16 minute read
The Great Pivot of 2020
The great pivot of 2020 and beyond
Local artists, performers explore new professions during the pandemic
By Bob Abelman
The arts were devastated in the wake of COVID-19. Since the initial shuttering of venues in March 2020, it has been reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that over 1.4 million arts related jobs nationwide were lost. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Small Business Pulse Survey, arts, entertainment and recreation enterprises are among the most likely to take longer to recover from the pandemic due to the in-person nature of their programming.
“To non-theater lovers,” wrote Cleveland-born actor Joel Grey in an opinion piece in The New York Times shortly after the worldwide outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, “lamenting the closing of Broadway in the face of so much widespread suffering may seem, at best, frivolous. But for many of us, this tragedy has been made that much more devastating by having to face the nightmare without the laughter, tears and sense of community that a night in the theater delivers.”
Because the show couldn’t go on, many performing artists found interim work outside their chosen profession that not only paid the bills, but were an intriguing application of their innate creativity and well-honed artistic talents. Canvas asked some members of the local arts community about their pivot during the pandemic. Here are a few of their stories.
Stuart Ho man, actor/baker
Going from starring roles to cinnamon buns
CANVAS: Before the pandemic, you were an itinerant actor specializing in intriguing characters in small plays performed in the intimate spaces of convergence-continuum in Tremont, Seat of the Pants in Canton and the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood, among others. When COVID-19 changed all this, you pivoted and became a professional baker. How did that happen?
Stuart Ho man: I was introduced to baking as a kid. My mom was one of those mothers who baked for every school event and as holiday gifts for my teachers. She allowed me to help in the kitchen and I discovered that cookie dough tasted so much better than Play-Doh. I occasionally worked as a baker before the pandemic, but once the theaters closed, I dedicated myself to laminated pastries – croissants and tea biscuits, mostly – for The Stone Oven in Cleveland Heights. And then I worked at Luna (Bakery) at its Cleveland Heights and Moreland Hills locations. I get genuine pleasure making something from scratch, delivering it to eager customers and giving them pleasure.
CANVAS: Sort of like acting.
Ho man: I never sat down to think of it like that, but yeah. I really love the creative process of both acting and baking. The early stages of both start with a written recipe that needs to be followed, and there’s comfort and structure in that. And once those key ingredients and instructions that make up a play and a pastry are mastered, there’s a certain degree of interpretation and freedom of expression to make the work my own.
CANVAS: Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet (“Glengarry Glen Ross”) hated actors interpreting his words. In his book “Theatre,” he noted that actors “need only say their lines and get out of the way of the play.” And then there’s playwrights like Eric Coble (“The Velocity of Autumn”), who trusts actors, directors and designers with his scripts. In a previous Canvas interview, Coble – a Cleveland Heights resident – noted: “If I’ve done my job right in the writing, what I intended will end up on stage. But this is a collaborative process.” In terms of your baking, are Stone Oven and Luna more like Mamet or Coble?
Ho man: Definitely more like Mamet. They have a brand to protect.
Stuart Hoffman as Archie in the 2016 production of “Birds of Paradise” at Gordon Square’s Blank Canvas Theatre. Photo / Andy Dudik
CANVAS: What’s also interesting about this parallel between baking and acting is that most of the hard work is done behind the scenes and in isolation – in a back kitchen or a rehearsal studio.
Ho man: Which is also something I really enjoy. Both are largely solitary activities until the fi nal product is eventually put on public display.
CANVAS: Just curious – are you more popular with your friends when delivering scones or Shakespeare?
Ho man: Most of my friends are actors and you never hear complaints when providing actors with free food.
Hoffman has also returned to live performance, most recently appearing in Blank Canvas Theatre’s production of “Cabaret” this past December.
Stuart Hoffman with fresh donuts. Photo / Nichole Vencl
Stefanie Cohn, musician/product manager
Doing the math about making music
In the sci-fi action thriller “Divergent,” a post-apocalyptic society is divided into fi ve factions that refl ect people’s natural inclinations: Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the kind), Erudite (the intelligent), Abnegation (the selfl ess) and Candor (the honest). The fi lm revolves around one young woman who defi es the norm and the law by fi tting into them all.
Lakewood resident Stefanie Cohn’s story is similar, sans the CGI and dystopian overtones. She’s a professional musician by nature and nurture, playing second oboe and English horn with both the Ashland Symphony Orchestra and the Mansfi eld Symphony Orchestra. But her ear for music is complemented by a proclivity for and a bachelor’s degree from Duquesne University in math. So, with performance opportunities were canceled, Cohn started work as an analytical product manager for the tech startup CHAMPtitles.
This might seem like an odd fi t, since musicianship tends to tap the right side of the frontal cortex – which is used for visual and spatial skills, imagination and emotion – and product analysis and management tend to tap the left side – which is used for rationality and logical tasks.
But according to the journal Brain and Cognition, Vanderbilt University psychologists found that professionally trained musicians more heavily and effectively use a creative technique called “divergent thinking,” which means they have elevated use of both brain hemispheres. The reason is that instrumental musicians are asked to integrate different melodic lines with both hands into a single musical piece. Also, they have to be good at simultaneously reading musical symbols (left hemisphere) and integrating the written music with their own creative interpretation (right hemisphere).
In short, musicians think differently than the rest of us.
“So working in the tech industry certainly makes sense,” Cohn says. “And when you factor in the immense discipline, hard work and dedication that goes into making music, musicians make the best employees.” Stefanie Cohn with her oboe. Photo / Christophe Genty Photography
To hear her tell it, Cohn has been able to pursue these two disparate interests with equal determination and drive. After COVID-19 hit, she began making use of qualitative and quantitative product user interface and experience data by day. By night, she diligently practiced études, orchestral excerpts and solos until opportunities to perform returned.
