BWW Interviews: Jaston Williams Talks BLAME IT ON VALENTINE, TEXAS

One of the most exciting aspects of theatre in Texas is sitting in the audience while Jaston Williams, of GREATER TUNA fame, takes the stage. His charisma and charming personality completely mesmerize and enchant audiences. Recently, I had an opportunity to catch back up with Jaston Williams, and he toldme about his recent performance as Truman Capote in TRU at Austin's ZACH Theatre and his upcoming production of his solo show BLAME IT ON VALENTINE, TEXAS at Galveston's The Grand 1894 Opera House.

Me: Let's start by catching up a little. Since last summer's production of CAMPING WITH GASOLINE, you revived your production of TRU on the ZACH Theatre's Wisenhunt Stage in Austin. What was that experience like?

Jaston Williams: It was incredible. I had done TRU before, about 11 years ago with the same director. The director was my first acting teacher in college, so we go way, way back. I had been so connected to the world of comedy and all of that, that I just naturally went for all the laughs the first time around. And, it was very successful. This time, in really analyzing the script, I realized that the play had a lot of comic line and many funny stories because he [Truman Capote] was an incredible Raconteur, but it is also a very, very sad. The play is really about dealing with alcoholism, and how it can destroy a life, and how it can allow you to get so grandiose and to think that you are so powerful that you can say or do anything. There is an amazing sadness to it. It [the revival] was more dramatic. I remember telling the director, after we started working on it, "I'm going to have to sober up to play a drunk. This is hard." And it was. But it was extremely well received. We staged it in the round in a theatre that had about 120 seats in it, so it was really like being in his [Truman Capote] New York apartment.

To play someone like Truman Capote, you know, I just consider him one of the best in terms of great American writers. I just will always hold Capote up. And, I think his work got diminished somewhat because of his notoriety as a personality. He was not only a writer, he was a star. His biggest job eventually became being Truman Capote. I'm sorry that more writing didn't come out, but I think 100 years from now, in the universities, they'll be teaching IN COLD BLOOD, CHRISTMAS MEMORY, and they'll be teaching him as a short story writer extraordinaire. And then he was an incredibly brave person about his personal life. He just didn't care who knew anything about him or about his homosexuality. He didn't have time to be bothered. It was a rare opportunity to play somebody like that. I've actually talked to Maureen M. Patton at The Grand [1894 Opera House] about bringing TRU to The Grand, and we hope to be able to do that at some point.

Me: In between performing CAMPING WITH GASOLINE, TRU, and bringing BLAME IT ON VALENTINE, TEXAS to Galveston's The Grand 1894 Opera House this summer, have you been developed any new material?

Jaston Williams: Yes, I have. I've been working on a novel whenever I'm not under deadlines to do a performance. It's set in the Texas Panhandle in a small town in 1967-68, which was kind of a seminal year in American culture. I'm loving it. The problem I'm having is I just create characters. You just come up with a new character, and you love them so much. I'm going to have to really get in and edit this thing or get a good editor and let some of it go because it's really hard for me not to take it all. Once I create a character, then I get totally into them. (Laughs) But, I'm loving the process.

I guess one could call it a coming-of-age novel, but it much more than that. It's a novel about everything that was going on in the world in '67-'68-from the war in Vietnam and the cultural changes to the Civil Rights Movement, and just the amazing cultural change that happened that year in cinema. It was a year when some really amazing films came out that were very different than anything we had seen before in American cinema, like The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Many books have been written about that year, but it's never been written from the perspective of a small town in the panhandle of Texas, so I'm having a ball with that.

Me: That sounds really good.

Jaston Williams: I'm real excited about it, and I'm loving it. I get involved in theatre, and I have to stop. And, it just drives me crazy.

I've also been working on a thing-I did a performance last week with Joe Ely, an incredible performer and musician, and Jo Carol Pierce, who is also an amazing musician. We just did a piece last week at the State Theatre in Austin called IS THERE LIFE AFTER LUBBOCK? We all grew up in the Lubbock area, and we preformed and read poetry, they sang songs, and we told stories about the craziness of life in Lubbock. And there's so many major artists, writers, and musicians that came out of there. We just tried to make the audience feel like they were sitting in our living room and listening to it. It was a smash. People went crazy. We encouraged people to wear their house shoes and drink longnecks. So, it was kind of like sitting in a living room and listening to three Lubbock crazies tell stories. It was a lot of fun.

Me: You have a knack for skillfully making the audience laugh while warming their hearts with your autobiographical stories. How do you think you achieve this?

