​Recent research published by the Brookings Institution reports that the performing arts have been the most at risk and the hardest hit by COVID-19 of all the creative arts industries.  It was estimated that, nationwide, almost 1.4 million jobs and $42.5 billion in sales have been lost to date.  Locally, Cleveland’s Playhouse Square expects to lose nearly $4 million and layoff or furlough nearly 200 employees between March, when its theaters were closed, and the end of the calendar year. In theaters, concert halls and arenas across the region, thousands of live performances have been canceled or indefinitely postponed. 
 
And yet, creative retooling and forward-thinking has recently taken place, as many arts organizations seek an audience among those in isolation and find virtue in going virtual.  They are profiled in CANVAS magazine and in a reprint of the piece in the CJN, which can be found here: 
 
https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/culture/theater/northeast-ohio-arts-organizations-go-virtual-during-pandemic/article_0525c9f0-2a7c-11eb-9370-876bf4ebcd3e.html
 
 

“All the World’s a Stage Fright” has been published in partnership with Gray & Company Publishing and the Cleveland Jewish News, the newspaper that hired me as its theater critic.  Its parent company has never before published a novel nor has it ever serialized excerpts from one, but here we are.

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​Excerpt 1: 3 left 26 near 0 pinch
 “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
As You Like It (Act II, Scene VII)

In the first excerpt, taken from the first chapter of the novella, readers are  introduced to Asher Kaufman.  As a former actor, he is asked by his managing editor to get cast in a professional production and write about the experience.  “You know,” he said loudly, in competition with the lunchtime din of the deli they were in, “do a Plimpton.”  Read more:
https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/excerpt-1-3-left-26-near-0-pinch/article_4fbebce0-1a16-11eb-b984-bb5ee8ae06aa.html
 
Excerpt 2: I fear Shakespeare
 “Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great,
some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.”
Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene V)

In this second-of-five excerpts, from the third chapter of the novella, Asher has gone to the ninth-story corner office in The Arcade, within walking distance of the Playhouse Square theater district, to get permission to audition for the musical “Sweeney Todd” from the artistic director of North Coast Theater, Andrew Ganz.  Andrew is fine with the idea and the publicity having a critic/actor in the cast can generate. But Asher soon realizes that his rusty stage skills are the least of his problems.   Read more:
https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/excerpt-2-i-fear-shakespeare/article_55131b3a-1ecd-11eb-b314-43dd3bb3fb25.html
 
Excerpt 3:  Thin skin
 “The wheel has come full circle.”
King Lear (Act V, Scene III)

In this third-of-five excerpts, extracted from Chapter 15 of the novel, theater critic Asher Kaufman agrees to be an embedded journalist in a professional production of “As You Like It.”  His debilitating fear of Shakespeare pales in comparison to having to share the stage with actors he has panned in the past, who he is about to meet in a pre-rehearsal gathering.   Negative reviews have long been an occupational hazard in the arts, but performing artists tend to have remarkable albeit selective memories, and he is about to find out which ones also have thin skin.   Read more:
https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/excerpt-3-thin-skin/article_b7d79898-22cb-11eb-b5d1-37d26e2eaf3a.html
 
Excerpt 4: The Chronicle
 "I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes?"
The Merchant of Venice, (Act III, Scene I)

In this week’s excerpt, the fourth-of-five, Asher tells us a little about the newspaper that hired him to be its theater critic and for which he is writing behind-the-scenes articles about performing in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”   We learn, for example, that The Jewish Chronicle was founded in 1885 during an upsurge in Jewish immigration in Northeast Ohio, and continues to be Jewish-centric in its focus and mission. 
But its orientation has gotten increasingly secular in order to attract a larger and broader readership. And so it includes a sports section despite the remarkable scarcity of Cleveland Jewish athletes to profile, reviews of non-kosher restaurants throughout the city, and an entertainment section that covers the visual and performing arts whose works are not necessarily created by, about or featuring anyone Jewish. But his managing editor requires him to call out Jewish artists in his reviews, much like how Adam Sandler’s hilarious “Hanukkah Song” calls out famous people who are Jewish and those we think are Jewish but are not.  “O.J. Simpson? Not a Jew.”  Read more:
https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/excerpt-4-the-chronicle/article_e3f5cbb2-29e6-11eb-8dc6-63fb010bba5f.html
 
