Production of this episode of Applause is made possible by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Supporting Foundation, supporting the humanities to shape a more just and compassionate world, and by Cuyahoga arts and Culture investing in the arts and culture of Cuyahoga County.

Coming up.

Courage and the arts.

As we step on stage with Cleveland Public Theatre's long time leader, a painter finds his strength and redemption after prison.

And the Cleveland Orchestra shares the brave musical story of a romantic hero.

Hi, I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

Welcome to Applause, where we meet the artists and people making a difference in Northeast Ohio.

Today we're focused on stories of courage.

And we start at Cleveland Public Theatre.

There you'll find artists speaking about real life issues, developing new work, and fostering community.

Let's step on stage now with Raymond Bobgan the head of Cleveland Public Theatre for two decades.

The only way out of a labyrinth built by a master.

I think it's in this place, a culture that it is the place where the most change can happen.

It is sort of the most dangerous thing.

Courage.

Is not the absence of fear, right?

Because if you're not afraid, it doesn't require any courage.

Giving up all for the hope of a and the fundamental change has to happen in the heart.

When we talk about courage, it starts at the heart.

And so for me, this is about courage.

All art is about courage.

Everyone who gets on stage, they're not getting on stage going.

Look at me.

They're getting on stage with courage.

It's terrifying.

And it's that kind of courage and that kind of transformation that I think can ripple out and make things fundamentally different.

Tell us what you know.

Courage lies at the center of a lot of his work.

I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of devised theater.

So the idea is that Raymond will develop a theme of, say, loss and recovery.

And based on a series of extended series of exercises, they will develop scenes based on this theme.

And out of this improvised work, he can sculpt a new piece of theater.

You can't do that without a sense of bravery or courage that you know you can inspire these actors to get in touch with material going on within them and create the vehicle and discipline for them, and to express that in a theatrical way, and then to be able to meld that and sculpt that into a new work.

Is pretty courageous.

I certainly trust that under his leadership, that the original ideas have been realized and will continue to be.

And it's been continually transformative.

And what else could a founder want?

For me, the whole process of creation is actually a process of discovery.

It's it's not like I have this thing to say.

It's I'm trying to figure something out.

And the way I can do it is through expressing it.

It's so difficult to try.

I want to do it all in a way that is useful and is needed.

And sometimes we need plays that are simply about what does it mean to be a human being?

Doing plays that might ask the question of when everything's falling apart.

What is my purpose and role here?

What would it mean for you to love yourself completely?

Inhale.

At Cleveland Public Theatre, we were never conceived to be a commercial theater.

It wasn't about like making money.

It was always about the art.

It was always about presenting plays that would maybe be confrontational.

That would invoke discussions about issues of the day.

And from the very beginning, it was about providing a stage for the voiceless, for people that otherwise would not necessarily have access to a stage.

It's something more organic about listening to community, sensing community.

Being in community.

And there's no accident that a majority of the playwrights and directors at Cleveland Public Theatre for over ten years are people who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color.

I mean, we look like Cleveland.

Came to see a show here at Cleveland Public Theatre called “The River Bride” That was an all Latina cast.

And I was like, oh, I want to be back in this community.

I miss art, I miss performing, and so much of Latino culture.

Art is is a key factor.

And I think here in Cleveland there is a strong desire to to perform, to express ourselves through painting, through writing, even whether it's books or theatrical pieces.

And just seeing ourselves on stage, I think it's very it's very comforting to know, like this is my community, this is my family, and that we're going to do our best to show up and support each other.

and I have like, little experience in acting in Lebanon, but when I got in here and, I enjoyed, like, working under the leadership of, Raymond and Im still here.

especially with theater when you connect with the audience and you feel like and you hear and you feel their reaction, you feel like, really I'm doing something, has value.

My city exploded and I could do nothing.

I say it, and everyone, like, in the group or sometimes for the audience, like, I feel like we live our life on the stage and we act outside.

