The tradition of the “Educators’ Evening” at Playhouse Square continues this year, and Tuesday was our first time of taking advantage of that for this season. The Educators’ Evening is an outreach by the theater to help local teachers incorporate theater and theatrical arts into mainstream curriculum; they do this by providing an hour-long talk before a show, and then the teachers can get $15 tickets to the play. It is a great program, and they even feed us.

Tuesday’s play was Venus in Fur, a play about a director casting a woman for his production of Venus in Furs, his stage adaptation of the book by the same name by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, from whose name we get the term “masochism.” The original book is about a man who agrees to become the slave of a woman, with the expectation that he would be treated badly, and he enjoyed the treatment. The fictional play being cast in the real play is the adaptation of the book, and so the real play explores the politics of power between men and women, and between directors and actors, with the role of power switching many times during the play.

Okay. So, how does that tie in with teachers? The focus of the educational part of the evening was the cultural perception of gender roles. We were challenged to try to recognize these kinds of roles in the classroom, so that we did not always assume that boys “act up” and girls are “good.” We were also asked to think about broader ideas, like that mechanics would always be men and grade school teachers would always be women.

I talked with the African-American woman presenter afterwards, and we had a good, if short, discussion. My concern was that we were being encouraged to pretend men and women were identical when we are not (our bodies and hormones are different). The instructor agreed we are different and we should be willing to embrace differences, but we needed to make sure opportunities for both sexes were accessible and equal, as much as possible. She stressed that there was nothing wrong with “being girly” or “being manly” as long as it was an individual’s choice and the people choosing could express why they did what they did. That made sense to me, and I was pleased with that answer.

As for the actual play, it was really well acted. It is only a two-person play, so each player had a ton of lines. It was also a very physical play, with lots of movement and some intense emotions. Finally, since the setting was an audition, we were seeing an actor playing a director who was “forced” to act for the evening, and we had an actress playing an actress who played two distinct personalities. That was impressive.

I found the actual play disturbing, though. I’m not a fan of raw power displays, not a fan of unkindness, not a fan of lying, not a fan of unfaithfulness, and I found the idea of people’s getting pleasure from being abused and humiliated sickening. So, as good as the actors were in this play, and as good and/or funny as some of the individual moments were, I left with a definite opinion that I never needed to see the play again. I am still most grateful for the Educators’ Evening, and I am looking forward to the next one we plan on attending in March – Clybourne Park.

The plays keep piling up, but I get ahead of myself. We started Saturday out by going down to church, where Mer graded papers while I put up a temporary mount for a new computer projector at church. I hit a few snags, but managed to get it in rough working order. Sunday was “Friend Day” at church, and so I wanted the new projector up for that service. The permanent mounting kit was due in early during the week, so in the meantime, I improvised by making a mounting kit out of a metal baking sheet. It worked well enough to work for one service.

After that, we went home, where I took a nap, before Mer and I headed up to Cleveland Heights, on the east side of Cleveland. I took Mer to a theater we had never been to or even heard of – the Ensemble Theater. I had stumbled across them online and saw they were performing an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, based pretty firmly on the book and not on the movies. I had listened to Frankenstein on iPod last year, so I was interested in how it would translate to the stage.

Pretty well, as it turned out. Because the weather was poor (cold rain), the audience was sparse, with maybe only eight or ten of us in attendance. The actors still played well, which was admirable. There was one fill-in actor who missed the occasional cue, but that is understandable.

Ensemble Theater’s solution to the wide-ranging action and settings of the book was to go with no set. There was a central raised platform, which was accessed under any of four scaffolds, which were used occasionally by the cast. We were told by characters or by a narrator where we were, and the action would commence. It was effective, and probably the only low-budget way to approach it.