Excerpt 5: Lenny in the first row
 
“If by chance I talk a little wild, forgive me; I had it from my father.”
Henry VIII (Act I, Scene IV)
In this fifth and final excerpt, extracted from Chapter 23 of the novella, the North Coast Theater production of “As You Like It” is starting preview performances and Asher, our clandestine critic, finds himself performing before a particularly rowdy and vocal challenging audience:  His dad, Lenny – the 88-year-old patron saint of local theater -- and several hundred senior citizens from local community centers and nursing homes. 
https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/excerpt-5-lenny-in-the-first-row/article_19fca3e2-2f38-11eb-8d4d-f796c9bfde25.html​
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"All the World's a Stage Fright" is available at grayco.com, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and wherever you like to purchase paperbacks.

​The Brookings Institution recently reported that the performing arts have been the most at risk and the hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis of all the creative arts industries.  It was estimated that, nationwide, almost 1.4 million jobs and $42.5 billion in sales have been lost to date.
 
Like so many other theaters, the Ohio Shakespeare Festival closed its doors in March.  Says company member Tess Burgler, “we were smackdab in the middle of our run of ‘Saint Joan,’ were about to start rehearsals for ‘Miss Holmes’ and had just announced our next indoor season at Greystone Hall.  And then it was gone.”  Also cancelled was the company’s summer outdoor season productions of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Othello.”
But rather than wait out COVID-19 or venture into virtual productions to be seen online, the OSF staged 16 live performances of Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield‘s comedy “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised].” The show, which parodies bits and pieces of all of the Bard’s 37 plays in just 97 mad-cap minutes, ran from July 17 – Aug. 9 to sold-out audiences. 
 
How was this accomplished?
 
They chose a play with a small cast (Ryan Zarecki, James Rankin and Natalie Steen) and already in their back pocket, having staged “The Complete Works…” four times over the past three years. 
 
“Abridged” and “revised” appear in the play’s title in acknowledgement of the show’s  treatment of the source material, but the authors allowed the OSF to also cut out the intermission so to limit audience interaction and eliminate most of the sound and lighting elements so to minimize the size of the production crew (Burgler served as director and stage manager). 
 
The show was performed outdoors on secured private property – the Lagoon area of Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens – with the approval of the Summit County Health Commissioner and the taking of every imaginable safety precaution.  “We needed a large outdoor space,” says artistic director Nancy Cates, “so that we could create 6-foot squares around every seat” and there needed to be enough seats to make the enterprise financially feasible.  Sales were limited to 70 patrons, which was 25 percent of a typical house under normal circumstances.
 
And following the National Basketball Association’s protocol, the cast and crew lived together in a quarantined “bubble” during the weeks prior to rehearsal and until the final performance. 
 
While hardly a sustainable or replicable formula, live theater has returned – at least for a short time – to Northeast Ohio.

​On Thursday, March 12, director Scott Spence and his four-member cast for Steve Martin’s comedy “Meteor Showers” were two and a half weeks into rehearsals with two and a half weeks to go before opening.  The set was 80% built and other facets of the show’s design were rapidly moving forward. 

The Beck Center for the Arts’ next big mainstage musical, the Tony Award-winning “Something Rotten,” was fully cast and open calls for its next production in the small Studio Theatre, Ayad Akhtar's Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Disgraced,” had just been completed.   

“That was when Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced limitations on public gatherings,” says Spence, who is also Beck’s artistic director,” and everyone had a sense that things would get worse before they got better.”  So it was decided among the actors, designers and administrators that “Meteor Showers” would be postponed.  “And though we are seriously looking at recapturing titles from this season for next season,” adds Spence, “until we hear more from the Governor and better understand what else is going on in the near future, we will sit tight and lick our wounds.”

Sitting tight is not really in Spence’s nature, so he is busy figuring out the prospect of social distancing in his mainstage theater and devising seating charts that factor in 6-foot separation among patrons and the staggering of rows. 

“The best case scenario is that we have 125-130 seats, about 25% occupancy, when people hungry for theater are ready to come back.”

