Abstract

Dean Gladden, Managing Director of the Cleveland Playhouse, describes the operations and history of the Cleveland Playhouse, including information about specific performances and collaborations with other theaters.

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Interviewee

Gladden, Dean (interviewee)

Interviewer

Durica, Mark (interviewer); Tebeau, Mark (interviewer)

Project

History 304

Date

3-24-2006

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

94 minutes

Transcript

Dean Gladden [00:00:00] Okay. Do some tests? Okay.

Mark Durica [00:00:09] Okay. My name is Mark Durica. I’m interviewing Dean Gladden of the Cleveland Play House on March 24th here at Cleveland State. Thank you for being here with us, Dean. I was wondering if we could just start off with when and where you were born.

Dean Gladden [00:00:28] I was actually born in Columbus in 1953, and it was one of those great births where my father wouldn’t go to the hospital until the Browns won the game on Sunday. And shortly thereafter, I was born.

Mark Durica [00:00:51] I read a little bit about your educational training prior to the Play House, and I understand that you have an undergraduate degree in music. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about that. Like what in music? And why.

Dean Gladden [00:01:09] I was a percussion major at Miami University. And actually how I got into arts management was that I heard Jim Edgy speak at. He was the head of the Ohio Arts Council, spoke about arts management, which was a new field back then. And so after that, I decided it would be an interesting career to pursue and looked into graduate schools that offered that.

Mark Durica [00:01:36] Was there anyone else that influenced you in this direction or any life experiences?

Dean Gladden [00:01:43] Well, being a percussion major, I thought it would be a great combination of mixing business and music. And I managed a couple of bands, and so I thought, well, this would be a lot of fun. And so I met with the general manager of the Cincinnati Symphony and also the general manager of the Dayton Philharmonic, and they gave me advice on graduate schools. And that was how I chose. I ended up going to Drexel in Philadelphia. I planned on actually going into orchestra management. I thought that I was going to be an orchestra manager.

Mark Durica [00:02:18] I was wondering if you could actually tell me a little bit about with Drexel University, actually, and your experiences there.

Dean Gladden [00:02:30] Well, the reason I went there was to do an internship with the Philadelphia Orchestra. And I was a typical graduate student where they promised you everything to get you to go there, and then when you got there, they reneged on all their deals. So it wasn’t a great experience for me. I crammed a two year graduate program into one year in order to get out because I wasn’t happy with them. So I graduated in a year and ended up doing my internship with my last choice on earth, which was the Erie Philharmonic and the Erie Arts Council. And it turned out to be a very positive experience. And I realized that there was more to life than just orchestras and ended up my first job running an arts council in Lima, Ohio. 

Mark Tebeau [00:03:20] Where?

Dean Gladden [00:03:21] Lima, Ohio.

Mark Tebeau [00:03:23] That’s what I thought you said.

Dean Gladden [00:03:21] Yeah.

Mark Durica [00:03:23] Now, that provides an interesting shift for our questions. I was wondering if you could discuss your career prior to the Play House and what that encompassed.

Dean Gladden [00:03:34] Well, I started off in Lima with a very progressive arts council, and it’s a town of about 50,000 people. We had a national dance touring program. This was back in the ’70s when the National Endowment had a lot of money. And so we brought in three national dance companies. We had artists in schools. We had 14 different artists that we had in residence year-round in schools. That was run through CETA program, which was a federal program that Jimmy Carter had started in his administration. And we ran a summer arts festival and series of concerts in the park. So that was kind of a great career starting place for me. And then from there I went to the head of the Toledo Arts Commission, which at the time ran the largest arts festival in the state of Ohio. And we also ran a percent for art program, which at that time was the only percent for art program in the state of Ohio, and did a lot of public sculpture. And then I came to Cleveland by way of the Great Lakes Theater Festival. They had just moved downtown at that time. They were called the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival. And I joined them as the director of administration and development. And it was their first season. It was a great opportunity to kind of get into theater and learn about theater. I been doing visual arts and sculpture. I’d done dance, and I’d done everything but what I was trained in, in music. And I fell in love with the theater and had three great years with them. And then the Play House asked me to join them. So I started off as the associate managing director, and a year later I became the managing director.

Mark Durica [00:05:31] Before getting into the Play House, could you just describe any really influential moments during that period in your career, kind of like a real high or low, like something that sticks out during this time period?

Dean Gladden [00:05:44] Something before I joined the Play House?

Mark Durica [00:05:47] A real proud accomplishment?

Dean Gladden [00:05:50] Well, while I was at Great Lakes, which was a great experience, I also was asked to teach a course, a graduate course in arts management at the University of Akron. So I went down to teach this course, and it turned out that the head of the department had left. And they asked me if I would become the head of the department while I was working full time in Cleveland. So I foolishly said yes. And so I actually did two full-time jobs at the same time. And it was a marathon. I would be in Cleveland on Monday afternoons and then at night I would drive down every weeknight to Akron and teach and have office hours and run the graduate program, which consisted of about 20-some students of which I think about nine were full time. That was a very exciting time. And I also had- My son was born that time. So I didn’t see a whole lot of my son that year. But it was working constantly and then prepping all weekend. I’d lock myself in a room and prepare classes. So it was fun and I enjoyed it. Had a great time.

Mark Durica [00:07:09] You mentioned briefly how you came to be involved with-

Mark Tebeau [00:07:13] I’m actually going to interrupt. This is the role of the facilitator - to interrupt. Two things. Why did you fall in love with the theater?

Dean Gladden [00:07:24] You know- [crosstalk] this is a great- Well, when- I knew the general manager of the Great Lakes Theater Festival, when I was in Toledo, she and I had worked on some state, the state touring program for the Ohio Arts Council. She invited my wife and I to come to Cleveland. She said, they’re doing Nicholas Nickleby. Well, Nicholas Nickleby is an eight-hour production. It takes place- If you saw it on Saturday, Sunday, you could sit all eight hours or you’d see it on two consecutive nights, four hours apiece. And I’d heard about this production and I thought, well, anyone who would give me a free ticket to see Nicholas would be worth it. So my wife and I came over and we interviewed and then saw this production. Well, it was the most incredible theatrical experience, I think one of the most incredible theatrical experiences of my life. And I thought, this is very cool. This is what I’d like to do. That was the defining moment.

Mark Tebeau [00:08:27] When was that? Just the year.

Dean Gladden [00:08:29] That was in 1983.

Mark Tebeau [00:08:33] And that was going to be my second question is, when did you join? Just for the date sake? You joined in 1983?

Dean Gladden [00:08:41] I joined the Great Lakes Theater Festival in, I think it was November. October, November of 1983.

Mark Tebeau [00:08:49] Now the Great Lakes Theater Festival has a reputation around here. I mean, it has a national reputation. Tell us just something about it and you know what it was- What it’s- I mean, I don’t know if it’s even still around.

Dean Gladden [00:09:03] The Great Lakes Theater Festival, the artistic director when I joined was Vincent Dowling, who had been with the company a number of years. And they used to be located in Lakewood and started off as a summer theater in Lakewood and then moved downtown. And that really kind of changed the perspective of that theater, became more of a higher national profile. And Nicholas Nickleby really was the kickoff for them. They produced it here. They’re the first American company to do it outside of the Royal Shakespeare Company. And the production went on to Chicago and played for three months and then was going to go on national tour. But unfortunately, the Royal Shakespeare Company did a broadcast of their New York production. And when that was broadcast, it didn’t translate well to television two dimensionally. And it just killed the sales in Chicago and killed a national tour that we were going to do. But still, the quality of the work of Great Lakes Theater Festival was very highly regarded. And then my third year there, Jerry Friedman, who is a very, well, very well-known national director, became the artistic director. And Jerry is known from his early days. He worked with Hal Prince on Bells Are Ringing. He worked with him on West Side Story. And he was also the first director of Hair for the New York Shakespeare Festival before it went to Broadway. So Jerry was a very fine director and was there for, I think, six or seven years and is now still in his 70s running the- He’s the dean of the School of Arts. Dean of the School of the Arts at North Carolina.

