Monday, Oct. 19 2009 @ 3:02PM
New York actor and former Houstonian
Bernardo Cubría is starting to get a little nervous right about now -- he's just hours away from the staged reading of his play
Down, Boy by Wordsmyth Theater Company. At the first reading, earlier this year, he was, ah, anxious. "It's like watching your baby bungee jump," he tells Hair Balls.
"This is the first full-length play I've ever written," he says, adding, "though I did, in the seventh grade, write an amusing play about the O.J. Simpson trial."
Cubría had written poetry and short stories for most of his life but he thinks of himself as an actor first and he wasn't intending to add playwright to his credits. After being challenged by a teacher, "If you can act, you can write a play," he went home, locked himself in his room and emerged three days later with
Down, Boy.
The storyline is based on a theater world's version of an urban legend. "I have an unhealthy obsession with Marlon Brando," Cubría admits. "Supposedly Marlon Brando had a stalker when he lived in New York, this was right after
On the Waterfront came out and he was at the height of his fame. The story is that one day he went to his window, looked down and she was standing there. So he opened his window and told her, 'Come upstairs.' She went up, he made love to her and then told her, 'There, I've given you what you wanted, now leave me alone.' She left and she stopped stalking him.
"I've always been fascinated by that story, by both people. Why he would do that, why she would do that, why she would stop stalking him. The first scene in
Down, Boy, is basically that situation, but in my version she stays."