Category: Theater (page 1 of 1)

July 1, 2019

Old School “Base Ball”

Originally published in the July 2019 issue of (614) Magazine

When Aaron Seddon first stepped up to the plate nearly a decade ago for the Ohio Village Muffins, he was actually stepping back in time. It wasn’t the same game he’d played in his youth. The rules and uniforms were unfamiliar, and pushing 30 as a walk-on wasn’t out of the ordinary. Even the spelling was different. This was 1860 vintage “base ball”.

No that’s not a typo—and no, the whole team didn’t forget their gloves either.

“When we’re talking to spectators about the differences in the game, they’re immediately concerned that we aren’t wearing gloves. That kind of protective gear didn’t enter the game until the 1870s,” explained Seddon, who starting playing vintage baseball well past the age most major league scouts tend to take notice. “We get a lot of our recruits from people who come to matches, who are intrigued by what we’re doing. We’re a close-knit group, even off the field. We’re a team, but we’re also a family.”

Long before the days of hot dogs and dugouts, what we now know as baseball was played in fields and empty lots from Cooperstown to Hoboken. Historians still dispute the exact origin story of the sport, but generally agree that despite scattered clubs before the Civil War, it was the inevitable intermingling of Union and Confederate troops that transformed the game into a national pastime.

But Columbus has its own history, perhaps mixed with a little folklore. Before the war, there were exactly zero baseball teams in the capital city, but shortly after its end, there were six. Players learned the sport from fellow soldiers from New York and New Jersey who brought bats and balls with them to pass the time between battles. Even the hand signals still used today for balls, strikes, “safe” and “out” arguably owe credit to the Ohio School for the Deaf in Clintonville, put into play a decade later to help their hearing-impaired athletes compete as equals.

Which brings us back to the matter of the Muffins. When the Ohio History Connection started their vintage baseball program in 1981, there was no prototype, only a rulebook. Recruiting most of that first team from their employees, they couldn’t help having some self-deprecating fun at their future expense. In the early days of baseball, your best players were referred to as the “first nine” followed by the “second nine”. Everyone left on the bench were called the “muffins”. A “muff” was period vernacular for an error, back before they were counted. The name was so inside baseball, it was perfect.

“The umpire’s role isn’t really to arbitrate the game. He’s there is settle disputes between the players they can’t adjudicate themselves,” Seddon noted. “And the pitcher’s role is to facilitate hitting. In modern baseball, your pitcher is your best defensive player, to prevent the ball from getting into play. The game we play is before it became professional. Everyone was an amateur back then.”

Fans will also notice a suspicious absence of balls and strikes. Newspapers from the era report some batters taking 50 or more pitches waiting for just the right one, because if a hit was caught on the first bounce, it still counted as an out.

“Probably the biggest difference between modern baseball and the game we play, is if an opponent makes a really good play, everyone cheers,” Seddon revealed. “We’re playing a competitive game, we’re obviously both out there to win the match. But there’s much more camaraderie between the teams.”

Speaking of the other team, the Ohio History Connection has more than one vintage baseball club. Much as the rise of men’s baseball inspired impromptu games among women well before Vassar College started the first formal women’s program in 1866, the Diamonds played their first match in 1994. Despite their parallel history and popularity, many of the early women’s vintage baseball teams have since consolidated or faded away, making matches more challenging.

Like the Muffins, the Diamonds also represent the game as it was played in 1860, which for women of the era was strictly recreational. The rules were the same, but even playing in back fields among themselves, the ladies often caused quite a social stir with their attire.

“We wear period accurate dresses made from patterns of actual garments considered either a camp dress or a work dress. Someone who first starts out may play in a long skirt and a white blouse,” explained Jackie Forquer, who has played for the Diamonds for more than two decades. “We don’t play as many games as the men, but the time commitment is also less. We play festivals and exhibitions games. Our players who come from a softball background see this as another way to share their love of the game.”

Both the Muffins and Diamonds are technically historical “interpreters” who interact with spectators much as players would have in 1860, sometimes to exacting detail. Forquer, who plays first base, is sometimes the first ambassador for vintage baseball folks may meet, either through school programs or at the beginning of a game, with Diamonds matches often preceding the Muffins. Never breaking character, she’ll politely ask the umpire to seek the approval of the audience before women roll up or remove their sleeves before play begins. Showing so much skin used to be scandalous.