So the question becomes how does a theater whose brand and business model revolves around sizable musicals pare down costs and still maintain its standard of quality and new guidelines for safety?  “We just don’t know yet,” says Spence, who is also balancing the arts education arm of the Beck Center, “but it is certainly something we are constantly working on.”
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Photo: Nick Drake (from left), Greg Violand, Charles Mayhew Miller and the ensemble in the 2020 production of “The Scottsboro Boys” 
Photo / Roger Mastrioanni 
 

​ “We were going into the second week of Love’s Labour’s Lost when we had to cancel,” recalls Dane CT Leasure, artistic director at Rubber City Theatre – formerly the Rubber City Shakespeare Company – in Akron.  “Before we shut down, we thought to offer a final live performance on Facebook by way of a phone at the back of the theater.
 
There were 12 friends and crew members in the house and Terry Teachout, the drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, happened to be watching on Facebook.  Here is what he had to say on his arts journal blog “About Last Night:”

“How does a New York drama critic spend his Friday nights when Broadway’s theaters are closed up tight? I don’t know about my colleagues, but I curled up on the couch with my laptop last week and watched a live performance in Akron, Ohio, of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. 

Like most of America’s theater companies, Rubber City Theatre has since been shut down in the hope of containing the spread of the coronavirus, so it decided to live-stream via Facebook the final performance of its current production as a gesture of solidarity with everyone who knows how vital great art is in times of trial….

To be sure, the technical quality of the one-camera webcast was primitive—the picture was fuzzy and there was no ‘camerawork’ whatsoever. But that didn’t matter in the least: The play came through clearly, and that was all that mattered. Kelly Elliott’s modern- dress staging was satisfyingly simple and lively, and the handful of loyal audience members sprinkled throughout the company’s small auditorium were audibly pleased by the results. So was I, and I found myself asking as I watched: What am I getting out of this experience? Why am I so moved? Exactly what do masterpieces have to say to us at moments like these?

In Shakespeare’s case, the answer is easy enough. Even in a self-consciously artificial comedy like Love’s Labour’s Lost, there are moments of immediacy that reach across the centuries (and through the screen of your viewing device, whatever it may be) and make you sit bolt upright, stunned by their prescience. In my case, it was these lines spoken by Lord Berowne, one of King Ferdinand’s noble companions, that rang the bell of recognition: ‘To move wild laughter in the throat of death?/It cannot be; it is impossible:/Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.’ For of course it is possible, which explains why we most need the balm of comedy when the roof of the world seems to be crumbling over our heads.”

​Not a bad way for Rubber City Theatre to go into hiatus.

​Charlie Fee holds a unique position in the American theater scene. He is the producing artistic director of three independently operated, professional theater companies – Great Lakes Theater in Cleveland, Idaho Shakespeare Festival in Boise, Idaho, and Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival in Lake Tahoe, Nevada – that have created an innovative production-sharing alliance. 
 
“Unlike co-producing models, our collaboration creates year-round opportunities for our artists and our production staffs by extending contracts across all three cities,” says Charlie. “In other words, we create all of the work seen in our three cities.”
 
And then came the pandemic. “We were in the second week of rehearsal for Much Ado About Nothing,” which was to open in Cleveland in March, move to Boise in May and then on to Tahoe in July, “and, early on, it was a continuously changing environment with constantly evolving information about the virus and compliance guidelines.” 
 
When the directive came from Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to shut down operations,  the acting company was on a mid-day rehearsal break and Charlie was in a production meeting with the various heads of production, stage management and design. “We went back to rehearsal knowing that it was over, that the show was done, but we couldn’t just leave each other.  We decided to run the show, invite the whole company to watch it, and capture it on an iPhone for an archival record.” And then he cancelled the show in Boise and then in Tahoe as the possibility of a production kept evaporating.  “It’s tough telling the same group of people, three times, that we are shutting down their show.”
 
The remainder of the Great Lakes 2019-2020 season, which ends in May, has been cancelled, but there is still the prospect of opening shows in Boise and Tahoe in the summer even though timelines are constantly shifting.  “It is a long shot,” admits Charlie.  “The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, a neighbor, has shut down entirely.  But the Utah Shakespeare Festival, another neighbor, has announced that it is opening in July, but to do so they are planning on rehearsing in an isolated, quarantined location.  We’ll see how that goes.”
 
And if theaters are allowed to open under new protocols, asks Charlie, what will their new productions look like?  “Are musicals more dangerous than straight plays because singers project two or three times the distance as speakers?  How far apart must musicians be in an orchestra pit?  What will be the required distancing in rehearsal and on stage?  Can actors kiss?  Fight?  And we live on ticket sales.  Will people show up?” 
 
