'I don't sleep. I like martinis. I don't mind being poor. And doggone it, people like me." Actress Ami Sallee Corley may be riffing a bit on Stuart Smalley, but otherwise her description is apt. No sleep? No wonder, since she's one of the busiest actors in the area. No money? Ditto. Like so many local thespians, she can't depend on the income her acting brings her, so she's worked as everything from box office manager at the Sarasota Film Festival to karaoke deejay at a Chinese restaurant. As for the martinis, well — you might take to drink, too, if you descended regularly into a world of "uncomfortable sex, dangerous imaginary drugs, hideously weird violence, lurid insanity, grisly murder, gratuitous nudity, severed body parts, irresponsible gunplay, derogatory depictions of interdimensional aliens, Catholic jokes, and jazz."
No, that's not her own life. She's simply quoting the press release for her latest show: Jobsite Theater's Delusion of Darkness, a new play by Steve Patterson that opens this weekend at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.
Corley plays Murphy, a secretive male writer (written to be played by a woman) who holds court at a waterfront dive among psychotics and mutants. Murphy, she says, is "searching for truth," but he's surrounded by people only "searching for answers" — answers to be found in religion, authority and pop culture. Further, Murphy's "a seller of deep human truths, otherwise known as secrets … human secrets that you find by overly observing human behavior."
Understand? Neither do I. But after all, the play takes place on the 66th of June. And you know what kind of day that is.
If you're a fan of Jobsite Theater, you already know Ami Sallee Corley. She's performed in such productions as Titus Andronicus, Dracula and subUrbia. She's also a talented director, as was amply evidenced by her staging of Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9 in the 2002-03 season. She's on the Jobsite board, and holds the (unsalaried) post of managing director. She's also been a notable presence at American Stage, where she's performed in Romeo and Juliet, Mere Mortals and Never the Sinner.
Corley admits it's a strain to have to find 20 hours of "spare time" in which to pursue Jobsite activities, and she looks forward to the day when the company can pay its administrators. In the meantime, though, she's not going anywhere: "I like this community," she says of the Bay area. "I like seeing it grow." And the Jobsite audience is everything she could hope for: "We have an incredible risk-taking audience. People who are willing to come and see something that is lesser known if not completely unknown. Something that might be a little bit over the edge."
Corley tells me that of the five plays in Jobsite's 2004-05 lineup, three particularly have importance for her: The Boys Next Door (Feb. 17-March 6), Machinal (June 2-19) and The March of the Kitefliers (Aug. 5-21). Of The Boys Next Door, she says, "It takes place in a halfway house for mentally challenged adult males. And then there's a counselor who doesn't live with them but pays them visits and checks up on them … It really is a coming of age for these gentlemen." She thinks that, in connection with the show's run, Jobsite may partner with local organizations that assist the mentally challenged. (She has taught summer theater workshops at St. Petersburg's PARC: Pinellas Association for Retarded Citizens). Machinal is a play in which Corley has already acted — a bit part in a St. Leo's College production, directed by David Frankel — and which she brought to the attention of the Jobsite board. The 1928 play, written by feminist Sophie Treadwell, is about a woman, Ruth Brown, convicted (justly, Corley thinks) of killing her husband. But Treadwell treats Brown as a victim of a machine that she hopes to escape by killing her husband. Her attempt to depart from a dehumanizing process dreadfully fails: "She actually didn't break out of the machine, and she was put to death by the machine" (Ruth Brown was the first woman executed in the electric chair). Finally, The March of the Kitefliers is a new play by Jobsite playwrights Neil Gobioff and Shawn Paonessa. It's a romantic comedy told, Corley says, from a distinctively male perspective: "It's not that Sandra Bullock, Meg Ryan kind of thing that a woman watches late night because she's lonely. It's not a chick flick. It has sentimental moments, it really gets you, but it flows like a great male comedy."
Making people happy, she says, is the chief reason she likes to act. "I thought that I was going to be a performer from the start. And I never thought about it in fame or money. I liked being goofy and making people smile. I liked impersonating and getting a point across. I just really liked connecting with humans, especially if you can add to that a smile. And that person remembering you for that — that performance, that smile, that connection."
Whether a play as chaotic as Delusion of Darkness can elicit such relatively benign responses is another question. The play, she says, is an "experience," not a narrative with a simple beginning, middle and end. Each audience member, she predicts, will walk away with a unique interpretation. And as for the ideal audience response: "Probably about 30 seconds of 'What the hell was that?' Followed by three hours of conversation with whoever they came to the show with."
Contact Performance Critic Mark E. Leib at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 305.
This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2004.