Published: Friday, July 02, 2010, 2:31 PM     Updated: Tuesday, July 06, 2010, 3:34 PM

VINCENT SACCO This scene makes it look as though it might be called “Tony n’ Tina’s Shotgun Wedding,” but it’s actually “Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant.” And even though it will be performed with a five-course meal next season at Cleveland Public Theatre, Miss Conni Convergence and the Avantgardists dare you to call it dinner theater.

Raymond Bobgan is cool. And five years into his executive artistic directorship of Cleveland Public Theatre, he just keeps getting cooler, mixing sound business decisions with risky artistry at the city’s leading dispenser of cool theater. After finishing the 2009-10 season with the strongest one-two programming punch of the year in Cleveland (“Open Mind Firmament” and “Wanderlust”), Bobgan has just announced the city’s most promising-sounding 2010-11 season. Dig all this:

• Four world premieres, including “Don’t Call Me Fat” by Turkish playwright Ozen Yula and “My Dog Barking” by Cleveland Heights scribe Eric Coble.

• Four Midwest premieres: The second production anywhere (after New York’s Public Theatre) of Pulitzer Prize-winning Suzan-Lori Parks’ latest; an avant-garde dinner-theater (!) offering; and a play co-authored by a creator of the upcoming Broadway musical “Spider-Man.”

• And a beefed-up new works development program to join CPT’s already strong Big Box and Little Box series, including a remount of Chris Seibert and Bobgan’s critically acclaimed one-woman tour de force, “Cut to Pieces,” which will then tour.

Bottom line: While most other theaters in the area are sticking to the reduced schedules and calculatedly mainstream productions instituted to cope with the recession, Bobgan and CPT are out at high noon on Detroit Avenue at West 65th Street with avant-garde guns blazing.

Meanwhile, in his spare time, Bobgan is also overseeing CPT’s partnership in developing the Gordon Square Arts District, including the ongoing renovation of CPT’s expansive campus.

So, take a breath and get a gander at what’s up next season at 6415 Detroit. If you want more information, go to cptonline.org or call 216-631-2727. Or you can catch Bobgan re-caffeinating himself several times a day next door to the theater at Gypsy Beans & Baking Co.

Shows open on a Thursday and close on a Saturday unless otherwise noted.

Saturday, Sept. 11: Pandemonium 10: The West Wild Side. CPT’s annual wacky arts, food and beverage fundraiser comes of age.

Sept. 30-Oct. 16: “The Book of Grace.” CPT regular Sheffia Randall Dooley directs Parks’ multilayered confrontation between Buddy, a veteran of the Iraq war, and his estranged father, a Desert Storm vet who now works as a border guard.

Oct. 7-30: “Don’t Call Me Fat.” Yula, who’s at CPT and Cleveland State University on a grant from the Cleveland Foundation, directs his satire about an obese man’s journey from sickbed to talk-show fame.

Oct. 14-30: “Kill Will.” Playing off the title of a Quentin Tarantino movie, husband-and-wife writers Josh Brown and Kelly Elliott edit the Shakespeare canon down to one evening of the Bard’s best fights and murders. Veteran CPT hand Alison Garrigan directs the world premiere.

Friday, Oct. 22 and Sunday, Oct. 24: “Il Tabarro.” CPT collaborates with Opera Per Tutti, a Northeast Ohio company whose name is Italian for “opera for all,” on Puccini’s tale of love, desperation and violent jealousy. Scott Skiba directs.

Nov. 5-7: Y-Haven Project. CPT stages the 11th annual collaboration with residents of an inner-city Cleveland center for homeless men in treatment for drug addiction.

Nov. 11-Sunday, Nov. 21: Little Box series. Staged readings of new plays by local playwrights are followed by audience discussions.

Wednesday, Dec. 1-18: “Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant.” CPT presents an audience-participation dinner-theater show (a la “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding,” but way weirder) served up by Miss Conni Convergence and the Avantgardists.

Friday, Jan. 14-Sunday, March 6: Big Box series. Eight weekends of new works as CPT opens its doors to area artists.

March 3-19: “Darwinii.” Glen Berger, now at work with “The Lion King’s” Julie Taymor and U2′s Bono on “Spider-Man,” collaborates with CPT regular Brett Keyser on a play about a thief who’s convinced he’s the great-great-great-bastard-grandson of Charles Darwin.

Friday, March 11-Sunday, March 27: NEOMFA Playwrights Festival. Three new works by students in the Northeast Ohio MFA Creative Writing Program, a collaboration of four area schools.