Jaston Williams: You know, there was a time, as a writer, especially with all the TUNA stuff that you go, "Ok, what are they going to like? What's going to please them? What do we need here to get this comic line going?" There was a lot of heart in TUNA, but it was all written within individual characters. I was taking things that were heartfelt to me, but I was putting them in another voice. At a certain point, when I started writing the autobiographical stuff, I just realized that you just can't be afraid to do that. You can't be afraid to humanize this stuff. And, I think, when you're talking about family, friends, growth, childhood, or the effect of religion in your life it's bound to be funny. But, it's also bound to have heart.

I think sometimes people, when they are dealing with comics or comedians, I think part of what audiences like and like to believe is that it's always this way. The person is always funny. This person can laugh at anything, and then you realize that no, this person has suffered the loss of a child, this person has watched his parents pass, this person has dealt with another child who has serious special needs. That's all me too, and when people start to see that side of me, I think they relate to it more.

You know, the great comic Jonathan Winters just died recently, and he was one of my favorite people. He could make me laugh more than anybody I've ever known. He really killed me, but there was a side to Jonathan Winters that was very human, very kind. He had enormous sadnesses, and he saw life more. You know, Jonathan [Winters] always struck me in just the one time I met him, but also in conversations I heard about him and the stuff I read about him, as being as much a poet as he was a comic. So, I guess, I'm finding the poet in me too, and I'm sure enjoying it.

Me: What was your inspiration for BLAME IT ON VALENTINE, TEXAS?

Jaston Williams: Well, this is interesting. I had done two other shows. One called COWBOY NOISES and one called I'M NOT LYING. A few years ago, some friends of mine, in Lubbock-they had a community theatre there-asked me to come in and do some kind of benefit. And I said, "Well, we can't really come in and do TUNA because it'd be way too expensive to mount, and all of that." But, I said, "You know, I have some individual stuff." The performance was happening on Valentine's Day, and oddly enough one of my favorite pieces that I had written takes place in Valentine, Texas.

I actually made my theatrical or show business debut in Valentine, Texas, when I was four years old at a dance recital. Valentine has about 20 people. I mean, it's out in the middle of nowhere in West Texas. I really messed up this dance recital. I was the only boy, and I was really upset about that. So, I totally destroyed this dance recital, and the audience loved me. They loved me! (Laughs) They did! They went wild. I became a star! And my corp de ballet, boy those little girls turned on me. (Laughs) They were really mad, but anyway.

So, I told them, "Well, I have this piece about Valentine." And they said, "Well, can you put that in the title?" And I said, "Well, let's call it BLAME IT ON VALENTINE, TEXAS because that's where it all started." But what I did was I pulled together certain pieces from I'M NOT LYING and certain pieces from COWBOY NOISES, and I created a new show. And, it's amazing because I think these pieces work better in this new combination than they ever worked in the original. So, that's kind of what happened.

I start with the dance recital, where I just created havoc in Valentine as a four year old in top hat and tails, and then I have a whole section about my best friend in childhood. He was a big boy and I was a little bitty guy, and he protected me. (Laughs) I don't want any parents to get upset about this, but he taught me how to cuss. He was real good at it, and it was kind of a freedom. It was just something that we did together that nobody ever knew about. Two fourth graders just cussing up a storm by themselves. And he remains an incredible friend to this day. And you think about, well, we were kids then. We were just two little crazy boys sitting in one bedroom or the other and cussing. You never realize that years later, you become parents. You have children of your own. He raised a child that was practically declared dead half a dozen times. His child was practically born with cancer, and Mike took such good care of his child. They just kept working, and this child, now, has totally recovered, and he's a doctor. He's a doctor! And you think, two little boys, sitting in a room cussing, never realize with that innocence you have together that someday you're going to be required to be as tough as anybody in the world. And we're still good friends, and we stay in touch. That is the second piece and it's a very funny piece.

Then, the third piece is one I wrote about my mother. My mother was 86 years old, and legally blind, deaf in both ears, using a walker, and she was still driving a car. There were whole organizations, active groups of people in West Texas, who were trying to stop her. (Laughs) Including her family. It's a piece about trying to take the car keys away from my mother, called "Killing Momma." And my mother, you know, I'm not this way for nothing. You think Vera Carp was a mess? My mother was something else.