Mark Durica [00:10:53] You mentioned briefly how you came to then become involved with the Cleveland Play House. I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more on that, the how and also, more importantly, the why of the-

Dean Gladden [00:11:06] Cleveland Play House? Well, I had gotten a reputation for being a good fundraiser at Great Lakes, and the Cleveland Play House was just completing. Well, they had built the Philip Johnson building and opened it in ’83. Yeah, ’83. But as with all capital campaigns, it went over budget. So they at the time had. It was going to be an $8 million theater. Then it went to 10 million, then it went to 15 million. They had raised 10 million and kind of run out of gas. And so I was hired to kind of raise the last 5 million. And also they had left part of the building unfinished. The rotunda was unfinished. The interior and the southwest tower, which was the entrance to the Play House Club, was left unfinished as a reminder that there’s still more to be done. So I was brought in to basically finish that campaign. And then a year after I got there, the managing director left. And so not only did I have the privilege of finishing the campaign, I had to take over as managing director.

Mark Durica [00:12:37] I understand the role of the managing director is utterly vital to the Play House. And I was wondering in the broad sense what that entails, what positions, but also just specifically kind of the challenges, the benefits of the job, what makes it worthwhile, and also just then afterwards, more what the actual duties are day to day, specifically entails.

Dean Gladden [00:13:11] Well, theaters are kind of unique management organizations in that they have two heads. So you have co-directors, you have the artistic director who oversees the art side of the theater. So he or she chooses the plays, hires the designers and director. All the production aspect works under him. So that means the costume shop, the prop shop, the scene shop and the paint shop. So all the artistic stuff is under the artistic director. All the management stuff is under the managing director. The managing director oversees development, marketing, finances and the facility. And in our case, we also, we run a private club, so we have a club that I also have to oversee. So it’s the whole business side of the operation. And then the managing director and the artistic director work together to kind of then facilitate the whole operations and both report to the president, to the board and the executive committee.

Mark Durica [00:14:24] Would you be able to take me through kind of what the typical day would be for the managing director? I mean, is there such a thing?

Dean Gladden [00:14:32] The typical day of a managing director is varied. Every day is varied because it’s a very active organization, both up and down, meaning the board as well as the staff. The board is 60 people and has numerous committees. So you are in daily conversation with board members and meeting with various committees of the board. You’re also meeting with various committees of the staff. So you’re meeting with your department heads, you’re meeting with individual departments on issues. So you know, a day can be meeting in the morning, starting at 7:30 with an executive committee or with other committees of the board, meeting with your various staff people dealing with the crisis of the day or the problem to be solved of the day, which come across your desk at all times. And being out doing fundraising, you’re always a big part of your job is fundraising and the facility is always a big part of your job. And then dealing with the artistic director over artistic issues. So you’re constantly. There are things happening that your day basically most days are 10- to 12-hour days.

Mark Durica [00:16:01] You mentioned both like crisis happening and just artistic challenges with the artistic director. Can you highlight some examples of what that would be specifically if any come to mind?

Dean Gladden [00:16:16] Oh, I mean, the crisis are not really crisis. They’re usually just problems or things that need to be solved in an instant. They can be budget items where things come in way over budget and we need to make a decision if we’re going to do it and should we go over budget or not. So I don’t have any recent crises that come up that say, oh, this was a great crisis story.

Mark Tebeau [00:16:49] Do you have a favorite crisis from the past?

Dean Gladden [00:16:50] Favorite crisis story? Oh my God. You know, I don’t know if this is a favorite crisis story. It’s a typical. This would Be a typical thing that would happen to me. When my daughter was born, I was trying to just take some time off so I could be with my wife in the hospital. And it was just so typical that I get a phone call in her room from the Play House. And we were in construction mode at the time, and the sheet metal workers went on strike, which meant that there would be no air conditioning in the theater that we had planned for our production. So I had to go back in to the office and I couldn’t even have time to be with my newborn child, so that would be typical of what my life is like.

Mark Durica [00:17:44] Regarding duties, I noticed something specific in your bio regarding the negotiating rights of 60 world and American premieres, international exchanges with the New Experimental Theatre in Volgograd, Russia, Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava. With these international exchanges, can you elaborate on that? What that even means with negotiating these rights?

Dean Gladden [00:18:14] Well, they’re two different things. One is the international exchange and the other is negotiating the rights. So we’ll just start with the international exchanges. It was, you know, we all lived through interesting times. For us, kind of one of the defining moments in the world was when the Eastern Bloc countries declared their independence from Russia and when the wall came down. And it was a very exciting time, I think, for everyone, because I think no one believed the wall would come down. I think everyone just assumed it would always be that way. And we were interested in international exchanges. It was almost by fluke. A friend of mine who was on the board of the Ohio Arts Council said, called me up one day and he said, I’m going with a delegation over to Moscow. The Ohio Arts Council is going to sign this cult exchange thing. And would you ever be interested in doing something? I thought, well, that sounds interesting. And so I started looking into it. And Cleveland has a sister city, Volgograd, which used to be Stalingrad, which was where the Russians turned back the Germans in the war as the defining point in the war. So I contacted our sister cities people and I sent a letter - a hand letter because was really the only way you could do things with this friend over to Russia - and the artistic director drove up from Volgorod, which had been about a 12-hour drive, to meet him in Moscow, and had a letter inviting us to come over and visit and start talking about an exchange. And so we did. And the artistic director was Josie Abady and myself. And we went over and met with Otar Dzhangisherashvili, who was artistic director - he was a Georgian - of the New Experimental Theatre of Vogrograd. And he- Then we hosted him in Cleveland and so that he could see the theater. And he invited Josie to come over and direct. She would be- And she agreed to do it. And she was the first American ever to direct in Russia, a Russian company, an all Russian company. She directed A Streetcar Named Desire. She went over for six weeks. And then I went over and joined her for the opening of the show. And it was a huge event. She was on television. And of course, there at that time it was still the Soviet Union. They had probably one or two television stations. And so she was broadcast over to millions and millions of people talking about directing this production. And that production sold out for over a year in that theater. And it was one of the most incredible things that I’d ever experienced. And she directed this - she spoke not a word of Russian, so she had two translators - in a day. And she’d work ten-hour days rehearsing. And she’d always ask, translate, and back and forth and back and forth. So after a six weeks - I think it was a six-week rehearsal period, it was a long rehearsal period - then they opened and they opened- It was standing room only. They were in the aisles. I mean, you couldn’t do this in the United States because the fire marshal wouldn’t allow it. And I videotaped it. And when it was over, the applause went on and on and on and on. And they brought her on stage and they gave her all these flowers. And then unbeknownst to her and me, the music director of this theater had taught them America the Beautiful. And they sang in English, America the Beautiful. And it was one of the most incredible emotional experiences. I still get tears in my eyes thinking about it. And it was just a wonderful moment that these Americans had done this play in the Soviet Union. So that was a very, very special event. We then brought them to the United States and hosted them for three weeks. And we performed her production of Streetcar. And they did another production of Erdman’s The Suicide, which was a fascinating in Russian, simultaneous translation in English here. And it was very well received. And so after that, I think it was on that trip where I went over to see her production. Then on the way home, we stopped off in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, which is another sister city, and had made arrangements to visit the National Theater there and talked with them. And of course, at that time it was Czechoslovakia, and the National Theater in Slovakia had a relationship with the National Theater in Prague. They were like sister cities. And so we talked about doing a future exchange with them as well, and started those talks. So after we had done the exchange in Russia, we brought the Russian company. Then we had thought, well, maybe we’ll tour to Slovakia and then go up and go to Volgograd, which was quite a hike. It would have been a big deal. And then we had the breaking up of the Eastern Bloc happen during this period of time. So now we had the Slovaks and the Czechs, and they voted to separate. And the theater was very much a part of that. Václav Havel, who became the head of the country, was a playwright. And Ivan Rajmont, who was the artistic director of the theater in the Czech Republic, who we had dealings with to start this relationship, had been one of the protesters. In fact, he had been one of the protesters in the ’50s as well. It was just kind of a very exciting time. And so all the people that Havel was putting in the government, the heads of the government were all people in the theater. And so everybody knew each other and the head of the government. So I went over on another trip to visit the country and to start making contacts to raise money. So we would go to American companies over there and talk to them about, you know, would you be interested in supporting this? And then coming back to the United States and then going to those same countries, and would you be interested in supporting. Supporting this? And so we set up an exchange where we would tour to the National Theater, the Slovak National Theater, and then the Czech National Theater. And also when we were in Slovakia, we also went to Nitra and performed at the theater there as well. And so we did that tour. We took over- They wanted an American play, so we took over The House of Blue Leaves, a John Guare play, and again performed to standing-room-only houses. The applause- We did, I think it was a dozen curtain calls. It was just amazing, the response from these countries in Slovakia and then in Prague. When we performed in Prague, we performed at the Estates Theatre. They have two main opera houses - actually, no, three main opera houses. Estates Theatre is where Don, where Mozart premiered Don- Oh, my gosh. My mind goes blank on the name of the play, of the opera. I don’t have to- [laughs] You’ll have to fill it in. Oh, shit. Well, it’ll come to me. But. How can I forget the name of this?

