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.

Last Saturday was a busy CVCA-filled day. A few months ago, one of Mer’s students, who had transferred from another school, asked Mer if she had ever heard of the Shakespeare Competition. Mer had not, and so the student filled Mer in on some details, and Mer looked into it. The competition is national, but starts at local schools. Your school must have at least three competitors, and they all prepare a Shakespearean monologue of about twenty lines. The school contest, in our case, was judged by two school judges (Brandon and Dubbs), and a judge the regional competition people sent. So, CVCA had its first Shakespeare Competition about a month ago. Mer had about ten students participate, and it went very well. A girl, Talia, won for our school with a monologue out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the fairy Titania falls in love with a common man who magically has the head of a donkey. Talia did a very nice job, but I felt that any of the top three or four would have done well at a regional competition. It went well.

Saturday was the regional competition up in Cleveland, at Playhouse Square, in the PBS studios called Idea Center. We met Talia and her father and two of Talia’s friends at Idea Center. The hosts fed us well, providing both breakfast (donuts) and lunch (excellent sandwiches). There were thirty schools slated to compete, but I feel as though one did not make it.

After opening remarks, the students were divided into two groups – even numbers and odd numbers (they had been assigned numbers when they arrived). Talia was an even, so we stayed with the even group. Talia went in the second half (she was number twenty-two, so she went eleventh out of fourteen). The students presented their monologue and also had to recite (from memory) a sonnet. The field of competitors was impressive. The vast majority of monologues were good, and about a half dozen were excellent. The judges voted on three winners from each of the two rooms to compete head to head after lunch, where they would do the monologue, a sonnet, and a new monologue that they had thirty minutes to practice.

The competition in our room was fierce. Talia recited her lines well, but her presentation did not involve much movement, and I think that hurt her. All three of the winners in our room (as well as a few excellent ones that did not make the cut) used most or all of the stage, moving around freely and using many gestures (without overacting). I was content with the three winners in our room; they were all deserving, although I had picked two others to win.

The winners for the finals were announced, and then we broke for lunch while the six winners went off to practice their new scenes. We all came back to the main studio/theater for the finals after lunch, and the six finalists all went. Oddly, and I think this happened by coincidence, the three winners from the other room went first, and then our three winners went. Everyone did a fine job, but I thought it was no contest; I felt, and Mer and Talia’s father agreed, that our room was quite a bit superior, and that they would finish first, second, and third. We had nothing invested at this point since Talia was out of the running; we were three theater-savvy people who thought the three girls from the “even” room had done a much better job overall. The other three competitors did a fine job, but lacked movement overall and some polish in the new, limited-time scene.

The winner of the regional contest gets a paid trip to the nationals in New York. Second place is the alternate if first place cannot go to the nationals for some reason. We were rather pleased with the winner – a girl from our room who had done the “Is this a dagger?” speech from Macbeth. She was very strong, although I would have been happy with any of the “even” girls. Imagine our surprise when the other two girls from “our” room came in third and honorable mention. The judges had voted for a young man who had done a good rendition of Friar Lawrence from Romeo and Juliet, but Mer and I (and Mer’s students later, when she asked them) all felt that the two other girls had been more expressive and more expansive with the text. The only thing we could come up with was that maybe the judges split over the other girls and the young man rose to second based on lack of objection. It at least gave us something to talk about on the drive home.

We got home in the mid-afternoon and puttered around home. We had supper, and then headed over to CVCA to see our friends’ band, Bethesda, who were playing at CVCA along with three other opening groups (two student groups and a solo faculty act). Bethesda is trying to record a new album, so the concert was a fundraiser to help them do that. Since we were leisurely over supper, Mer and I missed the opening two student-group acts, and only caught half of the faculty member’s act. He did a nice job, although he did have the misfortune to break a string on one of his two guitars; happily, he had a fully acoustic one on which to fall back.

Mer and I got to hang out with Dubbs and a couple of other teachers, and after the concert we ran into Zach and Londa, so it was a very social evening. Bethesda did a great job, and played two new (to us) songs. They even invited students on stage for the last song to dance, and that was fun to see that kind of energy and enthusiasm. I’m sad I did not have my camera to take any pictures.

