‘Velocity of Autumn' hits close to home for Chula Vista theater leader
Since taking the helm as executive artistic director of Chula Vista’s OnStage Playhouse in 2019, James P. Darvas has focused his work on planning seasons, developing and directing new plays by local playwrights and raising money to keep the 62-seat Third Avenue theater’s doors open.
And every once in a while, when Darvas feels a deep personal connection to one of the plays he’s producing, he steps onstage as an actor. That’s the case for the company’s current production, he San Diego premiere of the two-character play “The Velocity of Autumn.”
Written by Cleveland playwright Eric Coble, the comedy-drama is about Alexandra, a fiercely independent 80-year-old artist battling her children over where and how she’ll spend her final years. To keep her family at bay, Alexandra barricades herself in her Brooklyn brownstone with enough Molotov cocktails to blow up the whole block. To calm the waters and negotiate a deal, her family sends in her estranged son Chris, who she hasn’t seen in 20 years.
The play premiered in Boise, Idaho, in 2011 and made its Broadway premiere in 2014 starring Estelle Parsons and Stephen Spinella.
For the OnStage Theatre production, Linda Benning will play Alexandra and Darvas will play Chris.
Darvas - who lived in playwright Coble’s hometown of Cleveland before relocating to San Diego in 2008 - said he was drawn to the role of Chris because he sees himself in the character.
“It's rare to encounter a character who so honestly captures the struggle of a middle-aged artist balancing a full-time job while holding onto a creative life and that persistent feeling of not being enough,” Darvas said.
“Having moved 2,600 miles away from my mother 18 years ago, I was profoundly moved by how Eric Coble captures the experience of seeing a parent changed by time. The complexity and tenderness of a mother and her queer son are rendered with such grace and truth. I knew immediately this was a role I had to step into - not just as artistic director, but as an artist and a son."
“The Velocity of Autumn” is the third part of a trilogy that Coble calls the Alexandra Plays. All three are about Alexandra at different stages of her life. In the first, the 2011 play “A Girl’s Guide to Coffee,” Alexandra is a single young woman trying to find her direction as an aspiring artist. The play “Stranded on Earth” finds Alexandra in her 40s, where she’s strugging to find artistic inspiration while juggling responsibilities of a job and family.
In 2014, Coble told American Theatre magazine that the Alexandra in “The Velocity of Autumn” was inspired by his own experiences with his aging mother, who at the time was living independently in Cleveland surrounded by a community of family and friends.
"Alexandra's a fiction based on about a hundred personal truths," Cloble told American Theatre.
‘The Velocity of Autumn’
When: Opens Friday, May 1, and runs through May 24. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays
Where: OnStage Playhouse, 291 Third Ave., Chula Vista.
Tickets: $25 and up
Phone: 619-422-7787
Online:onstageplayhouse.org
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