Robert Lautz (feature story)

Playwright Robert Lautz is living with prostate cancer.

“I’m terrible,” he laughed when I asked him how he was doing. “It’s terminal, but at least this is a slow-growing cancer.”

Lautz is a longtime Davis resident who moved his family to Minnesota a month ago, where his wife’s family lives, but he was back in town briefly to watch the opening of his new play, “Third Date” at the Wilkerson Theater in Sacramento.

Lautz’s first play, “The Meaning of it All” ran at the Wilkerson in 2012.

“You did a review where you didn’t trash it,” he reminded me. “You encouraged me to keep writing, so that’s why I wrote a second play. It was as a great learning experience as my first play.

“I’ve written a comedy about cancer,” he said “ ‘Fun with mutant cells’ is the alternate title.”

Some may think it’s odd to be writing a comedy about cancer, but Lautz explained that initially, it was a series of notes to keep track of all of his medical records, but so many bizarre things happened during his treatment that he thought it might make a funny play.

And it is.

The show opened two weeks ago, and Lautz was there for the opening.

“I was thrilled,” he said. They had full houses on opening weekend and “the performance just got better and better.” He was most pleased that the audience “got it.” The point had been made.

Lautz stresses that “cancer has some clout. Doctors and nurses make a point of being very courteous and very gracious. You even get valet parking.”

But the play does hit home with doctors.

“My GP who has been my doctor for 20 years came to see it,” the playwright said. “Afterwards he said that ‘Generally we’re in the habit of creating a distance between ourselves and the patients. This reminded me not to do so.’ ”

Director Maggie Adair Upton added that a lot of cancer survivor groups have been attending.

“They either like it or they hate it,” she said, adding that one of her friends saw a preview and had to leave. There had been enough cancer in her life and she had just had enough.

“It’s a tricky show to do, but I think it’s important and I’m glad we are doing it,” Upton said.
“One woman at a talk-back after the show said parts of the play made her squirm,” said Lautz, laughing. He told her his alternate title would have been “Caution: Sections of this play may make you squirm.”

Many of those who were uncomfortable were Lautz’s friends and co-workers from the California Arts Council, where he worked for many years, who felt it was difficult to watch, knowing that these were his own experiences.

“It happened to me. Everything,” he said.

“I’m a musician,” he told me, adding that he played the vibraphone and drums and graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1976, with a degree in composition. In fact, the incidental music before and after the show was composed and performed by Lautz.

He grew up in California, but moved back East with his family for high school and college. Then he decided to return to California.

“I borrowed my father’s car and drove to Santa Cruz,” he said, adding that his father never got the car back.

He became a street musician, playing on the streets and in malls and performing gigs up and down the California coast, whenever he could find work, supporting himself for some 20 years. During that time, he met his wife in a jazz club.

It was after his wife became pregnant that he decided that “this jazz musician thing may not work out financially.”

In 1995, he ended up on the California Arts Council, a move that would bring him to Davis. By this time he had two daughters, ages 4 and 2, and real estate agents took him all over Sacramento looking for a house.

“Then I drove out to Davis, first getting lost on Olive Drive. But we fell in love with the town. It was a great place to raise our daughters,” he said.

Friends in Sacramento warned him that Davis was where the liberals were, “but we came from Santa Cruz!” he added, laughing.

He worked for the Arts Council for eight years “and then the budget went way south” so he worked for another state agency for a while and then returned to the Arts Council, where he continued to work after his 2007 cancer diagnosis until his family’s move to Minnesota.

Lautz said his character, Richard Montauk, is kind of a sexist pig who has a teenaged daughter with whom he has little relationship and a wife from whom he is divorced. Through the course of the play he is very subtly transformed by his experiences.

“A friend said he really didn’t like Montauk, but toward the end he did.”

So Lautz achieved his ultimate goal, and can a playwright ask for more than that?

The show runs 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays through July 4 in the Dennis Wilkerson Theater at California Stage’s R25 Arts Complex. Visit www.calstage.org for information.

Robert Lautz (feature story)

 It will be a proud day when Robert Lautz’s play, “The Meaning of it All” makes its world premiere at California Stage’s Wilkerson Theater on Friday, April 27. Directed by Ray Tatar, this 20th presentation for California Stage is set in the Italian Renaissance and deals with love, intrigue and alchemy.

