The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
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Northeast Ohio theater is largely paused, but critic helping to fill the void with experience-inspired fiction
For once, the critic gets to be the hero. ¶ Or at least not the jerk. ¶ “Critics always get the short shaft in literature,” says Bob Abelman, author of the soon-to-bereleased “All the World’s a Stage Fright — Misadventures of a Clandestine Critic: A Novella.” “They’re always the wittiest person in the room but the lousiest personality in a play or in a novel, right? They get killed a lot in movies and in plays.” ¶ Not this time. ¶ Abelman isn’t about to kill a critic. Because, as you may know, he is one.
Abelman, who lives in Chagrin Falls, for the last two decades has written about the Northeast Ohio theater scene — including a mountain of reviews — the last several years primarily for Cleveland Jewish News. (Disclosure: His critical pieces also have run regularly in The News-Herald and The Morning Journal for much of the last 13 years.)
Of course, for most of 2020, there has been little in the way of theater about which to write thanks to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
And after he returned home from a long-planned early 2020 trip to Vietnam with wife Judy — he says they decided to go through with the “oncein-a-lifetime” opportunity despite all the reports of
the virus’ spread in China — the CJN suspended its arts coverage, leading to a hiatus for Abelman.
That gave him the opportunity to create a blog about area theater, Sixth Row Center (bobabelmanblog.com).
“I’ve discovered there’s not too much interest in blogs,” he allows.
He also had an idea for a book, stemming from a series he’d written shortly after joining the CJN about his acting in a current production. Formerly a professional actor in New York City, Abelman had continued to act in about one professional production a year “just to remind me as a critic how hard it is to do what they do, so I can keep on appreciating it.”
“I think this book is satisfying, at least for a short time, for those people that miss theater.” — Bob Abelman, author of “All the World’s a Stage Fright”
The idea was, with the theater’s blessing, for him to audition for — and legitimately earn — a spot in a play and then chronicle the experience. As luck would have it, the Cleveland Play House was going to produce “Yentl,” which Abelman “thought would be great for the Cleveland Jewish News.”
Only one problem: the artistic director wasn’t interested in the “gimmick,” Abelman recalls, despite the man also saying Abelman was a fine actor.
So Abelman went right to the nearby offices of Great Lakes Theater to pitch the idea to Charles Fee, producing artistic director. He, on the other hand, liked it, and Abelman soon was cast in an upcoming production of William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”
However, in a dramatic twist, CPH soon had a new person in creative power, Artistic Director Laura Kepley, who knew of the idea and lured Abelman back to “Yentl.”
Fast-forwarding back to 2020 and Abelman looking to turn the experience into a book, he found there wasn’t enough there in the clips to get him where he needed to go.
Finally, he hit on the idea — a fictionalized memoir about a critic actually performing in “As You Like It” in a Cleveland production. Like him, the main character would be intimidated by being in one of Shakespeare’s plays.
“I don’t have the cadence,” Abelman says. “I don’t have the classical training.”
That said, he doesn’t also have quite the intense fear of the Bard that his protagonist, Asher Kaufman of the Cleveland Jewish Chronicle, does.
The format allowed him to draw on his own experiences, including “Yentl,” but also take any creative liberties he wanted.
“It was just fun,” says Abelman, who’d written plays, short stories and academic books but never a fictional book.
Finding a publisher wasn’t as fun. He reached out to various contacts, from publishers of the aforementioned academic books — to inquire as to whether they had fiction arms — to a New York Times bestselling author and friend, but he came up empty.
Eventually, he was pointed to Clevelandbased Gray & Co. Publishers, who’ve put out myriad works with Northeast Ohio focuses. They were interested, but also hesitant because they specialize in nonfiction books. For help with the venture, they partnered with CJN to put out the novella, which will be available Nov. 9.
One way Abelman sells “All the World’s a Stage Fright” is its brevity, the book clocking in at 128 pages and taking Judy only two hours to finish it.
“You know, sometimes all you need is a really good laugh and a welcome escape, without making a big commitment,” he says. “I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. I didn’t want to force in chapters I didn’t think fit into the storytelling.”
And, he says, it should appeal to Shakespeare fans, as well as to theater lovers in general.
“I mean, the book goes to opening night, and then (folds in) the reviews afterwards,” he says. “You really get a sense of being in the theater, of getting the adrenaline rush, the love of live professional theater.
“I think this book is satisfying, at least for a short time, for those people that miss theater.”
Abelman — who’s a professor emeritus at Cleveland State University and continues to teach an arts journalism course — says the virtual productions he’s seen have felt a little flat. However, he champions the immense creativity of Cleveland’s arts community and expects to be more impressed soon.
“I’m guessing the creative community is going to somehow merge cinematic sensibilities with live theater and come up with something unique. Something different.”