back onto the boards, an interview with Kirsten Dehner
By Christine Foster
Christine Foster: When I first heard you were doing the wonderful one-woman show Blown Sideways Through Life at Finnegan's, I was surprised, since I first met you as a writer. I didn't realize you were also an actor!
Kirsten Dehner: Well, ironically, as the child of an actor, I had not the slightest desire to act until my late teens. I was into horses, and after that I wanted to be a psychiatrist (ha!), but I couldn't imagine all that medical school and thought: Why not give my father's profession a whirl? He was successful in Hollywood. But I didn't take it seriously until my senior year at University High School in West L.A., and then the whole thing was such a blast I became a theater major at UCLA and studied acting independently with Jeff Corey. I had the good fortune to be directed by the amazing John Houseman in The Seagull when he was with the UCLA Theater Group, which was a professional company unrelated to the UCLA Theater Department. I also worked with Leonard Nimoy's theater company in L.A.
CF: May He Live Long and Prosper. What was that like?
KD: He's a lovely man. In those days Leonard was a struggling actor, a good teacher and director. He and his students formed a group and I played Jocasta, in Sophocles's Oedipus, our first production. I remember his telling of the nightmarish makeup experience he underwent acquiring Dr. Spock's ears during the pilot of course he had no idea of what lay in store for him, then, not the tiniest inkling of Star Trek's cult success! Later, at Theatre East in L.A: I did Nora in Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars, worked in a regional theater, and did some stuff in TV series and commercials. Then I put acting on a shelf I actually graduated from UCLA as a painter. And I married young, hoping to live the hip offbeat life as the wife of a film and arts professor. A life lived sideways is a life I'm familiar with.
CF: You mention your father, who was John Dehner, a very well-known television and film actor. Was he supportive of your interest in the business?
KD: He more than acknowledged my talent, but it was double-edged. He'd come backstage and say, "How did you do that!?"and there was not just admiration in his voice. The possibility that my success might mean losing his love was terrifying. The choices around this are all mine, of course.
CF: But you were close to him, growing up?
KD: He brought a lightness of spirit and the delight of play into our family, which was desperately needed. He was an inspired lunatic who once put me and my younger sister face down on our driveway and simulated beating us with a bullwhip, which stopped all the traffic on our street. Another time I thought he was going to kill me, and since I truly couldn't tell if he was acting or not, I ran. In some ways, my dad was more like the third child in the family. My sister and I were the occasional cherished relief for a career that was clearly more important, a busy one that went from the 30s and 40s into the late 80s. I had the intimate pleasure of seeing him on early radio shows, and hanging around the set with Paul Newman playing Billy the Kid in Left-Handed Gun.
CF: His career started in radio, then?
KD: Before that. He had a jazz band, and was a fine pianist. He was an animator at Disney before he ever became an actor. He had amazing skill he was one of artists who worked on Thumper in Bambi. But yes, he really got going in radio. He wrote and produced shows. As a radio commentator, he won a Peabody Award for his coverage of the first United Nations gathering in San Francisco. He was the voice of Paladin in Have Gun Will Travel. In fact, the part of Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke was originally written for him, but the producers wanted to do the radio show live, so he turned it down, to keep himself available for other work, a decision he came to regret.
CF: I know he was in dozens of films, including How the West Was Won, and Slaughterhouse Five, and Fun with Dick and Jane.
KD: Right, the original one with Jane Fonda and George Segal; they've just remade that. And of course he appeared on just about every television series anyone would have heard of. In the 80's he did Winds of War, and War and Remembrance, and films like The Right Stuff and Jagged Edge, which was his last. Finally, after dying regularly on the screen and as a young person that was devastating to watch him dieof emphysema in 1992. And that was a piece of theater if there ever was one.
CF: And, like him, you were interested in all the arts. But unlike him, you didn't stick long-term with the acting?
KD: No. But then I never got the feeling that my father was fulfilled creatively. Having to support a family narrows such choices, and I feel for that. For my part, I seem to have carried on the dilemma of this tradition. Having multiple talents may sound great, but for me it's been hard to manage; up until now, a curse, even.
CF: But you've done a huge range of things. That can't be bad.
KD: I've had a life is all. I've married and divorced twice, had two beautiful children who are still teaching me the most important things. I hooked up with a terrific jazz keyboard artist, Kent Glenn, and sang around L.A.
Graduated from the Columbia University MFA Writing Program. I loved that. Poetry. Fiction. I was editor of the literary journal; taught basic writing at NYU, too. I then went back to L.A. for a few years and wrote extensively for two multimillion-dollar IBM multimedia projects. I wrote a radio play about the Conquest of Mexico that was produced by KCRW. And in doing these projects, I discovered I had an affinity for technology.