Bethesda and the Bard made for a busy little day, but I enjoyed myself.

On Friday, Mer, knowing how to show a guy a good time, took me back to school for supper. CVCA’s branch of FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) was having a fundraiser spaghetti dinner. Mer had supplied a couple of Italian-music CDs for the event, and so had been given a free ticket. She was kind enough to pay for mine. So, we sat down in a well-decorated cafeteria and ate some pretty good Italian food. We were waited on by one of Mer’s students whom I also know, since he was in Royal Fools last year (he was not able to do Fools this year because of sports schedules). It is fun to know the students. We were joined after awhile by the Murphys, former CVCA parents who put three kids through the school, the last of whom graduated last year and had been a member of my Irish dance club and had been in Mer’s English classes as well. We got a chance to hear about how the family was doing, and it was a very pleasant meal.

After supper, we headed over to the auditorium/chapel for the Sometimes-Annual CVCA Talent Show. It is the “sometimes annual” show because we missed one year a few years ago – this was the fifth show in six years. Mer had been tapped to be a judge, and so she was on stage with the other three judges. I was seated in the audience when I noticed that a part of the projector screen casing was hanging down from the case. I was afraid it might fall on someone, and another faculty member asked me about it, so I went to get a pole to see if I could pull it down. It was too high up to repair quickly, so I figured I would pull it down and worry about fixing it later. I thought it was made of wood and would either pull out of the casing or snap off. Sadly, the show was starting by the time I got back, so I waited for intermission.

When intermission came, I went on stage and had one of the judges help me. I pulled and waited for the wood to snap, but it did not. Finally, one end came close enough to the stage that Eric (one of the judges) could grab it. It turned out to be metal, and no amount of tugging would bring it down. So, we were stuck with this metal piece sticking straight down on stage. The best of intentions….

The actual talent show was fun. I think there were nine acts, although I may have lost count. To my recollection, the acts were:
– an Irish dancer
– a Korean exchange student beat-boxing (and really well, too!)
– a rap duo
– an a cappella singing group of six eighth-grade girls
– two bands
– a young man who displayed a mighty ability to crack his knuckles on command
– a humorous narrated story about a light-saber duel
– a duo presenting a ten-minute version of James and the Giant Peach, with clever motions and varied voices

In between each act, the judges would make positive comments, and the emcees would entertain. The emcees were two of the more popular teachers at CVCA, who also are accomplished musicians, so they were able to play and tell bad jokes and the like, all to good effect.

It was an entertaining evening, with the James and the Giant Peach act winning the competition. The beat-boxing Korean came in second, and the rap duo rounded out the evening in third. The event was well attended, and all the proceeds went toward raising funds for a service group’s spring break service trip, where they go into the greater community to help out with local groups (like Habitat for Humanity, food banks, and the like). So, it was a fun evening for a good cause.

On Wednesday, Mer and I got to go out to supper at Friday’s, where we met up with two former students, Katie and Sarah. The happy thing about the evening is that Katie and Sarah initiated it. That is amazing to me, that nineteen-year-old students would actually want to hang out with 40ish-year-old teachers.

We were both very close to Sarah and Katie. Sarah and Katie were both in Mer’s Honors and AP English classes, and Katie took two writing electives with Mer, and was her student assistant last year. Both girls were in my Irish dance club at school, with Sarah being in it for four years and Katie for three. Both were in Royal Fools as well, with Sarah being in the group for two years and Katie for her senior year.  And they both went with us on last year’s London trip. They are both great and fun people, and so we were both delighted at the invitation.

We met them at Friday’s around 7:00, and we were there until almost 9:00. We had very slow service because the restaurant had sent home most of the cooks when it was slow, so they were unprepared for a mini-rush that happened around the time we came in. As such, we waited about forty-five minutes to get our meals, but it was all fine since we were busy chatting and getting caught up on the lives of Sarah and Katie. The time passed quite quickly (although I was certainly happy when our food did show up!).

