[NEohioPAL] Berko spotlight on Eric Coble

[Roy Berko]

*Spotlight on Eric Coble, Cleveland’s prolific playwright!*



Special for ArtsAmerica.com by Roy Berko



He’s been called “A Playwright to Watch.” His writing has been praised as,
“astute portraits [that] hit home with rib-tickling acuity.”  His work has
been termed, “a tour-de-force.”   He’s been summarized as “the most
astonishingly accurate—eye and ear on society and its foibles--of any
current writer.”  Who is this?  Eric Coble, the present day Cleveland
area’s most prolific stage writer.  And, according to Coble, he owes it all
to his children!



Coble, who was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, raised on the Navajo and Ute
reservations in New Mexico and Colorado, and has an MFA in Acting from Ohio
University, had his sights set on performing on stage.  But, when he became
a stay-at-home dad, he figured the casting agents weren’t going to let him
tryout in his living room, and he couldn’t ask the audiences to join him in
his kitchen for a family dinner, so he went down a different path.



Coble decided that he could use his undergraduate degree in English, the
imagination that allowed him to be a cartoonist, and his curiosity in the
logical and illogical view of current events, to spin tales for stage,
radio and books.   He set up a schedule around his kids…”they go off to
school, I go to my work of writing, they come home, I take off my
professional hat and put on my dad hat.”  The results have been
astonishing. From 1994 until today, there are over 100 works that have been
produced.



In the next two months, several plays will be transformed from page to
stage in the local area.  A GIRL’S GUIDE TO COFFEE, which features a
barista whose creations elevate the humble bean to unknown heights, will be
produced at Actor’s Summit in Akron.  It’s part of his “The Alexandra
Plays,” a trilogy concerning commitment, freedom, and how a person
identifies him/herself.  Another of the series, VELOCITY OF AUTUMN, will be
performed at Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood.  It will star Dorothy
Silver, the grand dame of Cleveland theatre, as an elderly woman with a
wicked sense of humor, who finds herself in physical decline.



Where do the ideas come from?  Coble admits he is addicted to the media and
when he reads on-line and watches TV, he starts asking who and how would
someone be affected by those instances.  “An idea just gestates.  Sometimes
it takes five to six years.  I just let it sit.  Come back to it.”  “You
can’t force a good play and when it’s time to be, it will be.”  He
indicates that he doesn’t have any half finished plays stuffed in a drawer.
 Once he starts, he finishes. Fortunately, Coble states, “I don’t get
writer’s block.”



Surprisingly in this electronic age, Coble hand writes his creations.  The
scripts are transferred to computer, but the #2 pencil, is his tool of
choice.



He pays attention to the readings and early productions of a show and makes
adjustments after the production.  “You see something before an audience
that you don’t see until the words take life.”



An Emmy nominee, the recipient of the American Alliance for Theatre and
Education Distinguished Play Award for Best Adaptation, the winner of the
AT&T Onstage Award, and the Cleveland Arts Prize, Coble is a member of the
Cleveland Play House Playwright’s Unit.  The purpose of the group is to
critique each other’s work in order to aid members to produce a better
product.  He depends on these writers and a select group of others to give
him criticism that helps develop the final product.



Coble is a full-time playwright, stay-at-home dad, a member of the
Cleveland-University Heights Board of Education, and obviously a talented
writer of plays, media scripts and books.



His play BRIGHT IDEAS, which premiered at the Cleveland Play House and went
on to much off-Broadway praise, may well be a way of describing Coble.  He’s
full of bright ideas, that seem to give birth to bright audience-pleasing
works.
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