Brian Dykstra - "The Jesus Factor"

Here’s how Brian Dykstra describes George W. Bush: “My A.D.D.-suffering, dyslexic, drunk-driving Bush Klan president with a 13-minute attention span, leaky brain pan” — we pause here to omit a deprecating anatomical reference — the “LQ. of a cracked blue soap dish, the verbal skills of a glue-sniffing gerbil with social-anxiety disorder” with “that severely self-medicated wife (and who can blame her?).”

There are several Broadway shows the Republican delegates won’t be attending during their convention at
the end of the month, they say. “Avenue Q,” for instance, might not go over well with the “defense of marriage” set. One Off Broadway production you can be sure they won’t be flocking to is “Brian Dykstra: Cornered & Alone,” but Democrats and environmentalists are going to find it enormously satisfying.

It’s always dangerous to equate mere outspokenness with humor, but Mr. Dykstra’s exhilarating one-man show, which opened last night at the tiny Triad Theater on the Upper West Side, does more than call names. “This is a planet that has lost over half its coral reef in your lifetime,” he says. “I’m talking to the 20-year-olds.” As much as Mr. Dykstra, an actor and writer, dislikes Dennis Miller, his political polar opposite, he has a similar ranting skill and style. And a similar willingness to go over the line. “I totally understand assassination now,” he says.

Mr. Bush, the show’s primary victim, is not completely alone. Mr. Dykstra has other unkind words— for Justice Clarence Thomas, the film industry (“Mel Gibson is insane”), the C.I.A., the press (“Whatever happened to follow-up questions?”), gangsta rappers who do sneaker commercials, energy policy (“That oil monkey on our back — all he knows to do is grow”) and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (the people who gave us “This is your brain on drugs”). That last organization, supported by pharmaceutical companies, wants to keep
marijuana outlawed, he says, “because who’d need Prozac, Valium, Zoloft or Paxil if weed was legal?”

Mr. Dykstra did not care for Ronald Reagan, but he has a soft spot for his widow because of her support for stem-cell research. He imagines born-again Christians at the gates of heaven, complaining, “Why, Lord, why did you forsake us in our hour of need?” — when loved ones were suffering from Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease or spinal injuries. God answers: “What are you talking about? I kept sending you those magic cells that’ll cure anything, and you weren’t paying attention.”

“Cornered & Alone” has a message beyond invective. It even threatens to make audiences think about everyone’s role in the State of things. Maybe we’re just hoping the planet will expire before the terrorists blow us up, or vice versa, he says, “rather than get our unconsecrated foot off their Holy Land -and our greedy hand out from up under the burka of their oil reserves.” What we’re hoping, he says, is that no one notices that this huge mess is “our fault, as we rack up our year-end bonuses and live in ‘Matrix’-like ignorance.”

As for the likelihood of changing the world: “The 60’s didn’t do it,” Mr. Dykstra says. “Gandhi didn’t do it. Malcolm X didn’t do it. Acid didn’t do it.” Finally, he concludes, “And shockingly enough, apathy hasn’t worked up to now.”

Mr. Dykstra has too much to say to take time for an official intermission, -but he suggests that those who need a break take one while he reads the Declaration of Independence. It would be a shame to miss the reading, though, if it’s been a while since you, like many of us, heard or read the whole thing.

The only problem with Mr. Dykstra’s show is that it doesn’t start until a half-hour after he has taken the stage. First, there’s a long narrative poem, the sort that Victorian children used to recite for company. It’s clever but just a parlor trick, with hints of political comment devolving into the moral that a happy nation is one whose queen has a satisfying sex life. There’s some promising chat about Mr. Dykstra’s real motivation for doing a one-man show. (“I want to be a star. I want to play the lawyer on ‘Law & Order,’ not some innocuous, two-line crime-scene guy.”)

Then, just to test our patience, he recites another poem, somewhat less annoying but curiously apolitical, a tribute to the actress Janeane Garofalo. Fortunately, the audience is seated cabaret style and drinks are served.

-Anita Gates - New York Times

Brian Dykstra: Cornered & Alone
Reviewed By: Dan Bacaizo

As the Republican National Convention approaches, more and more of the city’s theatrical offerings seem to have a decidedly political bent -- and nearly all of them are critical of the current administration. Clearly, not all New Yorkers will be welcoming the GOP delegates with open arms; addressing “Georgie” and his fellow Republicans in his new solo show, Brian Dykstra states, “All your being here means to me is that you’re fucking with my commute.”