Mark Tebeau [00:27:20] At the Estate?

Dean Gladden [00:27:21] Yeah, at the Estates Theatre.

Mark Tebeau [00:27:24] If my Internet connection worked, I’d find out.

Dean Gladden [00:27:29] Oh, man, what’s the name of that opera? It’s one of his main operas. It’ll come to me. So anyway, in addition to that, at the Estates Theatre is where they filmed the movie Amadeus. And it was just a magnificent, magnificent, gorgeous theater. It’s not Don Quixote, it’s- What’s that name? So anyway, so we performed there and then we brought over to this country on different years, the Czech National Theatre and the Slovak National Theatere. Now, the- Then our last international exchange was with the Hungarian National Theatre. And that was- We went over to Miskolc, Hungary. Miskolc is a sister city with Cleveland. And it was at the time, I think it was the third-largest city in Hungary - and now we’re talking the late ’90s - and we performed at the National Theatre there. And then we also performed in Budapest and we performed at the Vígszínház Theatre, which is their big theater. We were the first American company- The Cleveland Play House was the first American company to perform at the National Theatre, the Czech National Theatre, the Slovak National Theatre and the Hungarian National Theatre. And we also obviously brought those companies here. So what we tried to do was highlight for the Cleveland community and these ethnic groups because Cleveland is the home of the largest Hungarian population outside of Budapest. It’s the second-largest Czech population outside of Prague, and it’s the largest Slovak population outside of Bratislava. So we wanted to really kind of highlight that these countries were now free - it was a whole different world as the New World Order - and do that through a cultural exchange. So it was an incredibly exciting time. And these exchanges were something very special, unique to Cleveland. So that’s a long story, but it’s a fascinating story.

Mark Tebeau [00:29:49] I’m going to actually just interrupt as a query before we get back. That’s a great story. Was that in the video?

Dean Gladden [00:29:58] No, I don’t think we talked about that in the video.

Mark Tebeau [00:30:00] Did you ever meet Václav Havel?

Dean Gladden [00:30:02] No, I never met him. He wasn’t able to come to the performance. I think he was out of town. So we didn’t meet him. Yeah, yeah. That was a disappointment. Yeah.

Mark Tebeau [00:30:12] One of my great heroes. Anyway.

Dean Gladden [00:30:14] Yeah, yeah.

Mark Durica [00:30:16] As you mentioned, this seemed like an extremely exciting time and a lot of vivid memories. Is there one with. Such as with these premieres, Something that really stuck out. I know you mentioned America the Beautiful and the long pauses.

Dean Gladden [00:30:30] Well, the premieres were a different thing. The premieres are plays that the Play House has performed for the first time. And so the Play House has been doing new work since it was founded and in premiere. There’s been a lot of American premieres. Well, there’s been over 100 and some premieres of plays at the Cleveland Play House. And the Play House has not only premiered plays but moved plays to Broadway since, every decade since the ’30s. So in my tenure, oh, I’ve forgotten how many plays we’ve premiered.

Mark Tebeau [00:31:11] Over 60- [inaudible]

Dean Gladden [00:31:12] Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So over probably 60, 70 premieres that have been done that we’ve negotiated the rights to, the fun ones to talk about are always the ones that have moved on and been successful and moved either to other regional theaters or moved on to Broadway. And one that comes to mind that’s very exciting because it has a Cleveland connection is Eric Coble is a local playwright that we have nurtured since graduate school. He was a graduate student in our program that we had at the time. We had an MFA program with Ohio University, and he was a student. And then he stayed in Cleveland, and under Peter Hackett, who was artistic director for a decade in the ’90s, mid-’90s up into 2004. Peter put together local playwrights, and we nurtured them. They meet monthly with our staff. They’re working on writing plays. They’ve won a number of awards. Well, Eric Coble wrote this play called- All of a sudden I go blank. Getting too old. I’m just getting too old. He wrote this play called Bright Ideas, and it’s a wonderful play about kind of today’s generation that will do anything to get their son or daughter into the most prestigious preschool so they can go to the most prestigious kindergarten, to go to the most prestigious private school, to go on to the most prestigious college. And so he was doing this take on this by making the most prestigious- And then it was kind of based on- And he used Shakespeare, he used Macbeth, and as kind of- There’s this kind of relationship to the Macbeth story that he put into this. And it’s just very, very fun. And so that was a comedy we premiered, and then it went on Off-Broadway and has been done by many regional theaters since then. But every time we do a premiere, it’s usually a very exciting because you give birth to shows that will then move on. And another premiere that we did, Smell of the Kill - Michelle Lowe wrote it - was a very successful comedy here about three women, and they have the most obnoxious husbands in the world. And at a dinner party, the three guys get locked in a meat locker down in the basement, and the whole play is about whether the wives are going to let them out or not. And that moved to Broadway and was very fun. Another play that we didn’t premiere - it was premiered at Yale but we did the second production of - was called the Cemetery Club. That play also went on to Broadway and then was made into a movie by Touchtone Pictures and was very, very successful.

Mark Durica [00:34:31] You mentioned briefly negotiating rights. For those listening, can you explain a little bit what exactly that is?

Dean Gladden [00:34:40] Sure. When you negotiate the rights, you sit down with the agent of the playwright. And if you premiere this play, then you, as part of the deal is the Play House will own a piece of the play and have rights to the play in the future and have rights to. Even if the play isn’t produced, say on Broadway. If it is produced on Broadway, then you would have a percent of the gross or you will have a percent of the rights if it just is made into a movie or television or anything like that. So it’s the rights. You negotiate the rights for the Play House. You represent the Play House.

Mark Durica [00:35:26] To step aside a moment from-

Mark Tebeau [00:35:28] I’m actually going to interrupt. When you talk just in terms of that for the sort of ordinary audience, I’m not sure they get it. So you actually then own the play, so it becomes in your interest to own a stable play, right?

Dean Gladden [00:35:39] Right. You own a piece of the play. You don’t own the play. The playwright owns the play. You own a piece of it for a limited period of time. So you have to have that. The play needs to be then produced at another venue and then maybe another venue, whatever. And as long as that happens, then you’ll have a piece of it. If you don’t option those rights, if you don’t produce it in a certain period of time, then you lose the rights. So that’s what you negotiate.

Mark Tebeau [00:36:09] So do you- How would I put this? Does that contribute much to the budget of the Play House?

Dean Gladden [00:36:18] It is- You know, the thing about theater is it has to be, you know, you can’t make, as the saying is, you can’t make a living, but you can make a killing. I will tell you that of all the plays that we’ve done, we’ve never really made a lot of money. It has to be a mega hit. And if it becomes a mega hit, then you can make a lot of money. And we’ve not had a mega hit.

Mark Tebeau [00:36:46] Just in thinking about these, the kind of plays publishing has undergone this similar kind of economics, which is you can’t- Nobody makes money as a writer anymore because books don’t sell or they sell huge numbers. Could you describe the- I mean, is that an economic model that’s happened? And could you kind of just draw it out for the listeners? What’s changed? Has that changed over the last 20 years?

Dean Gladden [00:37:12] Well, it’s very hard to make a living as a playwright, because people don’t produce plays commercially. It’s a very small market. What you see in New York pretty much now are exclusively musicals. And so playwriting has become a lost art because there’s not a lot of money in it. Everybody goes to television and goes out to L.A., and that’s where the money is. So the regional theaters, which is where most plays are done, and the regional theaters is really the heart of theater in America today. Those are the theaters that are nurturing playwrights and produce plays. And so you’ll see pretty much every play that gets produced on Broadway probably was premiered at a regional theater. So. So that is where the work of playwrights is done today. But you just have to have a passion to do it to be a playwright, or you have to subsidize yourself other ways. It is very difficult to make a living as a playwright.

Mark Durica [00:38:20] Stepping aside a moment from the Cleveland Play House, I understand from your bio that you’re involved with the Cleveland Rotary Club, and I was wondering if you could describe for our listeners what that is and your work with that.

