Interview: Kevin Rolston of DEAL WITH THE DRAGON at Magic Theatre Transforms His Own Shame into a Captivating Work of Theater

Kevin Rolston's critically lauded Deal with the Dragon, a three-character, one-man performance is coming to the Magic Theatre for a limited run from July 22nd to August 13th. Developed with and directed by M. Graham Smith, written by and starring Rolston, the captivating comedy is a cunning grown-up fairy tale laced with terror in this new production which has been revised from previous Bay Area outings. Deftly staged and artfully performed, the free-wheeling fantasy was selected as one of the top 20 theater shows (out of 900) to see at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe by The List.

Rolston is a San Francisco-based actor and playwright who has performed with top theater companies all over the Bay Area. The first play he wrote, Crystal Christian, about the hypocrisy of loud-mouthed homophobes caught doing crystal meth with gay hookers, enjoyed a workshop production at Magic Theatre in 2008. His second play, This Many People about the lives of Bay Area LGBTQ senior citizens, premiered at Counterpulse as part of the 2010 Queer Arts Festival. As an actor, he has appeared in A.C.T.'s staging of 8, the marriage equality play, A Steady Rain at Marin Theatre Co, The Crowd You're in With at Magic Theatre, Blithe Spirit at CalShakes, Doubt at Center Rep and Opus at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, among many others.

I caught up with Rolston by phone recently to discuss this new run of Deal with the Dragon. We talked about how confronting his own shame led him to write the play, what it was like to perform it at the renowned Edinburgh Fringe Festival, his unorthodox path to becoming a professional actor, and a surprising role he'd really love to tackle someday. In conversation, Rolston is very direct and matter-of-fact, even when divulging some pretty personal information. He is also very thoughtful when answering complicated questions and somehow always quick to laugh. The following conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Deal with the Dragon has been described as a "grown-up fairy tale and a darkly camp comedy," which is very intriguing if a little ambiguous. How would you describe it?

I resist describing the plot because it can be a little misleading about what the play is really about, which is internalized shame and how it leads to all sorts of problems. But I will say the plot is particularly linked to how that can come up when someone is trying to create something new.

What was your original impetus to write it?

There were multiple motivations. About 10-11 years ago, I was kind of falling apart. Things just weren't working in my life, I was drinking a lot, I was wildly unhappy, I was having problems in my relationship with my partner, and I was also equally frustrated in my career as a theater artist. I was an ensemble actor-for-hire here in the Bay Area, and by all accounts succeeding and sort of moving up through the ranks and working all over the place. But I was so unhappy, and that had to do with a couple things. One: I was personally a wreck! [laughs] But two: I was frustrated with my sort of typecast box as the "white guy who doesn't get it," the Irish palooka archetype.

So I started writing because I had all this rage and resentment about what was going on across the country, particularly one of the hot topics at that time was the "ex-gay, pray the gay away" [movement]. That's what my first play was about, but then what led me to write Deal with the Dragon was that I needed someplace to grapple with the shame that I was struggling with, and these problems that I was having. And I also wanted to create a piece where I finally got to play the kind of characters I wanted to be playing all along. You know, year after year I would keep an eye out for everyone's season announcements and take a look at what are the stories I want to be a part of telling, and what characters in those stories I'd like to be playing. And very, very rarely would I get to play those kinds of parts - the witty, dangerous, mystical, charismatic characters - and so I wrote them into the play.

You developed Deal with the Dragon in collaboration with director M. Graham Smith. How do the two of you work together?

Oh, gosh, we have so much fun! [laughs] Developing it was such a rewarding experience. How we work is we come together in rehearsal and spend about a half hour gossiping, and then once we get to work - this is back when we were developing the play at Studio A.C.T. thanks to Mark Rucker who brought us over from The Marsh - I'll share the writing, Graham will give his thoughts, interrogate some things, ask some clarifying questions, and then often what we'll do is put the script aside and improv. Of course, I've already done the writing, so that's sort of there, but I try to throw the script out and see what happens. It's a different kind of language, different kinds of sentences that are created when you're on your feet, clearly going after something and just speaking directly, and I think that is what has led the play to be so dynamic. There are a couple of scenes that were created 100% through improv, and there's one scene that's still in the play that was created 100% on the page, so the process is basically dictated by the demands of the scene.

And it's surprising to me how each time we return to the play we dig into it more deeply and ask questions that are always tightening and narrowing [the material] and raising stakes. Graham's just really good at that.

You performed Deal with the Dragon at the Edinburgh Fringe Fest in 2016, where it was named one of the top 20 shows. I don't think most Americans have an understanding of just how massive the Edinburgh Fringe Fest is since there's nothing on an equivalent scale here in the U.S. What was it like to actually perform at Edinburgh?