With the added complexity of managing three theaters comes added opportunities. “I don’t see smaller union theaters opening anytime soon. Fortunately, we are in a stronger position to sit and wait and see.” 

Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” penned in 1951, asks “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” Lorraine Hansberry attempted to address these questions in a play – her first to be produced – that debuted on Broadway in 1959 and was performed earlier this year at Ensemble Theatre in Cleveland Heights.

The now-classic “A Raisin in the Sun” serves as a celebration of African American strength garnered through generations of personal struggle and slow-coming social change. And, for actors Eugene and Nicole Sumlin – who are husband and wife playing husband and wife Walter Lee and Ruth Younger in this production – performing together is a celebration of their shared passion, but it has not been a dream deferred.
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“Nicole and I have been blessed to be in about five shows together, not counting vocal recitals. And we actually got to share the ‘Raisin’ experience with our son, Easton, which was truly magical and something I don’t think we will ever forget,” recalls Eugene. Easton played the Cleveland Heights couple’s on-stage son, Travis.

​For the full article, go to: http://canvascle.com/eugene-and-nicole-sumlin/

​“Dear Dobama Artists, I’ve been wanting to write you all.” 
 
So begins artistic director Nathan Motta’s mid-May letter to those who have and were about to make art in the Dobama Theatre performance space.  His words are personal but so eloquently express the shared sentiments of a loving, caring Cleveland arts community.  They are excerpted here, with permission.
 
“I wanted to direct these sentiments to you because so many of my thoughts these past few weeks have been about you and how uniquely difficult it must be for each of you, my colleagues and friends.
 
Clearly the most important thing at this moment is taking care of each other - putting our healthcare and essential workers in the best possible position to be safe and to help those directly affected by the virus. But it’s natural to also be thinking of what this moment means for the future of our industry and community. I hope one positive thing that has emerged through all of this is the importance of the work of artists like you in our world.
 
During the first Saturday night performance of Dance Nation a few weeks ago, a light that was rigged to fall from the grid in the opening scene did not fall. In a freak occurrence, the pull cord that releases the light had bounced upwards and gotten hung up in the grid. The instrument was now dangling precariously over upstage center, an area where actors would gather in the next scene. We had rehearsed this light falling moment over two dozen times and had never had a problem like this happen before - yet here we were.
 
Within moments everyone knew what had to be done. I stepped on stage and called “hold,” asking the actors to stop in place and listen for further instructions. I asked the cast to clear the playing space and explained the situation to the audience. While I was speaking, the assistant stage manager and crew, without hesitation, brought a ladder on stage to manually remove the light instrument. Our wonderful production stage manager then announced on the god-mic for the company to reset for the start of the scene. Within 60 seconds from hold being called, the performance had continued.  The problem was unforeseen and unprecedented but we had put safety first.
 
Today we find ourselves in another such moment - unforeseen and unprecedented. If ‘All the world’s a stage’ then this is a moment in time when it has been of the utmost importance that we players hold in place and clear the stage for the safety of all.
 
When we take care of each other, we are living up to the ideas we explore in our storytelling onstage. By making artists feel safe, everyone is able to take artistic risks and do their best work. Now, at a moment when we are unable to do that work, we have an opportunity to demonstrate the empathy, compassion, and awareness we have learned and shared as theatre artists.  This is an uncertain, challenging and frightening time for so many.
 
Dobama will also take this moment to step back and examine our core values, mission, business model, operations, and future vision. We will do all we can to emerge from this difficult situation a more focused and centered arts organization.
 
I wanted to let you all know that we are thinking about you and that we are here for you in all the ways we are able. Please stay home, be safe, and let’s take care of each other.”

In the play Ratus and Hattie, black friends visiting white friends are served dinner by two black robots, called “Rastus Robot, the Mechanical Negro,” that are salvaged prototypes of a kitchen appliance developed by Westinghouse in the 1930s. The play was selected for the prestigious National New Play Network’s National Showcase of New Plays and was a 2019 finalist for the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference and a finalist for the Playwrights Realm’s Scratchpad Fellowship.
 
Set in Cleveland, The Art of Longing follows the lives of three “third-shift” people—those who guard and take care while the rest of us sleep. The characters’ secrets mask deeply held yearnings that manifest in fantastical abilities and anatomical switch-ups.  The play was a finalist for the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers, a semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s 2017 National Playwrights Conference, and received its World Premiere in the fall of 2018 at Cleveland Public Theatre.
 