Dean Gladden [00:38:37] Well, the Cleveland Rotary Club is an international service organization, and it’s one of the largest service organizations in the world. And you have your local Rotary Clubs that have local projects, and then the national has national projects and both- There’s a local foundation from Rotary that subsidizes programs. We work a lot in the city schools and we have a number of programs in literacy. And we also do other civic projects like helping fund a lot of nonprofits. We’re very involved with the Food Bank. We’re also involved with cleaning up. We have the West 25th Street station, rapid station that, all summer long, we actually take care of it. So there’s a variety of programs. The national Rotary does things. The biggest thing the national Rotary has been involved in for the last 10 years has been the eradication of polio worldwide. We’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars and worked on vaccinating children throughout the world. And we have eradicated 99% throughout the world. They’re still trying- They’re working with the World Health Organization to try to get some of these third world countries. And it’s very difficult to get in there and get these young people vaccinated. And so there are certain areas of China, I believe, in certain areas of Africa and certain areas of India that are still left to be immunized. But if that gets done, then we’ll have eliminated polio in our lifetime, which is pretty significant.

Mark Durica [00:40:28] I’m kind of curious. What drew you to the Rotary Club, how you became involved? Was there a particular influential individual or experience?

Dean Gladden [00:40:41] Well, I believe it’s part of being part of the nonprofit world is that you spend your life giving back to the community. That’s what you do, that we’re put here for a purpose. And one of the great things about running a theater is we have big education programs. We do all these things for the community. And you basically serve to enrich people’s lives and make this a better place. Well, not only do you need to do that, obviously, in your profession, but I think that you need to volunteer and do that in your volunteer life as well. So I chose Rotary as a vehicle to spend my volunteer time so that I would be doing more than just what I do for a living, but also giving back to the community in those ways.

Mark Durica [00:41:35] Shifting back to the Cleveland Play House. When interviewing Elijah Ford, we discussed the evolution of it during his career there. And I was wondering if you could tell me about how you feel the Play House has changed in terms of function as an institution and your thoughts on that, how it’s evolved?

Dean Gladden [00:42:01] Well, the Play House has evolved similar to a lot of regional theaters in America. First of all, it was the first regional theater in America, founded in 1915, way before anybody else was founded or thinking about being founded. It was very progressive. The founders went over to Europe and they went to the Moscow Art Theater and they went to the Berliner Theater, and they saw this model of an art theater that was unheard of in the United States. And they brought this back and talked about it. And it was a very rich time in 1915, because it was probably, I think, Cleveland was the sixth largest city. So the Cleveland Orchestra was founded. The Cleveland Play House was founded. Karamu House was founded. The Music School Settlement was founded. The Cleveland Foundation was founded. It was just a time of renaissance in this city. So it started off as an art theater and has continued to be an art theater. Now the world has changed dramatically and theater has evolved dramatically. It was a residential company of actors from the beginning, really more in the ’20s all the way through until the mid-’80s. And I joined in ’86. And it was downsizing from, at that time, a resident company. I think we only had nine actors that were in the resident company at that time. And the reason was that it’s expensive to maintain a resident company. And if you’re really doing a resident company, you should have 15 to 20 actors in a resident company. And regional theaters across the country were changing over into casting people on a show-by-show basis. The reason being if you have a resin company, you have to choose plays around the actors that you have in the company. If you cast on a show by show basis, you choose the plays and then you cast the actors around that. It gives you much more flexibility in your programming. Well, Cleveland, the city had changed. The resident company had been a white company, an all-white company. Its audiences were all white. Well, by the ’80s, the city had become, was almost, at that time, almost 50% African American. And we felt a need that we needed to relate our programming to the population of the city. So we changed artistically. This was a drastic change to go from a resident company into a show-by-show basis and also change the programming so that we were doing more African American programming or doing African American, because they weren’t really doing that at all prior to this. And so that was a revolutionary change. And that format then remains today. And that’s how we do it.

Mark Durica [00:45:15] You hinted actually at another question of mine, which is regarding the demographic of the Cleveland Play House and what you feel the dominant demographic it is and how that has changed over the years. If you can tell me about that.

Dean Gladden [00:45:32] Well, we felt that with the fact that- And of course, now the city is over 50% African American, that you needed to do program that related the African American community as well as the entire community. So if you’re casting on a show-by-show basis, then you can cast shows that have African American themes and hire total companies. I should tell you how we hire actors because that is pretty significant to what we do. The primary pool of actors is in New York City. There are actors in Cleveland, but it’s a relatively modest pool because it’s hard to make a living just as a stage actor because there’s just not that many jobs. So the actors that are here do voiceovers, they do commercials, they do other things so that they can work as actors. So we still hire local actors, but the bulk of our actors come out in New York City. We hire a casting director in New York City. The artistic director goes, and he, with the casting director and the director of the play, choose the actors from a very large pool who will be in the plays in Cleveland. We then, after they’re chosen, we fly them to Cleveland. We have 20 apartments in Shaker Square. They live in Shaker Square and rehearse for four weeks, and then they perform here for four weeks. And then while they’re performing, we’re actually rehearsing another company backstage for the next show. So that when one show closes, the next show opens.

Mark Durica [00:47:10] Continuing with the idea of evolution and change, during your tenure, I would imagine you’ve worked with various artistic directors. I was wondering if you can describe your experiences with those different individuals, how they’ve compared and contrasted during their time.

Dean Gladden [00:47:29] Well, the first artistic director I worked with was actually an acting artistic director, Will Rhys, who had been a member of the resident company for a number of years. And he took over after Richard Oberlin had retired, and Richard Oberlin had been there for about 14 years as artistic director. And Will was kind of the transition. He started doing multiracial casting and more adventuresome work. And he was- He had also worked- He was an actor who knew how to perform American Sign Language and did a wonderful play of Ionesco’s Exit the King with a deaf actor. And so he was innovative in trying to do a lot of different things. He had also gone to South America, sponsored by the U.S. government, and brought back- He did a tour for a summer and then brought back some interesting pieces to do in Cleveland. So Will was very talented and was a good transition for us for when we hired the next artistic director, who was Josephine Abady, who previously was the artistic director of the Berkshire Theatre Festival. And she really was the one who changed the programming to bring in more African American work and relate better to the African American community. And she also, I think, really upgraded the quality of the work by bringing in some very talented New York actors. And it was under her that we started doing shows that moved to New York. In fact, her very first show we did was the revival of Born Yesterday, starring Ed Asner and Madeline Kahn. She directed this production, and it was the first time that Garson Kanin, who wrote the play, allowed his work to be remounted in New York City. And so she directed it in Cleveland. It was a huge hit in Cleveland. We toured 16 cities across the country and then went to New York and played for six months in New York. Madeline Kahn received a Tony nomination for Best Actress. So Josie was very innovative, obviously, in doing a number of pieces that- And we celebrated our 75th anniversary while she was here. We remounted a wonderful production of You Touched Me!, which the Play House premiered back in the ’40s, which was really the beginning of Tennessee Williams’s career. He premiered this piece at the Play House at the time. We have one of the letters that he wrote, the artistic director, Frederick McConnell. He talked about that, I’m working on a new play, he said. I think it’s going to be very good. At the time, Tennessee was at Paramount Studios. He says, It’s called The Gentleman Caller, and it became The Glass Menagerie. So Tennessee got his early start at the Cleveland Play House. So we did that play and he co-wrote it with Don Windham, who was still alive. And we brought to the Play House when we premiered it, and it was a charming, charming production. We also remounted another very prestigious play that the Play House had mounted back in the late 60s called The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. It won a Pulitzer Prize, and we remounted it during the 75th anniversary, starring Marlo Thomas, and it was a stunning, stunning production. So Josie was very good at doing a number of innovative plays. And she took Harvey, Harvey, a wonderful story about Harvey. We did a revival of that during the holidays and it starred Bill Cobbs. Bill Cobbs is an African American actor from Cleveland. And in the ’50s he saw his first play at the Cleveland Play House as a student going to high school in the Cleveland school system. And he never forgot it because he saw this Harvey. And here, 40 years later, he starred in our production of Harvey. And it was just a wonderful story that was kind of coming full circle in a production that he saw his first production. So there are a number of stories about that at the Play House, those types of things. Then after Josie, Peter Hackett became the artistic director, was artistic director for 10 years. Peter directed a number of also exciting shows. We have a number of them that were transferred to Broadway and off Broadway. His first show that we did was a show called It Ain’t Nothing but the Blues. We did it in conjunction with the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So we thought if they’re going to open, we should do a show during that period of time that celebrated blues, which was the roots of rock and roll. That show went on to New York and eventually went on to Broadway and was nominated for Tony for Best Musical and also for Best book of a Musical. And we also did another production of Love Janis, which went on to off Broadway, ran for a year and a half in New York and ran in Chicago. We did a wonderful production of a play that we thought would be perfect for Cleveland called Elliot Ness in Cleveland. A new musical under Peter and trying to think of some other shows that we did with him. Lost highway, which was the story of Hank Williams, went on to play for six months off Broadway. So Peter did a lot of things that also were very exciting. And now Michael Bloom is the artistic director and we’re in his first season and looking forward to his good work.