Every organization has a historian, but vintage baseball happens to have an actual one. Dr. Jim Tootle came to the original version of the game later in life than most, but has still managed to outlast many of his peers. Having retired as assistant dean of the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences at Ohio State, his passion for preservation is as infectious as his laugh.

“I’ve gotten to play in four major league parks from coast to coast. I thought my playing days were winding down when I stumbled upon this, and I’ve probably played 600 to 700 vintage games,” Tootle recalled. “It’s been a wonderful experience to represent the Ohio History Connection on our home field at The Ohio Village, but also to travel the state and the country.”

When folks say someone “wrote the book” on a significant or obscure subject, it’s typically a metaphor. Tootle actually has written the book on vintage baseball—two in fact, not counting a third still used by prospective vintage baseball teams across the country trying to get their start.

“It’s like Civil War reenacting in a way because we give great attention to accuracy—interpreting the rules, our uniforms, and our equipment. And yet, the moment the first pitch is thrown, it’s not a reenactment anymore. It’s a real game, and we don’t know who is going to win,” Tootle chidded. “I have to laugh watching ESPN anytime there’s a barehanded catch. They go nuts and show it three or four times. I feel like saying, ‘Come out to a vintage baseball game, every catch is a barehanded catch. Gloves weren’t even invented yet.’” ▩

For a complete schedule of games, including the 2019 Ohio Cup Vintage Base Ball Festival featuring 30 teams from across the country, visit ohiohistory.org

October 4, 2018

Dare to Scare

Originally published in the October 2018 issue of (614) Magazine

Keith Newsom, aka Snappy the Clown, has been performing at local haunts for years
Photo by Brian Kaiser

No one plans months in advance what to wear to a Christmas party. That’s why Halloween has quickly become the favorite holiday for those tired of turkey and averse to eggnog. The trend is more than seasonal—it’s cultural.

Horror movies are hotter than ever, and Netflix and Amazon are clamoring to greenlight projects that once would have withered. Originally an outlier, AMC’s The Walking Dead routinely draws more viewers than all NFL games combined. Even Jo-Ann starts stocking shelves in July with spiders and skulls long before the last of the fireworks fade.

Despite your costume cred, stitch witchery, and amateur pumpkin craft, haunted house operators are way ahead of you. For a few weeks a year, their long lines and theatrical thrills pack them in. But what goes on behind the scenes has largely remained an industry mystery—until now.

The indie documentary SCARE rips the mask off “haunted attractions,” the technical term for live performance venues that defy your sense of reality, and occasionally control of your bladder. Columbus filmmaker Don Patterson “shot and chopped” the project over more than a decade, culminating with the final season of a local landmark of terror, the ScareAtorium.

“There’s so much more to this than just building a haunted house. You’ve got actor training, and make-up artists, and scene decorators,” explained Kelly Collins. He and his wife Neena founded the Midwest Haunters Convention, the country’s largest gathering for operators and enthusiasts, bringing standards and insight to the industry. “There’s more to a haunted house than handing someone a mask and saying, ‘Here, go scream at people.’”

For those who still tremble from memories of Terror Park at the old Cooper Stadium, Frightmore Manor in Dublin, and The Northland Asylum and RIP’s 3D Funhouse—now better known collectively as the ScareAtorium—you can thank Kelly and Neena, whose fitting 13-year run is practically unprecedented.

“When Kelly and I first got together, I had no idea there was such a thing as the haunted attraction industry,” she confessed. “Don has footage in the documentary going all the way back to Terror Park. He’s been capturing it since the very beginning.”

Ask any performer whether screen or stage acting is more challenging and rewarding, and most would agree on latter. And there’s definitely evidence of that in the ranks of haunted attractions. From the high school goths who maybe never fit in to theater folk looking for a novel outlet for select skills, there’s a tribe here that starts to resemble more of a family from one year to the next.

“I got my start as the general manager of a campground, and every Saturday at noon I’d get on the tractor, take everyone up into the woods, circle this big tree and come back,” he recalled. “One day a bunch of kids hid behind the tree and jumped out and scared everyone.”

Instead of scolding them, Kelly recruited them—keeping the standard hayride by day, but creating a spooky hayride at night that proved wildly popular. That’s when he was approached by the local Jaycees to turn it into something more. They’d recently lost the lease on their haunted house and partnered with Kelly to create a haunted hayride. He was hooked.

