afraid I was a wimp and went home from work at 11:00 a.m. on Monday to sleep. I was never good at getting by on short sleep, and that has not improved with age. Mer was a trooper and taught all day and stayed up until 9:00 Monday night. It was a whirlwind weekend, but a wildly winning one.

On Saturday, I pulled off a huge surprise for Meredith, which was more spectacular for my having thrown it together in about twenty-four hours.

On Friday, I was looking for “Shakespeare Festivals” on the internet, and I ran across the Maryland Shakespeare Festival, which is going on now through April 1st. The reviews I had found focused on MSF’s take on Shakespeare, which caught my eye. MSF tries to explore Shakespeare by recreating, as best they can, the conditions that Shakespeare’s actors would have encountered. Since theater was a primary form of entertainment in the late 1500s, plays had to be produced quickly, and theaters usually performed plays in repertoire (with several shows alternating during a limited time frame). So, Maryland Shakespeare decided to try to emulate that by having four plays in rep, and by staging the plays for the first time after only three days of rehearsal. They use no sets, and they perform in the same space in which the audience sits, and with the lights up so that they can interact with the audience. It sounded intimate and pretty unique, so the more I though about it, the more I wanted to see it. Since Saturday was “my day,” I asked Mer if she had plans for Sunday. When she said she did not have specific plans, I got busy getting tickets and finding a B and B in which to stay. Having done all of that, I told Mer she needed to be ready to go with an overnight bag by 9:00 a.m. on Saturday. She was intrigued.

We had a cool but pretty day for travel. I programmed the GPS to get us to the B and B, which was near Frederick, MD, about a five-hour drive away. Mer heard the GPS announce that there were “toll charges.” Since our local toll road is Route 80, an east-west road about fifteen miles north of our house, she boldly declared that she now knew we were not going south. That made me smile.

Mer was guessing our destination based on road signs as we headed east, passed the Pittsburgh area, and stopped to eat lunch at a diner around 12:30. She was mystified that we had already been traveling for over three hours and were not yet at our destination. She did not think I would go more than two or three hours afield on a normal weekend. We had a great lunch, including splitting a huge piece of “gob cake,” which was like a large slice of whoopie pie. We got back in the car and continued on.

I was quite gratified, and gave Mer some gentle grief, as we hit the Pennsylvania-Maryland state line. I think Mer’s reaction was, “No way! Maryland? Really?” It was fun. We continued on without incident to the B and B, which was a gorgeous place called Stone Manor. We got there at about 3:00, got checked in and unpacked, and got freshened up for the evening. I wanted to get into the town of Frederick at around 5:00 so that we had time to eat a leisurely dinner before the 8:00 show (about which Mer knew nothing). Mer still had no idea of why we were so far from home, even if it was pretty.

We went into Frederick, about fifteen minutes away, and I actually found a parking spot right next to the church where the play was taking place. Happily, there was so much to see that Mer missed the small signs advertising the plays. We walked a block to the main north-south shopping/restaurant district, and proceeded to The Brewery for supper. We got there just as they were opening up the upstairs dining area, so we had that to ourselves for about ten minutes. They were playing upbeat swing music over the speakers in the restaurant, so Mer and I took advantage to dance to one song until more people came along to the upstairs. I choose The Brewery based on its menu, which had a lot of comfort food on it, but it was a pretty restaurant as well, with a high ceiling, wood floor, big windows that overlooked the main street, and old letters from the 1800s as framed decor. I was impressed.

We left the restaurant at about 6:00, and I was glad we had gotten there at about 5:00 – there was quite a wait at 6:00. We still had about ninety minutes to wander, so we wandered the shopping district; I thought (mistakenly, as it turned out) I needed a toothbrush and toothpaste, so it gave us a reason to look at the shops. Along the way, we found a shallow canal that runs through Frederick, and that has been turned into the centerpiece of a stunningly pretty park and walking area. Near the downtown, the canal area is all bricked in and has four pedestrian-only bridges of different and interesting designs. It was well lit and romantic, with discreet lighting. We were both charmed and walked the length of the bricked-in area. We practically had it to ourselves since it was in the upper 30s and few people were out strolling. After I found and bought my supplies, we continued to wander the town. We found a chocolate specialty shop that was run by an ex-professor of foreign languages. He liked making chocolates better. I bought some chocolates for us for the next day, and we wandered some residential streets, impressed by the cute houses and apartments we could see. We walked to a nearby park and walked around the carillon in the park, and then went back to the car to stash our wares.

We got to the church at about 7:25, and the doors to the performance opened at 7:30. The ticket sellers were affable and chatty, and I liked them immediately. When the doors did open, Mer and I got front-row seats. On the way into the church, I had explained what was going on, and Mer was curious and excited to see the play. Saturday’s performance was the Maryland Shakespeare Festival’s premiere of All’s Well That End’s Well.

