In This Corner, a Director Who Prefers the Edge

Ron Link, one of Los Angeles’ busiest directors, has directed a variety of works, including plays by Neil Simon and Arthur Miller. But the productions that he feels closest to, he says, are the edgy ones.

“There’s usually an attraction to mean, lean, sex and death,” Link says during a recent conversation at the Mark Taper Forum. “For being such a homebody with my dogs and fireplace, I save all my insanity and Fellini-esque [impulses] for [the theater].

“I work the raw, visceral madness in there,” Link continues. “I know it has a great deal to do with sex. That’s about as close as I can get to analyzing it without killing it.”

Link made his name as a director in New York, first receiving widespread notice with his 1970s production of Tom Eyen’s “Women Behind Bars,” which ran for a year off-off-Broadway with the late actor Divine in the lead role. Yet the success of that high-camp work--which has since been staged around the world--actually proved to be something of an obstacle as well.

“There’s a very painful price for being ahead of your time a little bit,” Link says. “That may sound grandiose, but I was doing Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling and then Divine for years, and then I got tired of it along about 1980. So it took me a long time to not be associated with camp.”

He escaped the pigeonhole, by his own estimation, shortly after he moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. Since then Link has become known for his work with more serious fare.

His most highly regarded productions include Bill Cain’s “Stand Up Tragedy,” which he helmed at the Mark Taper Forum and on Broadway, and John Godber’s “Bouncers,” which Link staged both off-Broadway and at the Tiffany Theatre in L.A. The director is also proud of his 1992 staging of Dan Gerrity and Jeremy Lawrence’s “Melody Jones” at the Cast Theatre.

His current project--the West Coast premiere of Oliver Mayer’s “Blade to the Heat,” which opens at the Taper on Thursday--also shares some of the concerns with “sex and death” that characterized these previous outings. Set in the 1950s, it tells the story of a young L.A. athlete who’s struggling with his sexual identity as he tries to make it in the world of professional boxing.

It’s not strictly realism, though, which is what Link prefers. “I like [plays] that will allow me to stage stuff where there’s a terrain of the mind,” he says. “I hate plays with couches and furniture and teapots. I like seeing those plays, but it’s not my metier.”

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Link’s preference for the raw and gritty may stem, in part, from having spent the formative years of his creative life in New York. Born in Ohio, Link, now 53, arrived in Manhattan in 1960 at the age of 17, intent on a life in the theater.

“I wanted to be an actor,” he recalls. “I always said that I would stay in the theater, no matter what I had to do. So I ushered, took tickets, waited tables and all that stuff.”

His first solid theater job was stage managing “The Fantasticks” for three years, during which time he continued with the acting studies he had begun after arriving in New York. Soon, however, he began to gravitate toward producing, working first at such venues as Caffe Cino and the New York Theatre Ensemble.

The experimental scene was not his style, though. “I always had an eye for the commercial, so I didn’t last too long before going outside of that element and renting off-Broadway theaters on a Monday night for introducing plays.”

Then, in the mid-1960s, Link--who never had really gotten over the acting bug--began to direct. Soon, he was hooked. “I decided that I didn’t want to act, nor could I,” he says. “But it’s great to have wanted to be an actor so that you’re working from that base as a director.”

Directing also allowed Link to use his talent for seeing the big picture. “I look at directing like creating thousands of stills,” he says. “You’re creating these pictures, and if the picture’s off, [the play] doesn’t affect the audience emotionally.”

After more than a decade of working in New York theater, Link began to investigate other options. When someone suggested that Link bring “Women Behind Bars” to L.A., he decided to give it a try. The play ran first at the Cast and then for a year at the Roxy.

Perhaps more important, though, that success allowed Link to consider the notion of a life outside of New York. After commuting back and forth for awhile, he decided to relocate to California in 1984.

“With New York, I’d had it,” Link says. “The arena for product was getting thinner and thinner. I didn’t know that then, but [I knew] something was off in terms of where I could put my talent.”

Link’s first full staging of a new production in L.A. was John Bunzel’s “Delirious” at the Matrix Theatre in 1985. He then went on to stage a variety of dramas and comedies, including the 1989 Taper production of “Stand Up Tragedy.”

Since then, Link has maintained a consistent presence in L.A. theater. Of course, not every play that he stages--and Link typically directs several or more each season, both in L.A. and out of town--is what he calls a “Ron Link” play.

“There’s stuff that’s on the edge for me, and then there’s those gigs I do--because every play can’t be a five-star event,” he says. “I think people can tell the difference.”

One of the works he’s been most proud of was the much-praised “Melody Jones” in 1992. Based on a book by David Galloway, the dark, brooding play set in a strip joint fronting a gay bar won four L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards, including one for outstanding production.

Not surprisingly, “Melody Jones,” which Link is now developing as a film project, shares certain gay themes with “Blade to the Heat.”

“For years I’d collected paintings and photographs of boxing--not because I was a boxing aficionado, but more out of a homoerotic affection for form,” Link says. “They don’t call it contact sport for nothing.”

And as many theater artists before Mayer and Link have known, the sport also provides a clear symbolic language for the drama--and for the daily grind outside the theater. “I’d always seen boxing as a metaphor for life,” the director says. “You either get back up for the next round or you don’t.”

* “Blade to the Heat,” Mark Taper Forum, L.A. Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2:30 p.m. $28-$35.50. Ends May 5. (213) 365-3500 (Ticketmaster).