Thursday, March 24: Women’s Voices. The 12th annual female version of the Y-Haven Project, a collaboration with the Elyria YWCA’s Women’s Campus Project.

April 7-23: “Fever/Dream.” CPT staffer Beth Wood directs the Midwest premiere of Sheila Callaghan’s update of 17th-century Spanish playwright Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s “Life Is a Dream.”

April 7-23: “I Hate This” and “And Then You Die.” Local playwright, actor and director David Hansen presents his two previously produced one-man shows (one about personal loss and the other about personal victory) in repertory. Directed by Garrigan.

April 21-May 7: “Insomnia.” Holly Holsinger (Bobgan’s wife) collaborates with Karin Randoja and Seibert on a new play, starring Holsinger and Seibert and directed by Randoja, about a woman on the brink of something like death, mental collapse or self-discovery.

May 5-Sunday June 5: DanceWorks. Five companies perform world premieres in CPT’s 11th annual dance showcase.

May 12-28: “My Dog Barking.” Jeremy Paul, on loan from Theater Ninjas, directs the latest from Coble, about two lonely people’s lives taking a bizarre turn when a starving coyote appears at their doors.

May 26-June 4: “Cut to Pieces.” Bobgan and Seibert restage their shattering 2009 multimedia adaptation of the Persephone myth to lay bare Seibert’s soul.

Dates to be announced: Developing works. They include “My Hemisphere and Your Hemisphere Live Across the Street,” “People4Change” and Bobgan’s own “Rusted Heart Broadcast,” which he described as “a radical new play with an ensemble cast [that] re-examines religion, art and community in the heart of America.”

And, “I think it takes place in a tent and travels like a revival.”

How cool is that?

Published: Saturday, June 19, 2010, 11:59 PM     Updated: Monday, June 21, 2010, 10:59 AM

Julie Washington, The Plain Dealer

Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer “Sex and the City 2″ Girls Night Out party at the Capitol Theatre– a one-time silent-film theater that was renovated and reopened in 2009 — is an example of the vitality of the Gordon Square neighborhood. The Gordon Square Arts District capital campaign is the recipient of a 2010 Cleveland Arts Prize.

It took a small village to raise the Gordon Square Arts District capital campaign from toddler to noisy, energetic adolescent. It’s appropriate that the village will be among those honored Saturday as winners of the 2010 Cleveland Arts Prize.

It’s the first time in recent memory that a Cleveland Arts Prize has been awarded not to a person or an organization but to a neighborhood.

“No one person could have done what Gordon Square Arts District is doing,” said the district’s executive director, Joy Roller. “To give it to one person would be totally unfair. I congratulate the Arts Prize for getting it.”

The Cleveland Arts Prizes — given to creative artists whose work enriches Northeast Ohio and whose accomplishments set a standard of excellence — were announced in May. Artists will be honored at the annual awards event Saturday at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Gordon Square was awarded a Martha Joseph Prize for Distinguished Service to the Arts, given to an individual or organization whose vision or philanthropy has made a significant contribution to the arts in Northeast Ohio.

While only Cleveland City Councilman Matt Zone will go onstage to accept the prize on behalf of Gordon Square, nearly a dozen other civic leaders will receive an Arts Prize medal. They include Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization executive director Jeff Ramsey, Gordon Square Arts District executive director Joy Roller and Cleveland Public Theatre executive artistic director Raymond Bobgan.

The district is a collaboration among Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization, Cleveland Public Theatre and the Near West Theatre.

Its capital campaign has set a goal of raising $30 million for five projects in Cleveland’s Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood, involving the area’s theaters, streetscaping and parking, Roller said.

[Original Cleveland.com Article] [PDF]

By Tony Brown, The Plain Dealer

May 20, 2010, 6:00AM

View full sizeSteve WagnerScholar Barton Friedman (John Stuehr, left) writes about Irish hero Cuchulain (Ray McNiece) and poet W.B. Yeats (Brett Keyser) in “Open Mind Firmament.”REVIEW Open Mind Firmament What: Cleveland Public Theatre presents a play based on the works of W.B. Yeats and Barton Friedman, adapted and directed by Raymond Bobgan.When: Through Saturday, June 5. Performances at 7 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. Matinee at 3 p.m. Sunday; 7 p.m. performance Monday.Where: Cleveland Public Theatre’s Gordon Square Theatre, 6415 Detroit Ave.Tickets: $10-$21. Go to cptonline.org or call 216-631-2727, ext. 501. “I want to create for myself an unpopular theater.”

