Rock On

Photo by Michael Lamont

Similar to his alter ego on the stage, Elijah Rock traveled far away from home to pursue his love of classical music and the arts. The Cleveland native now living in Los Angeles portrays Roland Hayes, one of the first internationally acclaimed African-American classical singers, in Breath and Imagination showing at the Cleveland Play House from Feb. 14 to March 9. Rock talks to us about LA life and how Hayes’ story parallels his own.

Cleveland Magazine: While you are a Cleveland native, you've been living in LA for the last six years. What is acting in LA like?

Elijah Rock: Acting in LA has been good for me. It’s tough for a lot of people, but it’s been good for me. … I’ve always been performing, but I really took four or five years to just focus on filmmaking, and now I’m at a point in my career where I’m doing theater again. I’m making movies, and I’m signed with a lot of the top agencies just taking time to develop all these creative talents and endeavors, and now it’s all coming full circle. This Roland Hayes piece is a very full circle moment for me, because I’ve always continued to study classical voice.

CM: You recently starred in this show at the Colony Theatre in Burbank, Calif. How do you connect with this character?

ER: My life parallels Roland Hayes’ life in so so many ways. … Roland grew up singing in the church as did I. I identify with Roland from the perspective of not having a lot of examples of black male vocalists pursuing a career in the classical arts. When I was at Cleveland Institute of Music, there were no other black male vocalists. I of course had more examples of a few other singers along the way that had performing careers, like Paul Robeson, of course William Warfield. … [Hayes] had no examples so that’s kind of a lone and isolating feeling, but he carved out this incredible career and it came with many years of trial and error and a lot of people telling him that this would never work. So I still kind of feel that way ... but yet again a unique experience is being carved out of me playing him.

CM: Why should people come see this play?

ER: This is a story of a man who found his identity by way of his talent to do something that had never been done before. It’s like the quintessential American story of going on a journey of uncharted waters.  … We’re talking a black man born in 1896, who gets accepted by the Fisk Jubilee Singers with a fifth-grade education … [who] ends up singing for the king of England. Even today, that would be pretty astounding. So how could that story not inspire any human being?

Good Humor

We all know a Margie.  

With the economy still suffering, most of us can relate to the struggle of the single, just-fired-from-her-dollar-job mother at the heart of Good People, showing at the Cleveland Play House through April 14. 

Feeling out of luck, Margie becomes obsessed with the idea that Mikey, a former high school flame who has become a successful doctor, could help her find a job. A glimpse inside Mikey’s upscale life has Margie asking herself why he achieved the “American dream,” while she is still stuck in their hometown — the rough Southie neighborhood of Boston. 

At one time or another many of us have asked ourselves that question. That authenticity is why Cleveland Play House Artistic director Michael Bloom lauded Good People as one of the best American plays of this century. It's also why Margie’s curt one-liners had the opening night audience roaring in laughter while her emotional fits had audience members stopping to ponder how the circumstances we are dealt effect the outcome of our lives. Here’s three reasons you might enjoy the play, too.  

Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Bingo!: The funniest scenes are at the bingo hall. As a non-winning number is called out, Margie and her friends — her wacky landlord, Dottie, and lifelong friend, Jean (known as “Mouthie from Southie”) — throw their hands up and scream out a barrage of curse words not meant to be uttered in a parish. Outside the church, the one-liners keep rolling, matter-of-factly, one after the other. When Margie’s boss, Stevie, fires her explaining that he can’t have unreliable employees, she snaps back with, “It’s a dollar store, who do you think is going to work here?”

Quirk factor: Each character's odd habits adds personality and makes us laugh. Dottie hawks her kitchy, obviously handmade bunnies at bingo tournaments. Margie launches into flustered tirades filled with plenty of f-bombs and s-words followed by a sweet “pardon my French” and has a habit of “busting balls” with wry comments such as, “I expected pillars” when seeing Mikey’s house for the first time.

Teachable moments: The play offers so many rich lessons that the Play House turned it into an educational program for kindergarteners through fourth-graders, Margie and Mike. Everyone can relate to Margie’s struggle. The play challenges our tendency to judge people who are below us, and forces us to think about how our futures would change if we weren’t given opportunities. Could you say that you would be in the same spot you are today without money or help from your parents or mentor? I certainly don’t know if I could. 

Play House's new home, renovated Allen Theater, debuts

The Cleveland Play House welcomed theater fans and curious downtowners into its new home, the renovated Allen Theatre in PlayhouseSquare, last night. Hundreds came to see the renovated theater, departing on tours every few minutes.

The Allen, which began life in 1921 as a cavernous 2,800-seat movie house and hosted Broadway plays, ballet and opera over the past 20 years, has been remade as a comfortable, intimate 500-seat theater. Inside the now-smaller theater, the historic ceiling and walls are still visible behind acoustic reflectors. The new seats are soft and huge, the leg room generous, a big change from the cramped rows of the Play House's former theaters at its location near the Cleveland Clinic.

Tour-takers walked through the classic 1921 lobby and into a new inner lobby, a very contemporary-looking space with moody lighting and glass partitions, created where the Allen's distant rear seating used to be.

The renovation is daring, a big change to a historic theater. But the Allen has been little-used in recent years, and its 2,500-seat capacity wasn't a good fit for the Play House. The new, smaller space has about the same number of seats as the theaters in its former home.

The tours explored the seating, the stage, and backstage areas. In a dressing room and an alcove, master's degree theater students from CWRU enacted scenes from plays that professional actors will put on later in the season. Two undergrads from Cleveland State, which will also use the new theater, performed a scene from Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist classic No Exit. Not part of the tour were the Allen's new second stage and lab space, still under construction.

The Play House's season begins Friday with The Life of Galileo. To read more about the Play House's move, read our article from the September issue, "Second Act."

Don't shoot your eye out, Chicago!

Will the Turnpike get clogged with Chicagoans road-tripping for Cleveland Christmas cheer? Maybe so, after the Chicago Tribune's rave this week about our little home of holiday pop-culture obsession, the A Christmas Story House.

Writer Phil Marty really got into the Ralphie-iana, referencing the leg lamp, tongue-freezing fence, and even the Lifebuoy soap that washed the F-word out of our hero's mouth. He gave would-be Christmas pilgrims good advice for finding the museum, in the anti-posh south end of Tremont ("don't think you're lost when you find yourself driving through a nondescript neighborhood"). He was in-the-know enough to send visitors to two other local highlights, the West Side Market and the Rock Hall's Springsteen exhibit.

But he left out a few obvious recommendations for visitors on a Christmas Story quest. What about the live stage version of the Christmas Story story, playing at the Cleveland Play House for the (allegedly) final year? Or Cleveland's official drink of December, Great Lakes Christmas Ale?

Finally, I cannot fail to recommend the eating and drinking establishment just a few doors down from the House, the Best Throwback Bar in Cleveland Magazine's 2009 Best Of issue: the Rowley Inn.