Mark Durica [00:54:04] In linking memory in place. I was wondering if you feel that there’s a particular production of which the Cleveland Play House is particularly fond of?

Dean Gladden [00:54:16] The Mozart production was Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni was premiered at the Estates Theatre in Prague, and that’s where he performed.

Mark Durica [00:54:32] I was wondering if there was a production particularly linked to the Cleveland Play House - and also yourself - if there’s a particular production you’ve experienced at the Cleveland Play House that you remember with great fondness or hold dear.

Dean Gladden [00:54:51] Boy, you know, you go through the productions that you’ve produced and there are so many great productions and it’s very, very hard to say one or another. There are always kind of special moments that you remember. We did a musical in 1991 called Abyssinia, which was just an incredible gospel musical that sent chills up and down your spine. It was one of the highest attended shows in the history of the theater. And it was just very, very special. There are wonderful moments in the theater that sometimes are hard to describe because you just have to be there. But I’ll never forget this moment which showed, which was kind of a fun thing. We did a play, Alan Ayckbourn play, called Man of the Moment and starring David Schramm and Howard Hesseman. And there was a moment where it took place in a villa, Mediterranean villa. And it had this huge swimming pool that had to be five feet deep and someone had to drown in it. It was quite a spectacular setting. And there was kind of a theatrical trick that Alan Ayckbourn had written in where there was a moment where you were at daytime seeing this gorgeous scene and he clicks his fingers and all of a sudden there’s a television crew and it’s nighttime. And it’s nighttime at a click of a finger. And what was so incredible was somebody snapped their finger and it went from daylight, gorgeous, gorgeous daylight to a spectacular moonlight in the flash of, in a second where the light reflected on the pool and you just had these waves and you could see this and you realize the power of lighting in that moment. And it was just such a special theatrical moment. There other productions that were very special. We did this production of Jar the Floor that told three generations of African American, American woman. And it was just kind of very fun to see the response of the audience and to see those generations did a fabulous production of Mockingbird in 1995. And people came out because it was a story that had such resonance. I mean, I could go on and on and tell you stories after stories.

Mark Tebeau [00:57:33] Well, that’s an example of where we might actually want to just sit down with you at your office with some memorabilia.

Dean Gladden [00:57:38] Yeah. I could just- I could go through and tell you stories about so many shows and people. 

Mark Tebeau [00:57:44] Right. And that would be a nice way to sort of jog a more specific memory.

Dean Gladden [00:57:47] Yeah.

Mark Durica [00:57:50] You’ve provided excellent memories of the Cleveland Play House’s history for the past 20 years. Looking ahead to its future, do you foresee evolution in function or evolution in the architecture of the building?

Dean Gladden [00:58:07] Well-

Mark Durica [00:58:08] As I understand, there was, right around when you would have come, was the completion of it as the complex.

Dean Gladden [00:58:18] What I see as we look into the future, because, you know, it’s interesting, right now, Cleveland has been kind of a shrinking city in a shrinking county, and so- And the theater has had to respond to that. It’s a different world. We live in a completely different world today. Over the last 20 years, you know, we’ve seen, the Mac was invented in 1984. And so when that revolutionized things. The Internet. The coming of the Internet’s changed things. I mean, we saw also in ’84, they had, movies were put on. What do you call cassettes?

Mark Durica [00:59:00] VHS.

Dean Gladden [00:59:01] VHS. VHS movies. And now, of course, now we have DVD movies. And all of the home entertainment thing has changed the world. And we used to have three stations. Now we’ve got 100 stations on our television. We have seen Playhouse Square come out of the ashes, where back when we built our building in ’83, Playhouse Square had not been developed yet. And so you have all those theaters that have come back. The Broadway touring market was virtually dead in the ’70s, and now it’s thriving. So the entertainment world has changed, and so we have had to change with it. Our programming has had to change. The style of work has had to change. You have to respond to the times that you’re in. So we continue to evolve, and programming continues to evolve based on what is happening in our world today. So it will continue to evolve. What I think we’ll be seeing is I still think that theater speaks to people. It speaks in a different way. It’s a very intimate setting. You know, our largest theater is 550 seats. We’re thinking we might even shrink our theaters. We might go to 500 seats, or our other theater is 500 seats. We’re thinking we might shrink it to 400 seats to just keep things on a more intimate experience and something that you can’t get any other way and then continue to choose plays that resonate in the lives of people today.

Mark Durica [01:00:36] You seem to hint at this. My next question, as the managing director, what do you feel is the mission of the Cleveland Play House as an institution? How would you describe that?

Dean Gladden [01:00:50] Well, the mission of the Play House is really to produce plays that are relevant. That’s exactly what we do. It’s not only plays that are relevant, but plays that relate to this community, specifically to the ethnic makeup of this community and to the uniqueness of Northeast Ohio. So that’s kind of our first. Our first thing that is part of the mission. The second part of our mission is education. We’re very involved. We’ve been doing education programs since the 1930s. And so we still have curtain puller programs which were started back then, which are classes for young people and now go all the way to adult classes. We have partnerships with the Cleveland School of the Arts. We do a lot with the city schools and bringing them in to see theater. That’s a very important part of what we do. We do children’s theater. So we have plays that we do for K through fourth grade, and we also will do plays for junior high age. And so we think that that’s a very important part of our mission as well. So education has always been and will continue to be. We also do an MFA program, Master of Fine Arts acting program with Case Western Reserve University. And we have, we take a class of eight actors every other year. And their three years in training, in residence at the playoffs, their third year, they get to act on the stage of the Play House. This is, we think, a very important training program. It’s one of the more prestigious programs in the country. To give you an idea how hard it is to get into the program, we auditioned 1600 actors for eight slots. So it’s a very competitive program.

Mark Durica [01:02:45] Before I conclude with my final question, I’ll now turn the interview over to the facilitator, Dr. Tebeau.

Mark Tebeau [01:02:53] I actually have just a couple quick questions. The first is, how do you- I mean, it’s interesting you mentioned at the end, different than Playhouse Square. How are you different than Play House Square in terms of performance?

Dean Gladden [01:03:08] I mean, completely different. The difference between us and Playhouse Square is this. The Cleveland Play House is a producing theater. That means that we, we choose our directors, choose our plays, choose our designers, we hire them all. They come up with a concept for the play. Then we choose the actors, they rehearse the play. We build all the sets, the costumes, the props on site at the Play House. We build everything there and rehearse it there. And then we produce the play for four weeks. And then after it’s over, we throw it in the dumpster and we produce the next play. Playhouse Square is a booking house. What they do is they book shows that are on tour from Broadway. So the plays come on a truck and they tour to Cleveland, they tour to Chicago, they tour to Los Angeles, they tour to Columbus. The same show is done in all those cities and keeps touring. And that’s how they get their product.

Mark Tebeau [01:04:11] Okay, the second question is I’m interested in the difference between an artistic director and a managing director. I would imagine they’re somewhat temperamentally different. I don’t know.

Dean Gladden [01:04:22] Well, they’re completely different. The artistic director-

Mark Tebeau [01:04:26] Oh, but in terms of temperament, I understand that. I’m not so interested in- I mean, it’s pretty clear they’re different, but I’m just interested in their temperament for the moment. I’ve heard so much about the artistic temperament. That’s all.

Dean Gladden [01:04:40] Well, the artistic director is an artist, and so, you know, they produce the art. The managing directors are more the business people. But I think what makes good managing directors is that they come out of an art form. Now, I came out of music, but I certainly had theater background. A lot of managers in theater actually come out of the theater, you know, had been theater all along. So part of my job as being a managing director is that you want someone with some arts background so that they can relate to the artistic temperament, so that they understand where people are coming from. Because it’s different than just being a bean counter. So you have to bridge that. The art and the business that your job is to kind of bridge and understand that temperament so that you can support them. They’re the vision. The artistic directors are the vision of the theater, and your job as the manager is to help them realize that vision.

