By Isaac Mell
As a teenaged Clevelander, Carter L. Bays, co-creator of How I Met Your Mother, entered a comic piece into the 1992 Marilyn Bianchi Kids’ Playwriting Festival. Two slackers in an Arabica-esque coffee shop encounter a significant news item: Later that night, the world will end. After their waitress says, “We all have to get on with our lives as best we know how,” the slackers, who have so far squandered the time they have had, must decide how “best” to spend the rest of their existence.
Anyone wanting to know how the play (and world) will end will have a chance to ask the playwright himself at Dobamarama, Dobama Theatre’s first official benefit Fri 6/15 at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens.
The evening is split into two ticket price levels (partially tax deductible): Star Gazers ($125) and Night Bloomers ($40). Margi Herwald Zitelli, a Dobama board member and benefit committee co-chair, believes that combining the two tiers will welcome the full spectrum of Dobama supporters.
“A lot of benefits appeal to an organization’s patrons, but we wanted to make sure that our everyday audience members and our participating artists could still attend,” Zitelli says, “so that everybody could take part, and get to meet Carter, and get to enjoy the evening, and show their support for the theater. Like the kind of work we produce, we wanted the benefit to be a mix of a certain sophistication and a certain amount of fun.”
Star Gazers enter the Gardens first, at 6pm, for dinner and cocktails, and have access to the entire evening. Night Bloomers arrive for dessert and open bar at 8:30pm, which dovetails into dancing to live music by Easily Amused. Both groups will enjoy a silent auction and special presentations by Dobama players and headliner Bays.
When Bays’ four-page Seas of Coffee won the prize for his age group, Dobama Theatre turned his scene into a full-fledged production. Seeing the stage lights shine on a three-dimensional set inhabited by living, breathing actors “was really the moment that I knew this is what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” Bays told Dee Perry on WCPN’s “Around Noon.”
His experience is within the grasp of today’s first- through twelfth-graders.
“With this playwriting festival, every child in Cuyahoga County has that opportunity, which is rare,” Charlotta Enflo, Dobama’s managing director, says. In fact, the Marilyn Bianchi Kids’ Playwriting Festival was the first program in the country to bring kids’ plays to the stage.
Winning the festival excites even those who do not pursue playwriting.
“Whether you’re eight years old or eighteen years old, it’s got to be inspiring for a child to see the potential that they have in themselves and their work,” Zitelli says. “Any time you’re able to get feedback and to see your work come alive, it inspires you and helps educate you and helps point you in the direction of where you want to go next. I have a great time reading those scripts, seeing what ideas are out there.”
Of course, Dobama Theatre produces other scripts, too: plays of critical acclaim that are fresh off their runs in New York.
Enflo says, “Our mission is to produce works that have never been performed in Cleveland before, so we are that theater to experience a play that is very contemporary, that has either just been off-Broadway or on Broadway. We produce a lot of Tony Award-winning plays and a lot of Tony Award-nominated plays. So they have this reputation, they just haven’t been shown in Cleveland before.”
Dobama also commissions work, such as this season’s Grizzly Mama by George Brant. Inspired by Sarah Palin’s candidacy but incorporating an attempted assassination, the play “got people talking because of its political nature, and its focus on the divisive nature of political rhetoric,” Zitelli says.
Zitelli considers the sparking of cathartic conversation to be art’s special power.
“I’ve had more great conversations with people after seeing a work of art, as we debate what it meant or its merit, than probably anything else,” Zitelli says. “I think really, really great art is going to refresh you, whether it’s on a challenging or upsetting topic or a light and fluffy topic or anything in between, because it’s going to bring out emotion and bring out thoughts, and that’s in its own way very refreshing.”
So enjoy the refreshing benefit of Dobamarama—so that Dobama Theatre may continue to refresh you.
Dobamarama occurs on Fri 6/15 at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. Star Gazers must make reservations for Dobamarama by Mon 6/11 and Night Bloomers by Wed 6/13. Buy tickets and learn more by visiting http://Dobama.org or calling 216-932-3396.
Isaac Mell grew up in South Euclid, OH and attended American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He welcomes conversations with potential employers, collaborators and friends.
Cleveland, OH 44106