Balm In Gilead (1989)

"Balm In Gilead" by Lanford Wilson, directed by Dennis L. Dalen
(Ohio University School of Theatre, 1989)

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
- Jeremiah 8:22

“‘Disintegration’ is the best album ever!”
- Kyle Broflovski, South Park

Nineteen Eighty-Nine was the greatest year in musical history. This is a point of some debate, but I know it to be true. Psychologists have explained that each individual believes the music released in one’s twenty-first year will generally be regarded as superior to all others.

But come on, Paul’s Boutique, Three Feet High and Rising, Deep, Pretty Hate Machine, I could go on. Disintegration is indeed the best album ever, and well describes my own psyche at the end of my third year in college, when it was released.

I had gone from second-year golden boy to third-year pariah, and started my fourth-year in perhaps the most mentally correct place I have ever found myself. I learned that I need to get my professional shit together and was ready to just bear down and work until graduation.*

The undergraduate production that fall was Balm In Gilead by Lanford Wilson, a production which opened thirty years ago tonight. An ideal play if you want to cast as many people as possible, Wilson’s work is a hipster fantasia taking place in and around a twenty-hour diner frequented by the addicted, sex workers, and also thieves, hustlers, and criminals.

Joe (Peter Voinovich) and Darlene (Susan Hobrath)

All my best friends, my contemporaries, were in this production (except Jules, who was across the alley, performing in Hurlyburly) and we all underwent a deep, focused investigation of the world of heroin users, expending the kind of time on research that was so plentiful at school, even if we were unaware of it.

We had scheduled a meeting with a therapist at the campus addiction recovery center. I knew absolutely nothing about heroin, save for having watched Sid & Nancy. What I learned became quite valuable, as I will soon point out.

We did not need to study the time period, because director Denny Dalen did not set it in any specific time period, or to be more accurate, we were each from different eras, as though we were walking through some kind of purgatory.

Larry was a 70s street hustler, with picked out Afro, Pete a Miami Vice styled wannabe kingpin in a blazer and T-shirt. Ricky in all-white disco attire, Susan a 60s flower-child, Lisa a hard-boiled 1950s waitress with small apron and snood.

Me, I was the narrator, an addict named Dopey in a mid-80s Deep Purple T-shirt and a high school varsity jacket. My long hair ratted out and my first real beard, I have deeply warm feelings about this costume. Much love to designer Tavia DeFelice.

The script is very challenging to read, as several conversations can be happening at once. You had to say your line in the order it appears on the page, but you might be responding to something someone said three lines back. But the more we did it, the more we heard it, and the more it became like a kind of word jazz.

I remember the week leading up to opening was particularly tough. Denny had something for everyone, and more for some than others. The underclassmen were a pain, as they debated every observation Denny had for them, responding with some explanation for how the way they were doing it made sense.

There's a saying. "Take the note." Don't argue with me. Do it.

One night, before we started in with notes, someone speculated on how long notes were going to go, and how wearying it all was.

Self as Dopey

“Not for David,” said one of the second-years. giving me the side-eye. “He never gets any notes.”

I was a little too quick to respond. “No, I don't. But if I did I’d be sure to pitch a fit about them.”

It got better. Denny was not happy with the penultimate dress, and everyone knew it.

He said, “David is the only person on this stage who knows where he’s coming from and where he’s going to,” or words to that effect.

I don't usually remember compliments, but I remember that. A couple years ago, when posting about Greg Vovos' play, How To Be a Respectable Junkie, I recounted my experience in preparing for this play, and how close study of the text and an understanding of the effects of heroin made it possible for me to pick apart the threads of conversation and develop a clear map of (as the man said) where I was coming from. Where I was headed to.

Check out the post, the playwright makes it all crystal clear.

So yeah, I was proud of myself, for being the professional, for embodying a whole character and being confident about it. It has been a very long time since I have had the opportunity to dive so deeply into a character.

But the whole production was like that, it was practically immersive. Balm was staged in the Forum, a deeply thrust stage. The set (Daniel N. Denhart, designer) inspired by Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, the non-present walls of the diner clearly defined by light (James A. Gage, designer) all organey warm inside, and bluishly cold out.

The script is a symphony of despair, one that repeats night after night, as we lounged about the set, crouching in corners, shivering, when we weren’t on. Smoking live cigarettes. Spitting.

