TV REVIEW : This Man Was an Adventure

KPBS-TV’s documentary on San Diego playwright PhilipDimitri Galas opens with a close-up of Mona Rogers, a character created by Galas and actress Helen Shumaker. She is a vision of trampy excess, with raccoon eye shadow, a boozy lounge singer’s attire and the attitude of an impatient diner waitress.

“Miss Rogers eats TV dinners on TV trays in front of the television with a drink and a cigarette at midnight in an apartment downtown above a pawnshop on a street where people get murdered for no reason at all,” Shumaker, as Rogers, growls into the camera. “This woman is an adventure.”

Mona Rogers assaults the audience, daring them to see something more than her vampy exterior. As much as any of Galas’ other bizarre characters, Rogers captures the aggressive and multilayered theater experiences he created. Galas was a mercurial talent on the local scene until he died of AIDS in 1986 at the age of 32.

“Avante Vaudeville: Philip-Dimitri Galas,” premiering tonight at 10 on KPBS-TV (Channel 15), attempts to spotlight Galas’ spirit and energy. The 30-minute program also strives to define the “avante vaudeville” style that became his trademark. That is no easy task.

Usually featuring a lone actor on a barren stage, chanting poetry in machine-gun style, avante vaudeville is “a combination of dramatic forms,” including burlesque, melodrama, torch singing, acting and avant-garde theater, Galas said in an interview taped at the height of his critical popularity.

Several clips from performances give viewers vivid examples of the form. In “Baby Redboots’ Revenge,” actor Sean Sullivan--wearing pants with suspenders, no shirt and his hair spiked--has the look and attitude of a rogue street performer who has wandered into a theater to explain the meaning of life and do a little juggling at the same time.

Looks were important to Galas. Long before voguing became fashionable, posing was an essential part of a Galas show, based on the “preposterous notion that pose is substance,” Shumaker says. In “Mona Rogers in Person,” Shumaker stands like a floozy statue--one leg in front of the other, back slouched, arm cocked, palm up--and delivers a fierce, unrelenting monologue:

“Who needs another story about her; who needs another woman who smokes too much; who needs another story about her.”

Produced and directed by Paul Marshall, “Avante Vaudeville” is a typical KPBS documentary, a solid package with little flair, imagination or style. Interviews with Shumaker, Sullivan and UC San Diego Professor Bram Dijkstra are intermixed with the production footage.

Narrator Stuart McLean, former curator of performing arts for the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, adds little to the program; he was filmed sitting in a studio, and he delivers stilted segues, a heavy-handed, cliched program device. McLean comes across like a parody of Paul Schaeffer impersonating rock promoter Don Kirshner on the old “Saturday Night Live”: “In 1984, Philip told me about an idea for a one-woman play,” McLean says, without providing any real insight beyond making clear that he knew Galas personally.

Although the program manages to provide a strong introduction to Galas’ work, no effort was made to provide a context. To appreciate the dynamic nature and courage of what Galas was doing, the audience must understand the boring and conservative traditions of the San Diego theater scene. But the program gives the viewer little idea of the barriers Galas was breaking down.

Nor does it spend much time on Galas’ development. With only three main interviews, Galas’ background is alluded to but not fleshed out. He received a bachelor of arts degree from UCSD at the age of 18, but, beyond a few personal details, the audience learns little about how this wunderkind formed the bizarre blend of cabaret and assault poetry that became avante vaudeville.

Rather, the program is a tribute to Galas, and it is at its best when it spotlights his work. As Dijkstra says, there is “that element of putting the ordinary and the extraordinary right next to each other.” The fierce language and dark humor play well on TV, leaving the viewer wanting more.

More than anything else, the program succeeds in hammering home the sadness of an artist dying long before he has fully developed his skills. Galas was just hitting his stride when he succumbed to AIDS.

At least this program captures the essence of his skills, and maybe it will inspire other young writers with dreams of breaking out of conventional forms to follow in his creative footsteps.

* “Avante Vaudeville: Philip-Dimitri Galas” airs at 10 tonight on KPBS-TV (Channel 15). The program was produced and directed by Paul Marshall of KPBS-TV and co-produced by the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, with major funding provided by the city of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.