All’s Well is a comedy, but has some darker moments. The heroine of the play is a great character whom the audience loves. She loves a young man above her social circle. She cures the king of France of a disease, and as a reward he marries the woman to the young man she loves. He scorns her and runs off to wars in Italy, where he quickly lusts after another woman. Through cleaver tricks arranged by the young heroine, everything turns out well in the end.

The experience was pretty great. The play may not have been perfectly polished from a text point of view – there were occasional times when actors would start to talk over each other, and there were a few repeated lines, but as a piece of theater it was magnificent. The play was fresh to the actors, and they engaged the audience well, including occasionally interacting with us. Add to that the fact that I have never read, and only once seen, All’s Well That Ends Well, and it was engaging theater.

It was uniformly well acted. The lead heroine was very well cast, as she captured my sympathies right away. The king of France had a wonderfully deep voice, and the comic figures of the play were not afraid to play up the physical humor the play allows. Mer and I both enjoyed the evening immensely.

Which was good, considering it took us five hours to get there.

On Friday, Mer and I met up with Brandon and Jen at Actors’ Summit theater. Actors’ Summit was putting on new play, A Girl’s Guide to Coffee, by a Cleveland playwright named Eric Coble. We were not quite sure what to expect – my best guess was that it was a comedy.

I was not completely wrong; it had many comedic moments, but it also had several very serious times as well. The play is probably best described as exaggerated real life. The play focuses on a young woman who started working at a coffee shop during college, and she is still there two years after college. She works with her still-in-school roommate, visits her slightly pressuring parents, and deals with a boss who badly wants to send her to compete in the “barrista olympics” in Spain, a plan that the young woman thinks will destroy her art of coffee creations and her quest for the perfect latte.

The play was very solid; I did not love it, nor did I dislike it. It was probably too close to real life, while not being a mirror of real life, to completely capture my attention. Some of the humor was about cell phone etiquette, and I’m not into cell phones, so that passed me by. The play’s more serious moments occasionally felt a little heavy-handed, with lessons-to-be-learned stated explicitly to the audience instead of letting us figure them out. Having said that, the play was enjoyable, and I did appreciate the struggle of a young person trying to figure out how she should fit into things, and trying to juggle multiple relationships (parents, roommate, boss, boyfriend).

The actress playing the young woman did an excellent job. She had magnificent chemistry with her on-stage boyfriend, and she carried more than half the lines in the play. The boyfriend and the boss were both excellent actors, and the other actors did well in smaller roles.

The set may be the most extensive set I have seen in all my years of going to Actors’ Summit. They had created the counter area of a coffee shop at the back of the stage, including all the equipment used in making coffee. The front of the set was made up of sofas that were the front of the shop, or the young woman’s apartment, or her parents’ house, or wherever else was needed. It worked well.

So, it was a solid play, and it was fun to see a new work with Brandon (CVCA’s theater teacher) and Jen. We decided to extend the evening after the play, and we headed over to Friday’s for dessert, where we got a chance to catch up, especially with Jen, whom we don’t see so often as we see Brandon.

On Thursday, I was invited by some students to join them for “wing night” at Eddy’s Deli. Eddy’s offers all-you-can-eat wings, with soup and side and a small dessert for $10. I am impressed that students want to hang out with teachers, so I try to go whenever I am invited (plus, I like the food).

On this night, there was a huge group (for us). Besides me, there were Matt Fleagle and Craig McSparran for the teachers, and we had eight students show up. We ate too much and spent most of the two-plus hours talking about superheroes, and so it was a great time. The only downside was that the service was very slow – the restaurant was shorthanded, and I think they put a group of eleven people near the bottom of the priority list, so they could focus on the tables of four and two people. I ended up leaving before dessert was served because I had told Mer I would come back to school at 6:30 to get her, and I left the restaurant at 7:15. Still, as a group, we laughed a lot, and so it was a good evening.

I felt bad that Mer had to wait until 7:30 before I came to get her, so I took her to Arby’s to get some food. We walked in and were greeted by two of our students – David and Steven (Steven graduated last year). They come to a Pokemon card night at Arby’s every Thursday, and so we got to chat with them for awhile. That was a happy event, and Mer was able to get her food. We came home, and she ate while we watched an episode of Doctor Who.

Last Saturday was kind of Mer’s day, but it was largely taken up by a school-related event. Last spring, Mer volunteered to start up a junior high team for Academic Challenge. Academic Challenge is sort of like trivia and Jeopardy!, played by students. CVCA has had an Academic Challenge program for high school since Mer was at CVCA (she was in fact the captain of her team), but CVCA has never had a junior high team before.

So, Mer founded a team with the goal of helping to build the high school team, and also getting involved with students. She loves trivia and knowledge, so it is a good fit. Mer took the team to two meets in the fall semester, and then took a couple months off. The team started practicing in February for the state meet, which was held last Saturday at John Carroll University in Cleveland. So, that is where we were for much of the day.

