Working Out

“I wanted a workout,” says Richard Jordan of his role as a manically self-destructive neophyte playwright in John Ford Noonan’s play “My Daddy’s Serious American Gift” at the Tiffany Theatre in West Hollywood.

While Jordan admits that “I lose my touch if I don’t play in front an audience every couple of years,” he could have added that acting marks only half of his relationship with theater. The other half is directing: he made a mark with some unusual L.A. Actors Theatre productions in the ‘70s, and his 1987 staging of Vaclav Havel’s “Largo Desolato” received a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award.

What drew Jordan to Noonan’s crack-smoking but talented scribe was “writing which emerged out of an incredible sense of self-knowledge and the repeated image of the barking dog this guy feels inside, gnawing away at him.

“Addict friends of mine have seen the show two and three times,” he said. “They’re overwhelmed; they tell me they see new facets of themselves with each viewing.”

And what’s it like to work with Noonan?

“You have to cajole and pull things out of him, and then he’ll rewrite,” Jordan said. “There’s a genuine insanity about him that I like. Some of the best bits of writing in the show came out of a phone call we had during rehearsals. He came up with this amazing speech right on the spot.”

Another writer Jordan feels affinity for is Havel, whose current imprisonment in Czechoslovakia is the focus of a major Amnesty International campaign.

“We’re nearly the same age,” Jordan said, “and I admire how he’s turned the outer turmoil of his life into a sense of inner peace.”

Jordan recently finished playing another man of similar mettle, slain Salvadoran priest Rutillo Grande, in the upcoming film “Romero,” starring Raul Julia as martyred archbishop Oscar Romero. “It was great,” Jordan said with a growly chuckle, “making a movie you believe in.”