Actor-Writer Turns to Challenge of Directing 1-Man Shows

It’s life on the line in Ralph Hunt’s “Two Alone,” an engrossing pair of one-man one-acts: “L305” and “Siamese Twin Kills Brother for Bad Breath,” playing through Feb. 12 at Stages Trilingual Theatre in Hollywood.

“There are two possibilities,” said director Guy Giarrizzo of “L305,” the monologue of a Yeats-spouting, pistol-waving poetry professor unraveling in front of his students. “Either he kills himself, or he doesn’t. But the audience shouldn’t be sure. This is a man who’s at the end of his rope. His wife is fooling around, he’s not going to get tenure, nothing has come of his writing, and his students don’t seem to take any interest in what he’s teaching. Life has dealt him a pretty hard hand.”

Actor Dan Mason and Giarrizzo, whose local directing credits include “Fabiola,” “Just So,” “WACs in Khaki” and in collaboration with his artist wife, May Sun, “The Great Wall, or How Red Is My China?” manage to keep it suspenseful. Sometimes too much.

“The scariest thing for some people has been the gun,” Giarrizzo, 40, said, shaking his head in puzzlement. “People get insane . During one of the previews, a woman stomped out of the theater--loudly. She wanted to hurt the play. It turned out she’d been in that acting class where the guy accidentally shot himself doing a scene from ‘Lethal Weapon.’ When this character puts his gun in his mouth, people freak out--which is amazing to me. This is theater ; you know you’re not going to get hurt.”

Giarrizzo smiled ruefully. “One thing that’s surprised me is that some people have been more worried about themselves than the character. They need to feel for whether he’s going to live or die on stage--not whether they’re going to live or die in the audience.”

Another kind of emotional transference takes place in “Siamese Brother,” a comically eerie tale about a middle-aged urban hustler who comes home one evening, settles into his pepperoni pizza and looks up to find his own image talking back from the TV screen. It’s a dual performance for Carl Bressler, who plays the part live, interacting with his videotaped performance on the screen.

“Doing these has been a real challenge,” Giarrizzo admitted. “One-man shows are tough. Tough because when you have other actors, you have a kind of vitality on the stage, people bouncing off each other. So when you only have one person on stage, it’s static; there’s very little conflict. In this case, the playwright has two wonderful devices. In ‘L305,’ the character has his class to talk to. In ‘Siamese Twin,’ he’s playing off the TV.”

As happy as the experience has been, the director/playwright (who joins the faculty at Cal State Northridge next month) noted that the plays forced him to explore some dark areas in his own life.

“Many times I’ve sat alone at night and put a gun to my mouth,” he deadpanned. “But sure, you investigate your own pain. Sure, you investigate the pain of others who’ve had those experiences.”

For Giarrizzo (recently appointed executive director of First Stage), the bottom line is “two men dealing with outside forces that are pushing them over the edge. In ‘Siamese Twin,’ we have a guy who’s been hustling and fast-talking everyone all his life. He’s forced to see that side of himself and discovers he doesn’t like what he sees. The way the play ends, it’s left up in the air: Is he going to be changed by this or stay the same? I would hope--and maybe it’s just me--that he changes a little bit.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I’m just an optimistic person. But I’m also an optimist who looks at life and says, ‘Jeez, what do I have to be optimistic about?’ I’m very political; I care a lot about my fellow humans. And it’s hard times. Hard times in which to be an optimist. But I think art should be uplifting. There should be something in it that gives people hope for a better world--outside and inside. Even in my younger days, when I was an actor, there was a philosophy behind it, a bigger scope. I always wanted to change the world with my theater.”

That mission has taken Giarrizzo from his native Chicago, where he studied at the Goodman School of Drama, to New York, where he founded the Magic Circle Theatre, to Vancouver, to Seattle, back to Chicago--and finally to Los Angeles. “I had begun to burn out,” he said. “Writing, directing and running my own company was a huge commitment. Also, from the early-to-mid ‘70s to the late ‘70s, there was a change in the times, of thinking, of social responsibility. The company began to change, and I began to not like it anymore.”

Arriving here 10 years ago, Giarrizzo purposely distanced himself from theater-making. He found a good work outlet in theater publicity. But, before long, he was giving in to requests for his directorial services. A couple of years ago, Giarrizzo threw caution to the wind: quit his job in the Mark Taper press office and put out his director’s shingle.

He swears he has never missed the acting. “I’ve found I really don’t like the idea of having to hustle to get work, expose yourself; it’s not a very pleasant life. It’s different with a writer or director--it’s not your body that’s being bought and sold. Plus I don’t particularly need to get on stage and be nervous all the time. Applause? I don’t miss it. I mean, everyone needs it to a certain extent. You want to get nice reviews, you want people to like the work you did. But for me, the most important thing has always been the work itself. I’m really driven when it comes to the work.”