So said William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet, playwright, politician and playboy (1865-1939).

Cleveland Public Theatre’s “Open Mind Firmament” is nothing of the sort, yet is also true to Yeats’ vision of “a mysterious theater” that is more “a memory and a prophecy” than realistic.

Engrossing, hypnotic and viscerally literary, this homage to both Yeats and Cleveland State University Yeats scholar Barton Friedman entailed a year’s worth of hard physical and mental work by an ensemble of 14 performers led by CPT executive artistic director Raymond Bobgan.

Bobgan specializes in this sort of thing, having produced original adaptations of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, “Summer and Smoke” and plays by Gao Xingjian.

As brilliant as those were, it is tempting now to say that “Open Mind Firmament” surpasses them all. But let’s just say it is everything theater ought to be but so rarely is: revelatory.

Yeats, determined to write plays about Ireland’s heroic age to compensate for what he saw as the portrayal of his countrymen as buffoons by other Irish playwrights, produced a six-play “Ulster Cycle,” five about legendary Celtic hero Cuchulain.

None of these plays is staged today because their pure poetry makes them all but unplayable.

Bobgan and company mix excerpts of the plays and Yeats’ muscular poetry, the subtle gestures of the Japanese Noh theater that fascinated Yeats, and the lectures and written works of Friedman (1935-2009).

The resulting swirl of words and actions — moistened by water, heightened by ladders, shrouded in sheer scarves, and lighted in stark lights and darks by designer Trad A Burns – is a dreamlike melange of playfully sensuous allures.

The story arc, if there is one, emerges from several directions and eventually builds itself into a meditation on the nature of the writer as hero of his own work, author of his own life and anticipator of his own death. Yeats is Cuchulain — and so is Friedman.

The ensemble functions as an organic, protoplasmic whole that ebbs and flows and oozes on the Gordon Square arena stage. But it has four ringleaders.

Brett Keyser‘s Yeats has both dignity and mischief in his eye. Chris Seibert casts spells as Cathbad (the chief druid of Irish mythology) and as a blind seer. Raymond McNiece embodies Cuchulain’s physical and poetic prowess. And John Stuehr haunts the sidelines as Friedman.

If you know little or nothing about Yeats and his work, just let the production pour over your senses, and afterward pick up one of the informative limited-edition programs ($5) in the lobby, take it home and pore over it. Then go to the library and get some actual Yeats (the cast whispers some recommendations to the audience at the end of the show).

Yeats finished his wish for an “unpopular theater” by saying he also wanted “an audience like a secret society, where admission is by favor.”

Do yourself a favor, experience “Open Mind Firmament” and become a member of Yeats’ secret society.

[Original Cleveland.com Article] [PDF]

Steve WagnerJonathan Ramos, left, Kevin Charnas, Adam Thatcher and Trae Hicks take a stroll through “Wanderlust: A History of Walking” at Cleveland Public Theatre.

REVIEW

Wanderlust: A History of WalkingWhat: Cleveland Public Theatre presents the world premiere of a play, adapted and directed by Matthew Earnest.

When: Through Saturday, May 29. Performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. Special performances: 3 p.m. this Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Monday.

Where: CPT’s Gordon Square Theatre, 6415 Detroit Ave.

Tickets: $10-$21. Go to cptonline.org or call 216-631-2727.

The mind of Homo sapiens sapiens evolved, over most of the 200,000 years since the emergence of the subspecies we call human, to collect and process data at about 3 mph.

That’s the speed of walking — you know, where you use your legs, feet and a little arm pumping to navigate from place to place.

In ancient times, some of our forebears began to be pulled in chariots by horses and others began riding the beasts, which today can gallop at up to 30 mph.

But it has been only in the past couple of centuries — with the advent of the practical steam locomotive, the automobile and the airplane — that we’ve demanded our brains catch up in a hurry to exponentially faster processing speeds as we go faster through the world.

This fascinating observation is but one of a multitude made in “Wanderlust: A History of Walking,” which opened last weekend in Cleveland Public Theatre’s Levin Theatre.

It’s a work adapted by New York-based director Matthew Earnest, who’s getting to be a regular around Cleveland. He’s worked at Porthouse Theatre, the Beck Center for the Arts (where he will work again next season) and now Cleveland Public Theatre, where his visual, physical style is most at home.

In an unusual wrinkle, Earnest worked from a nonfiction book, Rebecca Solnit’s fascinating history of walking. Although the book is a delightful read, putting such a scholarly tome on the stage runs the obvious risk of didacticism.