There were only six actors, and two were always the same (Frankenstein and his creature), with the other four actors playing all the other parts. The actors playing the two leads were very strong. The other actors were good, but made occasional odd choices; for example, one actor chose to play an Austrian professor as a buffoon, which he was not in the book, and that was odd. The young woman playing Frankenstein’s beloved was very good as the beloved, but was weaker as the narrator Mary Shelley. There was also a place where a man was narrating, and they cut to a recording of “Mary” finishing his lines. If the director was going to use a recording anyway, why not just have the man finish his own lines? It was a little jarring.

Still, I really loved the production. It was true to the book and was intense in many places. The starkness of the bare stage and the suggestive (rather than literal) props used by the actors helped us to fill in details with our minds. It was a good theater experience, and we really liked the small theater space, as well as some of the productions they have coming up. I look forward to going back soon.

On the way home, since we went right by it, I do have to admit we stopped for dessert at the Cheesecake Factory. It is hard to drive past that place.

Halloween is usually about costumes and candy. We got the costumes part right, at least in seeing them. Yesterday, we used Halloween to drive over to Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania, to see their production of Les Miserables, even though it was just a Thursday, and so a workday. It was the only day we could get tickets.

First, we ate. We stopped at the Main Street Diner, mostly because I love anything with the word “diner” in it. The food was quite good, and the service was good, but I might hesitate in going back because they had several TVs on, and I really hate seeing TV when I am in a restaurant.

Back to the play. Mer and I knew two of the students involved in Les Mis – one in the pit and one as a chorus member on stage, who even had a few solos. I am impressed that a college with no graduate students and only a theater minor (no theater major) could pull off a musical on the scale of Les Mis. What is impressive is that they did, and did so really well. The only negatives I remember catching were the occasional failure of a microphone for a non-major character. Mer and I were in the front row, and there were two or three times we could not hear the actor singing, but that was rare. The other negative was in casting – the young woman playing the main love interest, Cosette, is supposed to be the jaw-dropping beauty of the play. She was pretty, but the girl playing Eponine was noticeably more striking, especially with her long, dark hair. Even Meredith commented on it after the play, and we both thought the director should have had her tuck up her hair for the play so she would not be so pretty.

Having said that, the production was a colossal success. The pit was nearly perfect, the singers were all well cast, the sets were huge and effective. All of the leads were strong. While Grove did not have the typical moving stage associated with big-budget productions of the play, they compensated for it effectively by having characters walk around the front of the pit. I am still in awe at how well the cast and crew did for this musical. The notes said it was the thirty-fifth and last year for the college director, who was retiring, and he wanted to go out on a huge production. He did, and they all did very well.

Today, Wednesday, was an unusually student-filled day. Mer and I and a few other teachers, along with about 125 students, went up to Cleveland to the Hanna Theater to see the Great Lakes Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s Richard III. These field trips are always a bit uneasy in that you never know if the students will like the play, and also, since the theater holds about another three hundred students from other schools, how the day is going to go.

Pretty well, as it turned out. There was a slight delay in getting the play going, and the students were a bit restless (especially those from other schools), with some of them starting rhythmic clapping at times, but once the production got going, everyone settled down and the audience was as good as you could hope for.

Richard III was great. It was set in an unspecified modern time, with most actors wearing suits or skirts. The set was minimalist, with lots of bare metal supporting a catwalk, on which was hung a lit-up neon-esque sign proclaiming whichever monarch was in power at the time. There were cell phones and automatic weapons and modern camouflage uniforms, and it all worked well on stage for me and Mer. We were both reminded that students are not always used to “modern” productions of Shakespeare plays, where the clothes are modern but the speech is four hundred years old, and formal for even that time. Some students said it took them a bit to get used to all of that. Plus, Richard III can be hard to follow because of the sheer number of characters, many of whom are related, share names, and/or also go by titles different from their names. It is not easy to keep it all straight, but the kids did really well.

The acting was excellent across the board. I have never seen a poor performance at Great Lakes. Richard was quite strong, with the actor taking on a limp and a crippled hand throughout the play.