The last three pieces are really about the nature of fatherhood. There's one piece about when my life was saved by a hired hand on our farm. My older brother's pig was about to eat me. I'm not making this up. (Laughs) And this guy saved my life, and I realized that all the hired hands on our farm were father figures to me, along with my own. And then, in the second act, I have a piece called "Cowboy Noises," which is about my own father. It's a retelling of the night that The Beatles came on Ed Sullivan, and my father had a complete and total nervous meltdown. It was just (Laughs) one of the funnier things. And he was a real cowboy. So, he would make these noises like you're herding cattle, and, oh my God, he was screaming at the set and making these cowboy noises like he was trying to make it go away. It was one of the funniest things on earth. And, of course, I loved them, so that totally upset him. And I realized years later that my father was just seeing something change. He was seeing something come into my world that he didn't understand, and he was trying to protect me from it, you know. He was being a good parent, but it was funny, funny, funny. I mean really funny. And I have talked to so many people of my generation who talk about that night. Everybody has their memories of that night that The Beatles came on, and I tell you what, the West Texas cowboy fathers did not hold up well for all of that. They really did not (Laughs) hold up at all for it.

The last piece is called "The Screaming Part of China," and it is about my journey to go find my son. It's about being a Texan alone in China for two weeks with this seven-year-old boy, who is such a beautiful and wonderful child. But, when I got him, he was a wild thing. He was a Wild Kind of country kid. He was making a lot of noise, and he was scaring me. I didn't know if he was mad at me or if he was just really, incredibly loud. Have you ever seen the old Warner Brother's cartoon where Sylvester the Cat will be sitting there, then Speedy Gonzales comes up behind him and screams, and then the cat is hanging there from the ceiling?

Me: Yeah.

Jaston Williams: Well, that was me. The kid would come up from behind you and yell something in Chinese, and I was like, "Oh my God! What have I done?" So, I asked the guide who was with us, and she was this wonderful woman, and I asked her "Is he mad at me? Because he's screaming a lot." And she said, "Oh no, he's from the screaming part of China." And I said, "Well, I didn't know there was a screaming part of China, and I would have loved to have that information coming in."

I think, maybe, "The Screaming Part of China" is the best piece I've ever written. It's all about Culture Clash. There is a scene in a bus terminal in China, I won't ruin it for you, but it was East meets West. Boy, I turned into a cowboy and went right to the front of the line. (Laughs) So, it starts with me being a four year old in Valentine, Texas and ends with me adopting a boy in Northern China, and we just circle around through life, all the way from one end to the other.

Me: Once a show like BLAME IT ON VALENTINE, TEXAS is written, how do you go about preparing it for staged performances?

Jaston Williams: Well, I have a really good director. His name is Scott Kanoff. He's now teaching and directing at Butler University in Illinois. He's an amazing, amazing director. He has a real sense of minimalism-only use what you have to use. And he also has an incredible ear for language and writing, and I was so lucky to have that because he is very sensitive to my needs. He knows when someone writes something they are very attached to it, and yet it is his job to say, "I think this is too much," "This word is confusing here," "This sentence. I think you've already said this," "What about reversing these lines," or "What about putting this paragraph later?" And his approach to directing is that he likes you to discover it as you go. At a certain point in rehearsals with Scott, I will always say "Ok, Scott. We've gone with the flow for about ten days. Now, let's make some specific decisions," and he's fine with that. But he likes you to kind of find it organically, what's comfortable with you. And then, he makes it look better.

He's just a really brilliant man. He taught directing at The University of Texas for a while, and now he's at Butler, and UT is a lot worse off for him being gone; I'll tell you that. It's a very free flow process. He has already directed all of my stuff. At this point, we've done it so much that I kind of just get together on my on and, with the stage manager, just re-familiarize myself with the blocking. But, the actual process is slow and it's painstaking.

Scott really loves that I can just walk up and start talking with an audience. He says, "That just really amazes me. You will go out to introduce yourself to an audience (Laughs), and you have no idea what you're going to say and they love you." I guess I'm just lucky. At some points, I'm more comfortable in front of an audience. I've spent so much time in my life in front of an audience, that's about my most comfortable place to be.

Me: What do you hope audiences take away with them after seeing BLAME IT ON VALENTINE, TEXAS?