But in these inventive hands, it’s a nonstop, highly choreographed dance-theater piece in which an indefatigable ensemble of seven walks this way, talks this way on a set (by Earnest and Curtis Young) consisting of a stage of dirt and a wall-size chalkboard on which history is writ.

From the bones of “Lucy” (a hominid who lived more than 3 million years ago and whose pelvis indicates she was bipedal) through Aristotle’s Greece and the Middle Ages to modern-day Las Vegas, Earnest and crew set a perpetual human machine in motion for 100 minutes.

It’s an impressive and extraordinarily entertaining education with every member of the cast pitching in: Kevin Charnas, Alexis Generette Floyd, Trae Hicks, Nicole Perrone, Jonathan Ramos, Pandora Robertson and Adam Thatcher.

Walk, don’t drive, to the box office.

By Tony Brown, The Plain Dealer

[Cleveland.com Article] [PDF]

Read the Original Article on Cool Cleveland.com

Gordon Square Arts District

Cleveland is alive with art. It’s one of our greatest strengths.

Would-be artists have been awed by The Cleveland Museum of Art with its world-renowned collection and free admission. Budding violinists have been inspired by the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom or a Celtic band in a local pub. Thespians have taken to local school productions after witnessing Shakespeare performed on Playhouse Square.

Great art, when combined with opportunities to create it, breeds new ideas, new art, innovation. Nonprofit organizations and community organizations provide instruction and incubation takes place in studios and backstage rehearsals.

In Cleveland, arts districts invigorate our neighborhoods. Gordon Square Arts District was born when $20 Million was spent to renovate the near west side surrounding the Capitol Theatre. Restoration of the Capitol Theatre, a throwback to the era of classic movies like “Gone with the Wind,” was just the beginning. The Cleveland Public Theatre got a facelift and the Near West Theatre was constructed, making Gordon Square a destination for film and live theatre http://gordonsquare.org/capitol.html. You can watch a video of CoolCleveland.com’s Thomas Mulready interviewing Joy Roller of the Gordon Square Arts District by clicking the image below or here. Also pictured are Gordon Square Arts District Executive Director Jeff Ramsey and Cleveland City Councilman Matt Zone.

The streets were enhanced by new street lights, wider sidewalks, and accessible parking in the highway-accessible Detroit Shoreway neighborhood. Long underutilized and not-so-well maintained, Detroit Shoreway now enjoys great restaurants, musicals, galleries, films, and dance, in a clean and comfortable urban environment.

I headed out there on a Sunday afternoon to catch “Alice in Wonderland” at the Capitol. Others had the same idea– there was a line. Inside the theater’s lobby, the shadowy wall-sconce light and dark wood against light walls created the feel of the 1920s, the time of silent movies. The old Vaudeville stage (yes, it IS that old) remains amongst the three screens with digital projection foreign and independent, and the latest pop-culture, films, like Alice. Check out their Classic Brunch and Movie Series: a classic movie followed brunch in the adjacent restaurant, for $25 (call 440-349-3306, ext. 111 for your reservation). Late Friday Shift Schedule includes films like “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “The Room,” 6515 Detroit http://www.clevelandcinemas.com.

Cleveland Public Theatre has become the west side’s incubator for new talent. Dancers, choreographers, playwrights, musicians, and directors are encouraged to seek their muse and create art with the support of art professionals. Although students create raw material from inexperience, that doesn’t mean the show is deficient. The theatre has drawn a large audience from around the greater Cleveland area since 1983 http://www.cptonline.org.

Visual arts and design, including fashion, brighten 78th Street Studios a few blocks north on Lake Avenue. The Creative Arts Open House is the best way to see what the West Side’s art community has to offer. Check it out every third Friday, not the same weekend as the Tremont or Little Italy walks, which means you can walk and look at art on lots of Fridays. The hunger and thirst are staved off by light food and beverage every third weekend quarterly when the exhibits change, making it a happy hour experience from 5 until 9 http://www.78thstreetstudios.com. Music stirs in the Lava Room recording studios, and print media is alive and well at the Alternative Press.

After all that exploring, you’ll be hungry, and although Gypsy Beans & Baking Company is great for coffee and pastries, pasta at Luxe will taste heavenly after all that walking http://www.GypsyBeans.com. That’s what I plan to eat after I spend an evening with W.B. Yeats at Cleveland Public Theatre sometime between May 13 and June 5.

