Story Photos
 Photo by Bill Wagner Longtime Main Stage Theatre Director Dana Brown watches groups audition during recent tryouts for 'Noises Off,' Brown's last play at R.A. Long Hish School. |
Dana's Last Act
Saturday, December 16, 2006 11:55 PM PST
By Tom Paulu
Printable version
E-mail this articleAs he opened auditions for "Noises Off" last week, director Dana Brown wasted no time in getting to the point.
"You all know this is my last show," he told the 50-odd actors in the R.A. Long High School auditorium.
Brown, who has taught drama and directed plays at the high school for 27 years, didn't need to repeat the news that has spread through the local theater community.
Brown, 61, has openly shared the fact that cancer has spread from his jaw to his liver, lungs and brain. Barring a miracle, he expects to live another six months at most.
When faced with that grim reality, many people would quit their jobs to travel or spend time with family. But for Brown, his job provides a second family. "I love teaching. I love directing. I love what we do together," he told the auditioners, many of whom have worked with him for years.
He gestured at the theater and its occupants. "I only have one life, and this is it."
Brown plans to keep teaching and directing as long as possible, although two veteran assistant directors, Susan Donahue and Wayne Nichols, can take over "Noises Off" if necessary.
"When or if I am unable to continue," Brown told the actors, his voice slightly breaking, "they will finish the work."
Brown has discussed his health with his students at R.A. Long. "One of the things we never talk about in the school is death," he said. "Well, excuse me. It's there. You have to deal with it."
He's been dealing with the reality for most of his life.
"I'm not afraid of dying," Brown said during an interview at his West Longview home. With a rough childhood, a year of combat during the Vietnam War and a decade fighting cancer, he said, "I should have been dead a long time ago."
Brown grew up in Spokane, raised by a mother who was an alcoholic. In his family, he said, "there wasn't anybody who didn't drink a lot -- except me."
Brown was in his 40s when he finally tracked down his father. The two had one brief phone conversation. "For the first time in my entire life, I had heard a voice like mine," Brown said. His father promised to call back. When he didn't, Brown tried again, but the number was no longer in service.
Just like so many young people he has mentored, Brown caught the theater bug in high school, where he appeared in every play he could.
Because of his own experiences, Brown said he has a special rapport with troubled kids. He also strictly enforces a prohibition on student cast members drinking or using drugs. He has been known to kick out student actors with lead parts -- a few days before opening night.
As a young man in Spokane, Brown said he had the "John Wayne syndrome" of wanting to be a hero. So he and a friend joined the Navy reserve, thinking a ship would be much safer than the rice paddies of Vietnam. Trouble was, Brown said, sailors were ordered to help the South Vietnamese government on the ground.
When Brown's plane landed on the Da Nang airstrip in 1966, it was being shelled. The pilot slowed down enough for the soldiers and sailors to jump out and run. Brown said he later helped pick up body parts of fellow servicemen who didn't survive the dash across the runway.
His first assignment in Vietnam was to fight fires, using a brand new American fire truck shipped over. Then the call went out for volunteer helicopter gunners. He responded. "After eight months in country, you're crazy so you don't care," Brown said.
An enemy rocket downed one helicopter he was in, killing the pilot and copilot. "I have no idea how that happened -- well, I do now. It was God's will. I should have been dead but I'm not.
"After I saw the things I saw, and did the things I did, I never expected to live a long life," Brown said. "I saw death come very fast. I saw life is really, truly short."
The hardest thing in Vietnam for Brown was shooting at villages where he knew there were women and children. "You could literally kill anything and everything you wanted," he said. "There were no rules.
"For a long time I carried that with me. I carried survivor guilt with me longer."
Brown wears a Vietnam service insignia on his trademark sailor's cap. "When I run into a vet, we have a moment we can share together," he explained.
Back in the states in 1967, Brown tried to make it as an actor in San Francisco.
To get directors to remember his name at auditions, he took the stage moniker "Simon T. Featherbottom III." He has dusted off the name for appearances in local presentations.
After a few years acting in a San Francisco improvisation company, "I got tired of starving. I decided to get a real job."
That meant college. He got a bachelor's degree in teaching and theater from Eastern Washington University, and started his career in Brookings and Scio, Ore., before coming to R.A. Long in 1979.
It was in Oregon that Brown found healing for his Vietnam experiences. He was asked to teach a drama class at a church camp -- and found himself tearfully becoming part of the group.
"When I finally met Jesus face-to-face and felt his power ... I felt like I had managed to come full circle."