After the play, we dropped everyone off in Hudson to go get lunch anywhere on the old square or in the new one. Mer and I and the other teachers went to Hattie’s, an ice cream parlor run for the benefit of mentally disabled people. The food is good, and the cause is a good one. We did get ice cream at the end of the meal, but we had to get it to go, as we were running out of time.

Back at school, I had a standard Fools’ practice. The improv practices are always from 3:30 to 4:30 on Wednesdays, and I have typically had about fourteen of the eighteen Fools show up each week, which is a good class size.

I ended my student-intensive day with going out to eat with some of my Connections guys. At CVCA, each faculty member is assigned a group of eight to twelve students to meet with once per week, and staff can sign up too. I have a group of ten seniors, and five of them met me in Cuyahoga Falls, at the Royal Buffet Chinese restaurant. I like buffets because we can all get what we like, and we can be leisurely over the meal. The six of us ate and visited for over an hour, and they guys seemed eager to go out again before too long, although given the business of the holidays, I’m guessing it will be January or February before we go out again.

Mer and I have one holiday tradition that we have done every year of our marriage (and actually a few years before that) – we carve pumpkins every Halloween. This year we were more on top of things than we have been of late and actually carved them yesterday (Monday), a full four days before Halloween. This makes the 16th set of marriage pumpkins, and at least two years prior to that.

Since we had been there this summer, I tried to carve Italy. It came out a bit rounded and plump, so I figured that was Italy in the world of the Pillsbury Ragazzo di Pane. Mer got clever and carved a patch, for a “pumpkin patch.” She is so witty, and it actually worked pretty well.

Playhouse Square in Cleveland has a partnership with Case Western Reserve where Case Western students who are working on their Master’s degrees in acting get to do two shows a year at Playhouse Square. Granted, it is usually in the very small Bialosky Lab Theatre, which holds 150 patrons, but it is still a cool space in which to perform. On Saturday, Mer took me to the matinee showing of Case Western’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Mer and I have seen Twelfth Night a lot – at least three times in the theater, and we own two versions on DVD. Being familiar with the play is helpful. Quickly, it is a comedy, which means there is a block to young love (in this case, gender confusion from disguise, and a lady in mourning), and there is much confusion because of the presence of a twin brother and sister, each of whom thinks the other is dead. Throw in a fool, a rigid butler, a drunken kinsman, and a stupid but wealthy knight, and you are good to go.

Case set this production in the Mississippi Delta region, which made for amazing music in the play – lots of slide guitar and blues and harmonica. The music may have been the best part of the play, and that is no small feat. The acting was solid across the board for all of the main characters, with the actress playing Viola/Cesario doing a very good job, and the Fool was solid actor and a very good musician. The actor playing Sir Toby did well, although I was not always on board with some of the directorial choices.

My biggest disappointment was in fact some of the direction; the play is very funny, and usually borders on slapstick in places. The director of this production toned that humor down in most places, and that was too bad. They did do some fun things with the wild hair of the stupid but rich knight, but on the whole, the humor was smile-worthy instead of laugh-out-loud.

As if that were not enough, we left the theater and headed east to Chardon. I had never been to Chardon – it has a pretty town square, where we ate at a diner. The food was good, but the service was a tad slow, so we had to skip dessert. Mer had more plans for the evening, and another play, to boot.

We walked over to the Geauga Theater, the community theater of Chardon. We were there to see The Haunting of Hill House, which is appropriate enough for this time of year. The choice surprised me a bit until Mer told me the play was based on a book by Shirley Jackson.

The play takes place in Hill House, with a group of six people investigating the supernatural. Creepy things happen throughout, like doors closing on their own, and doors shaking in the casings, and strange lights and such. It was a fun show from an effects and set standpoint. The set was two rooms and the silhouette of a tower. I did not see where the plot was going and was completely wrong about the end. My only slight complaint was there were enough hesitations and repeated phrases that it seemed as if some of the actors did not know their lines completely, and that took me “out” of the play and made me edgy.  Still, I enjoyed the story, and had a good time.