You're not making this any better.

Making it a lot worse right now.

Part of the challenge in American theater is that when the professional theater movement started, they needed to differentiate themselves.

The regional theater movement, they needed to differentiate themselves from amateur theaters.

And so the amateur theaters were called community theaters, inherently meaning that if I am a professional theater, I am not a community theater.

And it really the repercussions of that divide were still feeling to this day.

The progeny, the necessary weapon, but could be more so in programing.

We want to keep looking at that and simultaneously reaching for these, I'm going to say ambitious ways for audiences to experience art that cannot happen in a traditional theater setting.

Raymond has taken the what I feel are the seminal aspects of the mission, to provide the voice to people who otherwise do not have a way of communicating with the greater community and providing that.

And he's also consistently invested resources in a new work, in alternative work and addressing issues of the day.

But that's one of the important roles.

It's not just about producing new work, it's about playing on a national level from Cleveland so that Cleveland voices can get out.

There is something happening in this community about how we're both behind in many ways, and we're struggling in many ways, and we're ahead in many ways that I think some of the most important work in this country is being made in Cleveland and cities like Cleveland.

But it's going to be hard to say, do this and this will happen.

But if you want impact, you have to think about how can I make some deep cultural change that is going to make this change is going to make this change.

And somewhere out here, real change will happen.

And that to me is really what courage is always about.

Courage in the arts is front and center right now, as courage is the theme of this year's Humanities Festival from the Cleveland Orchestra.

In addition to opera, classical and jazz, Severance Music Center features visuals.

Reflecting on courage, we met up with the artist inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat, whom he discovered while in prison.

What attracted me to Basquiats work was his use of language, text, and visual work.

I always thought that you had to, like, paint portraits.

And so when I saw it as somebody who just drew what they wanted to draw and use words to convey, as well as images and shapes and iconography.

Thats what just attracted me.

It just seemed like he just did what he wanted to do.

When I was released from prison in 2019.

I had a year to visit galleries and museums, and then in 2020, we had a global lockdown after being locked down for 22 years in prison.

One year free global lockdown.

And this is when I began to, experiment with expressing my creativity through, visual art.

And so when I started to create work, I said, I just want to create work that it may not be figuratively, you know, representative, or it may not be symmetrical, but people won't be able to walk past it without stopping to consider.

So this is the fourth year of the Cleveland Orchestra's Opera and Humanities Festival.

Each year, Franz Welser-Möst, our music director, selects an opera and from there we build a theme and explore that theme through conversations, concerts, music, art, and with various community partners.

Over the years, we've explored the themes of the American Dream, power, reconciliation.

And this year, we're focused on courage.

And we're doing that with Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio.

We also have our curator for the festival, Terence Blanchard.

He's a five time Grammy Award winner, composer, trumpeter.

And he really focused on threading the theme of courage throughout the festival, not just with the opera Fidelio, but through the art exhibit with Halim Flowers.

It takes courage to love yourself in a world that convinces you to be everyone else.

It takes courage to value what you value and not, the metrics of value and the systems and institutions that dictate value to the human family today.

And so for me, courage was an easy thing to paint about.

I did the paintings at their warehouse I did the drawings back at my space in, Chesapeake Beach, Maryland.

But, you know, half most of the works were done here.

And I like to when I exhibit in a space, I like to go to the basketball games.

The football games, the baseball games, the restaurants, the pubs, the casinos, just to mingle with the people and understand, like, what are the colors in the flowers and the birds and the trees and the plants that's native, you know, and celebrated in this area.

And so I took all of that qualitative data I had from spending time here in Cleveland in 2025 and exhibiting work here in 2025, I think is a very important show at this time in the world.

You know, where we need to be more encouraged to have the courage to, you know, to live in love and stand on our values.

