FROM THE LA STAGE SCENE BLOG

by Christina Joy Howard  |  May 2, 2012

Jessica Botello, Hollie Meyer, Edwin Garcia, Sean Durrie, Noah Benjamin, Jason Ryan Lovett, Matt McCroskey and T. Michael Woolsten in "The Last Day"; Photo by Adam Sheridan Taylor

The past year has been an incredible journey into the darkest parts of myself. Was I on a drinking spree? No. Moonlighting as a prostitute? Not this time.

I was writing a play.

If you had told me what it would feel like to actually sit down and commit to writing a play, I never would have done it. It was agony. I separated myself from my friends and family, gained 30 pounds, and stopped caring what anyone thought of me. I parked myself in front of a computer screen, my teeth clamping down on cigarette after cigarette, often to get up after two or three hours without having written a single word.

Christina Joy Howard; Photo by David Muller

Or I would pack up everything and head to Peet’s in Larchmont, where I’d stake out a spot by the window until my meter ran out. Then leave with nothing to show for it except caffeine jitters and a bad mood. This went on for what seemed like an eternity.

Quite honestly, I have no idea how I completed The Last Day. I prayed a lot. I cried a lot. I questioned every decision I’ve made in my entire life. And at the end of the day, I gritted my teeth and kept going.

When I was in high school, I got the idea to write a story about my father’s involvement with the 1975 Saigon evacuation. I’m now 31 years old, and as I realize how long I’ve held this story in my heart, aching to tell it, terrified to screw it up, I can’t help but once again break down in tears in front of this computer screen.

Now my beloved work is currently running downtown at LOFT ensemble, the theater company I started when I was 27 with a group of my friends whom I enjoyed working with at another theater company. We gained access to an incredible loft space in downtown LA, thanks to Bob and Sherry Jason of City Hearts: Kids Say “Yes” to the Arts, where I taught Shakespeare to kids in underprivileged areas. I moved into their performance studio, a 4000-square-foot dance/theater/multi-purpose playground where much magic has been created over the past five years.

This solid group of artists is the reason The Last Day is such a special play, beyond the obvious implications of taking on a project that is so personal to me and my family. Your family of origin can only take you so far–it’s the family you create when you leave home that often takes you the next leg of your journey, as you not only discover who you really are, but who your inner artist is.

Jessica Botello, Sean Durrie and Noah Benjamin; Photo by Chelsea Coleman

The small group of friends who came with me when I decided to start a company trusted me to train them in a method called Viewpoints, an acting and movement technique used by Steppenwolf in Chicago and SITI Company in Saratoga. It’s a training method based on being grounded in the present moment, using space and time to create dynamic visual pictures, and building a powerful trust and love for your ensemble. Viewpoints was a spiritual balm for my soul. You can feel that energy in every production LOFT ensemble presents.

The Last Day is about my father’s involvement in the 1975 Saigon evacuation, yes. But it’s also about friendship, failure, fear, tenacity, and persistence. In writing a play about my father, I had to search deeply to discover who he is — this man who raised me to keep pushing, no matter how dejected I feel. Just as he kept pushing himself in one of history’s most tragic and weary defeats — the loss of a country that so much energy and effort was invested in — only to look back and wonder why so much was wasted. It’s a deep wound that affected not only my father and my family, but affected our entire nation. My desire to bring his story to the public — a story that many people have never heard — has become a burning desire and fierce passion.

My primary resource was a collection of audio tapes my father made during his harrowing three-week assignment in Saigon during April of 1975. In addition to recordings he sent back to my Vietnamese mother (already safe in the U.S. during the evacuation), he also carried a tape recorder around his neck on April 29, anxious for instructions as to how to leave the city safely in light of the rapidly advancing North Vietnamese Army. He ended up riding a helicopter out of the city, part of an experience that was visually captured by the iconic image –  featured on the cover of Time Magazine — of a chopper landing on the roof of the American Embassy.

Christina Joy Howard and her father Bruce Howard; Photo by Todd Kellstein

His escape came after three weeks of working around the clock to remove more than 40,000 people from Saigon. I grew up listening to his story told from these tapes, marveling at his cool collected voice as he watches the mounting chaos in a city doomed for defeat. He could have lost his life, but instead he saved many, and featuring the actual audio footage in this production allows me to share my awe and respect for this man and what he did with anyone who will listen.

Love can heal and soothe, but it can also ignite a fire within you that forces seemingly immovable obstacles from your path and clears a space for others to find their own artistic power. LOFT ensemble is a safe haven I created so other artists could discover this power within themselves, and I’d like to open our doors to you and to share this magic with anyone following a dream that often feels just out of reach.

The Last Day, LOFT ensemble, 929 E 2nd St., Studio 105, downtown LA. Sat 8 pm, Sun 7 pm, through May 27.  Tickets: $20. www.LOFTensemble.com. 213-680-0392.