The 10-minute play The Bomb, a dark comedy about two ex-lovers who run into each other a Black Lives Matter protest, has been published in “Black Lives, Black Words,” an anthology that aims to explore the black diaspora experiences in some of the largest multicultural cities in the world.
 
These are among the innovative and daring works created by 2018/2019 Nord Family Foundation Playwright Fellow Lisa Langford. 
 
For the full article, go to: http://canvascle.com/lisa-langford/
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​The basic formula for a modern staging of a play hasn’t changed very much over time. Lighting, sound, set, costume, direction, stage management and performance are among the required elements. But now the language of live-performance storytelling is evolving rapidly, courtesy of projection design. 
 
What was once an experimental and expensive complement to other design elements has become an accessible and integral part of a production’s manufacturing of atmosphere, landscape, perspective and animated special effects.  Now the immediacy of theater and the density of computer generated imagery have joined forces so that the lines between set design, lighting design and projection design blur and audiences can’t tell where one stops and the others begin.
 
On the local front, T. Paul Lowry, 44, is the projection designer of choice when it comes to solving visual production problems, telling and propelling stories, and making moments on stage look particularly cool. “Projections have now become a dramaturgical element in many Cleveland productions,” notes T. Paul.
 
When he started designing projections professionally, he was usually brought into a project late in the process, after the set was designed and because the creative team was looking for a specific effect.  “Now,” as was the case with Dobama Theatre’s production of The Nether, “theater companies bring me into the process at the beginning” and he approaches his work the same way he would building sets and lights. 
 
For the full article, go to: http://canvascle.com/t-paul-lowry/

​It was during rehearsals in last summer’s production of the musical Tuck Everlasting at French Creek Theatre, which is based on a children's novel by Natalie Babbitt, that I first noticed that Calista Zajac prances rather than walks, as if always on the verge of breaking into dance. Or taking flight.  She played an 11-year-old living in the woods of New Hampshire, a lead role, who must make a decision with everlasting consequences.
 
And she sings show tunes 24/7.  These and other noticeable symptoms of someone born to perform musical theater have contributed to an impressive professional resume, talent agency representation and placement at the top of the short list of most sought-after local actors. 
 
“While most kids her age are listening to Ariana Grande,” notes her Mom, Jessica, who blames herself and her husband, Louie, for giving Calista the acting itch by exposing her to Broadway musicals when she was just 3½ years old, “Calista listens to Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz and Ben Platt.”  Louie, having performed “legendary” spotlight work while at North Royalton High School, credits his daughter’s immense talent to heredity. 
 
Perhaps, but Calista’s remarkable drive, unyielding dedication, laser focus, and years of vocal training at Helen Todd Voice Studio in Cleveland Hts. and dance lessons at Emjaez Dance Studio in Bay Village haven’t hurt.  She is particularly adept at losing herself in her characters while, at the same time, finding something of herself to inform their portrayals.  And she finds joy in absolutely everything.
 
For the full article, go to: http://canvascle.com/calista-zajac/

The 2006 made-for-Disney Channel movie “High School Musical” and its sequels have given voice to countless kids who have found their best selves performing on or behind the stage in their own high school productions. 
 
For the past five years, Cleveland’s Playhouse Square has been providing high school triple-threats and stage crafters with an annual opportunity to actually meet, work with and compete against like-minded teens.  Called the Dazzle Awards, this initiative is intended to inspire and honor excellence in high school musical theatre and recognize the importance of the performing arts and arts-education within the Northeast Ohio community. 

Earlier this year, 31 participating high schools prepared to have a panel of trained adjudicators attend one performance of their musical and evaluate the performers and the production across 15 categories that include Best Actor and Best Actress, Best Student Orchestra, Best Costume Design, Best Technical Execution and Best Musical, and provide each school with educational feedback.  To date, approximately 9,000 students have participated in productions represented at the Dazzle Awards.

This year’s process was to culminate with winners announced on May 16, at a gala Dazzle Awards ceremony in the Connor Palace Theatre at Playhouse Square. However, the adjudication process and the event were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Instead, Playhouse Square created a virtual Dazzle Awards chorus video as a culminating project for the schools enrolled in this year’s program.
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Read more about Dazzle at:  http://canvascle.com/playhouse-squares-dazzle-awards-hone-high-school-talent-inspire-broadway-dreams-even-during-pandemic/

​When Raymond Bobgan took over as executive artistic director at Cleveland Public Theatre in 2006, he inherited an organization rooted in the urban revitalization vision and social justice mission of James Levin.  Levin, who returned to Cleveland from New York City in 1981, was determined to form an experimental, risk-taking, community-rooted theater group similar to Off-Broadway’s Cafe La MaMa, where he worked as an actor and director.  
 