Mark Tebeau [01:05:51] Are any famous stories that you have or things that you would tell at a conference or something about a great moment with an artistic director? Just one of those.

Dean Gladden [01:06:14] A great moment with an artistic director. [laughs]

Mark Tebeau [01:06:19] I’m sure there are many, right?

Dean Gladden [01:06:22] Yeah, yeah, there are many great moments. [laughs] I mean, you want a funny story or do you want a story that’s an artistic story?

Mark Tebeau [01:06:31] I don’t know. I can imagine both working for me. Like, I’m thinking- It could be both. It could be either. I don’t care. Just one thing that stands out where it just pops up there.

Dean Gladden [01:06:45] Well, a story that always pops up, that’s just a funny story is when we were in Russia, in Volgograd, it was in July, and it was 104 degrees, if you can imagine Russia being 104 degrees. And there was no air conditioning in our hotel. And the sun would come up at three in the morning and just beat. And your room was- You were dying. And Josie Abady, the artistic director, had to be over there for six weeks to rehearse. And so her first day when she went over there, she said, either you get me an air conditioner or I’m not staying here. So they got her an air conditioner. So she had this suite. And this was actually a Soviet hotel. It was a hidden hotel because, you know, they hid the good hotels for the Soviets and their guests. You know that if you’re a member of the Communist Party, you would stay in this hotel. And the inn tourist was way over on the other side. And so we were staying in the nicer hotel, although it was like, you know, a 1950s hotel, to tell you the truth. So Josie was up in this suite, and I’m like, dying, and she says to me, Dean, why don’t you just come up and stay with me? I’ve got two beds in my room, and you can have air conditioning. And so I’m one of the few managing directors that slept with his artistic director. And I’ve been kidding a lot about that. But let me tell you, it was well worth the air conditioning.

Mark Tebeau [01:08:20] [laughs] I’m sorry, I’m not supposed to laugh aloud. And then the final question I have is just about sales. So have your sales numbers then gone down? How have your budgets worked over the last 20 years? What you just described is an exceptional amount of pressure on any organization. You see it throughout the city.

Dean Gladden [01:08:31] Yeah, well, what has happened to theater in America, and has happened to us to even a greater extent than the average theater, is that we have seen as all the entertainment options have increased and all the changes that have happened in Cleveland over the last 20 years, is a significant drop in subscriber base. And so we have had to compensate for this drop in subscriber base. And it’s also changing lifestyles. In addition to all the entertainment options that I’ve mentioned that are available to people is that now most households are. Both spouses are working. And it used to be one spouse worked and the other spouse worked on the social calendar and took care of the kids. Kids. And because that has all changed, that’s changed the buying patterns of people and their lifestyles have changed dramatically. Because when you have your children now, also people are kind of into kids and they’re doing all these activities with their kids. So when they come home after work, they tend to do things with their kids growing up. And so you don’t really. They kind of disappear from the landscape, the entertainment landscape, until they get into their late 40s and early 50s. And so that has all changed. That has all changed in the marketplace. We felt that change.

Mark Tebeau [01:10:00] The final question would be just, is there anything we’ve forgotten, anything you’d like to say?

Dean Gladden [01:10:11] Well, the other thing that’s interesting about the Cleveland Play House is the architecture. And it’s a Philip Johnson building. Philip Johnson was raised in Cleveland and left Cleveland and designed buildings internationally, but never did a building in his hometown until we built the Cleveland Play House. And Kenny Bolton was a big champion of hiring Philip Johnson and hired Philip to design the Play House. And it’s a unique Romanesque style building. Truly unique and quite special. And Cleveland is, I think, really lucky to have it as an architectural icon. It also ties into he, he kept the style of the original building. His addition was really all the lobbies in the 1980. Well, and the Bolton Theater. But the original building was built in 1927 and that houses the Brooks Theater and the Jury Theater. And that was designed by Philip Small and the firm of Small and Raleigh. And that’s a very unique building. And they went on to design a lot of. They designed Shaker Square, they designed the Van Sweringen mansion, they designed a lot of homes in Shaker Heights and in Daisy Hill. So it is absolutely unique building. The fact that it was built as a legitimate theater in 1927 again was unique in the country. So these things are quite special for Cleveland. The other thing is we purchased the Sears department store in 1979 and added that and kind of combined all of that into one complex. And that complex now with the. There are four theaters in the complex and the Sears building and all our production facilities and we lease out space. But it’s a 300,000 square foot building. It is the largest regional theater in the United States under one roof. And again, unique to Cleveland. And of course, the Property sits on 13 acres, so we own everything from 83rd Street to 86th street, from Carnegie to Euclid Avenue, also quite unique.

Mark Durica [01:12:31] Thank you for speaking with us today. This has been Mark Durica interviewing Dean Gladden at Cleveland State University. Thank you for listening.

Mark Tebeau [01:12:39] Thank you, Dean. This is great.

Dean Gladden [01:12:40] Yeah.

Mark Tebeau [01:12:41] Love the energy, the story. I actually can see that.

Mark Tebeau [01:12:46] One of the things I know we’re eventually going to want from you are clips from the Russian performances. Those are perfect moments.

Dean Gladden [01:12:52] Well, I have. You know what? I don’t know if I got the clips because Josie, I gave them to Josie. I never got him back and she died. I might have something in the archives. I’ll have to. I don’t know if we’ve got some commercials or we got any video at all.

Mark Tebeau [01:13:08] Well, we can- We can go in search of them. But those- That’s a great story. A couple things I just want to say. We need you to sign that. But two things. One, I know Mark would like to get into the archives. He should call Julie just for his paper he’s- 

Dean Gladden [01:13:27] Right. Yeah. What do you- You can- I would actually coordinate with me because- And then I’ll let Julie, if she- If she’s going to do anything. But she actually doesn’t go up in the archives as much as I do.

Mark Tebeau [01:13:38] Yeah. So what Mark’s doing is writing an essay for my class. So it would be great if he could- And your home address or your work address. Makes no difference. It would be great if he could get in there to look at some stuff. Basically, stuff like about the architecture would be useful, for example. And we’ll of course give you a copy of the paper. We’re also going to make a DVD, of the CD ROM of the interview for you so that you can put it in your personal collection.

Dean Gladden [01:14:04] Yeah, right. I’ll throw it in the archives. Another-

Mark Tebeau [01:14:08] And we’ll give you a copy. What I was doing while you were talking is logging it, which I will go back and actually Mark will log and we’ll compare the logs and put it together. So you know, what you talked about when. If you ever wanted to find a clip and you’ve got a sign.

Mark Tebeau [01:14:24] The other thing is, you know what I’m thinking that we would love to do is lots more interviews with people. So if you see- Because it could be a real nice marketing strategy. Get people who’ve been subscribers forever sit down and just talk about their memories.

Dean Gladden [01:14:34] Well, and I can think of some people that have been around and can tell you stories. We’ve got a few board members that- It’s great because they’ve been subscribers for 40 years. And plus they know, because they’ve been board members, they know everything. And they knew all the people. All the people. That would be great. There are some of those and the only- The wife of Richard Oberlin’s wife is alive. It’s a tragedy. I mean, that we lost. Richard Oberlin died and Josie Abady died and Peter Hackett’s not in town. But you know, we can give you-

Mark Tebeau [01:15:18] Yeah, that’s great. We can go out- We can actually go out of town. We have budgets for that. So what we’re doing is trying to collect the stories and anything where we can triangulate bunches of stories. Because there are going to be 19 essentially kiosks at 12 locations along Euclid Avenue. So there’s going to be one outside your building, I mean, presumably.

Dean Gladden [01:15:37] Right.

Mark Tebeau [01:15:38] So we would love to be able to produce 10 or 12 spots.

Dean Gladden [01:15:42] Well, you could do, certainly do Peter. Because as artistic director for 10 years, he would have a lot of good stories. And the fact, you know, he did the Hungarian exchange and so he can- You can get that. Speaking of that, I do also have video. I do have video because of the Czech and the Slovak stuff and interviews with Josie. Because we have a television. We had an hour television show that was done. So that I do have. I’m just not sure about the Russian stuff.

