A Bundle of Comic Contradictions

“Because he was my dad, he couldn’t die.” Playwright Charles Avakian Freericks mulls over his remark for a moment, then adds: “I know that contradicts the fact that I was dreaming about my dad’s death before he actually died, but life is full of contradictions.”

So too, he stresses, is his play, “Eight Miles From New York,” now at the West Coast Ensemble. Freericks is interested in creating a comedy not only involving a son’s confronting the unexpected death of his father, but also about Jewish parents who converted to Christian Science and raised their children in that faith, which is based on the principles of metaphysical healing and of spiritual power subsuming the material world.

And then, there’s perhaps the ultimate contradiction of all, which most Christian Scientists have had to confront at one time or another: How does one adhere to the religion’s ultimate tenet--that death, like all matter, is unreal--while enduring and accepting the death of a loved one?

In “Eight Miles From New York,” the son, Stuart, though no longer a believer, negotiates this bundle of losses and contradictions in a way that synthesizes Judaism and Christian Science. As Freericks did with his own father’s sudden death, Stuart wills his father, Ira, back to life through his dreams. Ira becomes something out of an Isaac Bashevis Singer Yiddish tale of spirits revisiting the world, while also seeming to prove Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy’s principle that death is nothing more than moving on to another plane of existence.

Still, “if I call this autobiographical theater, then you’d have to call me a liar,” Freericks, 31, says, noting for instance that Stuart’s parents are based on friends’ parents, rather than his own. “I thought they were more interesting,” he says sheepishly. “And Stuart makes mistakes I haven’t made, so as a result is able to make revelations that I haven’t made. In that sense, he’s gone much further than I have.”

Further distancing the writer from his creation is the fact that, though Stuart haplessly struggles to patch things up with his ex-girlfriend and cajole her back into his arms, Freericks is engaged. And though Stuart is an untenured assistant professor at UC Berkeley, Freericks works by day as a television development executive for Wilshire Court Productions.

The playwright nonetheless has inserted his own life experience into the play in ways big and small. There are the evocative absurdities, such as neighbors coming by to ask the grieving Stuart to trim a tree arching over into their property. “That actually happened, and made the whole experience of my father’s death into a kind of dream experience, as if none of it were truly happening,” he says. “Stuart’s eulogy at the play’s end is almost verbatim to what I said at my father’s funeral. A few people came up to me afterwards and said I should go into stand-up comedy. But I’m only funny when I’m nervous. I never really know when I’m funny.”

So a visitor to Freericks’ Ocean Park apartment can understand when he slightly nervously excuses himself for a moment to pick up a Slinky, which he absent-mindedly plays with while talking about what he hopes will be a funny play about serious issues. But according to Michael Peretzian, a stage director familiar with Freericks’ work, Freericks needn’t worry too much.

After writing one-acts such as “The Man on the Ten Dollar Bill” and “Making Love to Zelda at the Sears, Roebuck and Co. in Hackensack, New Jersey” Freericks has made the leap to full-length with this play. “He knows that there’s a time when you’re ready, and I have the feeling that now is that time,” Peretzian says. “I know he’s wanted this very badly, but of course, that’s never enough. What you have to do is what I always say to writers: ‘Follow Your Muse.’ I have to think that Chuck has followed that advice.”

But, as Freericks explains, following Muses hasn’t been enough. He admits that his early drafts were full of problems--which have been tackled in two phases: first, hastening Ira’s death rather than postponing it; second, collaborating with “Eight Miles” director Avner Garbi on tightening and fleshing out what was already on paper.

For the playwright, having Ira die sooner rather than later is in a sense the very act of confronting death face to face, which Freericks feels Christian Science avoids. “Everyone--and I mean everyone--I have known in the religion is incredibly nice, the epitome of what good people could be.

“But it still made a profound impression on me that, despite my parents’ loyalty to the church--my mother remains very devout--no one from the church visited us when my father died. I realize that by not facing death, one can imagine that it doesn’t exist. So I had to face it early in the play, since it’s about Stuart coming to terms with himself and his father.”

It was this that Garbi, raised by Orthodox Jews in Haifa, Israel, and admittedly ignorant about Christian Science, connected with, “the son questioning his own beliefs, as I had with my father, who was a rabbi. Ironically, I know a lot of Jews who have become Christian Scientists. The attractions are that it doesn’t preach to you, and that it is a faith in love with the written word.”

Unlike some past West Coast Ensemble productions when the playwright couldn’t attend rehearsals, Freericks’ brain was available to pick. This was especially helpful regarding nettlesome points such as Stuart’s dilemma with the Christian Science idea of “animal magnetism”--the attraction of everything opposed to God, from the flesh to pure evil.

Is leaving the religion Freericks was raised in, perhaps, the victory of animal magnetism? “It was a matter of growth for me, and it was spurred on, oddly enough, by my Sunday school teacher, who taught chemistry during the week and Christian Science on Sunday.

“He admitted that physical matter doesn’t really vanish, but assumes other forms--the molecules of a coffee cup later become the molecules in a building. This blew my mind. And because of his advice, I ended up at George Washington University rather than Principia,” the college operated by the Christian Science Church.

Despite his own break from it, he strongly denies that “Eight Miles From New York” is a slap at the faith. “This is Stuart’s story, not the diatribe against any religion. Besides, there’s something kind of beautiful about notions of ‘perfect love’ and ‘perfect life.’ And all those nice, nice people . . . “

“Eight Miles From New York” runs at the West Coast Ensemble, 6240 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays until Dec. 20. Tickets: $15. Information: (213) 871-1052.