Raymond was also a passionate artist who has been pushing the boundaries of conventional theater for decades. He told his colleagues, “Let’s stop trying to compete with the LORT [League of Resident Theatres] houses in town – the Cleveland Play House, Great Lakes Theater – and let’s be good at what we do… work that nobody else in Cleveland is going to try.  I want to create an environment for artists, for creators, that feels safe and challenging at the same time.”  And, says Raymond, “A critical component of what we do facilitates a sense of community gathering."

It is this mission that is getting the CPT through the pandemic. 
 
Cancelled are two plays in production – an all-Spanish language production of José Rivera’s Marisol and the world premiere of Nikkole Salter’s Breakout Session – as well as the upcoming production of India Nicole Burton’s Panther Women, which has been in development for over a year. 

Also cancelled is a showcase of world premiere works by Northeast Ohio dance companies and choreographers called DanceWorks, Nina Domingue’s solo piece, The Absolutely Amazing and True Adventures of Ms. Joan Southgate, and Raymond’s own Candlelight Hypothesis. 

Cancelled is Station Hope, the annual community event that celebrates through theater, music, storytelling, and dance Cleveland's social justice history and explores contemporary struggles for freedom and equity.  The theater’s educational partnership with Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) at community centers for youth and families who live in public housing has been cancelled as well. 

But moving forward, the CPT is trying to figure out how to navigate in the internet world and still create that sense of audience intimacy and make work that continues to be experimental, risk-taking and community-rooted.
 
“And we are adamant,” adds Raymond, “about keeping everything live rather than recorded.”
 
Among the new initiatives is a virtual sharing of the pieces and parts of Candlelight Hypothesis, which is being performed by Raymond and fellow artists Holly Holsinger and Faye Hargate.  These performances are raw and are being showcased on Zoom so audience members are able to see each other’s reactions and discuss the work after it is completed.  “And a silver lining in all of this is that it is forcing me to revisit the work in a new platform and, perhaps, discover what this piece was really meant to be.”
 
Another silver lining is that “now more than ever there is a need for what we do, which is to gather people and share an experience that will provoke and engage.  And there is a greater sense of gratitude from audiences who appreciate what we do as well as from artists who appreciate that their work is being chosen from the many online alternatives available during this difficult time.” 
 
A more personal silver lining, admits Raymond, is that his parents – who are in their 80s and have not been able to watch him perform in years – can now see his work and interact with other appreciative audience members online.
 
“While we can't be together physically,” states a posting on the CPT website, “we're excited to connect with you in new ways and look forward to seeing you soon.”
 

Forty seats and a miniscule performance space. Limited cast size and few production bells and whistles.  Little overhead and a full-time staff of only three. 
 
This is business as usual for convergence-continuum in Tremont under the supervision of founder and artistic director Clyde Simon.
 
So with the realization that smaller theater venues may very well be the first to re-open under a new set of guidelines for social distancing, downsizing will hardly be noticed.
 
Going from 40 seats to 27 and truncating an already small playing space to accommodate an already modest production, says Clyde, “is not that much of a hardship.  Small is pretty much our business model.” 
 
Since con-con also dances to a different production schedule than most other theaters – it had not yet started its new season when the pandemic hit – things have been delayed but not necessarily dismantled.  Plans are moving forward to produce Robert O'Hara's Insurrection: Holding History in July and the theater might circle back and revisit planned but never staged productions of Johnna Adams’ Gidion's  Knot and Topher Payne’s Angry Fags.
 
“When we started out so many years ago, we never announced a season because we could not plan that far ahead.  We announced a show, performed it and, at the end of the run, we announced the next show.  That may be the new reality.  We have a feeling that audiences will be forgiving.”
 

​Being affiliated with Kent State University's School of Theatre and Dance – one of the Top 30 musical theater programs in the country, according to On Stage Blog – is both a blessing and a curse for Porthouse Theatre during these trying times.
 