It is also a debut play for Lautz, who has spent the past six years polishing his skills as a playwright. What the audience will see is his 11th version of this story, which he has been thinking about for most of his life.
This now 50-something-year-old did not start out to be a playwright; he wanted to be a jazz musician. Lautz had played music all his life and went to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston as a drummer, but found that didn’t really meet his needs.

“When you’re a drummer, they give you a pad and put you in a room and tell you to keep banging on it,” he said.

Looking for more interaction, after making friends with jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton (who went on to become vice president of Berklee, before his retirement), Lautz took up the vibraphone and became a composition major (“a natural for a percussionist,” he says).

After graduation, he “borrowed” the family car (his father never got it back) and drove across the country to return to his native California. He had grown up in the Bay Area and after his return, settled in Santa Cruz.
“I got there in April and the car still had snow tires on it,” he recalls.

He became a street musician, playing on the streets and in malls and gigs up and down the California coast, whenever he could find work, supporting himself for some 20 years.

It was after his wife, whom he met in Santa Cruz, became pregnant that he decided that “this jazz musician thing may not work out financially.”

In 1995, he ended up on the California Arts Council, a move that would bring him to Davis. By this time he had two daughters, ages 4 and 2, and real estate agents took him all over Sacramento looking for a house.
“Then I drove out to Davis, first getting lost on Olive Drive. But we fell in love with the town. It was a great place to raise our daughters,” he said.

Friends in Sacramento warned him that Davis was where the liberals were, “but we came from Santa Cruz!” he added, laughing.

“I’d always liked writing,” Lautz said, when asked about his play. Built while concentrating on his music, he’d never written anything officially. He had an idea floating around in his head about what would happen if someone invented a “universal solvent” that dissolves anything (kind of a variation on the King Midas touch).
He approached California Stage’s Ray Tatar with his idea.

“I was so naive,” he said. “He probably gets hundreds of play ideas pitched to him.”

Tatar, however, was intrigued enough to let Lautz know he would be willing to read his script once it was written, and if it was good enough, he would produce it.

Realizing that Lautz had no experience writing a play, Tatar suggested he connect with Rich Foster, the dramaturg for California Stage.
“He lives in Sonora and is a wonde
rful playwright and writer and volunteers his time to help aspiring writers,” Lautz explained. “Without him, I would not know how to write a play.”

Over the next five to six years, Lautz worked on his play, and Foster gave constructive criticism.

“I remember the first draft I sent him. He just tore it apart. He’s been wonderfully honest. After his criticism, I asked lots of questions. He said ‘bravo to your wonderful response to my savagery.’ ”

Lautz discovered that when one plot point doesn’t work, it sometimes requires making massive changes. His cast, for example, doubled in size, from three to six.

“Writing is a struggle. You lock yourself in a room and ask ‘why am I even attempting this?’ Rick would have ideas different from mine, but it made me realize he was right,” Lautz said.

“Sometimes you have dialog working so well but then you realize that in order to introduce a new idea you have to tear apart something and then mend it. I might be in love with a line that works well and realize I had to throw it out to get better perspective about what the story is all about.”

One of the ideas that had to go was the play’s setting. Lautz explained that originally he had scenes all over the place, including one on top of the leaning tower of Pisa, until he realized that, economically, he needed to find a way to set the whole thing in one room.

There will be incidental music throughout the play, from the time before the play starts to exit music. Lautz did a lot of research on music of the period which, he explained, tends to be mostly sacred vocal music music.

“I wanted small instrumental ensembles and I’ve found some really wonderful, charming and even goofy music,” he said.

Lautz also sought help from Franco Renosto, a retired UC Davis faclty member who is perhaps better known as a youth soccer coach, for translating some of the script into Italian, to give the play an authentic sound.

“When the characters get angry, they are more likely to speak rapidly in Italian,” he said.

After a long labor process, “The Meaning of It All” is about to be born, and there will be no prouder first-time papa than Lautz. The show opens April 27 and runs weekends through May 27. On Sunday, April 29, the playwright and his translator will hold a talk-back with the audience.