CF: Seems a bit of a detour from the arts side.
KD: Ha. Maybe you can begin to see my affinity for the character in Blown Sideways. I taught myself graphic arts, web design. It was where the money was, and I liked it. In the early 90s, I developed and designed the bilingual New York consumer health website NOAH, which remains a nationally recognized online health resource today. I'm proud of that.
CF: You said bilingual?
KD: I learned Spanish listening to my kids' babysitter telling ghost stories round our kitchen table. And I've always had a real gut response to the Mexican, Aztec, well, all the pre-Columbian history and mythology. When I was really small, four or five, my father wrote down things I said about the Aztecs, if you can believe it. I've seen the notes.
CF: Is that what brought you to San Miguel?
KD: Yes, in the end. But my dear friend, Bev Donofrio, who had been living here for a while, was the one who put into my head the possibility of radical change and moving here. And so the hard questioning began. As much as I loved/love NYC and was deeply bonded to it after 9/11, I didn't want to wait until I was too old to fully explore my life. Scary as hell, I can tell you that, but there were a number of powerful threads that pulled me toward this decision. I decided on research and writing about a character in the Conquest of Mexico. It's a huge subject that still has me in its grip. I will pick it up again, but, through a series of unexpected and serendipitous events, I found myself in Alan Jordan's acting workshop, and then this role.
CF: Even though you weren't planning on pursuing your acting here?
KD: Exactly. In my pre-San Miguel life, I would have turned my back, and judged it a distraction. But now I'm considering, for the first time, that in addition to the irony at work, there's a strange life strategy. What if I've been acting all along without knowing it? So, when this opportunity appeared out of the blue, I thought, what do I have to lose? Man, all these years, I'd been looking through the wrong end of the telescope, thinking that I should choose one talent over the other. No, no. You choose them all, or you choose nothing. They're connected. You have to trust the process, and in saying "Yes" instead of "No," I found a terrific match in Alan. He supports creative choice with great sensitivity, so the class was a real joy, a discovery, an affirmation.
CF: And now he's directing you in this amazing one-woman show?
KD: Yes, Blown Sideways Through Life was a surprise hit Off Broadway in 1993. It's by Claudia Shear, and it's her tale of the 64 sometimes hilarious, but mostly catastrophic, jobs she'd held by the time she was 35. And, even more importantly, about how she never let her work define who she was.
CF: And you certainly have some affinity with Shear the ongoing search…
KD: Doing this play is a sideways shift, but it's also about completion, return, straightening out a crooked road. It's a journey to my roots, conjuring my father and the things he taught me, making them mine, cutting loose what isn't. This is the experience of letting myself happen. I am very grateful for it. There's a lot tied up in it my childhood, my personal history and a mountain of living. So, yes, allowing myself to be "blown sideways" is a good thing. And remember, sideways can sometimes be straight ahead, depending on how you look at it. Nothing is wasted, and everything is possible. It's like she says in the play, "Life turns on a dime you can stop for a doughnut and end up living in another country." Which of course, I have!
Blown Sideways through Life
A play by Claudia Shear
February 10-26
Thursdays-Saturdays, 7pm
Sundays, 5pm
Finnegan's Restaurant & Bar
Codo 7
130 pesos: show tapas and a
margarita
230 pesos: above plus Gill & Cartas cover
Seasoned actors join cast of The Diet Tribe
By Dean Taylor
"The Diet Tribe," which opens later this month at the Teatro Santa Ana, is a hilarious comedy with a serious theme: a healthy body.
Weight loss is a huge industry full of perils. There are promises but there are problems, and things don't always work out as planned. "Why are these extra pounds still with me when I have done everything to lose them?" is a familiar refrain. Another is, "Sure, I lost all that weight, but now it's right back again, with a few extra pounds added for good measure!"
"I wrote "The Diet Tribe," says playwright Don Connolly, "because I'm interested in health, and I am aware of the exaggeration surrounding many weight-loss promises."
Everyone connected with the production feels the play is highly appropriate in this era of burgeoning obesity.
Among the nine performers in the cast are several with solid theatrical experience. Narissa Ferrer has appeared on Broadway in "Two for the Seesaw," as well as on the TV sitcom "Sergeant Bilko" with Phil Silvers. Eight years ago, Narissa wrote and produced a musical about Pancho Villa with a cast of 60 at the Angela Peralta Theatre.
John Wharton has long been associated with theatre in San Miguel, having appeared in productions by the Playreaders, as well as the Players Workshop. By his own calculations, John has acted in "probably a hundred or so plays," starting at age 14 in "Inherit the Wind," and years later playing an adult part in the same play. Currently, he is establishing his own 60-seat theatre, complete with café and art gallery.