Cohn is now back performing with both the Ashland
Symphony Orchestra and the Mansfield Symphony Orchestra, and is teaching oboe at Cleveland State University in addition to pursuing her tech career.
It’s not clear whether either activity necessarily informs the other in any concrete ways – it isn’t as if creative and analytical problem solving is going to help her circular breathing technique or embouchure – but both are certainly expressions of who she is.
Stefanie Cohn at work as an analytical product manager. Photo courtesy Stefanie Cohn
Marc Moritz, improv artist/restaurant host
High-stake improv at an aged steak eatery
A priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a bar.
If that bar happened to be inside the Capital Grille steakhouse in Lyndhurst, chances are good that an array of perfectly timed punchlines – some more blasphemous and bluer than others – would be coming from funnyman and improv artist-turned-restaurant host Marc Moritz as he sat them at a table.
In the late 1980s, Moritz was the founder/director of the Clevelandbased Giant Portions Improv Troupe, after having done stints at central Chicago’s famous ImprovOlympic. He has since taught acting and improv at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and CAP21, among other professional training programs. And he has performed on stages throughout Cleveland – most recently in Karamu House’s production of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” – and across the United States, including the former Alvin Theatre in the original New York City Broadway production of the Stephen Sondheim/Hal Prince musical “Merrily We Roll Along.”
That is, until the pandemic forced the closure of clubs and other entertainment venues. Hence the gig at the Capital Grille, which was a challenging albeit short-lived professional pivot for Moritz. More like a pirouette.
“It’s a great restaurant and a wonderful place to work. For anyone but me,” he says.
Moritz quickly came to realize his tendency to find the funny in everything was not particularly conducive to the serious job of greeting and seating customers at a high-end establishment and guaranteeing them a delightful dining experience.
“I think they hired me for my outgoing personality and improvisational instincts, which included being able to read a room,” he says. “But every night there would be a situation – a cantankerous diner or some minor mishap in the kitchen or on the floor – that called for a mature and professional response. For me, each was a ‘yes, and’ improv opportunity waiting to happen or in desperate need of a truly great one-liner, which I had in abundance.”
To keep his comedy chops in check,
Marc Moritz, left, as Al Lewis and George Roth as Willie Clark in the 2011 production of “The Sunshine Boys” at Cuyahoga Falls’ Porthouse Theatre. Photo / Bob Christy
Marc Moritz at the Capital Grille. Photo / Marc Moritz Moritz took his breaks in an empty restaurant restroom and, while looking in the mirror, gave himself a dialect (say, Brooklynese) and a complication (you are presenting the evening’s entree specials to a table of business executives but cannot use the letter “m”) and did some mental short-form scene work to get it out of his system. He would suggest to himself three simultaneous psychoses (an intolerance of people chewing food, not being able to touch things made of paper, an inability to stand up for more than a few seconds at a time) and play them out in his head before returning to his post, purged and with a straight face.
“A sense of humor wasn’t a requirement for the job,” says Moritz, “but it sure served as a survival strategy on the job,” which lasted all of three months.
And what would have happened if a priest, a rabbi and a minister actually walked into the bar? “I wouldn’t have made it to two months.”
Since leaving Capital Grille, Moritz has performed improv for the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals, portraying injured and sick patients to help train their medical staffs.
Canvas writer turns theater fact into fiction
As a local critic and sometimes actor, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, I continued to write about theater – just not reviews and not for a newspaper.
A few years ago, I performed in the Cleveland Play House production of “Yentl” so I could write about the experience for the Cleveland Jewish News, Canvas’ sister newspaper. Why not turn the series of behind-the-scenes articles into a memoir, just as journalist George Plimpton had done when he transformed a few Sports Illustrated stories about taking some snaps as the Detroit Lions’ quarterback into the autobiography “Paper Lion”? Renegade chef Anthony Bourdain did the same when he converted his The New Yorker essay “Don’t Eat Before Reading This” into a game-changing, best-selling memoir “Kitchen Confidential.”
But three chapters in, I realized there really wasn’t much of a story to tell. The production of “Yentl” was … fine. My fellow actors were generous. The audience was appreciative. Not the stuff of a tell-all page-turner. And so, I decided to give my realworld experiences a makeover with a hard-candy coating of fabrication, thereby turning my serious memoir into a humorous, fictionalized semiautobiography. The pleasant experience of “Yentl” was swapped out for a terrifying misadventure in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”
And my avatar – a better looking but less functional version of me – found iambic pentameter petrifying and had to live out the nightmare of sharing the stage with the thin-skinned classically trained actors he had just panned in the press. In the book, fellow critics angered by the traitorous breach of the proscenium arch circled like sharks on opening night.
My novella “All The World’s A Stage Fright: Misadventures of a Clandestine Critic” was published eight months into the pandemic and has found an audience. With the continued cancellation of theatrical productions due to the coronavirus variants, the sequel “Murder, Center Stage” – an Agatha Christi-like whodunit set in a production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” – hit bookstores late last year.
Here’s hoping that in 2022, there’s no need for a trilogy.
-Bob Abelman
Above: Bob Abelman at downtown Cleveland’s Hanna Theatre with fellow critic Gwen Kochur. Photo / Gwen Kochur Right: Bob Abelman at a Fireside Book Shop signing in his hometown of Chagrin Falls. Photo / Judy Abelman
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