After supper, Sarah and Katie swung by the house to pick up some cookies I had just made, and we talked for another fifteen minutes or so before they headed off. It was a great reminder of one of the big reasons of why Mer and I work in education.

Another group of former students invited us over on Thursday. Clarice and Matt invited us over for a game night, and our former students Josh and Kristen (now married!) were to be there as well. The games never really happened, as Josh and Kristen both ended up working later than they’d expected, and they arrived at separate times. In the meantime, Clarice and Matt had put in the first season of the TV show Arrested Development. They thought we would like it, and they were right.

The show features a very dysfunctional and weird family, where the one normal son is trying to straighten out the family business, which had been run by the father, who was put in jail for embezzlement. The show is very witty, and the strange family members are painfully weird. We ended up watching three full episodes. Josh and Kristen showed up partway through one of the shows, and they were delighted, since they are big fans. We had a very good time laughing at the show and getting caught up with the others.

It is a bit weird that young people want to hang out with us, but I’ll not question it. I love the energy and vitality of our younger friends, and it keeps me from getting too old mentally, even if the body keeps aging along. Young people rub off, and that is a very good thing.

Last Saturday was “Mer’s day,” so she was in charge. Her plans did not need to start until late morning, so she let me go running thirteen miles on the Towpath. I’m kicking around the idea of running the Cleveland Marathon as part of a fundraiser for a colleague’s husband who was an avid runner, but is currently fighting cancer. I think I can be ready in time (the Cleveland Marathon is in late May), but I wanted to see how I felt with longer runs at this point. The run went fine, so I’m still seriously considering the marathon.

After I got home and showered and ate, we puttered around the house until almost noon, when we got the car and headed west. We went to Pennsylvania, to Geneva College (about ninety minutes away). One of Mer’s former students, Tiffany, is involved in the theater there, and we have gone to see her in a couple of plays to date – Measure for Measure and Alice in Wonderland (where she was the lead). On Saturday, Tiffany was the lead woman in She Stoops to Conquer, a farce about mistaken identities.

Mer and I had seen She Stoops to Conquer years ago at Actors’ Summit Theater, but we could not remember much of the plot of the play. We both remembered that we enjoyed it and thought it witty, so that was a good sign. Geneva’s production was very good, and the play was amusing throughout, with several laugh-out-loud moments.

The basic plot (ignoring some of the subplots – the play gets quite involved) is one based on mistaken identities and a misunderstanding of social standing – a “manners” play. An old and conservative man has a young daughter (played by Tiffany). He has arranged for a handsome and wealthy and successful son of an old friend to come and stay with them to see if a marriage will result. The daughter is intrigued by the description of the son, but the son has a major flaw – he is uptight and shy around women of good breeding, although is it rumored that he is fond of flirting with women of the working class. The son, meanwhile, has been misinformed that the house in which he is to stay is actually an inn, and so when he shows up, he starts ordering the father around and behaving as though he owns the place, which infuriates the father. When he meets the young woman he might marry, he freezes up and can barely function, so the young woman conceives of the plan to pretend to be a barmaid, so the young man might relax around her and she can get to know him (thus, she “stoops to conquer”).

The production went well. It was a matinee performance, which was sparsely attended, and mostly by grandparents. That made for a bit of a low-energy audience, but the players still kept up good energy on stage. The main actors were excellent and natural-seeming. A few of the supporting roles were a bit stilted or forced, but not to the point of distraction. The biggest difficulty in the play is always the case with high school and college productions: it was a bit hard for the actors to pull off the old men and women of the play. It worked fine, but I think one of the reasons the the Actors’ Summit version worked somewhat better was that older men played the older men parts. Still, that is unavoidable in a college production if the director is going to cast students in all the parts.

The set was basic, but effective – mostly two staircases leading to a mostly-open second floor. The lower level set was confined to the back of the stage and was a sitting nook with a fireplace. The set did give the suggestion of an inn, and it worked well for the action of the play.

