BWW Interviews: Jaston Williams Talks Fatherhood and CAMPING WITH GASOLINE

Summer along the Gulf Coast in Texas is certainly here, but Jaston Williams is hard at work preparing a highly anticipated new one-man show, Camping With Gasoline. On the morning of Saturday, June 2, 2012, he gave me a little bit of his time and opened up about the Greater Tuna series, his family, being a father, his writing process, and his new show. 

You are no stranger to the stage at The Grand in Galveston, how does it feel to be premiering Camping With Gasoline on that stage? 

It’s a natural home to me, and clearly my favorite place to work. They don’t build theatres like that anymore. It’s got two balconies, and the seats in both balconies are good. And I have a long relationship with The Grand, and Maureen Patton, who runs the show there, so it’s always a comfortable place for me to be. So when the new show was in the process of being created, she was the first person I called. She jumped at it. She said, “Oh yes, let’s do it here.” And, I’ve premiered other shows at The Grand before, so it’s just a meningful place to start things off.

Out of the many and diverse roles you have played, Vera Carp from the Greater Tuna series may be the one that everyone remembers you for. Looking back on your career, is there any other role that you enjoy as much or even more than Vera?

Oh gosh. You know, I’ve been doing theatre for forty years, so the Tuna characters, I actually enjoy doing all of them. Vera is (Laughs), Vera is the most noticeable (Laughs). Of my characters, she really pushes her weight around, but I love playing all the characters I play. I love playing some of the characters I’m creating in this play; I’m really having a ball with them. I’m going to be reviving the one-man version Truman Capote in Austin next year (Please note: Jay Pressen Allen’s Tru., starring Jaston Willams will run at Austin’s ZACH Theatre from January 9 to March 10, 2013. Please visit http://zachtheatre.org/ for more information). I did that about ten years ago, I guess, and I totally loved doing that because your just really able to immerse yourself in a person that actually lived, and that you’ve got photographs, and you’ve got recordings, and you’ve got videos of. So that, that was a joy. I like doing nearly all the roles I get to do. I’ve gotten so old, I just don’t take on anything that I don’t like, but when you’re younger, you’ll do anything. You just want to work. When you get older (Laughs) you know better. So, I loved playing Vera, but I get to play my mother for a few minutes in this new play [Camping With Gasoline] coming up. And, my mother had a whole lot of Vera in her. In fact, one of the pieces I’m doing is called “Blood and Holly,” which is about our house at Christmas time. And my mother had a lot of Vera Carp in her, so that will never be gone.

Your works, especially the Greater Tuna series, are well known and loved across the nation. This notoriety earned not one, but two, command performances at the White House by President H. W. Bush. What was it like being asked to perform for the president?

Well, it was an incredible honor. The elder Bushes are, really I think, quite amazing people. They loved their Texas connections, and they understand it very well. Barbara Bush and George, I always call him George the First, were extremely gracious. (Pauses) Extremely gracious, and it was a real honor. I am a well-known Democrat, but I think it says something about the original Bush White House that that made no difference what so ever. They were there to be entertained, and they come see us quite often when we perform in Houston, or in the area. You know, we never know when they may be in the audience, so they have been very loyal to us, and that’s an honor. That’s an honor. As fellow Texans, I really appreciate that.

The Greater Tuna series has definitely weaved its way into the contemporary history of Texas, and it shows no signs of leaving. How does it feel to leave an indelible stamp on Texas culture and history?

Well, I guess surprising. You know, I would say it’s surprising. I would hope that all of my work, and again the new play [Camping With Gasoline] is dealing a whole lot with Texas, it’s dealing entirely with Texas actually. I would hope that people understand that I play and approach my characters from a place of heart, even when you sometimes disagree with them, or you’re very different from them. We come from a real place of heart. My partner and I just went out for breakfast about an hour and a half ago, and we have our son, we adopted a boy from China about seven years ago, and he’s just about to turn fifteen, and he has some special needs. He has some issues. We parked our car next to a big old Cadillac, and it had a whole bunch of very right-wing stickers on it, and our car (Laughs) has a whole bunch of pro-Democrat stickers on it, and we walk in and saw this couple, and they had a child who is a down-syndrome child. My child went up and talked to him and we’re talking to them, and you realize they have those stickers on their car, we have those stickers on our cars, but we’re all Texans. You know, we’re all Texans. We’re all part of this crazy thing that’s called Texas. And, I love living in Texas, sometimes in spite of it. You know, I really do. I’ve lived here most of my life, and I was born here, and I just love it. So, getting to play Texas characters again, that’s part of what is so much fun about this new play. It’s crazy Texas characters, and psychotic Scout Masters, and psychotic Boy Scouts, and my crazy mother at Christmas time, which was just hell with snowflakes, and my great Hispanic friend Ben Hernandez. You know, he and I ended up in Guatemala. I was planning to adopt a child there. We ended up on a volcano that was about to blow up with a bunch of German tourists and had to run down in the dark so we wouldn’t get kidnapped by armed guerillas (Laughs and continues to laugh while speaking) So, you know, it’s just another day with some Texans. (Laughs heartily) I always think of what Liz Smith said, Liz Smith the great columnist in New York. She was telling me one time, “You know” she says, “People are always giving me grief for writing so much about Texans, and I tell them, ‘I don’t invent the news, I just print it.’” So, that’s kind of my attitude about Texas.

