Playing Jake creates a real connection to Neil Simon's writing and character

A noted director once told me, “You’re a good writer, Dave, but you’re no Neil Simon.” 

Well, okay. Neil Simon’s resume is considerably more impressive than mine and he’s written a lot more than I have. In fact, when it comes to writing plays, I’m still at the stage of thinking about writing my first one. But as I read his stuff, I can’t help feeling that I’m sitting in some privileged spot behind the word processor and the words I’m reading are coming as much from my head as from his. 

Maybe that’s why I feel so at home as the character Jake in Neil Simon’s play, Jake’s Women. Jake is a writer who writes all the time. Literally. Even when he’s not writing. Jake’s writing has become his reality and most of the characters that surround him, all women, emanate from his mind. The fact that this doesn’t sit well with the few real women who also share his sphere of existence provides the conflict so necessary to an entertaining story. Jake’s Women is a comedy, but a serious one.  Even though Jake’s predicament provides a barrage of truly funny scenes and moments, there’s more to the play than humor. Jake isn’t just funny, he’s a fully developed character who has feelings and for whom we can feel.

Although I have acted before, I don’t minimize the challenge of playing Jake.  Jake has literally half the lines in the play and leaves the stage only once—during intermission. And over the two-hour course of the play, Jake travels a considerable character arc, going from someone who loves imagination to someone you could imagine loving. But, as Jake says in the play, “I feel a connection here.” It’s not that I think that I am Jake, either in the sense of living in my imagination or needing to be surrounded by women, but rather that I can imagine being Jake. Imagine so well that I can understand his pain, his wants, his needs, his attachments. Yeah, I know that Neil Simon wrote the lines for Jake, but I feel I know the character well enough I could have written them myself.

It would be troubling to really be Jake, of course, because Jake is a troubled person.  The play begins with Jake’s marriage in serious trouble because his current wife is reluctant to share him with the memory of his late wife who’s been dead for 10 years.  Fortunately, I haven’t had that experience.  I have, however,  been accused of drifting off into my own world of fantasy and creation, separate from the real people about me. Especially when I’m writing. Because when you’re writing, as Jake says, “You don’t just get to play God, you get to be God.”  Who wouldn’t want to do that?

And Jake loves women. “I’m a thousand times more comfortable with women than I ever am with a man,” he says. “I love being around them.” Do I love women? Yeah, doesn’t everybody? Well, maybe love is a little strong. But I am comfortable being around them. I suppose it comes from spending a lifetime in an office of some sort. Maybe I’d be different had I spent my life fixing cars, digging holes, or felling trees. But, frankly, I’m more in my element running an office full of women than I’d be directing a crew of working men. A lady’s man, no. But comfortable with the ladies, yes.

Jake is a role that, for the length of the show, will take over your life. But I don’t mind. I’m having a good time with Jake.  I love the way Neil Simon writes and I love to deliver the lines. They just seem to stream out of my mind and roll off my tongue. And even though I know they’re Neil Simon's lines, I feel that through the process of learning them, learning how to deliver them, learning what they mean, they have become not just Neil Simon’s lines, but my lines as well. And through the process, I feel I’ve become significant in my own right in bringing the words and ideas of the playwright to life. No, I’m not Jake, at least not now. But on stage I’m a different person. And whoever I am, the actions are mine, the reactions are mine, and the words are mine. Similar to writing, acting feels a little like playing God. 

So thank you Neil Simon. You’re a great writer. Even if, still, you’re no David Vale.

Jake’s Women will play at 7:30 p.m. on April 10 & 11 and at 2:00 p.m. on April 11 & 12.  Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for students and seniors, and $5 for those under 12.  They are available at Bigfork Drug, the Pocketstone Cafe, the Kalispell Grand Hotel, at the door, and online at www.BigforkCommunityPlayers.com.