Light Years From Southern Noir

About 10 years ago, Beth Henley and a dinner companion chanced upon a sidewalk graphologist on Melrose Avenue. The handwriting analyst offered her friend all kinds of effusive praise, so the playwright plunked down $10 hoping for similar plaudits.

Instead, she was told she was “a measly, petty and untalented loser.”

“That’s all from my handwriting!” the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright says in good-humored outrage. ‘I just wrote two sentences! I was devastated!”

Because Henley had been having difficulties with her writing, the incident kicked her into action. “I started to study some graphology, trying to improve my handwriting,” says Henley, as she perches in the middle of a big couch in her Westwood office. “[I thought] if I changed my handwriting, I could change my life--if I could only make my Ls better, not so scrunched up!”

Thus the birth of “Signature,” in which a central character, Boswell T-Thorp, tries to change his fate by changing his handwriting. In a broader sense, the play addresses the yearning to leave one’s mark in the big Book of Life as it follows four characters in search of food, shelter, fame and love in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles hit by a series of environmental disasters.

“Signature” makes its West Coast premiere at Actors’ Gang Theater on Saturday through the efforts of director Veronica Brady and the Bloy Street Productions/Naked Angels Theatre Company.

Set about 50 years from now, the futuristic time frame is a first for Henley, 48, who is better known for droll works of Southern comedy noir, like “Crimes of the Heart,” for which she won the Pulitzer in 1981, and “The Miss Firecracker Contest” (both were made into movies). Locally, she is also known as one of the founders of the Loretta Theatre, the producer behind “Detachments” at the Tiffany Theater.

Just before writing “Signature,” Henley explains, she had labored over two period pieces--”The Lucky Spot,” set in the Depression ‘30s, and “Abundance,” set in 1860s Wyoming--and was weary from all the historical research required for those plays. “I just really wanted to use my imagination, to totally have fun.”

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For Henley, part of the fun in writing “Signature” came from inventing the jargon to jibe with the rough and raw setting of L.A. in the future: “Big splash of the season” (the hot celebrity of the moment); “celebrity chase” (a mega-celebrity bash akin to the post-Oscars party); “ultra surgery” (wherein a smile can be permanently etched into the face). She filled the play with broadly drawn characters, rat-a-tat scene changes and quippy dialogue.

All of this takes place in the year 2052, where the remaining population of disaster-torn Los Angeles finds itself living in the Hollywood Hills. “We imagine L.A. has taken every wrong turn there can be,” says Brady, “and now everyone’s living around the Hollywood sign, surrounded by water and sludge.”

Here, the letters of the famed landmark have become buildings--the H is a television satellite station; the D a pier; the W the home of Boswell (Ed Trotta); and an O the home of the graphologist character, Reader (Susan Barnes).

Boswell, a conceptual artist-philosopher, is riding on the fame of inventing the Box Theory, a vague idea that everything can be, yes, boxed. He is managed by L-Tip (Terrah Bennett Smith), whose motto is “Trend Is Life.” She takes him around to see-and-be-seen parties and tries to book him on cable talk shows. L-Tip aspires to the glamour of a cartoon character named Chee Chee Kitty, “wearing outfits made of sugar stars, lapping up the limelight, dancing at the Cafe Who’s Who with Country Tidbit.” She also happens to be in the process of divorcing Boswell’s brother Max (Gareth Williams).

Boswell is dying but trying to change his fate through his writing. He’s so self-engrossed that he won’t give the heartbroken Max any comfort or food. And he looks down upon housemate William (Elaine Tse), who works as a “splatterer,” someone trying to clean up the grunge-encrusted creatures found floating around L.A. “God, how pathetic to live a life where every bone is a treasure,” he says to her.

Boswell’s ambition is to sit atop the trash heap. “Due to my remarkable intelligence,” he exclaims, “I realized early on this world was not an oyster I wanted to try and swallow. Thus I went on to other things. Like maintaining an image which was a vital part of securing government subsidy. . . .”

In this world where image is king, Max finally decides to get himself “euthed,” or euthanized. That would make him the first person to be euthed for love.

“Yes, it’s an absurdist play,” Brady admits, “but just enough so that you could still think it could actually happen.”

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Brady was behind the push to bring “Signature” to L.A. She had been artistic director of Passage Theatre Company in Trenton, N.J., where the production had a previous incarnation, but she felt that it could be better presented. “The thing I missed in the Passage production that fascinated me early on was the technical aspect,” she says. “This play really does live in the world of 2052, a world of accelerated trends and fashion. You would have to re-create that world to make the play live and breathe.”

They found their stagecraft wizards in Design Magic, a North Carolina-based company. For “Signature,” the company will be projecting Boswell’s writing into midair as he scrawls his name into the sand. Costume designer Rodney Munoz will outfit the cast in a dazzle of changing gear to reflect how speedily trends come and go in the world of the future.

The hard edge of the techno-world Brady is trying to depict on stage is deliberate. “Ours is the way I always envisioned the play--the contrast between the high-technology future world and the human spirit,” she says.

Meanwhile, Henley is delighted to have the opportunity to rework the play. “I’m so happy to be working on it again,” she says. “I just took out a passage that was so bad--it’s like from a junior high schooler’s diary! I cannot believe it went through three productions with this really maudlin, mawkish piece. It had no irony or insight!”

For Henley, the play raises essential questions of human existence that have special resonance in this city. “What is our signature when we live? What is important that we’ve done?” she asks rhetorically. “Especially in the context of Los Angeles, where everyone is literally trying to sign their names in the cement and leave it there!” She points to the line in which Boswell insists his tombstone should read, “Here lies one whose name was drilled in granite.”

“I’m always curious about why are we here, what is our purpose, and the inability to come up with an appropriate answer that satisfies me,” she muses. At the same time, this is not meant to be a poison-pen letter to the city.

“I like Los Angeles very much,” says Henley, a Mississippi native who has lived in Southern California for two decades. “I like the notion that a lot of people who move here want more than an ordinary life, they’re kind of searching for something a little special or magical.” Later she adds, “I think people have room for a lot of ideas here, and I really like that.”

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“SIGNATURE,” Actors’ Gang Theater, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd. Dates: Opens Saturday. Plays Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Closes Oct. 27. Prices: $20-$25 (previews, $10). Phone: (323) 465-0566, Ext. 2.