theater

A Conventional, Unconventional Season at convergence-continuum

By Faye Sholiton

Jovana Batkovic as Freegrrl and Tom Kondilas as Hemad in Spawn of the Petrolsexuals.

Blame co-founding artistic director Clyde Simon, who manages his Tremont company on a shoestring budget. From the opening of his first show in 2002, when the ink on the building permit was still wet, he has never been sure enough of anything to tempt the theater gods.

But some things are changing in 2008: convergence-continuum has assembled an active board of trustees and a small business staff. Its new financial stability, albeit modest, means the company can now pay royalties – in full – before the season has even begun. And, for the first time, Simon has dared to announce his complete April-to- December lineup.

So much for convention. The work itself remains frenetic, original and cutting edge. With one exception, the season features Ohio premieres. And all five plays are worthy of a look.

The high jinks began in April with Noah Haidle’s Mr. Marmalade, a bizarre comedy featuring a four-year-old girl (played by a grown-up) who seemingly has the life experience of a 40-year-old. Over the course of an evening, she works out a complex relationship with her vicious imaginary friend (the eponymous Mr.Marmalade), and begins a real and problematic relationship with the troubled five-year-old stepbrother of the kid who is shtupping her babysitter. Simon calls the piece "so twisted and wrong and hilarious. It makes you laugh and gasp." Add to that the multiple layers of reality, watching adults playing fourand five-year-olds. "You can completely buy it on one level, but the bodies are not little children, and the complexity of characterization weaves in and out of itself," says Simon. The play, directed by Arthur Grothe, runs through May 3.

Simon directs the second offering, Norman Allen’s In the Garden. It’s a probing, intricately woven, fearless and funny look at modern infidelity, dishonesty and willful ignorance, set in an upscale urban landscape. Gabe, a charismatic college student, drags a quartet of interrelated adults into his journey of self-discovery. Outside his routine visits to their bedrooms, he opts for a life of asceticism and self-denial. His decision to become a modern-day Saint Francis prompts the others to look at the emptiness of their own lives.

"In the Garden mixes the sex and religion and empty religion in a complex way," Simon explains. "People make arguments on both sides that are perfectly rational, and perfectly irrational. The idea of escaping from the world is very appealing … We ask, ’Where’s the basic human connection?’ We’re finding it in sex and spirituality at the same time." In the Garden runs May 30 through June 28.

Third up is Carson Kreitzer’s Freakshow, a play set at a turn-of-the century carnival sideshow. Among the freaks on view: a saucy woman with no arms or legs; her lover, who is caked in animal excrement; an idiot named Pinhead; a dog-faced woman; and a human salamander, a boy who deliberately grew gills to protect himself against being human. At the dawn of the 20th century, they are rethinking how long they want to remain in the industry.

"We’re always aware of the ’other’," says Simon. "This play takes the ’other’ to extreme. We often feel that everyone else is a freak, or that we’re freaks. In our society with race, class and ethnic diversity, there are so many ’others’."

What makes the play resonate today is our tabloid society, which turns celebrities into freaks, he adds. What does that say about those of us who are fascinated by them? Simon tapped company member Geoff Hoffman to direct the piece, which runs July 25 through August 23.

For the next slot, Simon revisits the work of Sam Shepard, one of his personal favorites. The fourth play of the season is c-c’s fourth Shepard production: the Pulitzer Prize winner Buried Child. In typical Shepard fashion, it explores what is quintessentially American on individual and cultural levels. In this case, a family is forced to dig up a long-buried secret when a grandchild returns for a visit.

"Shepard asks, ’Do we have an authentic identity?’ and ’Where do we get it?’" says Simon. "Everything is so full of American icons that we accumulate, and they become part of us. But they’re so fleeting. We move so far from authenticity."

Buried Child looks at our mythology in a more linear way than most plays in the Shepard canon. But, as Simon points out, "You’re never sure what’s true and what’s real, and everyone in this family has a different version of self, history and relationship." It leads us to ask, "Do I remember things the way they were, or the way I want them to have been?"

Simon played the role of Tilden in a 1996 production at Kent State University. He continues to teach the play at Kent, but at c-c, he directs his first production of it.

The season finale is a world premiere production of Cleveland writer Tom Hayes’ Lord of the Burgeoning Lumber. Winner of c-c’s first new play contest, it looks at a pair of grown men who go deep into the woods to find themselves. Simon directed a staged reading of an early draft of the script in 2007 in the Little Box series at Cleveland Public Theatre.

According to Simon, the play is about the idea of identity and how fleeting it is, changing with circumstances. Two people disappear for an unspecific time to explore new identities and relationships. Others can’t understand their bizarre behavior. Even nature conspires against adults trying to return to a more innocent state.

New play development is also part of the theater’s mission, according to Simon. That the script came from a writer who is one of c-c’s most treasured writers is a bonus. Hayes’ other c-c credits include the company’s strategic and marketing plans, grant applications and website upgrades.

As Simon becomes more conventional in his business outlook, he sets his sights on public funding. He hopes to position c-c favorably for the next round of awards from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture (Issue 18 funds, monies collected from cigarette taxes). During the first round, Simon says, they did not have the necessary credentials. In round two, they will.

In the meantime, he says with a laugh that betrays his decades-long affair with tobacco: "We keep smoking. We’re smoking for the arts."

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