It was unbelievable, such a dream come true. When I die and go to heaven, heaven for me will be Edinburgh in August. But like you're saying, it's really hard to explain. It's the largest arts festival in the world. People come from all over the world en masse, and you can see so much theater, dance, standup, puppetry, magic, mask work, anything. And people are performing everywhere. People perform in bathrooms, literally. The whole town is just taken over by performers and artists, and it's absolutely magical. Plus, I have Scottish blood so there was the added bonus of walking around and recognizing "Oh, there's my father's nose. And there's my sister's chin." Like I was just seeing my ancestors on the street.

Has Deal with the Dragon changed much since 2016?

It has. There was already a different ending since Edinburgh, which is already outdated again. We discovered and worked on it at the 2017 TheatreWorks New Works Festival, and we did that ending at New Conservatory. It's not drastic, but it's significant. Because the play, again, is about shame and the protagonist, Hunter, is sort of a version of me, and I think my own shame prevented me from allowing the audience to know him fully. There was still a little bit of a guard up, and this was completely subconscious. When I realized what was happening, I was like "Omigosh! I'm writing about shame - and shame is preventing me from writing about shame!" [laughs]

You've worked as an actor all over the Bay Area and beyond in everything from farce to Tennessee Williams to Shakespeare to contemporary works. What kind of training did you have?

After college, I moved to Europe and taught English in Germany, in the Black Forest, which is where Brenn is from in the play. And when I got back to the U.S., I was like "I'm gonna take a stab at this acting thing or standup comedy thing." I returned to Philadelphia and took an advanced improv class at the Walnut Street Theatre. And then when I moved to New York, I just basically created my own experiential-learning, unaccredited MFA. I took a whole bunch of classes. I wanted to do some Shakespeare so I went and studied Shakespeare. I wanted to get better at being more comfortable in my body so I took a bunch of movement classes at HB Studio. That's really how I did it. It was more targeted to what did I want to do next.

I think some of my best training came because I was doing standup comedy. When I moved to New York, I didn't know anyone and no one knew me, and I didn't have a resume, so open mics were the performance outlet available to me. I did a lot of developing of my own material, and there's just a fearlessness I think that comes from that. Once you've stood onstage, by yourself, and held an audience's attention and made them laugh? What that did for me is it created this experience where I loved auditioning -

Really?! One of the main reasons I chose not to pursue an acting career is that I hated auditioning. I was a basket case, every single time.

Yeah, I think I'm also a basket case [laughs] - but afterwards, when I'm waiting [to hear if I got the part]. But the event itself and getting ready for it, I really love. I'm very fortunate.

Is there a role you've never played that you'd really love to have a go at?

Oh, gosh, let me think... Actually, the character of the Homebody in Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul The whole first act is basically a woman doing a long monolog, and I'd love to do it in drag. It's a great role, and I think it's some of Kushner's best writing.

Lately I've been seeing a lot of commentary from some really prominent actors like Tom Hanks questioning whether non-gay actors should be cast in gay roles. As a gay actor yourself, do you have any opinion on that?

I do, yeah... [takes a long pause] I have had resentments in the past about seeing really great gay parts going to straight actors, and so I'm glad that the conversation is happening. I feel like my thinking on this was so clouded with personal resentment at the time that I had a sort of a narrow view of it, but I do think that in this day and age, especially in San Francisco theater, you can't tell me you can't find a gay actor. [laughs] But at the same time, a director, it's their call, you know? It's complicated...

I understand the resentment, and I've been around long enough to remember when straight actors cast in gay roles were invariably praised for being so "brave," which was pretty galling. But at the same time, I don't want gay actors to not be able to play straight roles, so...

That's a good point. What I think is maybe the higher ground here is that we're in this time where theater is really an arena in which a lot of these discussions are happening, and should be happening, about whose story gets told, how does that story get told, and who gets to do the telling. And that's really exciting. It's just unfortunately happening at this time when theater is in a really rough shape, with a lot of theaters closing. Theater is thousands of years old, and I don't think it's going anywhere, but it is in a time of great change, so it's an interesting arena in which to be grappling with these issues.

And as we grapple with them, I don't imagine we're going to immediately arrive at the right answers.

Yeah, I think it's gonna be bumpy. It's like that line in Angels in America, when the Rabbi says, "The melting pot where nothing melted." That's America. But it's melting now, and being in the crucible is hot, and hard, you know? And you don't know who's gonna survive.

(photos by Ben Krantz Studio)

Deal with the Dragon will be performed July 22 - August 13 at Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Boulevard, Building D, San Francisco. For tickets and additional information, visit magictheatre.org or call (415) 441-8822.

To post a comment, you must register and login.