On the way home, we took steps to rectify the problem of missing dessert. We were driving very close to the Cheesecake Factory, so we stopped there and each got a piece of cheesecake. As always, I thought I could plow through it with no problem, but the last four to six bites made me feel queasy. There is a lot of cheesecake in one of those pieces.

We did not get home until late, but it was a good long date day.

Sometimes our “day” concept gets interrupted for good reason. Last Tuesday, Dave Krichbaum passed away. I never met Dave, but his wife, Sue, has been going to our church forever and is a wonderful lady, so we wanted to go to the funeral and funeral dinner, both of which were on Saturday. It was not the occasion I would have sought, but it did let us spend a good chunk of the day with Aunt Mary, who also knows Sue quite well. That was nice.

The funeral was in Hartville, down near where the Krichbaums live and where we go to church. We met Aunt Mary at the funeral home and we in for the funeral. Our pastor, Ken, did a fabulous job of giving a personal and detailed sermon, which was all the more amazing given that no one was sure what Dave’s faith was. He was a reserved man, and never talked much about religion. Ken treated that subject with sensitivity and compassion, and that was a good thing for Ken to do.

As I said, I did not know Dave, but what I picked up at the funeral was that he was a math and physics major at Mount Union College, and then he served in the Air Force for twenty years before retiring as a major. He moved back home to the farm to take care of his mother and the farm, and he lived out his life there. He was a quiet, no-nonsense man who loved his family. He worked hard, even when his back bothered him from all they physical work around the farm. He had a sense of humor. He died of complications due to a blood disease that was diagnosed two-and-a-half years ago. Sue loved him, and that speaks volumes to me. It sounds as if he was a very good man.

The graveside service was very moving. There were six members of the Air Force there as an honor guard, and the ceremony was precise and unhurried. It choked me up a couple of times, especially when one of them played a perfect rendition of “Taps,” which was not an easy feat given the temperatures in the low 40s with intermittent drizzling.

After the graveside service, we all went back to the church in New Baltimore for a funeral dinner. There was food for about 150 people! (There were about fifty or sixty of us at the dinner). We had a good time of fellowship, and Sue seemed to be taking things fairly well, although I’m sure it will be very difficult over the next few weeks and months.

Mer and I said goodbye to Aunt Mary and headed home, where we took a long food-induced nap (after Mer made a very quick grocery run for the week). Once we were up, I made supper, and we streamed the movie Iron Man 3, which we had not seen yet. It was pretty good. The Iron Man series of films does a good job of balancing the action with lots of humor, which makes the basis for a decent superhero movie. There were a few “oh, come on!” moments, but only a few, and I was quite entertained, especially by the Tony Stark moments (as opposed to the Iron Man moments). Stark is funny and at times introspective and resourceful; when he is Iron Man, he tends to be fighting, and that makes Stark more interesting to me. Not a great movie, but it was a good one.

On Sunday, I managed to get Mer to go for a late evening walk with me down on the Towpath near the Beaver Pond. It was a perfect fall day, and we ran into one set of CVCA parents and another CVCA teacher. We walked for about an hour. I do love Ohio falls – they are pretty and tend to be cool and dry.

Saturday was Mer’s day, and after a mellow start to the day, we headed west of Akron. It was a beautiful day, and Mer wanted to go for a hike out of our 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Cleveland book. The national parks were all closed due to the funding issues going on in Washington, so Mer picked a county park, which was still open. She picked the Allardale County Park, which was private land that was donated by a couple about thirty years ago and has become quite a nice little park.

