May 23, 2002
by Rob Kendt
Sometimes "What are you up to?" results in more than
small talk. I asked that innocent question of actor/writer Ben Davis last year,
outside Sacred Fools Theater, after I'd viewed the grueling Grimm (though I
enjoyed the piece he directed, Godfather Death, especially
the cello-like performance of John Rosenfeld in the title role). Davis, a tall,
striking actor with a strong, Boston-accented voice who'd appeared memorably as
Satan in Zoo District's The Master and Margarita the year
before, told me he'd just returned from Maui. Sweet, right? Not exactly: He'd
flown there under threat of being dismissed from the Off-Broadway production of
a new play. The playwright/director, a young Hollywood TV writer premiering his
first play, had given Davis, his co-star, and the show's two producers an
ultimatum: Come to his home in Maui in 24 hours (on his dime) or they'd be
fired. The play was slated to open in New York in weeks, and though the cast
and producers had their doubts, they dutifully flew to one of the most
surreally beautiful places on earth to stay at the writer's palatial
residenceÑwhere he informed them, in all seriousness, that his play was going
to change the world. Because, you see, he was the Messiah.
"This guy's achievements and notoriety, coupled with his
promises, were very appealing," Davis admitted to me recently, to explain
why, even after the playwright's cuckoo mission statement, he wavered about
whether to stay with the project. "I felt somehow legitimized by his
interest." Davis' new one-man play, Big Shot, tells the
story (with names changed to avoid litigation) and reflects on the tendency of
actors to give up their sense of themselves to others. "Taking it
personally is endemic to people in the arts," Davis said. "It's hard
to take an objective stanceÑit's you they're accepting or rejecting. When you
start to really get in trouble is when you think who you are and what you have
to give is determined by someone outside yourself. You give up your
power." Having seen Davis' first one-man play, In AbsentiaÑabout a
harrowing, hilarious, ultimately clarifying near-death experience he had while
tripping on mushrooms in collegeÑI can vouch for his winning way with wild
yarns that are stranger than fiction. How does all this weird, mind-bending
stuff happen to one guy? "I am someone who makes myself available to
demons," he said with a shrug. We believe it. Big Shot plays as a
late-nighter at the Lillian Theater starting May 31, following yet another
revival of the unstoppable Go True West, Ben Simonetti and Joe Fria's
outrageous Suzuki stress-fracturing of Shepard.
¥ Davis' Zoo District compatriots celebrated five years of
form-busting theatre on Sunday night at the Palace Theatre in Downtown L.A. We
couldn't make it, alas. We wish them at least five more yearsÉ. The attrition
at Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theatre Projects continues: Matt Almos left last week
(word is he'll take a teaching gig at Loyola Marymount), as did Wendy
McClellan. Soon, it seems, no one will be left but executive director Kym
EisnerÉ. Cast album producer Tommy Krasker recently put the Blank Theatre
Company's first-rate production of Michael John LaChiusa's First Lady Suite on record,
for release on Krasker's own PS Classics label. I know I'll be skipping a few
tracks of LaChiusa's prickly, Britten-esque score, though not the nutty, moving
Mamie Eisenhower mini-opera, belted definitively by Eydie Alyson and Paula
NewsomeÉ. Playwright Erik Ehn (Erotic Curtsies, Chokecherry) may join the
playwriting faculty of Cal Arts, where he has a champion in fellow
"language playwright" Suzan Lori-Parks, who recently got the Pulitzer
for Topdog/Underdog (maybe that will get her some So Cal productions?).
To my recollection Ehn resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and has taught at
the University of Iowa's not-too-shabby writing program. The Cal Arts mafia
gets a new made man.