Role Player : Writer’s sampling of life inspires a dark comedy

You might say that Gale Baker Shick has been sampling her options. The aspiring scientist- turned-hairdresser-turned-entertainer-turned-nursing student-turned songwriter- turned-scriptwriter/playwright has seen a lot in her 40-odd years. And though she swears that she writes fiction, real life is clearly responsible for much of the inspiration.

Her newest work, the dark comedy “Love Killers,” is playing at the Off Ramp Theatre in Hollywood. The intrigue centers on a reclusive, backwoods Appalachian family (Ma and her sons, the half-wit Bubba and Vietnam vet Ludie) with “many secrets to keep,” a pretty next-door neighbor named Cora Sue, and a mysterious stranger from the city who shows up one night and proceeds to turn their lives upside down.

“People have to be left alone, allowed to evolve in their own way,” said the Tennessee-born Shick. Part of the play, she said, shows how hard it is for the two societies--urban-contemporary and Appalachian--to understand each other. “Everyone has their own way of dealing with life--and we can’t impose our feelings on that. These people are not bumpkins; let’s not presume they are just because they don’t understand our language. And they’re not simple-minded because they’re simple.

“Just because they don’t speak about computers doesn’t mean they wouldn’t understand them if they tried. Sometimes they just don’t want to,” Shick said. “I’m still resisting word processors. When I started writing scripts I’d do 10 words a minute, ‘cause I was hunt-and-pecking. I’d never typed; I didn’t want to. My sister was an office person, and I didn’t want to be tied to it. So I resisted--till the need to get the words on paper became greater and overwhelmed the other.”

Shick’s life seems a series of negotiations and substitution plays. Although she excelled in science in high school and had dreams of being a nuclear scientist, “in my era they did not easily give out science scholarships to women.” Instead, after she graduated from high school she took up hairdressing for a year. Then, at 18, she hit the road with dreams of a singing career. Eventually she landed in Las Vegas and was hired as a singer for an MGM Hotel spectacular, “Hallelujah Hollywood.”

The show was elaborate. “There were three revolves,” she said. “A thing came down from the ceiling and people walked across.” There were “110 bodies,” she said, and “of course the singers sang, but the show was the costumes. “Scenery”--cleavage--”was very important.”

Although Shick speaks gaily of that time, it’s clear it was not a period of artistic productivity.

“It does stop you creatively,” she nodded. “You’re paying for the pool and the house and the car and you’re going to work 7 days a week and doing 3 shows a night--and suddenly you say, ‘I used to think such great thoughts; I used to have wonderful things going on inside of me. I wonder what ever happened to that?’ You’ve become a performer in a production show . . . a cog in a wheel.”

The antidote?

“You have to find ways to enjoy it,” she said. “On Saturday, our third show was at 3:30 in the morning. So we’d send out for gourmet food between the last two shows and everyone would have caviar. It’s those little things that help you make it through, make you feel human again.” Shick gently fingered a rose-embroidered decorative egg on her piano. “This was made by a woman who was the elephant trainer’s wife. These are the things you learn to do.”

For Shick, who also sang as an opening act for Rodney Dangerfield and other comedians, poetry and piano--and a stint in nursing school--were the offstage salves.

Then, she said, she started writing nightclub acts for other people. “I didn’t stay long with the show. I didn’t fare well ‘cause I didn’t want to be there. I’d come from living in New York--well, it was major culture shock. We’d been geared towards character, music, motivation--and now the motivation was getting up a flight of stairs so you could change costumes and get on the revolve before it went back down again.”

With a move to Los Angeles in 1982, and an appearance in Billy Barnes’ revue “Movie Star” at the Westwood Playhouse, Shick has turned more and more to writing.

Last year, her beauty parlor-set comedy “Pincurls” was a hit at the now defunct Room for Theatre in Studio City. A new play, “Canteen,” celebrates the music of the ‘40s. (“When I was a kid,” Shick confided, “my sister would buy those 33 1/3 records, and that old be-bop music just latched right into me.”)

“Love Killers” started as a riff she wrote for her husband, actor Bill Shick, and a pal, actor Vaughn Armstrong, “but once they started reading it aloud, the people began living for me.”

All of which has brought Shick to a conclusion. “I realize I’m here to write,” she said. “It took me a long time to admit it. But I like L.A. And my personal life is very happy. All the things I’ve done in my life have interested me. Now it’s going to be wonderful to put them into something--and not just feel that it’s useless knowledge.”