For a small park, Allardale has a couple of impressive hills, including a sledding hill. The path through the park is both paved and grass, and one side trail we took was all grown-up woods, and the path was just a forest trail, including a small ford over a stream. None of it was breathtaking, but it was pretty, especially the overlook at the top of the big hill that looks out over a field and a treeline. It took us over an hour to walk the whole park, and while there were other people around, we often had the trail to ourselves. It was great to get outside on such a fine day.

In the evening, Mer took me up to the east side of Cleveland, to Case Western University. After a small search for a parking lot, we managed to find the on-campus theater for which we were looking, to go see the university’s production of Betty the Yeti. I know – I had the same thought of “Huh?” Mer had decided to gamble and go to see a production we had never seen nor even heard of.

It was a decent pick. Betty is set in the Pacific Northwest, and focuses on five characters representing the logging industry, environmentalists, and park rangers. The author added in a yeti for good measure as an endangered species, and he went at it. It is a funny play, and the author made sure to poke fun at all of the characters, and he made sure to turn things on their heads with a logger wanting to protect the Yeti and an environmentalist wanting to get rid of her because she was not useful to “the cause.” It was funny and moderately thought-provoking without being heavy-handed. The production was a little uneven at times as far as acting goes, but the actors were all competent, with the lead logger being quite good. I had a good time, and enjoyed being out on the town with Mer. We also got to see a new-to-us venue by going to Case Western.

On Saturday, I did a lot of running around – literally, in the morning at any rate. Shannon and I went and ran in the park for another 4.5 miles. That gave me about sixteen miles over four runs in the seven days after a marathon, which is pretty amazing for me, since it usually takes me four to seven days before I can run at all after a marathon.

After we got home and ready for the day, Mer and I decided to go downtown. I was sleepy, but Mer and I make a conscious choice to try to do something every day when we are away from home, whether that be hiking or touring or seeing theater. So, we headed downtown on the El. We started at Moody Bible Institute to drop off a package of cookies for one of Mer’s former students (we give cookies as graduation presents to students). We then walked in a direction that I thought would take us to the Water Tower. The walk took us through several cool neighborhoods we had never seen, including a block-long restaurant district, but ultimately took us about four blocks too far north. We were able to correct that, and we got to the Water Tower so we could visit Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA). The museum is small (we were able to see the whole thing in about three hours), but is full of Christian art from the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Shannon and Jo recommended it highly to us, and we were not disappointed. The permanent collection is on one floor, occupying three rooms. We went through most of the works when it came time for a guided tour. Mer went and joined the tour while I rested on a bench. Although I can run for about four hours and suffer no back issues of any kind, standing in one place makes my back ache badly after just an hour or so. Mer returned with two people – a guide and a docent-in-training. Mer and I made up the entire tour, which was cool. It lasted about an hour, and they took us around to see several works. The guide kept asking us what we saw in each painting, and that was interesting to be forced to look hard at each painting. Being a bit impatient when I am not experienced in a topic, I did occasionally wish she would just jump in and tell us about the painting, but it was an informative tour. After the tour, Mer and I took a quick look at the rotating works on a different floor, but we were short on time and the works were all modern and so had less historical importance, and did not deal with Christian themes, so were less personally interesting.

We jumped back on the El and had to tromp home about a mile to Shannon’s in the rain. Shannon told us he had hoped we would just stay downtown since we were going back down to Moody (on the El, of course). We ate a quick bite, and Shannon and Mer and I headed back out in the now-rain-free evening to go see the Informal improv show. Jolene stayed home to work since she is in the middle of getting her master’s degree.

We got to the show an hour early (shocker, I know), and we were first in line. Ben and John, my former students, saw us and ran out of the auditorium to say hi. They needed to warm up, so could not chat long. Shannon and Mer and I passed the time chatting and watching the growing crowd – Informal manages to fill a four-hundred-seat auditorium twice in an evening, which is impressive. Playing to a mostly-college-aged crowd must be fantastic, given the energy in the room.