Brian Dykstra: Cornered & Alone is part comic monologue, part performance poetry, and part political rant. The writer-performer commands the stage as he riffs on everything from the Defense of Marriage Act to the death of Ronald Reagan. Dykstra does not dive headfirst into such material; after opening the show with a politically inflected spoken word poem, he banters with the audience about how he initially set out “to deconstruct the one-man show form” and provides some humorous examples of this. But once he does begin the more blatantly political portion of the evening, he doesn’t let up. When he’s not taking acerbic pot shots at Bush, he’s commenting on the environment, health care, and the war in Iraq.

Dykstra has seemingly boundless energy and a good rapport with his audience. As directed by Margarett Perry, he also knows how to modulate his rhythm, pace, and vocal inflections for maximum effect. His delivery is particularly notable in the various slam poetry pieces that he intersperses throughout the evening; he wraps his mouth around a plethora of tongue-twisting phrases and clever rhymes, speaking at a very fast clip yet managing to clearly articulate every word. At times, he is hysterically funny. But while Dykstra is able to elicit torrents of laughter and applause from his audience, he’s even more impressive when he stuns them into thoughtful silence. Though his main target is the Bush administration, he implicates all Americans in his critique.

Maruti Evans’s set is dominated by a large and somewhat tattered American flag at the back, rendered in shades of gray and white. It looms over Dykstra as a comment that America is not the vibrant, colorful, “good” nation that it thinks it is. According to this writer-performer, if the world can be broken down into “good” and “bad” -- which is what George W. Bush would like us to believe -- we’re the ones wearing the black hats.

This is something that Dykstra would like to change. He’s not naively idealistic; he knows it will take more than a one-man show by a political comedian to make a difference. But he’s certain that apathy won’t help matters, so he does what he can. Equipped with a sharp wit, a poetic flair, and just the right amount of cynicism, he has put together an engaging and timely performance piece that won’t win him any friends amongst Republicans but should be seen by everyone.
- Theatre Mania

Brian Dykstra and the narcotic of
imported crude


The Tour de Rants
by Tom Sellar
February 12 - 18, 2003
That Damn Dykstra
(The Boxed Set)
By Brian Dykstra
Access Theater
380 Broadway
212-352-3101

Brian Dykstra is working hard to turn ranting into a new genre, and if he succeeds comedy may not be safe. When his compulsive characters find the right words and rhythm, their verbal flights take off in psychological, political, and just plain pathological directions—leaving some badly skewered subjects in their wake.

That Damn Dykstra (the boxed set) makes an evening out of eight one-acts, slams, and monologues, some of which are performed by the actor-playwright. Dykstra usually gives his sketches simple foundations: roommates debate how to paint the patio furniture; women skewer a common ex in a clinic waiting room; actors argue about a performance. But each scene soon escalates through looping meta-logic and fast talk, frequently rising into an obsessive-compulsive delirium.

What’s the difference between designating a stairway “out of service” and “out of order”? A middle-management woman, denied access, wants to know. She interrogates a security guard, and in the ensuing conversation they riff on servitude, servicing, and the “service economy,” among countless other fine points. Elsewhere Dykstra’s contentious creatures argue over “primary” versus “base coats” of paint, wonder if they can describe a mosaic as “Mexican-y,” and catalog insults after a catfight (“You said Twitches’ and followed it up with ‘wenches’?”).

Director Margarett Perry bookends the comic sequences with two solo rants performed by the author (who also regales the audience halfway through with his cranky thoughts about the production and its unfortunate titling). Dykstra opens with a slam in lyrical free fall, in which he spins the tale of Jimmy Jack Rude’s come-ons to a Mean Queen. In red trench coat and wraparound shades, Dykstra nods to each character as he rides the rhymes; as Jimmy whispers entreaties into the Queen’s ears, Dykstra glides into a soft scat and the word flow feels unstoppable. He closes the show with a jarringly topical solo, returning the rant to its angry primal form. With indignation and disgust Dykstra exhorts his audience to “Just Say No” to “Enron fucks,” “couch-potato thighs,” and “the narcotic of imported crude.”

A few scenes stretch beyond their natural life span, but saying that Dykstra overwrites would be missing the point: By definition a~rant courts excess. In the best sketches Dykstra displays striking comic powers: His people are both tortuously rational and obsessively doting, and he often builds their conjectures into absurd and hilarious dimensions. An early sequence, pitting a would-be environmentalist against an apparently insensitive lout, even brings to mind Shakespeare’s cunning clown scenes; in amicable but competitive verbal sparring, the jester twists his challenger’s words and triumphs. When the writing occasionally loosens elsewhere, the neuroses Dykstra dwells on can come across as standard Seinfeld-like harping on ordinary minutiae (as in a dialogue about watching paint dry and water boil). But when Dykstra trains his accusatory eye and ear on the smug fools among us, he can make you think as hard as you laugh; as he asserts at the close, “I’m here to tell/they’re going to hell.”