“The Jaycees are credited with creating the haunted house industry,” he explained. “Many of the oldest haunts in the country were started or still operated by the Jaycees.”

Short for “Junior Chamber,” the Jaycees, like many long-standing service organizations, have struggled in recent years to attract younger members. But for decades, they operated haunted houses as both a fundraiser and a recruiting effort. Even I didn’t know the Jaycees created the concept of the haunted house, and I used to volunteer throughout high school at one they operated in my hometown in the storage barn of a creepy old train depot.

Ohio actually leads the nation in the number of haunted attractions. Lower lease and land costs are part of it, but so is the Midwestern work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit. But it’s still a business.

“Even though we’re only open in October, Neena ran the business year-round. A lot of people who make the jump from home haunt to a professional haunt don’t last long,” he revealed. “Whether they decorated the backyard, garage, or basement, you can’t go to a bank to borrow that kind of money for a seasonal business that’s only open 20 days a year.”

That was the impetus for the Midwest Haunters Convention. Unlike private trade shows that mostly showcase cheap eeks and pricey props, the couple started a public convention to bridge the transition from passion project to profitability, offering classes on the business and art of haunted attractions.

“People sometimes get into it thinking they’re going to make money, but it typically takes three years to break even. They often fail for lack of knowledge, like not understanding fire codes,” Kelly noted, sharing the story of a haunt in an old school building that had to put $150,000 upfront into a sprinkler system before they could even open.

“Code standards are higher for haunted houses than they are for schools,” chided Neena. “People often ask us what it takes to run a million-dollar haunt and I tell them about $3 million.”

Neighbors can also be a nightmare if you don’t know what you’re doing. Germain Amphitheater closed for lots of reasons. Competition, controversy, and crowd control killed it long before an invasion of Scandinavian furniture. But noise and traffic complaints from nearby homeowners were probably the final nail in the coffin.

“Having a haunted house in a former funeral home sounds great, until you consider the parking problem. There just aren’t enough spaces,” he explained. “We had three great locations, but with 10,000 people coming through a year, even we had to keep moving.”

Upping the adrenaline also requires keeping things fresh, which for the Collins required replacing roughly a third of the attraction each year, with construction on new rooms starting as early as March.

Fortunately, their rate of staff return provided the continuity many haunts lack and envy. They fostered talent with an audition process and informal mentoring from actors and artisans who quickly became more than just part-time employees.

“When we’d break for meals, I’d make everyone put their phones away. I was a dad like that to everyone,” Kelly confessed. “Of the 150 or so staff, we had about 85 percent return year after year. It really became more of a family. We cherished it,” Neena noted.

The Collins recently sold their creepy creation to Thirteenth Floor, the nation’s premiere haunted house operator. Though the two are technically retired, and their haunt lives on under new management and through the documentary, it may not be the last we see of them.

“Kelly will still be consulting with the Midwest Haunters Convention and he may be doing some work with Shadowbox Live in Columbus,” Neena revealed. “Even in retirement, he’s busier than ever.” ▩

13th Floor Haunted House, still Columbus’s largest haunted attraction, is located at 2605 Northland Plaza. For open dates, tickets, and group rates, visit 13thfloorcolumbus.com.

To view a trailer for SCARE, visit youtu.be/teo0UHkCldY.

June 1, 2018

Aidan 5

Originally published in the June 2018 issue of (614) Magazine

Bryan Michael Block wasn’t surprised when the phone rang, but it wasn’t the call he was expecting. The conversation was short, but sufficient. He opened the door to his closet and grabbed a gray-striped tie and weathered leather jacket to make sure he looked the part of a police detective. There was a serial killer, it was his job to stop him, and the clock was ticking. But this wasn’t any ordinary case. The murder he was called to solve was his own.

Block has an unsettling stature when the situation requires it. Imagine the disheveled understatement of Harrison Ford in Blade Runner amplified by the ominous presence of Vincent D’Onofrio on a bad day. That grim and gritty look is the reason he was originally cast as the lead actor in the ambitious and acclaimed science-fiction series Aidan 5, which recently returned with its long-awaited second season after starting as a short nearly a decade ago.