Jaston Williams: Well, I hope they'll appreciate their father's more. You know, or it'll make them think about their fathers or being a good father. Fatherhood is a tricky thing. I was extremely lucky in my life. I had a really good father. He was as crazy as the day is long in some ways, but he was a really, really good father. I know a lot of people in the world have father issues. There are a lot of fathers that don't step up to the late, but there's a lot of them that do. So, this is about fathers, about being a father. If you're father was a good father, I suggest you bring him to the show for father's day weekend. I think it's a good salute to fathers. If you have father issues, then come. It can be healing. And for those that are fathers or will be fathers, I think it will be good for them too. We intentionally staged this on Father's Day weekend. So, bring you dad, bring your son, or bring your daughters. Bring anything but your pets. Don't bring your pets. (Laughs)

You know, I remember in an interview one time with Cher, she was talking about being in the car with her boyfriend, her daughter Chastity, who's now Chaz, and her son. Her son was really sad His father hadn't called, and he hadn't seen his father in a long time. Cher and her boyfriend stopped the car, and she said, "Ok, Elijah, look around." She said, "Only one person in this car had a good father. Chastity had a good father." She said, "I didn't have a good father, my boyfriend didn't have a good father, and you didn't have a good father. You're not alone. You're not alone." You know, I'm a father twice over. There was a time in my life where I was not a good father, but I became one. I became a very good father to my first son, and I'm a good father to my second one. That's important to me. It's never too late to be a good father.

Me: Family is a big part of BLAME IT ON VALENTINE, TEXAS. What draws you to that topic?

Jaston Williams: I guess I've just had such a unique and wonderful family. This is funny (Laughs). They were crazy as hell, you know. I look at pictures from the old pioneer photo albums that my family has, and my mother's family moved into what is now Comanche County and Brown County while the Comanchees were still there. I mean, that's a tough crowd. I look at the pictures of my distant relatives, especially the women, and think "Oh, those poor Comanchees. They had no idea." (Laughs) "They had no idea (Laughs) what the word savage meant!"

And I've often joked that one reason I adopted my son from China-there's some Austin Hippies who said, "Well, don't you want to have you own kid?"-is that I know my gene pool. I know my gene pool. I'll take my chances with a stranger from Asia any day of the week. And it doesn't mean that I don't love my son because I adore my family, but we're a really unusual mix. And there's an enormous amount of humor.

My parents were both great storytellers. They were very well educated people. My parents both had college degrees back in a time in West Texas where that was an absolute rarity. They were bilingual. They were really sharp people, but there was another side to them that was just West Texas wild, crazy, and confrontational. That shaped me. I doubt I'd be the actor, writer, or any of the things that I've become if I didn't have the family that I did.

I mean, my older brother Corky-people think I'm the crazy one in the family. I'm really not. My older bother takes the gold medal hands down. He's truly amazing. I mean, he's like Yosemite Sam. I mean, he really is. And he looks like Yosemite Sam. He's about 5'2"-a little tiny cowboy. Corky's about 75 now, but he can take you down. He is one funny individual. In fact, one time he was performing with us in THE FOREIGNER, and some cowboy came backstage after the show. He was an older cowboy guy, and he asked me if he could speak to Corky Williams, and I said, "That's my older brother. I'll go get him." I went to go get him, and I said, "Well, Corky, there's an old cowboy here that thinks he knows you." He said, "Did he seem hostile?" I said, "No. (Laughs) He seemed real nice." And this guy, he asked Corky, he said, "Are you the Corky Williams that was found naked in the lobby at the Blackstone Hotel during the Fort Worth Stock Show in 1957?" Corky thought for a minute and said, "It rang some kind of a bell." (Laughs)

So, you know, I came from one of those kind of wild, pioneer families. And another thing about my family and growing up out there is that Far West Texas and especially the Panhandle were kind of the last wild spaces in this country. It was pretty much where the natives, and it was definitely where the Comanchees, made their last stand. It was settled much later. We are the grandsons of the pioneers. It was a tough and vibrant group of people, very hard working, and they told stories. That was the only entertainment they had. There weren't bookstores. There weren't libraries for the most part. They told stories. And they passed that down. So, what I'm doing with this show-it's just a contemporary take on an old tradition, you know.

Storytelling is getting quite a rebirth now, and I think that's real important. I think one thing that is really helping it is that there's been so much texting and so much Twittering, Tweeting, and Facebooking that is so limited in what you can say, and it has no sound to it. It has no inflection, no pause, and no heat. It's just information. I think that's why people are hungry for sound. They're hungry for inflection. They're hungry for timing. And, you know, they're hungry for something that is longer than just a few characters on a keypad, and I'm trying to provide that.

Me: How do you juggle being a father and a performer?