Doris Pyle holds a university degree in theatre and taught theatre for many years in Texas. She ultimately became a public school administrator. "That's where I experienced REAL acting," she declares.
Amy Chankin is a relatively new permanent resident of San Miguel. Over the years, she has appeared in numerous community theatre productions. Until retiring from Arizona with her physician husband, Amy had a long and productive career in the corporate world helping businesses turn a profit and traveling the world as a consultant.
The Diet Tribe
A play by Don Connolly
Tuesday-Friday
February 21-25, 8pm
Matinee, Sunday, February 26, 3pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Reloj 50
100 pesos
The Literary Cabaret fall in love again
By Meredith Beaumont (Feb 10, 2006)
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The Literary Cabaret dips into the world of the sensual, sexual and satirical to bring you their third production of the season, In Love Again. The play opens on Valentine's Day, February 14, and runs for four nights. |
Rick Davey, Marilyn Bullivant and Reesha Browning-a hilarious, hedonistic trio hailing from the British Isles-promise you an engagement full of their usual highjinks, highlighting both light and enlightening selections from the world of English literature over the past 500 years. This promiscuous program will take you into bawdy and boisterous Elizabethan England with the verse of the rather naughty clergyman, Robert Herrick ("On Julia's Breasts"), William Shakespeare ("Love sought is good, but given unsought is better"), and the tender and teasing poetry of John Donne. Then, onward to the restrained regimen of Victorian love, including some highly desirable ditties from the Music Hall era that brought us such songs as: "Now That You've Got Me What Are You Going to Do" and "I Was a Good Little Girl Till I Met You."
The roar of the Twenties will be featured in song and verse through Noel Coward and other lascivious luminaries …
I am no good at love,
I batter it out of shape;
I lie alone in the endless dark,
knowing that there's no
escape
Works by Sir John Betjeman, Roger McGough ("On having no-one to write a love poem about"), and the obtuse amorality of Harold Pinter take us up to and through the Swinging Sixties-and on to the current angst-ridden "Noughties" (00's) with the contemporary coquetry of Pam Ayres ("Will I have to be sexy at sixty?"), Wendy Cope ("Cuddling the new telephone directory, after I found your name in it, was going too far"), the Dixie Chicks, and more!
The Literary Cabaret In Love Again
Tuesday thru Friday, January 24-27, 8pm
La Cava de la Princesa, Recreo 3
50 pesos
Playreaders do Gurney
(Feb 10, 2006)
The Playreaders of San Miguel presents two one-act plays by A.R. Gurney. The Seduction of Bunny Stuntz is the story of how Bunny Stuntz, a hard-driving career woman, is undone when she cannot find the key to a box containing some very important items. In The Love Lesson, two university professors encounter great difficulties ending a course on love through history, which they have taught together. Both plays show how plans can go very awry.
In the first play, Marianne Koerner plays Bunny Stuntz; in the second, Sharon Frantz plays Professor Carroway and Jonathan Taylor is Professor Burgess. Christina Bautista, Robert Benjamin and Howie Hale feature in Seduction and Lesson. Ben Westbrock directs, and Eli Nadel handles lights and sound. Doors open at 7pm.
The Seduction of Bunny Stuntz & The Love Lesson
Wed thru Thursday, February 14, 15 and 16 7:30pm
St. Paul's Parish Hall
Calzada del Cardo 6
10 pesos
The Comedy of the Universe, variety show, strikes again…
By José Luis Mendoza (Feb 10, 2005)
One of the most entertaining shows of the season hits again, right in the funny bone! The Comedy of the Universe hilarious takes on the human condition has never failed to cause spontaneous eruptions of pure enjoyment and laughter. For five years now, this comedy company has been delighting San Miguel audiences at least twice a year, with all kinds of clean and joyful skits. This time the Troupe presents a series of skits called "With the Wrong People in the Wrong Place."
The Comedy of the Universe is known for its fast-paced vaudevillian repertoire that hits the mark, be it the ordinary or the sublime. The Troupe consists of a group of very talented young actors, led by me-José Luis Mendoza (the curly haired specimen that runs the Biblioteca movie house). Committed to deliver love, communicate joy and entertain by clean laughter, these shows have achieved cult status among the local audiences and promise comic surprises for visitors.
By popular demand the show includes crowd favorites "The Violinist" and "Femme Orquestra," and in homage to the great opera coming soon to San Miguel, "Carmen" as well as "A Hot Day in The Jardín."
Come to the theater for an evening of laughs with the wrong people in the wrong place. What better company could you keep?