Play’s Staging Parallels Life of Van Gogh

The show is called “Sincerely Yours, Vincent,” and the subject is Vincent van Gogh.

Since its debut in March at Stages, David Wolpe’s one-man drama has waged an uphill battle, struggling against many of the same demons that plagued Van Gogh: artistic expression in the face of critical dismissal, poverty and public disinterest. The most devastating blow to the show’s creators came early on: a sharply negative review in the Los Angeles Times. (The show also received some positive notices.)

“After The Times review,” recalled director John Walcutt, “we just said, ‘We can’t give up. That’s what this piece is all about.’ ”

Lacking a budget for publicity, he and Bryan Rasmussen, the red-haired actor who plays Van Gogh, distributed flyers (an estimated 10,000 to date) at the Hollywood Farmers Market every Sunday, the Hollywood Bowl every night, cafes, dance schools, acting schools and art schools. Finally, people started coming. After the performance one night, a woman from the audience wrote a $500 check so the pair could buy a newspaper ad.

Originally, “Vincent” ran three nights a week. Now it plays only on Sunday nights, in the upstairs 28-seat Lab space that Walcutt and company renovated for this show. “We did the rewiring; the stereo system is Bryan’s,” Walcutt said.

Walcutt, Rasmussen, the slide designer, the sound designer and costumer worked for free; ticket prices have been kept to $8. “We’ve found our audience is usually struggling students or actors,” Walcutt noted. “That, or people who go to galleries.”

The 70-minute piece offers a portrait of a man (revealed in Van Gogh’s actual correspondence) whose passion was measured in his art. Rasmussen said, “I was reading a book of his letters last year, and I noticed a centennial coming up in July, so I called John, and he happened to be reading the same book. Really!”

The result was a candlelight performance on July 29, 1990, (the 100th anniversary of Van Gogh’s death) at downtown’s Itchey Foot Ristorante, where the Colorado-born Rasmussen founded the Itchey Feet Improv Group and where he has directed and produced 20 premieres. “It took off from there,” Walcutt said. After a one-nighter at the Los Angeles Fringe Festival and its shaky beginning at Stages, “Vincent” is entering its seventh month, and all performances are selling out.

“The harder we worked, the more we put out, the more people came,” noted Rasmussen, who became friends with Wolpe and Walcutt six years ago during Wolpe’s “A Voyage to Arcturus” at the Odyssey Theatre. “It’s really very purist: You’re responsible for the success of your piece. Of course, it’s doubly satisfying that it’s Vincent--working on him, making his life known to other people. Emotionally, yes, it’s very tough to do; falling into that head space is not a joy. But it’s also cathartic, inspiring, invigorating,” he said.

“It was a tremendous challenge from the start,” added Walcutt, a Michigan native who came to California on a track scholarship, got a master’s degree at USC and attended London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

For Rasmussen, the months of memorizing lines, of asking relatives for money and selling most of his possessions to finance the show have clearly been worth it. “This is my calling card now,” he said firmly. “This is what I’m supposed to do. I’m willing to give it years of my life to say what he wanted to say. Let’s face it, I’m not going to find too many better roles. And for the first time I’m able to say something about life--and about my struggles--through him.”

Walcutt echoed, “Van Gogh has been the inspiration. He kept going against all the odds. No one liked his work. Critics didn’t like him. The public didn’t like him. Every time we hit an obstacle, we’d come back to Van Gogh and say, ‘This is nothing compared to what he went through.’ ”

Now there is talk of taking the show on the road, and an in-the-works offer to film it as an instructional video.

“There are going to be people who don’t get it, don’t like it, don’t relate,” Walcutt admitted. “You just have to do it, knowing there are people who are going to be touched. It’s definitely been a life-changing experience for all of us. You can’t go up against those kinds of roadblocks and not be changed.”