Newport Beach man explores addiction in his first play
Dave Ronquillo was watching a movie with a group of friends when he mentioned he’d like to write a script. The off-the-cuff statement planted the seed for “The Last Call,” a one-act play about alcoholism and recovery.
The Newport Beach resident didn’t set out to be a playwright. In 2018, the movie buff wrote a screenplay called “Killer Buds,” which he left sitting quietly in a Word document. But he enjoyed the experience and decided last year to try his hand at a play.
Ronquillo has struggled with addiction in the past and works in addiction treatment as a client advocate, communicating the needs of clients in residential treatment programs. He conceived and wrote “The Last Call” in a month. Then he turned his attention to producing it.
“We thought we were just going to perform it in the garage for fun,” Ronquillo said.
Ronquillo’s casting method was as unorthodox as his writing background. He would think about the people he envisioned for certain parts, and when he noticed friends or acquaintances who seemed to fit, he would walk up and ask, “Have you ever acted before?”
Only one of the nine cast members in “The Last Call” has professional acting experience.
Though he didn’t make significant changes to the script during the casting and rehearsal process, he called it a “collaborative effort with the actors” and credited his wife and producer, Katie, with being his primary sounding board.
On Saturday at the Huntington Beach Library Theater, “The Last Call” sold more than 250 tickets without any real marketing strategy. Revenue went toward theater rental and other production costs. The cast members volunteered their time.
The play’s first performance, at the library theater July 28, sold out the 319-seat venue on word of mouth alone, Ronquillo said.
There were two shows in August at Newport Beach’s Theatre Arts Center before the play returned to the larger Huntington Beach venue in September.
Ronquillo felt it should be a longer show, so he expanded the 45-minute production.
Saturday’s performance, which lasted about an hour, included a new scene that draws out the investigation into a stolen watch and provides a further glimpse of the recovery experience of each character.
The story follows Johnny Ray, who has been ordered by a judge to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in place of a jail sentence.
He does so incredulously, showing up to a meeting to get his attendance card stamped while maintaining that he doesn’t have a drinking problem. That bars him from speaking during the meeting, a rule he more or less ignores while scoffing at the stories and experiences related by others. He does take interest in Zach, who works at the place where the meetings are held, and particularly in Zach’s Rolex watch, which belonged to his late father.
Johnny Ray continues to attend the meetings, making snide remarks, hurling insults and occasionally picking fights.
When one regular, Windsor, arrives inebriated and has a seizure, Zach removes the watch and a friend sets it aside while the group tries to help Windsor. Someone takes the watch, and when Windsor has recovered, all eyes are on Johnny Ray.
Johnny Ray insists he didn’t take it and becomes further alienated from the group.
Ronquillo says the play is meant as entertainment, not education. But he doesn’t deny that it might bring awareness of what recovery is like.
“The main character is trying to adjust to a new sober lifestyle,” Ronquillo said. “There is getting to be more of an awareness of addiction ... because 70,000 people died from overdose last year.”
Themes that arise in the play include co-dependency, mental illness and other “common emotional roadblocks that people go through and face in recovery,” Ronquillo said.
Some of the characters were “loosely based” on people he’s known in his own recovery journey.
Johnny Ray “never could admit he had an addiction,” Ronquillo said. At the end of the show, after a grieving character relapses and suffers a fatal overdose, Johnny Ray is stunned into seeing his own situation for what it is.
“Almost everybody’s been affected by [addiction] in some way,” Ronquillo said. “It is so powerful that you will go to any length to get your drug of choice.”
Nicki LaFever, a friend of the Ronquillos, was an admiring audience member before she joined the cast.
LaFever, of Newport Beach, made her stage debut Saturday as the character Jennifer.
“I was so mesmerized, thinking I’d like to do that, never thinking I’d be in it,” LaFever recalled from when she was sitting in the audience last year. For the latest performance, her son and daughter came from Los Angeles to see her.
The small, close-knit cast gathered for pizza after Saturday’s show. LaFever and others recounted forgotten lines and admitted various degrees of stage fright, but LaFever also was quick to volunteer herself for a future performance. Others quickly followed.
To learn about future performances, visit thelastcalltickets.com.
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