Jaston Williams: (Laughs) That's pretty crazy. You realize, of course, I have help with Kevin-we're a two-parent household-and between the two of us, we get it done. But, it's not easy. I used to, when I was younger, go out on the road four, five, six months at a time. That is not even a remote possibility anymore. David, I think it's very refreshing to realize that when you look at this kid, and then I look at myself and think, "Well, you could go out. You could go on the road with this musical, or whatever," but it's not even a possibility. I don't even want it to be a possibility. What I need, right now, is this kid, and what this kid needs is parents-somebody to watch him.

He has special needs. He's had two surgeries in the last six weeks, and he's going to have another huge surgery in the fall for a cleft palate and facial reconstruction. It's going to be massive. He's going to probably have to have surgery on his legs because he has some tendon problems there. You just deal with. You love your child, and you deal with it.

We had him in the public school here in Lockhart, where we live. We were totally unhappy with that situation, so we drive 35 miles in everyday to take him to the school he goes to in Austin, and it's 35 miles back. And we do it! We just do it. We figure it out. We make it work. And you've been around my son. There is no more loving child in the world.

Me: Yeah.

Jaston Williams: And so, what you get back from him, you know, with him laughing, dancing, changing the radio, and finding his favorite music on the way home, that's a reward. So, you just find a way.

But, this summer, I'm going out. I'll be doing BLAME IT ON VALENTINE, TEXAS in Galveston. Then, the next day I'm going to be flying to Lubbock. I'm going to be doing a workshop at Texas Tech, where we're going to be doing a workshop of A TUNA CHRISTMAS. We're going to use tons and tons of actors. We're just going to play with it and see what this play would be like with a full cast. So, I'm going off for that, and then I'll be home for a while.

Then, at the end of the summer, I'm going to Casa Mañana. I'm going to be in a production of BIG RIVER there. And that will be the longest period that I'm away, but I think my son will be with me for about half of that. He's really good on the road, and he likes to travel. He's good backstage. So, you know, you just figure it out. It's just like any other family; you figure it out.

Me: As a father and a performer, what advice do you offer to others with busy work schedules and familial obligations?

Jaston Williams: (Sighs) Well, you know, I would say is that there are no rules. There really just are no rules. There are solutions. I think the world likes to think that you've gotta have this, and you've gotta have that, and you've gotta do this, and you know-like there is some book somewhere where you can look it all up, and that will work for you. And I think every parent, every child, and every situation is unique. If you can calm your mind long enough to think about it, you can figure it out.

And you have to give up a whole lot, especially with our child and him being special needs. We can't just leave him anybody when we do something. You know, I've seen just about every kid movie in the last ten years. He's going to adult movies now, and we just thank God every day for it. (Laughs) I can take him to adult movies now, and he loves it. But, I think you just figure it out.

I was just watching a thing on Huffington Post where Lou Dobbs and some other guy, in a thing called RedState.com, had made these statements that women should be at home and men should be the breadwinners, that's how it's intended to be, and they had scientific proof. This commentator on Fox News just tore them to shreds. You have never seen two men try to change their minds so quickly. And, I'm not saying having a father working and a mother at home isn't a good idea, if that's what works for you. Or having a father at home and a mother working, if that works for you. Or having both of them work part time, if that works for you. But, I don't think that there is an answer. I think that intelligent people, who love their children, and also love their work, can figure it out. You just stay calm, and you figure it out. Each case is unique.

I know, for us, one thing that has been really important in our lives here is that we are attending a little Episcopal church in Lockhart, Texas. We are a totally non-traditional family, as you know, and this little church that is 169 years old in Lockhart, Texas has totally embraced us. My son is the most popular kid in the church; everybody loves him. And, you know, we have that. We live in a small town. We attend church every Sunday, with our son, and go have lunch with the parishioners. Every Wednesday night we take Holy Eucharist. There are people in this community, if I have an emergency situation, there are a dozen people I know within two blocks that I can just go knock on the door and say, "Can you take care of my son for an hour, while I go deal with an emergency?" And they'll do it, so you just figure it out.

Me: That's awesome.

Jaston Williams: It's a god life, David. It's a good life.

It's always a true pleasure seeing Jaston Williams on stage. Don't miss BLAME IT ON VALENTINE, TEXAS at Galveston's The Grand 1894 Opera House. Because of his busy schedule, he'll only be doing two performances of the show on Saturday, June 15, 2013. One at 2:00pm and one at 8:00pm. For more information and tickets, please visit http://www.thegrand.com or call (800) 821 - 1894.

Photos by Brenda Ladd. Courtesy of Hook 'em Marketing & Public Relations.

Promotional Photo for Jaston Williams' BLAME IT ON VALENTINE, TEXAS.

Jaston Williams.

Jaston Williams.

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