“The Secret Garden” is playing at the Near West Theatre Thursdays through Sundays from May 7 through May 23 at 3PM. The kid-friendly production costs just $8 for adults and $6 for children. Call 216-961-6391 to purchase tickets. The Near West Theatre is a grassroots theatre with a focus on educating the public and strengthening people of all ages, with an emphasis on youth. Its philosophy is rooted in the transformative power of theatrical arts http://nearwesttheatre.org.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Claudia Taller, whose passion for words has led to creation of the Lakeside Word Lover’s Retreats, an outgrowth of her work with Skyline Writers.

Her favorite foods are red wine, salmon, ice cream, and chocolate. She loves to read, write, tour wineries, ride her bike, ease into yoga, and cook gourmet meals for friends. Find her at http://www.claudiatallermusings.blogspot.com.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at 3:54 pm and is filed under BizTech, Claudia Taller, Events, News, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Read the Original Article on Cool Cleveland.com

By Julie Washington, The Plain Dealer [Cleveland.com Original Article]

View full sizeThe Plain DealerThe Plain Dealer’s critic Steven Litt has won the Robert P. Bergman Prize as part of the 2010 Cleveland Arts Prize.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — In a rare move, a Cleveland Arts Prize has been awarded not to a person or an organization, but a neighborhood.

Gordon Square Arts District — a collection of theaters, restaurants and galleries clustered around West 65th Street and Detroit Avenue — and its leaders are being honored for having the vision and influence to revitalize a Cleveland neighborhood using the arts as an economic engine.

And among other winners of the arts prize is Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer’s art and architecture critic won the Robert P. Bergman Prize for leaders who are dedicated to a democratic vision of the arts.

Gordon Square leaders include Cleveland City Councilman Matt Zone, Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization executive director Jeff Ramsey, Gordon Square Arts District executive director Joy Roller, and Cleveland Public Theatre executive artistic director Raymond Bobgan.

Winners of the 2010 Cleveland Arts Prize — given to creative artists whose work enriches Northeast Ohio and whose accomplishments set a standard of excellence — will be announced today. They will be honored at the annual awards event Saturday, June 26, at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

“This crop of winners is broad-based and reflective of Cleveland today,” said arts prize executive director Marcie Bergman. “I find it thrilling to look at the people represented.”

Here are this year’s winners:

Lifetime Achievement Award in Visual Art: Artist Audra Skuodas spends so much time in her Oberlin studio, her husband jokes that she’ll grow roots there. Naturally a reclusive person, Skuodas has never done the kind of self-promotion that many artists do to goose their careers.

So it was a wonderful moment when she learned that she had received the Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award in Visual Art.

“It’s just a beautiful reassurance,” said Skuodas, pronounced SKOO-dus. “I exist.”

Skuodas has spent 40 years building a body of work that includes wall sculpture, book making, drawing and writing.

Martha Joseph Prizes for Distinguished Service to the Arts: Honors an individual or organization whose vision or philanthropy has made a significant contribution to the arts in Northeast Ohio. It is being awarded to Gordon Square Arts District and its leaders.

Other winners include:

• Joanne Cohen, executive director of the Art and Medicine Institute’s Art Program at the Cleveland Clinic.

Harper Collins BooksFormer Akron Beacon Journal reporter and author David Giffels is the recipient of the 2010 Cleveland Arts Prize’s midcareer award.

• Trudy Wiesenberger, curator and creator of the Art Program at University Hospitals of Cleveland, a trustee at Cleveland Institute of Art and a co-founder of the institute’s craft council.

• Mary Louise Hahn, former chair of the Cleveland Arts Prize and consultant for the Cleveland Foundation, where she bolstered the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award jury, increased the awards prize to $10,000, and turned the awards ceremony into a compelling event.

• Mickie McGraw, co-founder of the Art Studio at MetroHealth Medical Center.

Emerging Artist Award in Literature: This prize, awarded to a promising artist living in Northeast Ohio, carries a $5,000 prize. Poet and author Phil Metres, an associate professor of English at John Carroll University, is the recipient.

Mid-Career Awards: This honor spotlights artists who have received national and regional recognition and have lived in this region. The literature award will go to David Giffels, former Akron Beacon Journal reporter and author of “All the Way Home.” Giffels is assistant professor of English at the University of Akron. The music and dance prize will go to world percussionist Jamey Haddad, visiting associate professor of percussion at Oberlin College. Giffels and Haddad each will receive $2,500.

Lifetime Achievement Award: Writer Henry Adams, professor of art history at Case Western Reserve University, is the author of “Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist.”

[PDF] [Original Cleveland.com Article]