The goal of Big Box is to support new work and local artists.

CPT provides:
– The James Levin Theatre
– Basic production staff, stage management, box office support
– Marketing and advertising support

The artists provide the rest!

The writers, directors, actors, and designers selected for Big Box dedicate themselves to creating new and original work, or stretching their artistic powers by working in new disciplines.

Week #1: January 5-7 (Double Bill)
The Dreamer

My Dear BoY: gay Love Letters Through the Ages

The Dreamer

Created and Performed by Amy Compton
With Support from the Cleveland State University and Lake Erie College Dance Programs

The Dreamer is a solo, multi-media performance examining how a dreamer resolves her unrealistic expectations of unrequited love while struggling between make-believe and reality.

Weaved together like patches on an old quilt, The Dreamer is presented non-linearly through various artistic expressions. Through a seven year organic process Amy has been writing, dancing, painting, and filming. She followed her instincts and created without limitations. Amy recently realized she had a collection of creative expressions all about the same theme: unrequited love. Her collection includes an illustrated short story; contemporary dance solos; a love letter with a Karaoke ending; an obsessive-compulsive choreo/poem; a collection of “Dream” films created by drawing through stream of consciousness on her apartment walls; and several journal entries addressed to Ms. Oprah Winfrey (in her opinion, America’s fairy godmother). Amy bravely shares her experience of unrequited love through The Dreamer as a way to finally break the spell.

Artist Bio:
Amy Compton has been living in Cleveland as a dance-artist since 1997. Multi-tasking dancing with four local companies, teaching for three colleges and various community outreach projects, Amy keeps busy choreographing for herself, her students and her colleagues. She’s danced everywhere in Cleveland from its street corners to the local morning news; as a solo dancer with the Cleveland Orchestra to a “Solid Gold” dancer in a recent Paramount film. She has danced with local dance companies at PlayhouseSquare and as an individual performing in local art galleries; from the Rock Hall of Fame to churches. Her students have included her peers, college dance majors, and beginners of all ages in the traditional studio setting as well as non-traditional settings. She has taught and made dances with local dance teams, Jewish Senior citizens, the children of Mexican migrant workers, church groups, families, survivors of domestic violence, local rock bands and public school children to name a few. Amy sees dance as a way to make positive change and stronger connections with the world around her.

My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Ages

Conceived and Directed by Tim Tavcar
Produced by Word Stage; a Chamber Music Theatre

Developed from love letters written by prominent men throughout history from Marcus Aurelius to Allen Ginsberg, My Dear Boy expresses universal themes of human emotion and amorous relationships. The letters are a treasure trove of literary styles written with incredible emotional resonance; by turns heartfelt, hilarious, sexy, angry, intoxicating and above all, written with love.

Underscoring and enhancing these texts will be music of notable gay composers throughout history as well as the introduction of elements of movement and visual projections.

Artist Bios:
Tim Tavcar began his musical and theatrical education at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois with a concentration on opera direction.

For many succeeding years he spent most of his time as a singer/actor/director touring across the country in a variety of venues including Washington DC’s Kennedy Center and at the Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City. Following that peripatetic career, he turned to arts management and held a variety of positions in that varied field including General Manager/Artistic Director of Vermont’s Vergennes Opera House and as an administrative and artistic company member of Montpelier’s Lost Nation Theater since 1997. He is also a noted lecturer on things Operatic and Theatrical for the University of Vermont’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

Tim was a recipient of a Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment of the Arts for his Chamber Music /Readers Theater Project – WordStage Vermont, presenting its third season of programs about things literary and musical. WordStage made its Ohio debut at the West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River in September and October of 2011.