Mark Tebeau [01:16:12] Yeah. But even just part of what we’ll do is over the next, you know, three to six months, we’re in no hurry or anything. Mark’s going to come in, he like- And I’ll- I’m going to remember this. Of video of the exchanges. Because all that stuff can come back. We can make use of that to tell this kind of historical story, which is what we’d really love to do. And we’re talking two, three minute.

Dean Gladden [01:16:33] Exactly. Two clips.

Mark Tebeau [01:16:35] Yeah. You know, very little.

Dean Gladden [01:16:36] Yeah, very little. Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Mark Tebeau [01:16:39] 30 seconds of video is more than enough for most people. But the other thing is, if you can think, we’d be happy to interview people. And so if you just-

Dean Gladden [01:16:48] Do you want me to give you names of people?

Mark Tebeau [01:16:50] Well, it’s up to you how we do it. Do you want us to just call them or we can follow a systematic strategy? We should probably-

Dean Gladden [01:16:58] You know, you could call them and just say I said you could call them.

Mark Tebeau [01:17:01] So could I send you an email and just-

Dean Gladden [01:17:03] Yeah, just send me an email and I’ll just give you a name. Some people. Yeah. It’ll save me calling them all.

Mark Tebeau [01:17:09] Yeah. And I’ll just- And what I’ll do is call them.

Dean Gladden [01:17:11] You can just use my name and say Dean recommended I talk to him. Yeah.

Mark Tebeau [01:17:14] And what I’ll do is in the email, ask you to just give me an identifying tag you’ve been with so I can immediately say, oh, I understand you’ve been a board member for 25 years, or something like that. Because that would be great. I mean, you know, collecting these things. And we’ll give you guys a copy of all those things.

Dean Gladden [01:17:30] The other thing that is fabulous that we’re doing is we have put together these history boards on the Play House, and we’ve got the first three- They’re in the lobby and they’re pretty significant. In fact, they’re 16 feet long and 8 feet high. And they talk through the history of the Play House every season, every year. And significant stuff with great kind of trivia stories, you know, like when Eliot Ness came and investigated when we were bombed by the IATSE union. And there’s just- There’s lots of stuff that’s there that we’ve spent a lot of times in the archives kind of creating this history. And the second 30 years is going up this next week, and we haven’t done the last 30 years, but there’s some great stuff on there that saves you. That saves you actually a lot of research, because that stuff is the highlight stuff I went through with a designer, and we kind of went through all the archives. And the thing that’s interesting in the archives is we have scrap books for, like, 60 years of scrapbooks. And so all the newspaper articles and everything was very easy to get to for those years. And then we pulled out the best stuff and put it on this board.

Mark Tebeau [01:19:04] That’s great. So that’ll be valuable for you. And then the final thing is, one of the things that oral historians sometimes do is do interviews in ways that end up in the production of plays. So I just wanted to put that in your bonnet. If you guys-

Dean Gladden [01:19:28] We’ve done stuff like that that we’ve made.

Mark Tebeau [01:19:30] And if you guys- We’d be happy if someone-

Dean Gladden [01:19:34] Would be interested in doing this.

Mark Tebeau [01:19:36] Would be interested in doing it, because we’ve collected now 120 interviews. Our interviews have lots of different folks, but they could be a really interesting kind of story, used for a clever I don’t know what. I’m not sure.

Dean Gladden [01:19:48] Well, we’ve got several playwrights, like I said, we’ve got a dozen playwrights in this unit that if any one of those were interested in.

Mark Tebeau [01:19:59] Yeah. And so just keep that in the back of your mind if you mention, we’re happy to share this stuff because this is all going to be part of a major public archive here and at the Library of Congress. So, you know, we might as well do something with it if there’s an interest. I mean, that’s not my-

Dean Gladden [01:20:10] Yeah. It would be a fun piece if we could figure out a way to make it interesting. [crosstalk] You know, into a real interesting piece of theater.

Mark Tebeau [01:20:19] So great. This is awesome. This was fantastic. Great stories. I just loved the exchange stuff.

Dean Gladden [01:20:25] Yeah, it was just a fascinating time. It was just, you know, when the [Berlin Wall] came down, I mean- And the difference- When you were over in Russia and in Volgograd. And the first time, then you went back after the wall came down, and every hotel was a casino. The prostitutes would literally - first of all, you never saw a prostitute before - they would literally come up to your table at dinner and solicit you. It was just- It was like the wild, wild West and the mafia’s everywhere. And it was just an incredible thing to see.

Mark Tebeau [01:21:13] You know, I have an identical twin that lives in Warsaw now. He moved right after the wall. Shortly after he moved when he actually got married, I flew to Prague and traveled, drove from Prague to Warsaw. It’s like ’91 or so, about this time, right? And the thing about driving through the countryside is it was- It was as if it was 1940 again, because there was nothing there.

Dean Gladden [01:21:36] Oh, yeah.

Mark Tebeau [01:21:37] And we remembered the thing that made the biggest impression is there was no, you know, if we drive here, the interstate, there, every cloverleaf, there’s something to eat. There was nothing at all.

Dean Gladden [01:21:45] No, there’s like a certain place that there’s a, like, one station, and you’ve got to know where that station is.

Mark Tebeau [01:21:52] And so when you see it, it’s not like you can wait another 70 miles to get gas. You’re like, okay, I’d better get it here. But the thing that had begun to sprout up were these little kielbasa stands made out of old Airstream trailers that would just say kielbasa. And it wasn’t- They were everywhere. So they were-

Dean Gladden [01:22:09] That was their thing.

Mark Tebeau [01:22:10] But it wasn’t the sort of- These were 1950s Airstream trailers. So you looked at it, and it was not the kind of place you’d stop and eat, or at least we would stop and eat lunch. But we were just struck by this sort of sudden, this new world.

Dean Gladden [01:22:23] You know, you would go over there in the theater, they would have the most elaborate, expensive equipment and everything. You know, it’s all state of the art. And of course, the government funded everything. And you would be amazed that they would have all this stuff now this is in Russia, but yet they didn’t have a dime for the theater, so they didn’t have any money for thread. They didn’t have any money for material to make the costumes. And they would go all out on the black market. Everything was done on the black market. And then this artistic director I talked about, who I said was a Georgian. Now the Georgian mafia, you know, Stalin was a Georgian, and he took care of the Georgians. And they always kind of had their own world. And that country, of course, is landlocked and was always occupied by somebody else. And so the artistic director flew us to Georgia, to Tbilisi and to Gori. Gori was Stalin’s hometown, and his home was there. And it was a museum, but shut down because it was now out of favor. This was after the wall had come down. And it was just interesting to see how some of the drawings. Georgians. We stayed in this home, that big formal dining room. You know, it was like a home. It was a huge home. Oh, my God, we couldn’t believe it. But this guy’s Georgian. This guy knew how to work. What do you do? I’m an engineer. Everybody was an engineer. They’re all engineers. And then so we toured to police and all this stuff. But we flew on this airplane. We flew on this Aeroflot airplane that was a jet, and it sat 20 people and there were like six of us. And so we were supposedly being flown by this vice president of this company in Volgograd. And so we were with him a lot of nights and, you know, there’s a lot of toasts and drinking and talking about. And he- We were talking about the weapons aimed at. And he was saying, let me tell you what we have aimed at the United States. And he was saying, you think that they’ve got the Star Wars stuff? There are so many missiles, like at Boston, let’s say Boston, we will be sending over so many missiles that there’s no way you can get all the missiles that we’re to send over. There’s just no way, you know, you can’t do it. And I’m going, no shit. So then I get back to the States, and a year later, another group comes over from Volgograd. And the interpreter I knew because I’d met- I’m talking with her, and I’m telling her about this guy that she says, oh, yeah, do you know who he was? And I’m going, no, who was he? She said, he was the vice president. And also he’s a member of the Politburo of this company that makes missiles aimed at the United States. So he knew from whence he spoke.

Mark Tebeau [01:25:25] That’s great. But that’s- I mean, those kinds of stories are what exactly- I mean, I could just see the picture of the CBS News, the wall falling down, and Cleveland’s part of that story.

Dean Gladden [01:25:40] Yeah, yeah. It’s just- It was just such an incredible experience. And, you know.

