Cast of Characters

I volunteered at Coach House Theater Friday evening. A few months ago, I interviewed JT Buck, the artistic director who is steering the theater through its ninetieth year after almost shutting down due to lack of both funding and effective leadership. He’s an awesome guy, but he has undertaken a mammoth task. Consequently, volunteers who show up and have half a brain are greatly appreciated.

It’s an odd coincidence, but I recently rewatched a movie from the turn of the 21^st century whose main character reminds me strongly of JT—that is, if the character were gay, but that’s a minor point. The film is “The Tao of Steve,” the character is Dex, and the actor is Donal Logue. If you’ve seen it, you know that the character and plot echo the story of Don Giovanni: a man woos women by way of a Taoist-esque philosophy that includes, among others, a tenet of becoming desireless. Dex is remarkably successful in this endeavor, despite the extra weight he gained after graduating college. The plot follows Dex schooling a young friend in his philosophy while striking out miserably with a woman who works as a stage designer for a local production of—wait for it—Don Giovanni, the opera. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It’s available on Amazon.

Something tells me JT has a way with the fellas in a similar fashion. His resonant, musical baritone voice alone must be a romantic asset. Employed in extemporaneous speech, that voice is eloquent. I am certain that, applied to Shakespeare or O’Neill, it would be devastating.

The physical similarities are undeniable: very tall, overweight in a teddy-bear kind of way, reddish hair and clear, pale eyes. The mannerism are likewise strikingly similar: lots of eye contact, good posture, and a musical way of moving that some larger men have, a lightness of foot belied by girth. Jackie Gleason and Drew Carey (before the weight loss) are good examples.

I interviewed JT via email, so the voice and demeanor were additions to a character I had already begun building in my head. Unlike so many people I meet digitally before corporeally, he did not disappoint.

The other characters I met Friday were another matter.

It’s been a long time since I hung out with theater people. They’re a particular breed, theater folk. They all want to be in the spotlight all the time. When three or more of them gather anywhere, the competition for one-liners and limelight escalates quickly.

During the half hour after I showed up and before there was much to do, I loitered in a parlor-like room of the Women’s City Club with a few actors and technicians attached to the evening’s performance. It was easy to tell the actors from the backstage people. The former speak confidently in stage-trained diction and carry themselves as if always posing for a photo. The latter mumble and shrink into the furniture.

For the first time in my life, I found myself identifying more with the latter than the former.

The characters I encountered here in 2017 were oddly identical to those I encountered in community theaters 30 years ago.

The pale, skinny guy with long dark hair who tries to be mysterious and gothic. The boy-next-door tenor with ambiguous sexuality and endless energy. The young woman who doesn’t quite know how to pull off her burgeoning sexuality but gives it all she’s got anyway, tossing her long hair from side to side as she speaks and occasionally adjusting the position of her push-up bra to better advantage. And, of course, the aging gay man who raises his eyebrows with élan and curves his hands elegantly in the position of flourishing a cigarette, though he dropped that nasty habit decades ago.

One unique character at Coach House this weekend was Chalker. Chalker is doing early college during his high school years as a way to graduate with both degrees so he can accelerate his career goal. That goal? To be a minister. All I heard him do at the theater was talk about how awful other people are, with specific references to the behavior of his cast mates. He’s got the best character name: Chalker Conrad. No lie.

There was only one tense moment while JT and I manned the ticket desk, and it wasn’t that tense. Some confusion arose about someone having paid twice that I helped resolve quickly while JT continued, seemingly unfazed, to help arriving patrons. It all ended up fine. However, one woman, who clearly is a member of the Woman’s Club and comes to a lot of productions, made a point of repeating over and over how a big part of the problem was the fact that JT couldn’t print a receipt for her credit card, so how could she really know whether he charged her the correct amount or not? She kept throwing little jibes into her speech, like “supposedly” or “I’ll just have to trust him” in a tone that says she definitely doesn’t trust him. She was wearing a really lovely necklace and earring set that looked vintage, and she had painted exaggerated eyeliner onto her upper lids. Very theatrical.

I can hardly wait to go back next week and see what all these characters have been up to.