Halim Flowers exhibition “It Takes Courage to Love All Unconditionally” is on view at Severance Music Center as part of the orchestra's opera and Humanities Festival through May 24th.

Another northeast Ohio artist with great courage is a dancer born with Spina bifida.

When she was a child, doctors wanted to institutionalize her, but her mom and grandma had other plans, and so did she.

For more than four decades, Mary Verdi-Fletcher has revolutionized what it means to be a dancer.

And she's done it on four wheels.

My grandmother had always said I was born with a tear in my eye and a smile on my face.

She knew I was put on this earth to do something special.

Well, I certainly inherited her tenacity.

the Dancing Wheels Company is a physically integrated dance company, so it's comprised of dancers with and without disabilities and using the philosophy it's for all people, of all abilities.

We have a byline under our title as the World Center for Integrated Dance and Arts Access.

So we really want to make the arts accessible to all people.

The company's, in her 44th season, will be moving into our 45th season in July.

There's a saying that access to the arts is a right, not a privilege.

So 40 plus years things have changed considerably.

The idea of physically integrated dance is more known.

Accessibility is still an issue not as prevalent as it was years ago.

I was born in 1955 and I had Spina bifida.

So babies that were born back in that time with Spina bifida were often times left to to die or be institutionalized.

You know, my mother wasn't sure what to do when I was born.

And so my grandmother said, you take her home because the doctors wanted to institutionalize me.

And she said, you take her home and you do the best you can.

And if she survives, you've done the best you can.

And if she doesn't, you've done the best you can.

So she took me home.

I was this little person, but I was pretty active, I guess, because I would break my braces all the time.

And then the doctors gave me really strong braces, and I broke my leg instead of the braces three times.

So they put me in a wheelchair.

My mom was a dancer in the vaudeville days with her sister.

She would make up little dances for my brother and I in our living room, and she had my brother lift me in the air She just created little opportunities, I think, for me to enjoy music and dance.

I always loved music and watching dance, and I would move in my chair and I moved to the point where I broke the axle off the wheel.

But it wasn't until the mid 70s that the disco era came about.

So there was a lot of social dancing that went on, and I would watch it, watch it on TV.

Some of my friends were just doing, you know, the hustle, you know.

And I would sit back and watch it.

And then finally one of them said, well, let's just try.

And we did some dancing and twirled around the wheelchair, and I saw that it could move in a lot of different ways, and that actually it had this sort of like between skating and dance.

To dance.

Back then was the greatest acceleration in my body.

I always equate it to like flying, because to dance on a stage where there's no barriers and you can take on a different persona, it really is a way of freedom that is indescribable.

Particularly for our young people growing up.

If I can do it, they can do it too.

They see ability on stage or in the class that we teach.

It's like an unspoken knowledge that they gain by just seeing.

So seeing is believing.

You don't have to say a word because when we set foot or wheel on stage and we work together, people are seeing ability everywhere from the disabled and non-disabled dancers.

I was injured in a car accident.

Through physical therapy, I found out about Dancing Wheels and that it was possible to still move and still dance.

Came to audition.

That's where I met Mary.

I wasn't born with my disability, but Mary was.

And Mary inspired me.

Because to see someone spend so much time with a disability that they were born with, showing the world and showcasing that you can still do something and still create and still be seen.

It's been amazing to have a place where you feel like you belong, a place where you feel like you can show who you truly are.

Even through adversity or even through having a disability or even just being different.

So I'm going to be 70 this year.

I'd like to be able to continue to dance at least until the 50th anniversary of Dancing Wheels.

With any luck, we'll continue to do that.

I pride myself in being able to dance still, and I think part of that is when you continue to do something long term, it, stays with you and your body.

I'm dancing with 24 year old people.

Just the stamina to keep up with that is somewhat of a challenge, but I often times forget my age.

I think if you think young, you will be young.

You know?

Two brave men from Cleveland history.

Were brothers Carl and Louis Stokes were trailblazers during the civil rights era.