John Carroll is a small but pretty campus. They took good care of us, including opening up their excellent cafeteria for our lunch (the school seemed to be on break, as there were no students about). We had some trouble finding parking or even a car-accessible entrance to the campus; the school seems very protective of the grounds. We parked on the street and made our way to the building where the competition was to take place.

This was a pretty big meet, with junior high and high school teams. Many schools sent a junior high, a junior varsity, and a varsity team. CVCA sent two junior high teams – a seventh grade and an eighth grade team. In all, there were sixteen junior high teams competing.

For the actual competition, two teams would square off, with four players playing at once. Each round was made up of four parts, and substitutions could be made between each part. Mer made sure everyone on each of our two teams got to play at least once per round, although her best players stayed in through all four parts of each round.

Our teams did well. The seventh grade team went 3-3 through the six rounds, and our eighth grade team went 4-2, losing two very close games (one round was decided on the last question). All teams that went 4-2 or better qualified for the finals, so nine of the sixteen teams moved on.

I got roped into being a question reader since several readers did not show up. I liked reading – I found the questions interesting, and I had several coaches tell me I was the best and clearest reader their teams had had during the day. That was satisfying. Mer joined me to help me for the last two regular rounds after lunch, and for one round of the playoffs. As such, I did not get to see CVCA compete except for the very first round, when they happened to be in the room in which I was helping.

CVCA’s eighth grade team won their first-round game in the playoffs, and then the tournament runners had enough help, so we got to see our kids square off against Port Clinton, last year’s state champs. It was a competitive game, but we got out to an early lead by getting a lucky category draw of “The Bible.”  Our students did very well in that category, and maintained a lead for the rest of the game, and so advanced on to the final round.As one of the top four teams of the tournament, the team qualified to go to the national competition in Chicago in June. That was unexpected, so it looks as if Mer’s season will go on.

In the final round, we faced off against Hawken, an excellent (and pricey) private school that sent three junior high teams to compete. Our team was facing a Hawken team to whom they had lost in the first round of the day. The game was very competitive, but Mer’s team managed to win by one question. We have since heard that there was a dispute that someone in the audience said an answer that our team got right, so they gave Hawken a co-championship; nonetheless, CVCA’s eighth grade team won the state tournament in the team’s first full year of existence. I was very proud of Mer and her students!

Playing nine rounds of games, plus lunch, plus travel time took a fair amount of time. As such, we did not get home until early evening, and we were both pretty tired. So, we pretty much stayed home, but it was an interesting day.

Mer has been trying to arrange get-togethers with various colleagues in the form of going out to dinner or dessert on Fridays. Last Friday, Mer got in touch with our friends the Gurnishes. They were game to have supper, but already had plans to go to a Lenten fish fry at the Greek Cultural Center in Akron. Nate and Rachel are not Greek, but they do like a good fish fry. They said there would be other people there, but invited us along.

So, last Friday, we made our way to the Greek Cultural Center near the campus of the University of Akron. Mer and I arrived there first, but Nate’s mom showed up shortly after we did and recognized us. I went to find a bathroom, and after being directed to one by a man right out of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I came back to find that Nate and Rachel and a couple of more people had come in and claimed a table for nine (and two small children). We headed to the food line, where everyone but me got all-you-can-eat fish. I got chicken. We took our food to the table, and Mer and I were introduced to Nate and Rachel’s friends. They were two very funny young couples, one of whom Mer knew of distantly – the husband is the son of Don Bechtel, one of our colleagues. Both couples (and Nate and Rachel) had small children, but the children were very well behaved.

We had a very fun evening of visiting with everyone. I was especially glad to catch up with Nate and Rachel, since I have not had much of a chance to do that this year. Nate went to part-time, so he teaches and then leaves; I don’t get to see him much, and we have only run together maybe twice all school year.

The food was quite good, although the chicken was not all-you-can-eat. As such, once we left, I swung by Handel’s to get a sundae. That was also quite good and hit the spot.

CVCA has student-adult groups it calls “Connections.” The idea is to match up a group of eight to twelve students with an adult so that all students have a faculty or staff member to whom they can talk. I have a Connections group of eight senior guys, and they are a pretty fantastic group of students to be around. I like to arrange off-campus events once in awhile, so last week I proposed we go out to eat. The group suggested the nearby Royal Buffet, a Chinese buffet restaurant, and that sounded like a great idea. Since people can show up staggered, buffets and other casual eateries are best for these sorts of get-togethers.

Last Monday was the day set for the food fest, and we had a pretty good time. It was me and three of my eight guys, but that was enough people to feel like a real outing, and still small enough that we could all still talk (when we were not eating). One of the guys, Nate, had never been to the Royal Buffet before, and he gave it a huge thumbs-up. We were only there for about an hour, but I had a good time and the other guys seemed happy too. There was certainly plenty of good food to go around.