A Solo Performer Looks at the NEA Funding Dispute

Don Victor addresses the National Endowment for the Arts crisis in one part of his solo performance, “Honey, I’m Home,” opening this weekend at Stages in Hollywood.

“The character is an ancient storyteller, Waldo, who used to be federally funded, and now goes from corner to corner, finding stories people want to tell,” said Victor. Waldo relies on members of the audience for suggestions that help him tell a story.

“It’s street theater,” said Victor. “It’s what the people who control the funding would like artists to do”--to subsist solely on what the audience is willing to shell out.

But Waldo also expresses his own opinions on the funding flap, on obscenity, and other subjects. The rabble-rousing aspect of Waldo is based on Victor’s own grandfather, said Victor: “If you told him that one American didn’t have the same rights as another, he’d take his coat off. He thought arguing was healthy.”

Victor was one of three artists who performed “Triple Vision,” which recently ran at Theatre/Theater in Hollywood. But he is based in San Diego, where he has worked at Sushi gallery and at the Gaslamp, San Diego Repertory and Bowery theaters.

Apart from Waldo’s section, the bulk of “Honey, I’m Home” is structured around a man who sits at home alone, creating a fantasy life for himself. His segments are interspersed with Victor’s monologues and satirical songs, which take on such issues as gun control and the savings and loan bailout.

“TV makes it so easy (to retreat),” Victor emphasized. “But he discovers that you can’t live vicariously, isolate yourself from the world. He’s patterned after people I’ve known who are very creative, but can’t deal with the real world. Everything happens in their mind, their apartment; they have a lot of difficulty taking it beyond there. It’s like what we’re facing now in this nation: Do we risk going forward--get up and do something challenging and scary--or do we stay home and watch TV?”