A FAMILY COMES APART IN LOCKE’S ‘THE DOLLY’

“What’s your play about?”

Robert Locke (whose “The Dolly” is at the Burbage Theatre) gets asked that all the time, and he’s invariably stumped. “People want easy answers,” said the playwright, “so you tell them that it’s about child molestation. Of course, then they think that it’s a social-issue play--and it’s not.

“The story begins when a 7-year-old girl tells her mother that her (paternal) grandfather is molesting her, and follows what happens from there. The family’s at a breaking point anyway. And this propels a weak woman (Deborah, the girl’s mother) into handling a hard situation. Probably the most frustrating thing is that there are no answers, no whys or how it happened--just that it has. And the play isn’t even about the girl or the grandfather, but the marriage between Deborah and Laird and the grandparents, Byron and Inez.”

Since its premiere in 1984 at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco (where it won a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle award), Locke has seen “The Dolly” performed many times.

“Every time I watch it, it moves me,” he said. “It gets violent--physically and emotionally--and in an intimate house like the Burbage, that works like gangbusters, really throws the audience up against a wall. Over the years, there’ve been some people who didn’t like it, but they always admire its impact on an audience. And you know, the people who usually don’t like it are men, probably because they’re working on a hidden agenda, protecting the (illusion of a) male’s right to molest children. In that way, it’s a feminist kind of play--and women do tend to identify with it more.”

Locke (who teaches writing to high school students in Northern California) first put pen to paper during a Peace Corps stint in Liberia (he stayed an extra year to avoid the draft), inspired by a local woman’s telling of her bout with smallpox. “I was teaching English there, using these ‘50s textbooks with ‘Dick and Jane go to the prom.’ There was no relevance. When I heard that woman’s story, I wrote it from the boy’s point of view, about his mother. . . . It took me 10 years to get it published, because no one could figure out (which age group) it was for.”

Since then, under the pen name of Clayton Bess, Locke has written other novels for young people (including “Tracks,” honored by the American Library Assn.), plus the stage plays “Who’s Richard?,” “Rose Jewel and Harmony” and “On Daddy’s Birthday.”

“Usually my stories are inspired by something someone tells me,” he said. “With ‘The Dolly,’ it was a friend’s little girl. It got me thinking, ‘What if it were my daughter?’ ” As for the play’s title: “It’s the dolly that the little girl plays with, the little girl herself who is played with and used--and every woman in the story who’s played the role of the Barbie doll.”

“It’s really not a theater production,” warned Bob Telson of “Songs From the Warrior Ant” (opening Thursday at the Museum of Contemporary Art). “It’s music from the theatrical production--which has not been premiered, has been a work in progress for the past several years, an epic show that will take place over three nights.”

Such far-ranging, massive plans are nothing new for Telson, who, with partner Lee Breuer, brought the jubilant, Obie Award-winning “Gospel at Colonus” to the Doolittle a few seasons back. Now “Warrior Ant” promises to be just as ambitious--and yes, even more eclectic. Conceived and written by Breuer, it is a 12-part epic poem tracing the life cycle of a samurai ant. Naturally, the musical accompaniment (by composer/arranger Telson) is equally eclectic: The 80 performers will include a Puerto Rican bomba band, a Brazilian samba school and Bunraku puppets from Osaka, Japan.

The MOCA performance, however, will consist solely of Little Village, Telson’s 10-piece band (three horns, percussionists and vocalists--with lead singer Sam Butler from “Gospel”), whose influences, he offered, “range from Zairian guitar stylings to Afro-Cuban percussion. . . . Again, this is purely a musical evening. No acting, no narration. Little Village aspires to stand on its own as a great dance band in Afro-Caribbean styles.”

Not coincidentally, Breuer will also be on hand at MOCA (which has produced two of the “Warrior Ant” segments for its “Territory of Art” radio series), appearing Saturday for a reading/book signing of his newly published “Sister Suzie Cinema.” He described the collection of material (which includes his work for Mabou Mines, including “Prelude to Death in Venice” and “Sister Suzie Cinema”) as “pretty much everything I’ve done for the last 10 years.”

And now, back to the theme of family disharmony: Argentine playwright Ricardo Palesnik’s “One Hundred Times--I Shouldn’t” opens Wednesday at Bilingual Foundation of the Arts’ Theatre/Teatro, where it will be presented, on alternating nights, in Spanish and English.

“It’s about a married couple who live in a world of illusion,” explained Buenos Aires-born director Hugo Quintana. “They believe the world (exists) as it’s been told to them by their parents, the church, advertising--and they perceive no changes occurring. They have a 17-year-old girl; they’re still calling her Baby. The play starts as they find out that Baby is pregnant, and they’ve got to patch together their lives. So they lie, they bribe, they get very neurotic. It’s what happens when reality invades a home based on lies and empty values.

“Even though the theme is a little passe, the humor is not,” Quintana stressed. “There’s a lot of farce--very funny, cruel stuff. At home, we’d call it black humor.”

LATE CUES: The California Music Theatre, whose initial production, “The Most Happy Fella,” received strong reviews, is offering a subscription package for the season’s remaining shows: “Call Me Madam” starring JoAnne Worley (opening May 7), “The Desert Song” and “She Loves Me.” For further information: (818) 456-SHOW.

CRITICAL CROSS FIRE: The raves are in for Suzanne Lummis’ birthday party-themed “October 22, 4004 B.C., Saturday” which opened last month at the Cast Theatre--and has recently been extended through May 10.

In this paper, Don Shirley described it as “a scintillating comedy,” crediting director Robert Schrock’s staging “with a fluidity that’s almost musical. . . . If you appreciate witty, heady dialogue that virtually dances off the stage, join the ‘October 22’ party.”

In Drama-Logue, Lee Melville found the piece had “an edge no one has seen lately in theater. This is a fine introduction to playwright Lummis, whose name should become more familiar very soon.”

In the Daily Breeze, Sandra Kreisworth also enjoyed the banter: “Emotions run high. But so does Lummis’ quick wit and off-the-wall sense of humor.” And from L.A. Weekly: “The evenhanded skewering of male and female behavior (makes for) a witty, literate talkfest. No sitcom formulas or dreary complaints besmirch Lummis’ airy conception.”