Carl Stokes was the first Black mayor of a major city, Cleveland.

Louis Stokes was the first Black U.S.

congressman representing Ohio.

Consider their tenacity with this selection from our 201 documentary “Stokes: An American Dream” I felt as hard, calloused hands from scrubbing people's floors and washing their windows and all the hard work she did in order to make a living for Carl and I, and that was the first time I really understood what she was saying when I felt those hard, callous hands.

What she meant when she said, get an education, get something in your head so you don't have to work with your hands.

And in spite of meager, bleak beginnings, the young boys slowly worked their way through school, spurred along by their mother's insistence to get an education after high school.

Lou and Carl entered the army, where they experienced the irony of defending their country within a segregated military.

Such inequities would only fuel their dreams for change.

Firsthand experience with poverty and racial discrimination, coupled with a mother's mandate to be somebody, gave Carl and Lou Stokes their marching orders.

Taking advantage of the GI Bill, they graduated from college, then went on to Cleveland Marshall Law School with $120.

They formed their own firm, Young Lawyers, full of dreams and determination.

They were brothers.

They were lawyers, but they were different.

Let's go pick a pick.

Carl was an athletic scrapper who lived for competitive sports.

Everything from billiards to boxing.

Lou, on the other hand, was the quiet scholar, easygoing, more contemplative.

These childhood traits were now blossoming in adulthood and would eventually define their political careers.

We can best go by these statements of three witnesses.

Lou was very content being a lawyer, but Carl started to have a different ambition, and it was politics.

Carl Stokes, his first political victory came in 1962, when he won a seat in the Ohio Legislature.

He was an outspoken advocate for Black people, focusing his attention on fair housing, police harassment and child welfare.

Meanwhile, Brother Lou worked anonymously but tirelessly defending civil rights demonstrators by assigning the cause of Cleveland's rioting to a small group that didn't charge anybody a dime.

I just I this is what I wanted to do.

And this was my way of being a part of the civil rights movement.

Carl's dreams got bigger, and he set his sights on the 1965 Cleveland mayor's race.

I want to make this one thing clear.

I do not run as a Negro, but as a Clevelander, thinking of the best interests of all Clevelanders.

But he ran into an unexpected roadblock.

There was a sentiment And some among the older people in the African-American community that won, that Cleveland wasn't ready for a Black mayor.

And two, if they were, Carl Stokes wasn't the person.

And so there was some resistance.

Carl recalls this crucial moment in his book, Promises of Power.

I knew I had great credibility problems.

This especially bothered me when I could see it expressed among my own people, my base.

Of course, the white areas just weren't prepared to concede that any black man had the intelligence to run for mayor.

But there were enough, I guess, young African-Americans who were involved in the community at that time.

You know, push for Carl Stokes won because he wanted it, too, because he had the charisma.

He was very intelligent and very articulate.

So we felt if the barrier was going to be broken, that he was the person to do it.

you can watch the full documentary “Stokes: An American Dream” on Demand with the PBS app.

next time on Applause.

We visit Geauga County, where the maple syrup festival has served up this liquid gold for 100 years.

Once you start getting into making maple syrup, it gets into your blood.

It's like every single spring you kind of get this.

I got to get out in the woods tapping these trees.

And Wayne Shorter's music is celebrated on stage at the Tri-C Jazz Fest.

All that and more on the next round of Applause Thanks for joining us for a tribute to courageous artists and activists for this round of Applause.

I'm Ideastreams Kabir Bhatia leaving you with another group of heroes, Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra.

Together they present the Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival with courage as its theme, inspiring conversations like we've had today.

Here's their performance of a triumphant work by Richard Strauss, “A Hero's Life” Production of this episode of Applause is made possible by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Supporting Foundation, supporting the humanities to shape a more just and compassionate world, and by Cuyahoga arts and Culture investing in the arts and culture of Cuyahoga County.