- The Villiage Voice

10/25/07

Kitchen Theatre regular audiences easily remember Brian Dykstra as the overbearing, philandering husband in “A Marriage Minuet” or the aggressive lawyer in his own play “Clean Alternatives.” Both roles called for dynamic force and verbal fireworks, and Dykstra delivered in spades.

But in his explosive new play, “Strangerhorse,” now in its world premiere at the Kitchen, Dykstra leaves the clash of personalities to others. His own role is of a contemporary Sioux, family name Strangerhorse, whose brief story quietly but powerfully bookends the play.

None of Dykstra's flashing-eyed comic expressions here, only craggy features and tired eyes squinting against the sun. His speech bears the blunted, lilting Indian cadence. In worn Western clothes, complete with dusty cowboy hat and bandana, Dykstra seems so iconic a Native American that one audience member later asked if he wasn't, in fact, of that heritage.

Strangerhorse's tale of a great-grandfather's lesson, one that saved his life at the age of nine, is followed by the play's main action: a 180-degree turn into a stylish New York City apartment shared by two gay men, whose loving relationship is gradually shredded by the intrusion of a stranger.

Kent Goetz designed the tasteful rooms, adding at the upper perimeter of the rear wall a glimpse of ghost-white wood and barbed wire fencing, as from a reservation or prison, reminding us that the urban characters are still marginalized and constrained. Terésa Sears' lighting sculpts the space, reflecting the moodiness of the central action. Don Tindall's sound (including ironic refrains of “Cherokee Nation”) and Hannah Kochman's perfect costumes complete the setting.

Director Margarett Perry, who frequently collaborates with Dykstra and directed “Clean Alternatives” and “A Marriage Minuet” here within the last year, has returned to shape this new production. Her vision is perceptive and her cast dazzling: three seasoned New York actors and a young California newcomer.

The gay couple is Zach, played by Matthew Boston (the frustrated professor of “A Marriage Minuet”) and Graham, by Tyrone Mitchell Henderson (of this past spring's “Yellowman”). Zach's ordinary job as a hospital receptionist hides his class comfort. Graham is the homemaker - creative cook and careful housekeeper, maternally assuming all responsibility for the party they're throwing that evening for which Zach, predictably, has forgotten to pick up the fresh pasta.

Dykstra creates a compelling, authentic relationship between these two men, one that's tender and loving but susceptible, like all relationships, to jealousy, social inequity, and above all personal insecurities.

Much later and after the stranger's disturbing appearance, when their tiny friction over Zach's forgetfulness (and more) has escalated into a full-out quarrel, Zach isn't above hurling “My trust fund pays your rent” at his lover. Graham zaps back “My assh*le pays my rent.”

In Dykstra's own words: “Strangerhorse” explores “the politics of relationships, which may prove to be the most insidious political negotiating we ever have to do.”

The two men have to negotiate not only their gayness in a straight society and their personal economic disparities, but ultimately their ethnicities: Zach is white and Jewish; Graham is light-skinned African American.

Dykstra is a fierce social and political critic, so it's not surprising every play he writes tears into the phony fabric of American culture. (His latest solo piece, “The Jesus Factor,” a rant against religious hypocrisy, will be playing six nights in the Kitchen Sink Series, between Oct.30 and Nov. 11).

You may worry he's laying it on too thick: dealing with gay, working class, Native American, and black oppression in one big soup. But to Dykstra's credit, you never feel oppressed here by the politics. Even with the unusual counterpoint of Strangerhorse's framing story, the play at every moment is about real people, real emotions, real strains in the human fabric that arise from and yet transcend racial and class differences.

Part is this authenticity is the play itself, but much of it is due to the breathtaking acting of Boston and Henderson. Both men's roles are complicated and nuanced, their characters distinct yet equally intellectual and razor-sharp.

Boston's Zach is the less flashy role; Henderson's Graham is handsome, charismatic, and verbally dazzling (in him, Dykstra's own mania for language surfaces). Zach can pass as straight; Graham is loud and proud. Not surprisingly, Graham is more emotionally expressive, often reminding Zach that “I'd marry you in a heartbeat.”

Zach's holding back reflects, we ultimately sense, his own buried homophobia and lack of self-worth. He keeps from Graham little things (how his parents have called each year to wish him a Happy Gay Pride day) as well as big (the reason why he returns home, the night of their party, with $15,000 in bills stuffed into a paper bag inside his leather satchel).

The men's love and trust progressively frays under their confrontation over the mysterious money. What the audience has seen is that earlier, Zach's routine day at the hospital was interrupted by the arrival of a street-smart black kid, about 16, carrying that paper bag of cash and dumping it onto Zach's desk. It's to pay for his grandmom's recent surgery; she's his heart, he says, and we and Zach have no doubt the money is the spoils of his drug deals.

