A Return to Form on Simpler Terms

Dysfunction abounds in solo performance these days, and before writing his show, Rob Sullivan sat through his share of dramatic confessionals.

“I think that’s one of the reasons I haven’t done any one-man shows in a while, because a lot of them are rather indulgent,” Sullivan said. “My first show was autobiographical, but not so many people were doing it then. Now every Joe is telling, ‘Oh, this is my latest breakup.’ ”

His instinct was to parody this bare-your-pain trend. He started sketching out an audition for a mock TV show called “American Dysfunctional.” But as his character try-out progressed, his story took on a sense of realism. The TV gimmick fell away, and Sullivan was left with “Thicker Than Water, Thinner Than Ice,” a tragic story about the relationship between two cousins, Henry and Ramona, growing up in Bakersfield. The show, which is earning critical praise, continues through March 2 at Glaxa Studios in Silver Lake.

“This is totally fiction. There’s not anything in this that actually happened,” Sullivan said. “And yet I feel this piece more than others I’ve written. There’s something about it that really gets me.”

In the early 1980s, Sullivan was part of the theater scene that explored the territory between plays and performance art at alternative downtown venues like the late Wallenboyd and Night House theaters. His solo pieces, “Flower Ladies and Pistol Kids” and “The Long White Dress of Love,” drew critical praise for both his poetic writing and dance-like movement. At the same time he was a member of the Mums, a quirky troupe of jugglers, fire-eaters and blade-swallowers. But by the late ‘80s, Sullivan was writing almost exclusively. He busied himself with plays and movie scripts, performing less and less.

But about a year ago, he got a yen to do another one-man show, and like others in that Wallenboyd-Nighthouse crowd, he found his way to Glaxa Studios in Silver Lake. It is a minimal performance, he said, just three lighting cues and a chair. Those familiar with the physicality of his earlier work might be surprised that Sullivan roots himself in that chair throughout almost the entire hour of the monologue.

Richard Kaye, artistic director at Glaxa, was startled by the outcome. “I didn’t expect a lyrical abstract memory piece. I didn’t expect a literary accomplishment. I thought it was going to be far more topical, but this was dreamy and passionate and disturbing and austere.”

It was also totally different from the piece sharing the program, “Confessions of a Middle-aged White Heterosexual Male (just the high points),” by old Mums cohort Jan Munroe. The two were paired before they’d written their respective shows, but Kaye thinks it has worked out. Munroe’s humor balances out Sullivan’s austerity.

Sullivan trained as an actor at the Contemporary Theater Collective near Boston and later at Berkeley. But from his childhood days in Lafayette, a suburb of San Francisco, Sullivan was a writer. He wrote stories and plays at home. At 7 or 8 he went through a phase where he would grab one of his parents or brothers and command: “Speak to me! Speak to me! Speak to me!”

“It kind of became a family joke,” Sullivan said. “But I think I was really serious. It was like: I want you to speak to me and I want to speak to you. . . . That’s the first thing I can remember: a hunger to be with people, and to be speaking and to have them speak to me.”

That hunger never went away and was perhaps most literally realized by the four plays Sullivan did for the TheatreWorkers Project in the late ‘80s. For each one, he would interview industrial workers and craft their words into docu-theater pieces about strikes, layoffs and plant closings. The most successful, “Lady Beth: The Steelworkers’ Play,” toured union halls, college campuses and theaters all over America in 1987. In “Lady Beth,” actual steelworkers played some of the parts.

The stories belonged to the workers, but Sullivan had to find their innate rhythm. He created a structure that was more musical--with highs and lows throughout--than dramatic. “That’s something I really learned from jugglers,” he said. “Novelty acts really have a profound understanding of showmanship and timing--what tricks should follow what trick--and it’s really metaphoric to all entertainment.”

Sullivan is using a similar approach for his next play. An American producer who lives in Paris commissioned him to write about the war in Bosnia last fall. Before the Dayton peace agreement, he spent several weeks in Croatia and Slovenia interviewing refugees, government officials, artists and aid workers.

Tony Abatemarco, who directed Sullivan’s first autobiographical shows, said “Thicker Than Water” shows that Sullivan is a stronger writer and performer than he’s ever been. “Rob, on the surface, looks like an ordinary good-looking Joe,” he said. “His vocal range is very easy and comfortable. . . . He can draw you in very quickly and then you see that he’s taking you places that you didn’t expect.”

In March, Sullivan’s two-act play “Signs of Home” will have a reading at the Circle Repertory Theatre Lab in New York. He also wants to keep doing “Thicker Than Water, Thinner Than Ice” and develop other solo performances.

“It’s just a great vehicle,” Sullivan said. “You don’t have to worry about anybody else, whether they’re going to show up or whatever. You also have a real, total freedom. In other words, like in this piece, you can go from Salt Lake City to Bakersfield to Lompoc, or skip years. You can go wherever you want to go as long as you create a context for the audience.”

* “Thicker Than Water, Thinner Than Ice” plays with “Confessions of a Middle-Aged White Heterosexual Male,” at Glaxa Studios, 3707 Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake. Thursdays-Saturdays through March 2, 8 p.m. $12.50. (213) 663-5295.