Losers of World Find Solace From One Who’s Been There

SAN DIEGO â€”  Beth Henley used to consider herself a loser. Maybe that’s why the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright has a soft place in her heart--and her plays--for the sweet, gallant losers of the world.

And maybe that’s why, when Henley is asked to name the work she is proudest of, she does not pick “Crimes of the Heart,� which won her the Pulitzer and made her rich and famous, or “The Miss Firecracker Contest� that was released as the movie “Miss Firecracker,� starring Holly Hunter, now playing in local theaters.

No, her best play, as far as she is concerned, is “The Wake of Jamie Foster,� which bombed on Broadway and closed after just 12 days. She calls it a “very personal� piece that she is happy to see revived at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre’s Hahn Cosmopolitan, through July 23.

“It was based on my father’s death,� Henley said in her soft Southern drawl on the phone from Los Angeles, where she is working on a screenplay adaptation of a Reynolds Price book, “A Long and Happy Life.�

“I’m really just pleased that they’re doing it because I feel it should have a life even if it didn’t go well in New York.�

Henley’s father never believed that she would make anything of herself, and his unexpected death, after a brief illness in 1978, never gave her a chance to prove otherwise.

In “The Wake of Jamie Foster,� a man’s family copes with the unresolved emotional issues left by his sudden death, just as Henley had to do when her father died. There is the element of macabre comedy consistent with Henley’s work as the family butts awkwardly around the dead body laid out in the parlor. But she is also deadly serious about what she was feeling when she wrote it.

“Suddenly, someone drops out of your life, and you can’t talk to him again. How do you deal with something that bizarre? And, if you have something unresolved with that person, how do you resolve it by yourself?�

The last time Henley saw her father, she was an actress in Los Angeles, working days at a computer parts company and nights on a play--her first-- because she wasn’t getting parts. When she flew back to Mississippi to see him after he had a stroke, the last thing she remembers him telling her was to get a job.

“I said I wrote this play, and it was going to be produced in Louisville,� Henley recalled. “And he said, ‘Oh, now you’re writing plays,’ as if to say ‘Oh, now you’re going to fail at that.’ �

That play turned out to be “Crimes of the Heart,� but Henley’s father died before he could see her success.

“I think he would have been surprised,� Henley said with a catch in her voice. “I would have liked him to see it.

“All of my plays are based in very specific ways on real life. It may be incomprehensible to those who know me, but they are always based on emotional issues I’m dealing with. I don’t think I could stay sane if I couldn’t write.�

Henley has two sisters, but, although she drew on them somewhat for “Crimes of the Heart,� they were all based more on herself, Henley said. In “Crimes,� the sisters--one failing at marriage, another in show business and the other in her attempted withdrawal from the world--all shared “that feeling of coming home and having nobody understand why you don’t get jobs on commercials or soap operas or get your footprints in cement.�

That feeling of frustration fueled the play.

“I came out to Los Angeles to try to act, but it was just so difficult. It was so wonderful in college to act and say all these beautiful words and here, even if you get a job, you come and say two words on TV. That wasn’t the magic.�

Henley said she feels kin to all of her characters; the characters find themselves experiencing the lessons that Henley is feeling her way through.

“I never particularly have a message,� she said. “I just write my plays for myself to sort out things I don’t understand or am agonized by or confused by or in love with.� Like Carnelle in “Miss Firecracker,� Henley also once tried to dye her hair blonde, only to have it come up a shocking, attention-getting red. Like the mother and daughter in “The Debutante Ball,� to be done in London this fall, she understands “how people’s need for love really cripples them.�

“I think love is hard in every age. Love and death, that’s really all I ever think about.�

Unlike many modern playwrights who are associated with particular theaters or directors, Henley associates with “whoever will do the work.�

Indeed, there still seems to be a sense of wonder that anyone is doing the work at all, much less scrambling for an opportunity.

She still remembers crying in the parking lot of the Actors Theatre of Louisville, which premiered “Crimes of the Heart,� because she was sure the production would be so embarrassing to everyone.

“It was like giving this dinner party and being afraid that the meat would be dry and we should have gone to McDonald’s. People were all dressed up, and I felt like yelling to them that, ‘It’s just my play, go home!’ �

But the spectacular success of “Crimes� and spectacular failure of “The Wake,� both within the space of just a few years, changed her perception of herself irrevocably.

“It was awful,� she said of the critical reception of “The Wake,� “but what can you do? You feel terrible when your play closes on Broadway and you see this beautiful thing is going to die, and the wig lady is out of a job, and the actors will be out of work, and you’ve lost a half a million dollars for somebody just as you’ve fixed a new line for Act II.

“When my movie (‘Crimes of the Heart’) was panned, it was already in the can, everyone was already working on the next job. They don’t bring you the bad reviews at the party you’re having, like on Broadway. That was like a medieval massacre, a nightmare that dwarfed almost any disappointment.

“But my first reaction to that was that I was going to write more plays. I felt I had success with ‘Crimes,’ and now I’ve got money, and you can’t take that away. I guess it’s something Southern to say, ‘Great, you’re defeated, now it’s time to fight.’ No one ever told me I was wonderful before (‘Crimes). That dwarfs you. When someone told me I was awful, it just made me want to try again.