T or T-Rex, as he styles himself, all mumbling macho charm and spirited arrogance masking his own insecurities, is strikingly played by Ithaca College freshman Nick Barb. A musical theater major recently from the L.A. County High School for the Arts, Barb commands the stage in this, his first “straight,” non-musical role.

When T shows up the morning after at the couple's apartment, needing his cash back, the stakes soar and sparks fly. Everything each of the three men knows about his identity, security, and self-worth is on the line in their dramatic encounter. And inevitably, what we audience members assume about the uneasy truces in our own lives and society is equally challenged.

The Kitchen Theatre has always been devoted to new plays, and it takes particular risks whenever original work is premiered in the mainstage season. But the risk in producing “Strangerhorse” is well rewarded. Any new staging is a test of a play's legs, but this one is already sturdy. OK, the pasta argument goes on too long. But this is a rare false note in this intense portrait of love and betrayal in a compromised society.

“Strangerhorse” runs at the Kitchen Theatre through Nov. 11. Tickets are $19-$34 and are available at the Clinton House Ticket Center, by calling 273-4497, or online at www.kitchentheatre.org.

-Barbara Adams

(http://www.ithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071025/ENTERTAINMENT03/710250346/1082) - The Ithaca Journal

Brian Dykstra's fruitful relationship with the Kitchen Theatre continues next week when he performs his one-man show “The Jesus Factor” as part of the KTC's Kitchen Sink Series.

“It's about the political hijacking of a religious belief system that some are OK with, and others are not,” Dykstra said. “I'm more a fan of Jesus than religion, and that comes out in the show.”

Dykstra is performing in the Kitchen Theatre's production of “Strangerhorse,” which he wrote. He debuted as actor and writer at the Kitchen last year with his play “Clean Alternatives;” this summer, he acted in “A Marriage Minuet.”

Dysktra's one-man show “Cornered and Alone,” which ran off Broadway for four months in 2004, received positive reviews, including one from Anita Gates in the New York Times that brought the ire of the National Rifle Association and Rush Limbaugh. “This conservative group TimesWatch, who decides their job is to out all the left-leaning Times articles, took quotes from her review and put them online. Then the NRA and Rush Limbaugh pull those quotes and said I'm anti-guns and anti-Bush and I end up on their watch list — whatever that is.”

Dykstra began work on “The Jesus Factor” after the 2004 election.

“It came out of a series of e-mails I was sending back and forth with a friend of mine who lives in L.A.,” Dykstra said.

“Basically, we were talking about how it is possible that we live in a country that we don't recognize — at all. He's a northern California, Marin-County liberal, and I live in New York City, where if you meet a Republican, you really should sit down and talk to him because he's the only one you're going to meet for a month. So it's hard for us to imagine 40 people who voted for Bush, let alone more people who have ever voted for anyone.”

Having developed a form of spoken-work poetry along with a more visceral style he calls “rants” — see www.briandykstra.net for examples — Dykstra whittled down the e-mails into a more manageable form.

“There are five or six long spoken-work poems interspersed with the rants and some jokes,” Dykstra said. “When I was working on it, my director kept saying ‘More jokes.' Oddly, it's actually stand-up form, but I'm not following the rule of standup rule that says every 30 seconds the audience had better be laughing, otherwise you're losing them.”

Compared to its predecessor, this one is different, according to Dykstra.

“Pre-2004, it was sort of funny to talk about how stupid this president is,” he said. “Now, it's not funny — it's scary. So I don't make the kind of fun of this president that we used to be making, because we were convinced he was leaving. Now, things are funny about him, but they're funny in that stomach-turning way.”

Dykstra has performed “The Jesus Factor” in New York City and Los Angeles. The reaction in New York was “borderline fanatical worship,” he said. “We did it at a smaller house in L.A., and it had a better response at the curtain call, but they were very careful with what they allowed themselves to laugh out loud at. You could feel them start to laugh, and then judge, ‘maybe this isn't politically correct.' The New York mentality is, ‘Thank God, someone is saying what we believe.' The L.A mentality is, ‘That guy is saying something I didn't know a lot of people believe, even though I believe it.'

“What I've discovered is that the most religious people who come to see it — those who self identify as religious — have been very supportive. They're saying, ‘You're making a real pro-Christianity argument, as opposed to what's been bastardized by the Right,' which I think is fine. But don't get me wrong, I'm not pro-religion.”

Even though he said he got hate mail after “Cornered and Alone,” Dykstra said he doesn't worry about being politically correct. “There's no reason to keep going if you're going to self censor,” he said. “There's enough of that in all other parts of this business. I don't have to be successful doing this; there's no image I have to protect, like I'm a famous comedian branching out. I'm saying exactly what I want to say. It seems to be working again.”

By Jim Catalano
Journal Staff - Ithaca Journal