How does it feel sharing pieces of Texas culture and history to a national audience?

Well, it felt great, and it does feel great. Again, I get back into the new work [Camping With Gasoline]. It feels great, frankly, especially, with the new work, to show them sides of our culture that they may not expect to be there. People, in no small way due to the political season we are in, a lot of people outside of our state have a very narrow view of who we are. I remember one time, a critic was talking to me, and he was saying something like, “Well, I like Texans for the most part, but I just don’t like your music.” And I said, “Well, what music is that? Janis Joplin? Or is it Scott Joplin? Or is it ZZ Top? Or is it the great blues singers in Austin.” I said, “You sound like we only have one song.” You know, I said, “There is more than one guitar and one piano in the state of Texas, now lighten up.” (Laughs) You know, you just want to say, I mean, you know, “So, what are you talking about. Are you talking about a funk band in Austin or the Houston Grand Opera?” So, people have these ideas of who we are, and it’s my job to have fun with that, but to also show them that there’s a lot of heart, and a lot of affection, and a lot of diversity in the state of Texas. So that’s important for me too. But the most important thing is if you make people laugh then you can communicate with them. That’s the most important thing for me. I just (Pauses) I just love making people laugh.

What is your favorite memory from your performing career?

My favorite memory from my performing career, my goodness. I guess I would say one of the best, there are so many, you know, there are truly so many, but right after we had adopted my son, and he was from China, and I did a benefit performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, and again it’s like the stuff I am going to be doing at The Grand, it’s autobiographical and comic pieces and all of that, but one of the pieces was about my search for him, trying to find him, and it was hysterically funny trying to find him. But at the end of it, he came up on the stage, and he was seven years old and hadn’t been out of China for three months, and we had him in a Perry Ellis suit and a silk tie, and he got up there and took bows with me. And took deep bows. He had watched videos of Tuna, so he knew how to bow. And so, he would take a deep bow, and then he would throw his arm out and pass it off to me. So, that was about as joyous a time as I ever had on stage, sharing it with the kid. That was a good moment.

Looking ahead to the upcoming world premiere of Camping With Gasoline, what was the writing process for this piece like?

Well, you know, I’ve got all these stories in my head. I was talking to my agent in New York the other day, and he said, “You don’t forget anything, do you?” I said, “No I don’t.” I said, “It’s just all in there, from the time I was four years old on. I can just remember so many amazing and funny experiences that I’ve had in life.” And, I’ve had a really exciting life. So, just getting to get that stuff out, it’s always in my mind. You tell the stories to different people, or you talk to an old friend. You know, I was talking to an old friend when I was writing Camping With Gasoline, which is partially about, well, it’s about my experiences in the Boy Scouts in the 1960’s, and we had a really wild Scout troop. I mean, we were not your typical Boy Scouts, and had a ball. We had a ball. Now, some of the adults suffered a lot, but we had a (Laughs while talking) real good time. But, I was talking to this friend of mine, and he said, “Do you remember when we experimented with boiling gasoline?” And, I said, (laughing) “You know, actually, I don’t. (Laughs, and continues to laugh while finishing the thought) But I know we did because that sounds just like us, you know.” But, the writing process for me is I think about these stories a lot. I get them in my mind. I think it all out before I ever put anything on paper. I go through it, and remember it, and relive it. And, I get up pretty early in the morning and take pen to paper and I find myself. Our child is special needs, and so he has speech therapy and all of these specialists that he has to deal with, so I find myself sitting in offices and lobbies waiting for him to get through therapy, and I just take my work with me. I just sit down and work on it. I can work on it wherever; it doesn't matter. But the stories are in my head to begin with. I know what I want to say, and I know how I want to touch people. And then, I just start to put it on paper. So, in two of these pieces that are in Camping With Gasoline, the first two pieces, I wrote two years ago, but “Camping With Gasoline” I wrote last fall. I wrote it last fall, and I really don’t remember all the places I was when I wrote specific things. I just, you know, I just always had my writing with me, and when I get a moment I write.

You have said the show is about boyhood, as you experienced it first hand and again as a father. This is such a profound and moving theme and apropos for the upcoming holiday of Father’s Day (which is the weekend your show premieres). Do you fell that this is your Father’s Day gift to Texan fathers?

Yes. Absolutely! And I just believe that things happen for some kind of reason, you know. There is sometimes an amazing serendipity because, you know, the nature of this play is about being a boy, but it is also about that relationship that we have with our parents. And what we need from a father and what we respect from a father, and that, you know, sometimes when we’re kids, no matter how much we may resist our father, there comes that moment when our father makes us feel so safe and so secure. You know, there’s nothing warmer or stronger than that. And, my father has been gone for quite a while, but writing this just took me back a lot to dealing with him and with fatherhood. So, yeah, this is for the dads. This is a real good show to take your dad to, to celebrate Father’s Day, and hopefully make him laugh and maybe make him cry. You never know.

Camping With Gasoline will have its world premiere at The Grand 1894 Opera House in Galveston, TX on Saturday, June 16, 2012 at 2:00pm and 8:00pm. For tickets and more information, please visit http://www.thegrand.com/CampingWithGasoline.asp.

Photo courtesy of Brenda Ladd.