‘Armies’ Struck a Familiar Chord With Peace Corps Vet

San Diego playwright Michael Erickson had a sense of deja vu upon seeing the Old Globe Theatre production of “Rebel Armies Deep Into Chad,” playing through April 15 at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage. Like playwright Mark Lee--who drew upon his own experiences as a journalist in Uganda in writing “Rebel Armies”--Erickson, a former Peace Corps worker who spent time in Chad and Central Africa, wrote about his own experiences in “Water Music,” which will have a staged reading next week by the Ensemble Arts Theatre.

“Rebel Armies” tells the story of an American journalist, overwhelmed by his experiences in Uganda, who spends the night at the home of a cynical British reporter before his scheduled expulsion from the country.

“The similarities are pretty striking,” Erickson said. “In ‘Water Music,’ a young man is totally ill-equipped to deal with his experience in Africa. He ends up staying at the house of a Portuguese coffee merchant who has a very cynical world view.”

Like Lee, Erickson had horror stories to tell, and it took him several years to put the experiences on paper. “Water Music” was originally developed at UC San Diego, where he received a graduate degree in the playwrighting program.

Erickson was stationed in the Central African Republic in 1977-1978 when Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who had taken over the republic in 1966, declared himself emperor. Bokassa, later found guilty of killings and atrocities, including cannibalism, turned the country into what Erickson calls “a police state that was at war with its own people.”

“One of my best friends was thrown in prison. Another friend was told if he didn’t spy on us, they would kill his children. I almost ended up in prison. It was insane.”

Erickson’s problems began when he started hanging around the Central African Republic’s capital because the funding for the Peace Corps health project was held up by then-Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey, who was investigating an American journalist’s reports of Bokassa’s atrocities.

Bokassa’s soldiers, who eventually caught the journalist and tortured him before releasing him, grew increasingly suspicious of all foreigners, particularly Americans, Erickson said.

“One of my friends, they cut all his hair off, slapped him around, put him in chains” and then confined him to his hotel room.

When Erickson went to pick up his friend’s things from the hotel--the Peace Corps no longer wanted to pay the man’s bill since it thought he had disappeared--he saw soldiers, but didn’t recognize his friend at first. When he finally did and greeted him, the soldiers grew suspicious of Erickson. The Peace Corps hid Erickson in the American Embassy for his own safety before sending him to the bush and eventually to Chad.

“It was, in many ways, a very overwhelming experience,” Erickson said. “You go there to do one thing and you have these American movie ideas of what it’s going to be like, and it just isn’t like that at all. There was a climate of paranoia; people were picked up off the streets apparently at random. There were pogroms. I developed a really bad nervous tic after being there for almost a year.”

Jesus Ramon Araiza, the new musical director for Ensemble Arts Theatre, is composing music for the reading, which will be staged at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Words & Music Bookstore in Hillcrest. He is using African instruments he built himself; the one import is a genuine Senegal drum owned by Ensemble Arts member R. J. Bonds, who will play it during the show.

PROGRAM NOTES: Busy, busy. Jack O’Brien should put in a bid for Commuter of the Month Award. The artistic director of the Old Globe Theatre is taking over the direction of Neil Simon’s “Jake’s Women” from Ron Link at the Globe in addition to directing Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” for KCET in Los Angeles. He will also be directing “The Cocktail Hour” at the Ahmanson at the Doolittle series in Los Angeles April 19-July 1. The Simon play is hardly a show-up-for-opening-night-and-skip-town affair. The perfectionist playwright is known for doing rewrites throughout the run, which ends April 15. . . .

Actress Jennifer Leigh Warren, a veteran of both the La Jolla Playhouse, Broadway and Japanese productions of “Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (as well as the off-Broadway hit “Little Shop of Horrors”), is paying her own way to come to Starlight Musical Theatre from New York for the staged reading of “Abyssinia” on March 12. Warren will play the title role of a young woman with the gift of song who overcomes the trauma of being raped and goes on to be a Gospel singer. “Abyssinia” is one of several new shows Starlight is considering for production in 1991. The others, so far, are “Kiss Me Quick Before the Lava Reaches the Village”; “Alias Jimmy Valentine,” a newly commissioned USO musical revue show, and the latest script to receive consideration, a musical based on James Michener’s “Sayonara.” “Sayonara,” with music by George Fischoff, lyrics by Hy Gilbert and book by William Luce, is scheduled for a March 6, 1991, opening at Pasadena’s California Music Theatre. Starlight is considering becoming part of the show’s Southern California tour, which producers Gary Davis and Mikal Pippi, who optioned the rights, hope will end up in New York. . . .

They’re back. “A Few Hours in Hell,” the Stu Shames musical that had a workshop production at the Progressive Stage Company last year, is returning with its world premiere at the Progressive Wednesday through May 9. The story is the same--a cabaret show in hell featuring the seven deadly sins--but the new book, by Shames and Kent Brisby, who directs, has more character development, according to Laura Preble, the actress who plays Anger in the show. We find out how these former mortals got to be the seven deadly sins. . . .

“Teibele and Her Demon,” the latest in a series of hits at the Bowery Theatre, has been extended through the April 8 matinee. Next up is “Jesse and the Bandit Queen,” opening April 26 for a nine-week run. . . .

Those familiar with the Old Globe Theatre production of Stephen Metcalfe’s “Emily” shouldn’t expect the identical script at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, where it opens Friday. The play will include changes that were made in the intervening New York production. . . .

The San Diego Junior Theatre presents “The Diary of Anne Frank,” the play based on the actual diary of a young Dutch girl who did not survive the Holocaust, today through March 18 in the Casa del Prado Theatre in Balboa Park. Diane Sinor, education director of the Old Globe Theatre, will direct. . . .

A new theater company has a new play: The Star and Tortoise Theatre will present “Hotel Miracle,” a story of a middle-aged teacher kidnaped by two serial killers, March 16-April 14 at the Maryland Hotel, 630 F St., downtown. . . .

The third annual “All-City Auditions” concludes for non-Equity members of the Actors Co-op Sunday and Monday from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Casa del Prado in Balboa Park. Call 463-2451 for further information.