Wild About Ernie

On the title page of Sean Sanczel's play The Importance of Being Ernie, you'll find the words "Inspired by and dedicated to Craig Alpaugh." Alpaugh, of course, was the managing director of Gorilla Theatre until his sudden death in late November 2000. So what's his relation to a play that's scheduled to open this May 15, almost two-and-a-half years after his death?"

Craig was a very good friend of mine," says actor/writer/musician Sanczel (pronounced San-zel). He explains that it was at a Gorilla audition that he first met Alpaugh, and immediately thought "Oh man, who's this gruff old ex-marine type guy, which he was. ... Me and [fellow actor] Bill [Martinez] aren't going to last two weeks with this guy, cause we like to cut up and we like to have fun."

But soon after Sanczel began working as a graphic designer at Aubrey Organics -- owned by Gorilla artistic director Aubrey Hampton -- he found that he and Alpaugh were becoming good friends. Moreover, Alpaugh, who was older and a published playwright, was becoming a mentor to Sanczel, encouraging the younger man's creativity and persuading him to go public with his many artistic endeavors.

One day, Alpaugh even suggested a new project. Sanczel, who's of Hungarian background, was telling a Hungarian joke and Alpaugh, in jest, insisted that Hungarians just aren't funny. "And he said, 'Just name me any funny or important Hungarians at all. Try and think of one; you can't think of any!'" After awhile, Sanczel had a thought: "I said 'Wait a minute: Ernie Kovacs! There you go. Bela Lugosi and all those other people, but Ernie Kovacs, he was like a comedy genius!'"

Later that day, Alpaugh came into Sanczel's office and said he'd been thinking about television comedian Kovacs. He proposed that the two men write a one-man play about him that Alpaugh would direct and in which Sanczel would star. Alpaugh, says Sanczel, was eager to get started: "I'd never seen the guy so excited about an idea. ... He was just raring to go."

The two men began planning the show almost immediately. Alpaugh was committed to the one-character idea, but Sanczel preferred "a multimedia thing" that would stimulate the audience in more than one way. "I just love mixing all the ideas -- video and sound and music and acting and giving the people something to really look at," he says.

He and Alpaugh researched Kovacs' life, held a bunch of conversations, and then, before the writing began, Alpaugh died. "It was really hard," says Sanczel, "and it was sad, and it was also shocking, and I guess I never lost a friend like that."

Sanczel put the Kovacs project "on the shelf" for about a year and then one day in his office, he noticed a book about Kovacs that Alpaugh had wanted him to read. He picked up the book, starting thumbing through it and noticed "all these little post-it notes with arrows pointing at certain sections" -- all with comments by Alpaugh as to how the material might be used in the play. That was the decisive moment: "It seemed to me like, if he's still working on the project, I gotta work on it. And that's why I wrote the thing."

Sanczel also made one important addition to the script, one devised to acknowledge Alpaugh's significance. "The beginning of the play is with Sean Sanczel and Craig Alpaugh," he says. "They're now characters in the story." And in fact, the play begins with Sanczel and Alpaugh taking a smoking break and talking about Sanczel's Hungarian background. "Hungarians just aren't funny," says Alpaugh. "Name me any famous or important Hungarians at all."

"I got one for ya," says Sanczel, "Ernie Kovacs! Whaddya say to that, buster? A comedy genius!"

"Okay, I'll give you that one," says Alpaugh. "Yeah, he was great. What did he do again?"

And then the play really begins. And we find out.

A Season on the Jobsite Jobsite Theater has announced its 2003-04 season -- and it's a provocative one. The schedule includes one contemporary American classic, a gothic-historical play by a British heavyweight, a lesser-known work by a Pulitzer Prize-winner and a play by a woman who writes for Playboy. All the shows will be performed in the Shimberg Playhouse of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center -- where Jobsite has been named "official resident company."

The season begins with Bloody Poetry (Oct. 30-Nov. 16) by British playwright Howard Brenton. The play is about English Romantic writers Percy Bysshe, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and others who lived at a time (the early 19th century) when poets enjoyed the popularity and notoriety of rock stars. Expect sex, drugs, ghost stories and death.

Next is Playboy columnist Cynthia Heimel's A Girl's Guide to Chaos (Jan. 9-25), about the facts of life for contemporary single woman. The play brings to life three friends -- Cynthia, Cleo and Rita -- who proclaim "These are the times that try a girl's soul," and then tell us why.

The next Jobsite offering is David Mamet's much-celebrated take on American capitalism, American Buffalo (Feb. 12-29). It's about down-and-out junk dealer Don, who decides (on scant evidence) that he's been swindled by a customer. He decides to take revenge, but events don't work out as he planned.

Late spring brings us The Mineola Twins (June 3-20) by Paula Vogel (Pulitzer Prize for How I Learned to Drive). The play is about twin sisters who take opposite paths in life; and who may represent good and evil, left and right, or some other important political or cultural divide.

Finally, August arrives with Steve Patterson's Delusions of Darkness (Aug. 6-22), an homage to William S. Burroughs in which a mysterious writer spends a dark, surreal evening in the waterfront bar of a fogged-in seaport.

Subscriptions to Jobsite's season are available starting May 1 and single tickets to all shows go on sale August 1. Call 813-229-STAR.

Performance Critic Mark E. Leib can be reached at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 305.