“We didn’t know what genre was going to get pulled out of that hat. It could have been a western or a romance. With the 48-Hour Film Project it could have been anything,” recalled Block, whose impulsive and intuitive wardrobe selection set the tone for the lead character. “When they pulled sci-fi, that’s when they decided to make a futuristic film noir.”

Professional and lifelong friendships often intersect with the 48-Hour Film Project, an international competition where local teams squeeze the entire motion picture production process into just two days.

“After the acting was done against a green screen, the backgrounds were drawn and scanned in,” Block explained. “It was really just pen and pencil on a sketch pad, cut up in Photoshop, and dropped into a timeline.”

The finished film was low tech, but high concept — a composite comic book look more akin to Sin City than an A-ha music video. Audiences and the industry took notice, making the rounds online and at larger festivals, eventually making it all the way to Cannes. Even William Shatner tweeted his approval of its innovative techniques and technology with the envious interrogative, “Why aren’t I in it?”

“Ben Bays, who is also a producer here in town, approached us after the 48 about turning it into a web series, how we needed to take this world and expand it,” he explained. “That’s when we started to explore the details and fill in the blanks on the future we’d created.”

The original series opens in 2064 with Detective James Aidan standing over his own corpse, one of several clones with which Block appears on screen simultaneously, stitched together digitally in post-production. A world where cloning is commonplace was a crucial creative device and plot point that propels the now 30-episode series. The entire production was created and executed in Columbus essentially as a community film project, with a cast and crew too numerous to name.

“Season One was shot for no money and was cobbled together. But we had a lot of help between favors, friends, and filmmakers willing to show up for several Saturdays,” Block noted. “Season Two is three and a half hours. Add that to the three hours of Season One and we have four feature films worth of finished content.”

The new season is still set in the same dystopian future, and also employed the signature green screen meets black box theater approach. But unlike the original short or the first series that followed, Season Two took several years to complete, funded through Kickstarter to build interest and cover incidentals.

Filming took place in Columbus as well, minus one notable cameo that was almost too good to be true — Richard Hatch, best known for roles in both the original and reimagined reboot of Battlestar Galactica, but also a passionate supporter of streaming series, podcasts, and similar emerging storytelling platforms.

“We reached out to him, but knew it was a long shot. Even though his scene was small, it was pivotal. We sent him the script and he said he really liked the series and the part,” revealed Bays, showrunner and executive producer of Aidan 5. “He specifically mentioned one of the reasons he was doing it was because he was so impressed with the production and performances in Season One and liked working on projects with up-and-coming talent.”

Schedules didn’t align to shoot Hatch’s scene here. But a green screen can be anywhere, so you’d never know Hatch was in L.A. while Bays directed remotely.

“I just Skyped in and directed over a laptop,” Bays added. “There is even a cast photo of everyone in the studio with Richard and someone is holding up a laptop with my face on the other end.”

Aside from consistent studio space, the second season also piqued the interest of local talent, with more than 40 speaking parts and dozens of extras populating their imaginary world. Even the late John Kuhn, artistic director of the Actors’ Theatre of Columbus read for a role.

“It was the first time we’d ever met him and his voice captivated us. He had such gravitas we decided to create a villain around it,” recalled Block, whose contributions also included casting and helping to create the series backstory. “His performance and reputation gave Aidan 5 a lot of legitimacy in the local the theater community, and the episodic nature allowed us to feature local actors in scenes where everyone felt like a guest star.”

As for the final fate of James Aidan and his clones, Bays confirmed the series was always intended to be a trilogy — but we may have to wait a while before the next installment of episodes, just so everyone can catch their collective breath.

“One of the things about Aidan 5 that we love most is that it is so collaborative. It really is a group of friends working together with the local acting community to create something greater than any of us could do on our own,” explained Bays. “Whether it’s someone like Richard Hatch from L.A. or someone local like John Kuhn, the series creates an outlet for filmmakers, writers, and actors to be a part of something that puts Columbus on the map.” ▩

Both seasons are available now at aidan5.com

April 1, 2016

Stranger in a Strange Land

Originally published in the April 2016 issue of (614) Magazine

How does a nice Catholic schoolboy from Canada become a Mormon missionary in Broadway’s longest running “knock-knock” joke?

Ask Ryan Bondy, the former understudy now starring as Elder Price in The Book of Mormon, returning to Columbus this month at the Ohio Theater.