Today, he said, "It's tough for me to go to church because of the politics." Over the years, Brown and his wife, Sara, church-hopped until they found a congregation that suited them at East Hills Alliance in Kelso.
Something he brought to Longview was doing some plays with both high school students and adults from the community at large, which Brown said is a rarity; most school districts want all the roles to go to students. "We didn't ask permission. We just did it."
Brown said students and adults learn from each other, and he loves seeing people become enveloped in the theater in mid-life. A perfect example of that, Brown said, is John Fleshman of Kelso. Fleshman, a Weyerhaeuser millwright, heard about Mainstage through a friend and auditioned for "M*A*S*H" three years ago. "Noises Off" will be his eighth show.
"Dana has effected a lot of people's lives," Fleshman said. "My nephew wouldn't have graduated from high school if it weren't for him."
Mainstage can literally be a theater family. Lorraine Little of Longview has appeared in more than 15 Mainstage productions and her husband, Rick, has been in eight or 10.
Brown "commands respect, and he is a very caring man," Rick Little said.
Pete Ouellette of Castle Rock has been in a dozen Mainstage plays. His wife, son and both daughters have appeared at one time or another.
"It's unique because of the acceptance level," Pete Ouellette said. "There are liberals and conservatives, Christians and atheists, young and old, men and women. It's a cross-section of society."
Brown has "been a father to a lot of people and an encourager and a disciplinarian," Ouellette said. "What he has done for so many people is help them believe in themselves."
• n n
Brown has had several health scares over the years. In 1993, he had emergency heart bypass surgery a week before "The Little Shop of Horrors" was scheduled to open. An assistant director took over.
Three years later, a dentist discovered a melanoma on Brown's gum. It spread to his palate, which was removed in an operation.
Last summer, a cancerous piece of Brown's lung was removed.
A turning point came Nov. 17, when an MRI showed that the cancer had spread to Brown's brain. A week ago, he started getting daily radiation treatment at a local doctor's office.
"It doesn't kill it," he said of the radiation. "It just shrinks it. They hope in the long run it will buy some time. ...If we can buy off some time with the radiation, then we're talking maybe six" --- as in months to live.
After that recent diagnosis, Brown and Sara, who is also a teacher at R.A. Long, decided to take a quick trip to Disneyland with three of their four children. They planned to drive, but friends quickly raised the money to buy airplane tickets and kick in an additional $4,000 for expenses.
When the Browns arrived at the Portland airport, they found that Alaska Airlines had upgraded their tickets to first class. Then the Disneyland Hotel gave them a luxury suite.
"People's generosity has been incredible," Brown said.
It was Sara Brown's idea to hold a theater reunion. "I said, 'What if we had a memorial service but had it while you were alive?' " she told her husband.
Hundreds of people are expected to attend, and those who are too far away plan to send video-taped messages for Brown, who won't have time to talk to everyone during the event.
"It will be an emotional roller coaster," Brown said, "but that's OK. I want it to be a chance to celebrate the fact that we're all part of the family of theater."
• n n
Winter quarter, Brown had originally planned to stage "The Diary of Anne Frank," a play about the Dutch Jewish girl who died in the Holocaust. "I thought it might be a little bit of a downer to do when you've got cancer," he said.
So he substituted the play planned for spring: "Noises Off," a fast-paced comedy about the disasters that befall a theater troupe. What better closing act to his career than a play about theater, he figured.
He added seven non-speaking roles to the cast of nine. But making the cuts on Dec. 9 was particularly tough, he said, because he couldn't ask those who didn't get parts to come back for a future show.
Brown typically reads the riot act at auditions, telling actors they'd better not miss any rehearsals. It's even more important this time, he announced.
"When you know you're going to die, you get the feeling like sand is running between your fingers and you want to hang onto it as long as you can because you want to control it," he said. He told cast members not to be surprised if he snapped at them when glitches occur.
Along with directing, the thought of doing no more acting will be wrenching, Brown said. "I think I'm an actor by heart but a director by trade."
During a recent workshop for high school theater students in Spokane, Brown did a pantomime about an old actor's final audition. "When I started to do the piece I knew this was really my final performance," he said. "That was probably the best I'd ever done it."
Brown has few regrets about his career. He wishes he could have directed "Man of La Mancha" and done some more fishing.
"I'm a strong Christian and I know who I work for," he said. "I'm not afraid of dying. I should have been dead a long time ago.
"Everyone thinks that once they get past a certain point there's some guarantee that you're going to make it" to old age, Brown said. "You never know. You live each day for all you can get."
Past Month's Most Commented Stories