It was a good production, and Mer and I had a very entertaining afternoon. We also got to briefly chat with Tiffany after the play, and she was very grateful that we had come to see it.

We headed back home and had supper, and then Mer took me out again, and to another play. This time, we headed over to the much-closer Kent State, to see their production of Ragtime. This production was in the new-to-us large theater that was finished as part of an expansion of the arts-and-music building, and the new theater is huge and beautiful. We had seats near the front. Kent uses a mixture of graduate and undergraduate students in their productions, so their plays are usually very strong. Still, I was not prepared for the high level of Ragtime. It was pretty amazing.

Ragtime is based on a book about race (whites and blacks) and immigrant relations. It ties together several story lines, focusing on a black family, an Eastern European father and daughter, and an affluent white family, with the play mostly taking place in the greater New York city area. As the title suggests, ragtime music features prominently in the musical, and that was a lot of fun.

The actors/singers were jaw-droppingly good, especially the lead actor who played Coalhouse, a ragtime musician who is looking for a woman he loves. As far as I remember from the cast list, the actor who played Coalhouse was the only professional actor, and I am glad they cast him. Even at the start of the play, when there were close to fifty actors on stage at the same time, singing the opening numbers, my eye was drawn to Coalhouse. He had a huge stage presence, and he could sing mightily. What a great actor, at least for this role.

The other actors were all excellent, to the point where after the play, I asked Mer that if this was the level of talent a regional production could put on, how did anyone ever make it in New York or Los Angeles? Kent’s Ragtime was professional-grade all the way through: acting, music, set, and sound system.

The story itself was compelling as well. Sometimes in plays there are characters whom I do not like or about whom I simply do not care. Ragtime did not have any of these. I was interested in what happened to all of the main characters, and there are a lot of them – eight main characters in the three main families, and many supporting roles.

While I suspect many people would not want to see two plays spanning over two hundred years on the same day, it made for a pretty great day for me and Mer.

There are times in my life where I get frustrated with my idle brain, and I snap and decide I need to get back into learning things. That happened again recently, so I decided to try a couple of things. Last Tuesday was the day – I started back at guitar lessons and started dance lessons with Mer.

I have had a guitar for about fourteen years now, and when we first married, Mer and I took lessons together. I had a year or so of lessons, and got to where I could play about a dozen chords and knew a few strum patterns for my right hand. Then, I stopped taking lessons, and I started putzing around with other instruments. So, over the last decade, I have managed to stall at getting better on guitar, and not really gotten good at any of the other half-dozen instruments that I have in my music room. I decided to go back to square one, and I asked a colleague of mine who plays guitar if he would give me lessons. He agreed, and we had out first get-to-know-you lesson on Tuesday. I think Matt (my teacher) was pleased with what I already knew, and I liked Matt’s teaching style and the fact he listened to what I like for music, so I think it is going to work out well.

Tuesday night, Mer and I had our first dance lessons. Years ago, my brother took swing dance lessons, I got to see him dance swing a few times. It looked like a ton of fun, and I have wanted to try it for awhile now. Mer and I are at the age where some of our former students are getting married, especially this upcoming summer. The potential for dancing at receptions seemed to me like a good excuse to finally take some lessons, and happily Mer agreed. We found a ballroom in downtown Cuyahoga Falls, only about ten minutes away. We had an introductory (short and free) lesson last week, but out first real lesson was Tuesday evening. We met our instructor, Dominique, and he turned out to be a lot of fun. He knows what he is doing, and he laughs a lot. We had a good time with him. We learned three slow-dance steps, and four swing steps. Sadly, we did not write them down, so once we went to practice the steps on Thursday, we remembered the slow-dance steps, but could only remember three of the four swing steps. I’m sure we’ll pick it up once we go over it again, but Mer and I both agreed we need to write the steps down, if only to help us remember once we get home. The basic steps have been fairly easy to learn, so we may actually be able to dance a few dances at our first wedding of the season, which is in a month. Dancing with Mer is much fun, and I wish I had started years ago. Bully for me in finally getting my butt on the dance floor.