Since a ton of CVCA students end up at Moody, Mer and I saw several former students, including one of our “daughters” who was in Chicago for a concert, but had agreed to swing by the show if she could make it. That was fun. Ben’s parents came out to see their first show, so we were able to freak them out with them seeing and hearing Shannon for the first time (he is my identical twin).

The Informal show was fun. They always do about fifty percent sketch comedy (pre-planned scripted skits) and fifty percent improv. Both were well done. Informal has two new members who did very well; one of them is excellent at physical comedy, which is always a plus in an improv group. I always look to Shannon for an outsider opinion on the show since he does not know anyone, and he liked it very much, saying he would take a show of that caliber any day.

After the show, we visited with Ben and John and some other students, and then headed home on our friend the El. Mer and I stopped to pick up some Chinese food on the way back to the apartment, which we ate while watching YouTube videos Shannon and Jo wanted us to see and while we talked about the show.

We had to leave on Sunday, getting on the road about 10:30 Chicago time, which put us home about 6:00 after an uneventful drive home. It was a great weekend – a world-class city with friends and family, and theater and museums (and good public transportation).

I have two former improv students who are in an improv group called Informal – the improv group of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. I made it to two shows last year, and I wanted to try to see them again this year, so Mer and I headed out to Chicago last Thursday to see their first show of the season. But that was not until Saturday. Mer and I took Friday off from CVCA so we could spend time with Shannon and Jolene. The Thursday drive was uneventful, except I was able to tune in the Bills-Browns NFL game in on the car radio for about thirty minutes of the trip, right around South Bend. We got to Shannon’s place around 10:00 Chicago time. Jolene was already in bed since she had to work, but we stayed up to watch the last ten minutes of the game with Shannon. Sadly, the Bills lost in a close game.

Friday morning, Shannon and I went running in a nearby park while Jolene got ready for work and Mer slept in a bit. The park is very nice – the loop in it is one mile around, so Shannon and I ran there and then ran four laps before walking home to cool down, having done four and a half miles.

Jo had left for work by the time we got back, and Mer was awake. We all got ready in a leisurely  fashion, and then struck out on the two-mile walk to Anne Sather’s restaurant in Andersonville. Anne Sather’s is a favorite breakfast place for me and Mer – they have the best cinnamon rolls I have ever had, and you get two just as a side. Yum. We ate well, and then walked back, taking the opportunity to walk through some very pretty parks on the way home, although I started to feel ill from my breakfast – I’m guessing it was the rather greasy egg-and-ham burrito I had.

Shannon and I took a nap while Mer graded. We then all walked over to the El to take the train downtown to go to Magnolia – a cake shop in the Loop. Shannon swore they had the best chocolate cake on the planet, and he was pretty much right. We all got a slice of cake, and Shannon even remembered to get Jo a piece. Since we were downtown and it was after 4:00, we walked over to the building where Jo works so we could all go home together. She was pleased to see us (and the cake).

After supper (Thai take-out for everyone but me, who got pizza), we geared up to go see a play. Shannon said he had looked up the location, and Google insisted it was less than two miles away, so we should walk. Fair enough. We set off at a brisk clip, and got there a bit winded an hour later. Two miles, my eye – it was over three. We made it in time for the play, though, so that was good. The play was a small production called Set Up. It was a modern look at a blind date between two 40-ish-year-olds, who both had relationship issues from the past. Add in an over-involved waiter, a well-intentioned girl friend, and a pushy brother, and the play was funny for much of the time. It had thoughtful moments, and while certainly an exaggeration, there was much to relate to, even for someone like me who never really dated (just Meredith). It was not a heavy-hitting play, but was fun and had enough to think about not to be total fluff. It was well done.

We hoofed it back to the apartment, tired but happy. Shannon has a watch that keeps track of his steps, and it put him somewhere around 38,000 steps, which put us roughly in the region of twenty miles walked and run during the day. Not quite a marathon, but enough for us to feel pretty beat.