All Their Excess Lives in Texas

The small Texas town of Tuna is a dusty, hardscrabble place, yet metaphorically, anyway, it’s built atop a gusher.

The fictional locale--where book-banning, gun-loving residents have taken the motto “Don’t mess with Texas” a bit too much to heart--is the setting for the comedies “Greater Tuna,” “A Tuna Christmas” and the new “Red, White and Tuna,” which together have grossed more than $70 million in the last 15 years. On a seemingly endless tour of the country, the shows--performed by creators and longtime buddies Joe Sears and Jaston Williams--have proved to be perennial favorites.

The third and perhaps final installment, “Red, White and Tuna,” makes its Southern California premiere Saturday as part of the McCoy Rigby Entertainment series at La Mirada Theatre.

“We have a friendship that has blossomed into a business,” Williams says by telephone from a tour stop in Denver. In a separate conversation, Sears adds: “We’ve always called ourselves laughing buddies.”

Born by chance as a party skit in 1981, “Tuna” is a mix of character comedy and political satire, propelled by the conceit of having Williams and Sears portray all of the town’s residents--about 10 characters apiece. In as little as six seconds offstage, each actor switches costume and, often, gender.

Dressed in a polyester pantsuit and crowned with a Texas-size bouffant, the stocky Sears, 50, becomes Bertha Bumiller, an eternally put-upon wife and mother (she has a philandering husband and three wayward kids) who, once in a nighttime prayer, famously uttered: “As you know, last week I bought a gun. And, Lord, you have just got to give me strength not to buy any bullets.”

Donning cat’s-eye glasses and snooty attitude, the lean Williams, 48, transforms into Vera Carp, who’s on a mission to rid the high school’s dictionaries of such potentially misunderstood words as “hot, hooker, coke, clap, deflower, ball, knocker and nuts.”

And then there are mousy Petey Fisk, who becomes a lion of determination when it comes to safeguarding Tuna’s animals; matronly Aunt Pearl Burras, who hates chicken-yard pests as much as she loves to play pranks on certain townspeople; and hair-triggered Didi Snavely, the weapons shop proprietress who boasts, “If we can’t kill it, it’s immortal.”

The characters have become so much a part of the actors that, sometimes, the wall between fantasy and reality comes close to dissolving.

“Yesterday, I was walking down a street in Denver,” Sears says, “and this man just comes out of nowhere with a huge sign that says ‘Abortion Kills.’ ” Sears let the man pass without comment, but the Aunt Pearl in him “would have walked up and said, ‘You have no right to carry that sign. It’s not an issue for men. So let me have it right now; I’m going to break it over your head.’ ”

Aunt Pearl is one of Tuna’s most independent thinkers. Several of the others, however, “should be taken out and horsewhipped,” Williams wisecracks.

Vera and her book- and record-banning mentor-nemesis, the Rev. Spikes, might fall into this category, or Elmer Watkins, who makes “public service” announcements for the KKK on Tuna’s radio station--or any of the other residents who insist on thinking that their way is the only way.

“We try to hold a mirror up to those people and, hopefully, make a few people think,” Williams says.

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Though small-town America is by no means the only domain of this “I know what’s best for the world” mind-set, it was the setting that leaped to the minds of Sears and Williams, themselves the products of smaller, rural areas. Sears grew up among a family of ranchers in the Osage Hills of Oklahoma. Williams was born in the far west of Texas and grew up in the Panhandle, where his father was a farmer and his mother a schoolteacher.

This upbringing explains, in part, why the women of Tuna are so lovingly detailed. “I think it’s because we’re so close to the women in our lives, as Southerners, as Great Plainsmen, as farmers and ranchers,” Sears says. “There’s a connection to the women in those settings that’s undeniable. You stand around in a kitchen with a bunch of aunts getting Thanksgiving dinner together, and you could solve all the world’s problems within 45 minutes.”

Rooted in this sort of detail, the shows can be outrageous--outright silly, even--yet credible.

Though wacky as could be, “Greater Tuna” was laced with satire about what Sears and Williams felt to be one of the pressing issues of the day: “the Moral Majority and the Jerry Falwell crowd, who thought they were going to rule the world,” Sears explains. “A Tuna Christmas,” which followed in 1989, kept up the satiric heat yet also took time to examine the characters’ relationships and their profound, holiday-stoked feelings of love and loss.

“Red, White and Tuna,” which emerged in 1998, is about change--or the lack of it--as the town celebrates the Fourth of July and gathers for the Tuna High School reunion, with its heated contest for reunion queen.

Given the hilarity that has followed, it seems only fitting that Sears and Williams’ acquaintance began with a laugh.

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They met in San Antonio, Texas, in 1973, on the first night of rehearsal of a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Sears had just arrived in town; Williams was a resident actor at the theater staging the Shakespeare comedy. There was a rainstorm, and while both were standing in the doorway, looking out at it, Williams “said something about the rain being very biblical,” Sears recalls, “and it made me laugh. And I think he liked the way I belted out laughter.”

Several years later, after cementing their friendship, they moved to Austin to work with another theater, only to find themselves stranded after the company’s funds ran dry. Williams was living in a residence hotel, and the manager, who was a friend, asked him to entertain for a party. He and Sears devised a skit, and Tuna was born.

“People just went crazy,” Williams says, “and we thought, ‘We may be on to something here.’ And almost immediately, we started thinking in terms of, ‘What else is there in this little town? What else can we do?’ ”

Ed Howard, a director friend, pulled together the money to stage the resulting show, “Greater Tuna,” in Austin in 1981. He has co-written and directed all three “Tunas.”

“When we wrote ‘Greater Tuna,’ we thought it would maybe keep us occupied for three months,” Williams says, “and we’re going into 18 years now.”

In 1999 alone, Sears and Williams spent 34 weeks on the road, performing “A Tuna Christmas” for 14 weeks in 11 cities and “Red, White and Tuna” for 20 weeks in 13 cities. The official touring productions grossed about $6 million, with merchandise grossing another $400,000, according to Charles H. Duggan, who has been producing the shows since 1984.

The shows also were performed by student, amateur and professional groups across the nation last year--about 150 productions of “Greater Tuna” and roughly 100 of “A Tuna Christmas.” (Rights to “Red, White and Tuna” have not been released.)

As grateful as they are for all of this, Sears and Williams are feeling restless.

Though they’ve been inseparable for decades, they now find themselves--after long months together on the road--going their separate ways whenever there’s a pause in the tour.

Artistically, too, they’re moving in different directions. Sears has been collaborating on the book and lyrics to a new musical--”Doing God’s Chores,” about “goodness in the world,” he says--with Nashville songwriter Kimmie Rhodes, who is also writing the music. On his own, Sears is also writing a play about the Lincoln assassination. Williams, meanwhile, has been writing a play, “Romeo and Thorazine,” that satirizes American society and show business.

They can’t stray too far afield, though, because Tuna refuses to let them go. Producer Duggan is already booking into 2002, with hopes of taking all three plays to Broadway in fall of that year.

“We write for our fans,” Sears says, “and there’s enough of them that we could be in dresses the rest of our lives.”

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“RED, WHITE AND TUNA,” La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada. Dates: Opens Saturday at 8 p.m. and continues Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Feb. 5 and 12, also at 2:30 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m.; Feb. 6 and 13, also at 7:30 p.m. Ends Feb. 13. Price: $34. Phone: (562) 944-9801 or (714) 994-6310.