Though a professional theater that taps talent from New York and elsewhere, Porthouse is also a summer training ground for KSU’s full-time students and members of its summer musical theater academies.  Unlike other theaters, where the season is hopefully just delayed or detoured, KSU’s April announcement of the cancellation of the academies put an end to the Porthouse season, which was to include youth-heavy productions of Little Shop of Horrors, Bklyn the Musical and West Side Story. 
 
“All but a couple of roles were cast and the design process was just about complete,” recalls Terri Kent, the producing artistic director at Porthouse and head of the Musical Theatre program at KSU.  “Having to tell all those designers and actors that there was no work this season was really, really difficult.”
 
Ever the optimist, Terri is more inclined to talk about the blessings, like how Porthouse’s affiliation with an academic institution guarantees funding for the next season – “an umbrella of protection” – on top of the theater’s sizable and remarkably loyal subscriber base that she calls “family.”
 
She has already secured the rights to these three musicals for next season and has informed her cast – even the graduating seniors – that they have the right to first refusal to coming back to their roles, “though it is very likely they will have moved on to better and bigger jobs.”
 
“Much of the work has already been done on these shows and they will be so worth waiting for.” 
 

Just got off the phone with Celeste Cosentino, who is Executive Artistic Director of Ensemble Theatre and has served in nearly every capacity ever since her mother, Lucia Colombi, founded the company in the 1980s.  Productions in the theater’s 96-seat main stage and 65-seat black box performance space draw from the canon of modern American classics as well as other significant contemporary plays.  
 
Ensemble shuttered its doors going into the second week of Diane Samuels’ Kindertransport.  “We are in the business of people gathering and were among the first to close,” she notes, “and theater will probably be the last business to open” when this pandemic is over.
 
In the meantime, Celeste has been working with the Cleveland Hts. city council to put together an Arts Council to help coordinate recovery efforts for all the local non-profit arts organizations.  She believes that her theater’s small size and non-profit mission should expedite recovery if limited gatherings are part of the nation’s strategy going forward.
 
Looking ahead, Ensemble is planning a 2020-2021 line up to include Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park, Charles Smith’s Objects in the Mirror as well as the Cleveland premiere of Rajiv Joseph’s Describe the Night.  “We also hope to schedule shows that we’ve cancelled for this season that people have been looking forward to,” adds Celeste, including the musical Fun Home and, perhaps, a staged reading of Kindertransport.  

“This, of course, is subject to change given all the many, many unknowns.”
 And it’s pretty much these unknowns that keep every theater guessing at this point.
 
Production photo: Craig Joseph and Kimberly L. Brown in Ensemble Theatre’s 2020 production of Intimate Apparel
Photo / Shawn Christopher

"The conductor has his score, the director his script.  The choreographer?  Nothing but an intention, hopefully an inspiration and a room full of bodies."

​That, according to Martín Céspedes, is the tabula rasa that is musical theater choreography. He should know, having spent the last 15 years in Cleveland engaging in that enterprise at nearly every professional theater in town after a career touring the nation in celebrity-studded productions of Broadway shows which include The King and I and Man of La Mancha. My first experience with Martín's choreography was in 2005 while on the stage in Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific at the Tri-C Eastern Campus Performing Arts Center.

When he takes on a new project, Martín, of Westlake, finds the intention behind the dance-to-be by listening
to the musical’s cast album, which he does repeatedly in the isolation of his studio. “The potential for
dance arrangements,” he confides, “resides in the recording. I stand in front of the mirrors, set up my
phone camera, and I riff, notating the length of the dance break, the time signatures – slow, 3/4, 4/4 –
and envisioning style of music – waltz, rumba and so on.”  

He then performs and storyboards possibilities as he visualizes himself in the specific situation the dialogue
has created for the music and taps the emotion that the music has created for the dance. The results of
this creative process were most certainly on display during the recent world premiere revisiting of Jane Eyre
by Cleveland Musical Theatre, where Martín's graceful choreography created dramatic, fluid tableaus
that captured – along with Gothic lighting design and period-perfect costuming – the tenor of Eyre’s
haunting childhood memories so vividly described in Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel. 
 
Though inspired by and often paying homage to the choreography created for the original Broadway
productions he is re-staging, Martín is driven to follow his own muse and find his own voice. “While
Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse have created the footprint,” he says, “the actual steps need to be your
own.”
​
For the full article, go to: http://canvascle.com/martin-cespedes/