Every once in a while, however, I'm reminded that actually very little is required to produce affecting drama. "A man walks across this empty space whilst someone is watching him," declares acclaimed director Peter Brook in his indispensable 1969 text, The Empty Space, "and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged." On a bare-bones platform at ART-ACT in Miami's design district, Imazari (pronounced i-ma-za-ree) Theatrical Works amply proves Brook's maxim with a production of Michael Kearns's 1988 intimacies ... more intimacies.
A Los Angeles-based writer, Kearns has been creating, directing, producing, and acting in works about HIV and AIDS since 1984. In 1989 he won San Francisco's Bay Area Theatre Critics Award for Best Solo Performance for intimacies, which was originally written and performed by him as a one-person show. A bracing series of subtly crafted monologues, it offers an unsparing look at twelve characters, most of whom subsist on the margins of society and all of whom have AIDS. In the Imazari production, directed by Shelbric A. Fuller, three actors tackling four roles apiece rely on one or two props each -- a chair, a broom, a cigarette -- in order to flesh out these characters on an otherwise stark stage. (Intimacies is Imazari's fourth local production; a relatively new company, it began producing shows in different venues around town this past January.)
At first glance, a description of the characters in intimacies recalls a possible lineup of guests for a week on Ricki Lake: Meet Big Red, an incest survivor turned prostitute; Rusty, a teenage hustler addicted to crystal meth and hired to strip at a private party; Mike, an alcoholic redneck hemophiliac; and Father Anthony, a Catholic priest screwing his parishioners between confessions, to name a few. Don't make the mistake of linking their stories to the one-dimensional banality that marks the afternoon talk show circuit, however. Kearns wants us to get to know his survivors, hustlers, drugs addicts, and alcoholics very well; he doesn't use the word "intimacy" in the title of his show lightly.
With a musician's ear for rhythm and phrasing and a poet's eye for trenchant imagery, Kearns fashions these monologues so that audiences look closely into the hearts of folks most of us normally want to keep at arm's length. With hard-hitting, astringent street talk reminiscent of Charles Bukowski -- another Los Angeles writer who also trafficked in blunt images of sex, abuse, and disease -- Kearns makes us sit up and take notice. For all his crude, elemental detail, Kearns also writes with gritty lyricism like yet another Los Angeles-based poet of the dispossessed, singer/songwriter Tom Waits. Won over, we identify with characters who at first seem remote. As a result, AIDS is exposed as a disease that traverses sex, class, and color lines. And, as the characters grapple with their denial ("Getting AIDS in a steam room at the gym? No way. It's so clean in there," argues promiscuous valley boy Patrick), and their guilt ("This is my sin; I deserve to die," insists Mary, who had an incestuous relationship with her son and was then infected with HIV through a blood transfusion), we confront our own tendencies to sweep truth under the rug and our fears about sex and death.
No matter how well-written Kearns's monologues may be, intimacies would fail if a director did not elicit fully realized dramatic performances from his actors. For the most part, Fuller succeeds at this. Of the three actors, Barbara Austrich-Rivero appears the least self-assured on-stage; in places, her portrayals feel too premeditated. On the other hand, as Jesse, "a black broad with a tattoo," Austrich-Rivero comes through with some powerful moments. And her portrait of Deede, a middle-class white woman married to a closeted gay man, is heart-rendingly convincing.
Daniel Barr brings chilling certainty to his performance as Patrick, the valley boy convinced that he will live forever, and a mixture of sensuality and control to Fernando, a flamenco dancer who cannot accept his sexual orientation. As Phoenix, a homeless black junkie who lives under the Hollywood freeway, Barr is just plain hilarious, and endearing.
Scott Buckley kicks off the show with a grating, unfocused rendition of Denny, a former disco queen now suffering from AIDS-related dementia. This overeager opening didn't prepare me in the least for Buckley's stunningly accurate and understated turns as three other characters -- Rusty, the teenage hustler; Mike, the hemophiliac; and Paul, a deaf gay man. After-images of Buckley playing each of these men are still stamped in my mind, days later.
Ironically, while Fuller refrains from cluttering the stage with scenery or props -- a decision that highlights Kearns's mesmerizing language -- the director bookends each act with love songs from oft-performed Broadway musicals. Before the first and after the last monologue in both acts, Danielle Moreno proffers what the program calls a "musical interlude," singing "Anything but Lonely" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Aspects of Love, "Unexpected Song" from Webber's Song and Dance, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar, and "On My Own" from Les Miserables. Although an unnerving choice for Fuller to have made, it is not entirely unsuccessful. The songs speak of love in broad brush strokes that sound almost corny compared to Kearns's unsentimental frankness. And, although Moreno has an achingly lovely voice, her gestures while singing the first three tunes seem stilted. Yet she hits pay dirt during her final number. With the words of the piece's closing monologue still hanging in the air, the waiflike yellow-haired chanteuse returns to the stage in her long ivory lace dress. With raw simplicity, she offers a short version of "On My Own" that provides stirring closure to the show.
Often life's painful realities, so eloquently expressed in intimacies, lead many of us to seek out the comforting escape of glamour and glitz in lavishly produced commercial work. I was weaned on that style of theater and can't imagine not indulging my taste for it now and again. Yet, as one of only a few audience members sitting on folding chairs in a funky space located in an underpopulated area of Miami, I was as touched by the poignant stories and unpretentious performances in Imazari's production of intimacies as by anything I've seen in more conventional settings. Don't miss this moving evening.
intimacies ... more intimacies.
Written by Michael Kearns; directed by Shelbric A. Fuller; with Barbara Austrich-Rivero, Daniel Barr, Scott Buckley, and Danielle Moreno. Through August 25. For information call 446-4905 or see "Calendar Listings.