Mark Tebeau [01:25:45] So did you do any more exchanges at all, or is that-

Dean Gladden [01:25:49] We’re now. In fact, we’re just setting up one with Israel, we just met last week, had a lunch to make contacts. After 9/11, the economy and everything went sour. So we quit doing the exchanges and all the companies that used to support his Duum left town. So we had trw. Yeah, exactly. TRW was a big supporter of all the exchanges. So anyway, so we backed off. And also the other problem was Israel. War broke out when we were starting to do it, and we just thought, you know. And the State Department said, don’t go over. Well, that’s all changed now. And I mean, there’s not that there isn’t problems, but it’s not like it was. So we decided we’d start the thing. It takes about three years to put these things together before they actually happen. So you go over there and we’ll meet and go to the theaters, and they’ll invite people come over here and see the theaters, and then we’ll figure out a calendar and you do it. Usually at the end of your fiscal year, you’ll do a play. So you talk about what you’re going to do and what relates what they might like, and then vice versa, etc. It’s a fascinating process. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s completely different than what the Cleveland Orchestra does. The Cleveland Orchestra, they just get booked in major halls and they just go perform and they make money. They actually make money on tour. You can’t make money doing what we do, you do in exchange. So you have to fund it. You have to fund it, and they have to fund it. And of course, they fund it through their government. So the deal is when you go over, as soon as you land, they pick up all the costs while you’re there in that country, and they take care of you and vice versa over here. But while we’re there, I got to pay all those actors and everything else, so I got to raise all that money for that.

Mark Tebeau [01:27:34] Is Philip Johnson still alive?

Dean Gladden [01:27:40] No, no, he died not too long ago. He was like 95 or 98 or something. He lived a long time. So did his sister. His sister was alive. She was here in Cleveland.

Mark Tebeau [01:27:48] You know, it would be a great story. I’ll mention it to David Barnett to cover you guys going over. Will they send someone?

Dean Gladden [01:28:00] Yeah, they’ll send someone. Well, they did on the Hungarian exchange. They sent. They sent Dave. Yeah, he went over.

Mark Tebeau [01:28:10] Yeah. I hope they do that again because those would be great stories.

Dean Gladden [01:28:16] Oh, yeah, they’re absolutely great. And we had a television crew on the first trip on the other Trip over, which was smart. So we got a little bit of both. But, yeah, it’s such a fascinating thing. And again, this is one of those things that Cleveland, the communities here really got it. I mean, the Hungarian community and all, all that stuff. But the rest of the city, really, I think people just kind of just take this stuff for granted.

Mark Tebeau [01:28:40] Well, that’s part- And that’s what we’re- I’ve only been here six years, so. And I’m a transplant. And it occurred to me that there’s some- I mean, I’m an urban historian, so I care about places. But there’s a third of these stories that I keep hearing that you can’t find. There’s not much history written. If I were in Chicago, I could find a dozen really nice pieces of scholarly, real depth history. There’s nothing. It’s just not here. And just in doing the interviews, I’ve learned this extraordinary amount. So. Yeah, I bet we think we’re trying to recover some of that before people die. We’ve had two people we wanted to interview die and that’s how, you know.

Dean Gladden [01:29:25] Yeah, exactly. It’s amazing how many people die that you do this kind of stuff. And we’ve had, you know, it’s hard for a small nonprofit to really maintain archives and do stuff. And so I’ve really kind of pushed that to do stuff.

Mark Tebeau [01:29:40] One of the things we’re moving towards is some sort of the History Department, some sort of more sort of comprehensive museum studies kind of thing in collaboration perhaps with our library. You know, one of the things we’d love to do, I think, is start taking archives like that so. Because we could house them and treat them well. So, you know, as we move those conversations forward, we may call you. Because that’s, you know, so it’s got to go somewhere.

Dean Gladden [01:30:13] Oh, yeah.

Mark Tebeau [01:30:14] Well, Western Reserve has a hundred thousand cubic feet of-

Dean Gladden [01:30:17] I know, it’s amazing. Yeah.

Mark Tebeau [01:30:19] And it’s just- That’s because it’s not profit.

Dean Gladden [01:30:22] Yeah, no, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Mark Tebeau [01:30:24] You know, nobody, you know, it’s just the state.

Dean Gladden [01:30:26] No. And we hired an archive for several years and it’s just hard to maintain. It’s just hard to- You can’t afford it because you’re too busy trying to do theater.

Mark Tebeau [01:30:32] I did a book. My first book was on firemen and fire insurance. And I did a huge amount of research in the archives of Cigna. And they, you know, multi, probably a billion to multibillion-dollar international insurance company. And they finally divested themselves of their archives because they- It’s expensive.

Dean Gladden [01:30:52] It’s very expensive.

Mark Tebeau [01:30:53] And that’s really too bad. We’re working with somebody who is experimenting with an interesting idea. And I’m not sure how expensive it is. Maybe $10,000. It’s a- You know how they have those little photo booths? You know, you go in and you cheese up and you get three of them. It’s a history-taking booth where you comment on something you see and you just walk in and you talk at it.

Dean Gladden [01:31:15] I don’t quite understand.

Mark Tebeau [01:31:15] It’s a little history-taking booth. You walk in and you could put it next to a wall of photos and collect stuff.

Dean Gladden [01:31:20] Oh, really?

Mark Tebeau [01:31:21] And we’re trying to get- We’re thinking about trying to get that here and we need to think of places. And I thought, just as you described your wall, it’s a great. And you actually have a good setting for it because people come in and out, right?

Dean Gladden [01:31:33] Exactly. Yeah. And it’s free parking during the day.

Mark Tebeau [01:31:37] Yeah. Well, I’m not sure we, you know-

Dean Gladden [01:31:38] but it’s usually get people in.

Mark Tebeau [01:31:40] If it’s with somebody, if with something, you know, that you could. Because it’s a. They’re short vignettes.

Dean Gladden [01:31:45] It works so well.

Mark Tebeau [01:31:46] Exhibits.

Dean Gladden [01:31:47] Yeah, with exhibits.

Mark Tebeau [01:31:48] How do I respond to it? Well, how did you respond to this?

Dean Gladden [01:31:50] Oh, I see what you mean. Yes. So you. How did you respond to it?

Mark Tebeau [01:31:53] How do you respond to that?

Dean Gladden [01:31:54] Oh, that’d be perfect. Yeah.

Mark Tebeau [01:31:56] Because if you see the photos.

Dean Gladden [01:31:57] Exactly.

Mark Tebeau [01:31:58] Works really well with, you know, or productions. Do you have a response to the production, to the booth. Booth talk for 90 seconds.

Dean Gladden [01:32:06] Yes, I see. Yeah.

Mark Tebeau [01:32:09] So we’re trying to. Because it sort of haven’t figured out how it’s useful.

Dean Gladden [01:32:14] Good.

Mark Tebeau [01:32:15] We’re working on it.

Mark Durica [01:32:17] This is for him.

Mark Tebeau [01:32:18] That’s my car.

Dean Gladden [01:32:19] Okay, great.

Mark Tebeau [01:32:19] Just to have- And we’ll give you a copy of this. I’ll send you a CD and send you an email next couple weeks. This was great. We appreciate your time.

Dean Gladden [01:32:26] I’m glad to do it.

Mark Durica [01:32:26] I was telling Elijah, like, what I hate just about doing them though, is that I’m so used to saying when I’m listening to someone and it’s like

Dean Gladden [01:32:35] I’m not allowed nothing to say it. [laughs]

Mark Durica [01:32:37] So it’s like I’m just, you know, smiling and nodding, you know, probably thinking I’m a weirdo. All right, so. But I was listening even though I can’t, like, verbalize it.

Mark Tebeau [01:32:52] Well, Mark will see you up. I’m going to clean up the room.

Dean Gladden [01:32:55] Okay.

Mark Tebeau [01:32:55] Have a nice evening. I hope you find your cigars.

Dean Gladden [01:32:58] [inaudible]

Mark Tebeau [01:33:01] Yeah, that’s why I wanted to- 

Dean Gladden [01:33:03] I told too many stories. 

Mark Tebeau [01:33:06] That’s what happens.

Mark Durica [01:33:08] I’ll come back.

Mark Tebeau [01:33:09] Yeah, come on back down. Thank you, Mark.

Mark Durica [01:33:14] Yeah, I’ll see you.

Mark Tebeau [01:33:17] If you have a ticket, send it to us. We’ll get-

Dean Gladden [01:33:20] Okay, great.

Mark Tebeau [01:33:24] Okay.

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