By Cynthia Citron
LOS ANGELES — We have a live lamb on stage and she’s not housebroken—or, more accurately, stage-broken—so our first run-through was a bit redolent,” director Scott Paulin says. He’s talking about the newly revised version of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class, which makes its Los Angeles premiere this week at the Open Fist Theatre.
“This play, one of Shepard’s ‘memory plays,’ is his most autobiographical, and he’s made over an hour of edits for this new production,” Paulin explains.
Set in the early ‘70s, Curse tells the story of a dysfunctional family trying to keep its sheep and avocado ranch in the San Gabriel Valley in the face of crashing land values and predatory developers. “They are land rich and cash poor,” Paulin says, “and the family is coming apart.”
Paulin acknowledges that he feels a strong connection with Shepard because they have much in common. They both were raised as military kids and grew up in the San Gabriel Valley area (Shepard’s family had a small ranch in Duarte). Both their fathers were bomber pilots in World War II and came home “troubled and dark,” as Paulin puts it. “A whole generation of American males remained in turmoil after that war,” he says. “My father bombed small towns, killing lots of people, but he would never talk about it.”
At one point, Paulin’s father was shot down in Germany and subsequently attacked by villagers. “He was saved by the German military,” Paulin says. “In those days they took the Geneva Convention seriously. They believed the ‘rules of war’ needed to be followed.”
While Shepard spent only a year at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California, and then went on to work as a stable hand, orange picker, sheep shearer, busboy and drummer in a rock and roll band (the Holy Modal Rounders), among many other odd jobs, Paulin graduated from Pomona College, where he majored in political science. Although Paulin claims he is not a musician, he admits to “dabbling in blues harmonica” and “has been known to get up on stage and play a little.”
Eventually, however, both men wound up in theater — Shepard as playwright and actor and Paulin as actor and director. One of Paulin’s early roles as an actor, he remembers, was as the young son Wesley in Curse of the Starving Class. He was 26 at the time, the same age as Ian Nelson, the young man who plays that role in the current production. “When I played it back then,” Paulin says, “I saw it with the eyeballs of a boy on stage looking out on a world that was all about Wesley. Now, seeing it from this end of life’s experiences [Paulin is 61], and as a director, I see the role in its entirety. And I’m looking at a young actor who sees the role exactly the way I did when I was his age. It’s like directing myself.”
And how does he accomplish that feat? “With a gentle hand and as much good humor as possible,” he says. “For example, there’s a scene where Ian has to appear nude on stage,” he adds, “but the only thing he’s worried about in that scene is whether the theater will have its air conditioning on. He’s asked me about it three times already this week.” (For further clarification, look to the Seinfeld episode in which George got defensive about the effect of cold temperatures on certain body parts).
“Sam has made a number of significant changes in this new version of the play,” Paulin continues. “For instance, he’s changed it from three acts to two, which speeds up the play and makes it more powerful. And he’s updated the language, making the idioms more contemporary: changing ‘meatball’ to ‘dickhead,’ for example.
The play’s monologues often “are like an aria in opera,” Paulin says. “As an actor, I realize how difficult it is to deliver an aria, so we’ve got the monologues backed up with an original live score created by actor/composer John Bobek who plays the Dobro, a resonating guitar that makes a haunting, reverberating sound.
“And Juliette Goglia, a 15-year-old actress and songwriter who plays Emma, the daughter in the play, is an extraordinary vocalist and she’s set her own ‘aria’ to music.”
And then there’s Juju, “the most pampered lamb on the planet,” according to Paulin. “She just has the same line over and over. It’s ‘baaaaaa,’” he says. “But she appears to be ‘happy as a lamb’ on stage.”
In addition to directing Shepard’s plays, Paulin has worked with him as an actor. “Sam played Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, and I think he was responsible for getting me cast as astronaut Deke Slayton,” Paulin says.
“Sam’s plays always had political undertones,” he continues, “but over the years he’s gotten more and more overtly political. As for me, I’m as angry as I’ve ever been about the political situation in America. The middle class is clinging to the edge of the precipice with corporate America stepping on their fingers. We’re living in a corporate oligarchy and I fear for the next generation.
“The runaway development that Sam prophesied in Curse has already happened. Agriculture was pushed out in deference to low-cost housing. It was supposed to be ‘prosperity for everybody,’ but the profit motive made that dream impossible. In the part of Southern California where Sam and I grew up, they displaced the original culture, which was a wonderful way of life, and tried to replace it with a bedroom community for Los Angeles. It was supposed to be the West Coast’s Levittown, but it wound up as just a lot of dilapidated housing from the 1970s.”
Shepard now lives in New York and Kentucky with actress Jessica Lange, while Paulin, who started his acting career in San Francisco, returned to the Los Angeles area in 1980. He lives with his wife of 30 years, actress Wendy Phillips. Together, they founded the Second Story Theatre in 2001 and they currently teach a course at UCLA, Acting for the Camera. Wendy also teaches at USC. Their daughter, Jenny Dare Paulin, is an actress working in New York.
Paulin currently continues his acting career in addition to directing. He has appeared in literally hundreds of roles in film and television and currently has a recurring role as Jim Beckett in TV’s Castle series. He had also appeared with his best friend Joe Spano as a guest star in the series Hill Street Blues.
“Joe and I, as young guys trying to avoid the draft, became ministers in the Universal Life Church,’” he reminisces with a laugh, “and we officiated at each other’s wedding.” It was undoubtedly the role of a lifetime for each of them.
Curse of the Starving Class, produced by Laetitia Leon and Judith Scarpone, opens April 15; plays Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm; through June 4. Tickets: $25. Pay-what-you-can 4/17, 4/24 and 5/1.Open Fist Theatre, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; 323.882.6912 or openfist.org.
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Citron is Los Angeles bureau chief of San Diego Jewish World. She may be contacted at cynthia.citron@sdjewishworld.com This article is reprinted from LA Stage Times, published April 15th, 2011