Understudies are the second-string quarterbacks of the theater. They put in all of the same hours and sweat as the stars they shadow, but they only get to play when illness or injury suddenly push them from the sidelines into the spotlight.

When an understudy tells you to “break a leg,” he might just mean it.

“If Mormons had a poster boy for their religion, it is Elder Price,” Bondy explained. “Then he has a bit of a rude awakening. He presumes he’ll be sent on the mission he thinks he deserves, which in the play is Orlando. But instead, he’s sent to Uganda.”

That strained plot probably sounds like the worst idea for a Broadway play imaginable — maybe even worse than the hip-hop biography of Alexander Hamilton.

You’d be wrong on both counts. (The worst idea is still singing cats.)

In case you’ve been away on your own overseas mission, The Book of Mormon is the creation of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the same evil geniuses behind South Park. If a Fight Club-style faceoff between Jesus and Santa Claus or Satan spooning Saddam Hussein wasn’t your idea of enlightenment, put down your protest signs right now. The Book of Mormon isn’t that kind of religious experience. But the soundtrack isn’t exactly the Osmond Family Christmas either.

“When my family learned I was going to be part of the show, there was a little bit of concern,” Bondy confessed. “Growing up Catholic, I understood what it meant to be devout to a faith. Every religion may have its absurdities, but this story itself isn’t meant to offend. It’s really about learning to love your neighbor—with some potentially offensive lyrics.”

Bondy’s own mission of sorts has taken him from his familiar upbringing in Ontario to a strange land south of the border, patiently waiting for that big break—leg or otherwise.

“Obviously being a stand-by, you have to be ready at a moment’s notice. That’s part of the stress—you don’t get to go on every night, but when you do, you kind of have to carry the show. That’s the intensity of the mid-show swing,” he explained. “You may hear or see something earlier in the show and you know you need to start warming up.”

That’s exactly what happened several times on the road, when a pulled muscle or failing voice of the show’s lead was Bondy’s cue to tighten that tie and find religion fast. (Never mind that he was stepping in for someone who was blonde, and significantly shorter.)

“You worry about taking the audience out of the show. But once there’s that forgiveness of a different person taking over, you know they’re back on your side,” he said. “There was a little ad-lib at the top of the second act to acknowledge that. Elder Cunningham simply says, ‘Elder Price, you look different?’ Then, the audience erupts and we all move forward.”

“I’ve been with the show for almost two and a half years, and I’ve been with all three companies—the two touring companies and Broadway. I’ve seen different portrayals of Elder Price and each actor brings a different authenticity to the role,” Bondy explained. “As an understudy, you trail those performances and try to maintain the integrity of the show.”

“Now that I’ve been given the chance to do the show nightly, one of the biggest things you realize is when you only do the show every two months, you’re really stepping into someone else’s shoes and someone else’s show,” he said. “When you become the lead, the cast starts to become familiar with your cadence and your humor. They feed you, you feed them, and there’s a bounce back and forth on stage that you never really get to experience as an understudy.”

“Being Canadian, I really didn’t understand how much U.S. audiences change, even in just a four-hour drive. Some places, like Florida, that have an older audience, there may still be that shock value. By the time we get to the second act, we’ve warmed them up,” Bondy explained. “I’ve also performed to some of our loudest audiences in the ‘Bible Belt’. But there are also places with protestors who only know it’s ‘those guys from South Park’, or have only listened to the soundtrack and taken the show out of context without even seeing it.”

“There are also cities with a strong Mormon presence where they come out to support the show. A big part of their faith is just to start a conversation. There isn’t a quota,” Bondy said. “They actually take advertisements out in our programs, ‘You’ve seen the play. Now read the book.’ They’ll often wait outside after our show to talk about their faith and answer questions.”

Among the most unexpected audience endorsements Bondy revealed was from a conversation he had with one such missionary following a recent show.

“It kind of threw me because he hadn’t even see the show that night. ‘Entertainment’ is prohibited during their missions,” he said. “But he told me he’d seen the play three years earlier, and it made him curious about the religion—enough so that he eventually ended up becoming a Mormon and is now bringing that faith to others.”

How’s that for a religious experience? ▩

The Book of Mormon runs at the Ohio Theatre from April 19-26. Tickets are on sale now through the CAPA ticket office and Ticketmaster. For more, visit capa.com.