DOPEY: (turns to face the audience) Are you getting any of this?

And who knows. Maybe I could have been an actor.

"Balm In Gilead" by Lanford Wilson and directed by Dennis L. Dalen, at the Forum Theater at Ohio University, November 3 - 11, 1989.

*Side Note: Fall Quarter 1989 I had roles in three productions, the mainstage and two fourth year studio plays, whereas all other fourth years were in only two. In addition to Dopey I also played the Fire Chief in Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano" and in Tennessee Williams' "The Gnädiges Fräulein," the Cockalooney Bird.

Reflections of an Impromptu Reunion

If you had asked to make a list of the five people I would probably see at a 20 year O.U. School of Theater reunion, I would have guessed Ben and Litz. I may not have automatically suggested the other four to be Ricky, Billy and Heather. But I have had the most amazing time this weekend, and the unexpected mix made for a sweet, relaxing reminiscence on my time at school, and really energized me for the future.

Litz

To put it another way, I expected an enjoyable trod over familiar ground. I was not expecting a life-changing experience.

I have revisited my college years often. Too often. Two years ago I made an exercise of blogging all of my comic strips, with photos and sound bites and everything. But I knew all those things and was projecting them outward.

I have used skills I learned here as a performer and used them in my work, but have often thought my skills were limited by a narrow emotional outlook, and assumed most of what I know or can do I picked up in my time since.

The idea of touring the campus seemed like a waste of time. I know the campus. I lived here. And because of family I return to Athens three or four times a year. I know this place. There is nothing more to learn.

But to listen ... to listen to the time as experienced through others. To hear their interactions with the space and these people. The walk on paths I have not gone down in two decades, to allow myself to be led, rather than leading. To be as one self, not defined as father or husband or co-worker or as the member of an ensemble, to move freely as myself with these select few, who know me as well as I know them (which in some cases was not that much) tied by a moment in time and shared experiences that exist separate from life as I live it every day.

I keep thinking, "This is where we walked, swam, hunted, danced and sang."

Ricky

Spending time with Denny Dalen, whom I have been negligent in visiting. A mentor whose tie I broke simply by leaving and not looking back. How much I learned from him. He brought some of the best work out of me. And we bowled once. He said Balm In Gilead was the best show he ever directed there. And I am not putting down the 21 years since to suggest it was my best performance.

Ricky reminded me of the discipline we learned, and how important it was never to fear trying absolutely anything. You don't know the definition of a word? Make a choice, take a risk, move forward. Better to be fabulously wrong than do nothing, dither, argue or sulk.

Ben reminded me of Louis' version of a check-in. "How are we feeling today?" "Hungover." "Good, we will do the warm-up hungover today." The work has to be done, no excuses, no blame.

I was impressed by the magnitude of Seabury's Playwrights Festival. But I was reminded that we did good work, too. I saw the pictures.

On Sunday afternoon we walked through East and South Greens, it was a hot day, very sunny. We headed for Eldridge's archway, beneath Siegfried and sat in the shade, on the cement steps, for ninety minutes. For the first time in recent memory, time stood still. There was nowhere else to go. And the memories continued.

Finally - and I can only assume it was never anyone's intention to be POIGNANT for fuck's sake - Dave Litz (of all people) asked if we were satisfied with where we were, twenty years on. If this is what we expected, or if it fell short. And this was when I was happiest of all. Because we were theater majors (most of us) and because you are studying performance, there is an expectation, from without and within, for success. For fame. For great achievement - great public achievement.

with Denny

And yet none of us could say we were disappointed. We were all happy where we are, what we have done, who we know and love and where our paths have taken us.

I wanted to be a famous actor. I still could be. I wanted to be a successful writer, I am working on that. But I also needed a rock-solid emotional life, a partner to share my years with, and children who give me perspective and make it all make sense. And though I did not acquire any of those things in college, I would not have them without the work I did to become the person I am in this place.

We are packing up to go now. Tomorrow the great work continues. I wanted to have a good time with this reunion, I did not imagine it would be transformative. And that's something else I learned here - you have to stop looking so hard if desire to be surprised.

Or as Zelda puts it, "you get what you get, and don't get upset."

See you in 2030.