In this disconnected time we’ve been living in, stop and think about how you and your grandpa have really connected — or not. Over time, did you two make a real understanding with how you each see the world? What if his memory is not what it once was?
Playwright Lauren Gunderson reached out to her grandpa, K.D., at just such a moment and her play, “The Heath,” began to take shape.
Thanks to famous actor John Larroquette, and the Arizona Theatre Company’s director, Sean Daniels, “The Heath” will be re-created as a full-fledged radio drama for ATC online audiences beginning Wednesday, April 14.
“Lauren’s work is fearless and hilarious (with chunks of science and Shakespeare, of course) and asks the question of our time — will we ever learn to look for similarities and not differences in those different from us? Can we lead with love and curiosity before it’s too late?” says Daniels, who first produced this play back East a couple years ago.
“When my grandpa died,” says Gunderson, “my grief and confusion started to really build the story.”
Trying to connect with a patriarch who died from Alzheimer’s, she put herself in the play as the admittedly “unreliable narrator” of this wondrous connection. Because one of the “superpowers of theater is to resurrect life in front of us,” she said.
To the audience, her own “Lauren” says, “What if you could summon King Lear, for example, and he shows up?”
And then suddenly, there is Larroquette playing the famous Shakespearean father and talking with Lauren like his daughter and to the audience in famous monologues from his mad scene out on England’s heath, where he actually believes he’s on the cliffs at Dover.
Lauren comes to believe if she can resurrect Lear maybe she can do the same with her grandpa K.D. using connections they already shared, like Atlanta baseball and bluegrass music and the power of hymns in sustaining us inside or outside church. She even learned to play the banjo to help create her new “self.”
“I tend to process the world in plays,” she says.
And then suddenly, there is Larroquette in his other role: Gunderson’s grandpa K.D., a South Carolinian who loved the South as much as his granddaughter longed to leave it. Larroquette is uniquely qualified to play this role if only because his grandfather helped raise him for the first 12 years of his life in New Orleans.
“My grandpa was, let’s say, interesting, tumultuous and challenging,” says Larroquette. A longshoreman in the busy port of New Orleans in the ’60s, his grandpa owned a duplex of shotgun houses in the 9th Ward where he would be gone for days sometimes having to sleep on rice bags in warehouses because of long hours.
“He was a quiet man,” says Larroquette, just like the introverted K.D. “He did not smoke or drink and he would let me hang out on the docks sometimes. Those were the times when kids could run free. Men would say, ‘If he gets hit by a train, he should be hit by a train.’”
Older than K.D., Larroquette’s granddad liked big band and swing music just at the time when teenager John was so taken with rock ’n’ roll and the music of the French Quarter — he even started working as a DJ there at age 18.
Larroquette rehearsed “The Heath” online just north of Portland in Washington state while Gunderson rehearsed from her home with a husband and two young boys in San Francisco. Daniels directed them on Zoom for weeks and says they are both very accomplished performers, though Gunderson has never been this personal on stage before and Larroquette has never done Shakespeare professionally before.
They all have very high praise for each other’s creativity and dedication, plus Daniels says, “Danny Erdberg, our sound designer, does far more than the usual quiet guide of the emotional journey. Here he is front and center leading the listening audience through the play, including lots of music.”
Gunderson even wrote four songs for “The Heath” including, “Storm Still” early on in connecting with her grandpa through time together outdoors in her youth. Listen for her other songs amongst the hymns and bluegrass favorites: “Let It Be Me,” “Grace,” and “Sugar Babe.”
Larroquette is no stranger to music and theater. Besides his famous TV roles on “Night Court” and “The John Larroquette Show,” he could be seen in his Tony Award-winning role opposite Daniel Radcliffe in the revival of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” Also, he could be seen recently on TNT in “The Librarians” and in “The Good Fight” on CBS with his longtime friend Christine Baranski.
“I never watch myself in roles,” he says, but watched some video clips of rehearsals from Daniels. “I did watch some scenes with Anthony Hopkins as King Lear to get the feel,” he says laughing “But I could slip into Lear — just not necessarily right on the nose.”
“The Heath” is the first of ATC’s virtual audio presentations. It will be followed on May 4 by “Somewhere Over the Border,” inspired by Reina Quijada’s real-life journey from El Salvador to the U.S. and L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”
Brian Quijada’s “Somewhere Over the Border,” directed by Reginald Douglas, embraces the factual and the fantastical in its depiction of one young girl’s pursuit of the American dream. As Reina (Gabriela Moscoso) travels north to the Mexico border, she gathers friends, faces down dangers and holds tight to the memory of the little boy she left behind.
Set in the 1970s the production is propelled by cumbia, Mexican mariachi boleros, American rock and hip-hop.
“Brian’s work delves into the larger question of where do we come from, and how is family constructed,” Daniels said. “In a musical over Zoom, which is no small feat, he is pushing all of us to identify what are the things that bring us together, and why can’t we so readily see them? How do we choose a better life for our family and for each other?”
