Politics, the arts and a dog

Never name a dog Lucky. It tempts fate.

"Chesapeake," Lee Blessing's 1999 one-man show, is noted for addressing the public sponsorship of art and the attempts by conservative politicians to stifle government support for it. Especially those forms of expression they consider offensive.

But there is much more to this piece about the travails of a pretentious New York performance artist named Kerr, a fellow who runs afoul of a Southern senator and his re-election campaign.

It also is an "ironic, supernatural comic odyssey," says Kyle Barnette, founding artistic director of What If? Productions and the actor who brings it all to life.

"I think the play skewers both sides of the debate, making fun not just of the stodgy, supposedly religious senatorial candidate, but also of the artist who thinks everything should be acceptable, including an extreme point of view. It's a very entertaining show."

Kerr's antagonist is Sen. Thurm Pooley, whose dog, a Chesapeake Bay retriever nicknamed Lucky, becomes the linchpin of the tale.

Pooley, who hails from the same town as Kerr, has attended one of the artist's abstract, avant-garde performances featuring Bible verses and gradual disrobing.

Punch, counterpunch

Pooley does more than decry the outrage of it all.

"He discovers that Kerr has just received a grant from the NEA, and he goes into the performance with a series of assumptions. Pooley chooses Kerr as the basis of a platform to discuss why art should not be funded by government agencies. It's his whole campaign platform. His main objective is to stop these grants altogether, and Kerr is his scapegoat."

When Pooley gets re-elected, things get really loopy. In retaliation, Kerr determines to kidnap Lucky, a scheme he botches with bizarre repercussions.

"The second act goes in completely different directions, away from art and politics and into karma, reincarnation and the supernatural," says Barnette, "with the whole dog element helping to hold the story together. It's a major plot twist, and to say more would be giving it away."

Though Barnette has performed an hourlong monologue as part of a previous, three-character production, this is his first foray into a purely one-man act.

"It's an interesting way to perform," he says. "There's no fellow actor to bounce off of, but there's this great energy interchange you have with the audience. The hardest part is to maintain the audience's focus. You have to be consistently engaging."

'Role' models

Barnette says he has encountered many artists like Kerr during a life in theater.

"He's an amalgamation of people I've worked with my whole career. There's not a single individual on whom I model my performance. In playing Pooley, I'm not aiming at all to lampoon the Southern conservative because it's such an old device and not very entertaining."

The play also gives Barnette some room to maneuver in further distinguishing What If? Productions from a crowded theater marketplace.

"We're still a new company, but we use a lot of interactive multimedia elements like projection. We try to distinguish ourselves in that way, and in doing material that has not been done in Charleston before."

Reach Bill Thompson at 937-5707.