Channeling Blanche DuBois vs. Hurricane Katrina

Writer and performer Mark Sam Rosenthal, of the one-man show Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire, muses on King cake, critics and the beloved Blanche DuBois. Now playing at the Soho Playhouse through March 15.

You were born in raised in Baton Rouge, so Katrina hit pretty close to home.
Half my family is in New Orleans—aunts, uncles, cousins. So I had a lot of personal connection(s) to the whole thing, which is the reason why I wrote the show. It was very emotional. My cousins spent four months at my mom’s. After the storm in Baton Rouge, I think 200,000 extra people were there overnight. It was crazy. And I think 50,000 have stayed and become permanent residents.

Was your family able to return to New Orleans?
One distant cousin’s home was totaled, but everyone else was able to repair eventually and return.

When did you come up with the idea for “Blanche Survives”?
I actually came up with it while people were still in the Superdome.

Really?
Yeah. Too soon.

What inspired it?
Well, I love Blanche DuBois.

Tell me about your history with Blanche DuBois.
It’s so tragic how you identify with an alcoholic broken whore… But I do. Intimacies with strangers. Been there, come on. Story of my life. A friend of mine just told me yesterday, “people who don’t know you go and see the show and think, ‘what an interesting take on Blanche Dubois’. But I know you, and I think, ‘wow, what an interesting take on you.’ (laughs) But I love the show. My first exposure to it came in high school in a class called literature in film. Streetcar Named Desire was one of those, and at the same time, LSU had a production of it at the theater school. It actually remains to this day the best production I’ve seen of it. So I had a big crush on this guy in my class. We used to joke about the show and lemon cokes, so we went together. It wasn’t a date—in my mind it was a date—but we dressed up in ties and boutonnières—I mean, it was really gay. And we squirted lemon juice in cokes, and then we went to see the show. I must have been fifteen or sixteen. So since then I’ve just really identified with this Blanche character. Her voice. The way she talks, ‘cause I love words and language. And this particular Southern cadence that she has.

You do it well.
You know, if I didn’t ever have to talk any other way, I wouldn’t. If I didn’t live in frickin’ 2009 New York City, I would never talk any way but that. (laughs) And, so after the storm, I mean, I was torn up. And actually at the time, I was homeless myself. I’d just had a fire and I’d been living on someone’s floor in an empty house in Carroll Gardens. Then the hurricane hit, and my family was uprooted and there were nine people living at my mom’s house in Baton Rouge. All these people—the inhumanity of the whole thing. And in the middle of that, I had the sickest vision—I saw in that long line of people in the Superdome—I saw Blanche DuBois turning around with her parasol and her little valise. And I was like, ‘oh that’s so sick, I can’t do that yet, but I want to do that’.

In a New York Times review, Anita Gates asks, “So is Blanche Survives Katrina written and performed by a white southern male, racist?” Did she miss the point a little bit?
I mean, she might have missed a few things. I don’t know, maybe critics go in looking for particulars, because they have to write an article that includes particulars. And sometimes that precludes them from absorbing the bigger picture. My take on the racial component of the show is that, Blanche—first of all, you can say anything in that voice. Anything inappropriate that you can’t normally say—it’s Blanche—whatever. You can talk about “everybody in the Superdome appearing to be someone’s maid and yet the place was filthy”. That’s her character. That’s how she sees it. What I was trying to do is to call attention to the racial component of what happened. And yet in the end, this character Blanche, who is white and thinks she’s too good to be in any situation she’s in, especially the Superdome or the FEMA motel, in the end she finds that she’s just like everybody else. That was really the idea.

So you were at the Fringe Festival.
We had a good successful show. It was really well received. It was fun. We got some buzz about it and sold out a number of shows. We got the Audience Choice Award and I began to see that it wasn’t just an idea that amused my friends and I. I didn’t know who all those people were—it was cool to see that it resonated.

I saw a reading of Blanche Survives Katrina almost two years ago without a set.
I love the set. My director is Todd Parmely. An old friend of his from California, who is now a Broadway set designer, came on to the project for nothing basically, because we were so low budget at the Fringe, and continue to be. His name is Kelly Tighe. He’s great. I love that door. I love getting to flounce around on the door… You know who doesn’t love the show? The Tennessee Williams estate.

I heard there was a cease-and-desist.
I guess I’m a real artist.

Do you see the show going any further?
We’re supposed to do it in Provincetown for the month of July. I really want to take it to New Orleans. And we’re talking about the possibility of taking it to the West Coast. Yeah, I feel like it could tour a few places.

Is it ever a possibility for it to not be a one-woman show?
We thought about it very briefly. What we more played around with was me not doing it.

How would you feel about that?
At some point, I’m not gonna want to do it anymore. I don’t know how long the legs are, but if they were longer than I wanna run, I’d love to see that.

If you could cast anyone, whom would you cast?
Oh lord, would I want another man to do it? Todd is really interested in seeing a woman do it. I’d love to see Justin Bond or Valla Jean Merman. I wonder if there’s a mainstream actor that would be fun to see, although I stand by Justin Bond.

What about any of the best actor Oscar contenders?
Who are they besides Mickey Rourke?

Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Frank Langella and Richard Jenkins.
Dev Patel.

Will the show do something special for Mardi Gras?
Yes. Mardi Gras is on Tuesday, so we don’t have a show that night, but the weekend before we’ll do something. There’s a bar downstairs at the theater so they’ll be serving Hurricanes and some beads and we’ll get some King cake.

What’s King cake?
A special Mardi Gras cake with a plastic baby Jesus in it. I’ve already had one this year I love it so much.

I don’t know about this cake.
You don’t know about the king? King of kings? Like Jesus, the reason for every season—including Mardi Gras. There’s a little gold plastic baby Jesus in a huge cake with lots of frosting. It’s basically like a giant sweet cake.

What do you like to do in New York?
Well, I live in Brooklyn. Is that part of your New York? (laughs) I love a lot of places down by the waterfront. I love the promenade in Brooklyn Heights, if I need to be peaceful. I know that might not be a hot spot. My mom was here last weekend and we went to Steak Frites. There’s this really great place in Gowanus called Bar Tano—very sharp.

I have friends who are also performers and some of them sing and I don’t, and I wish I did. So if I have a chance I go and see these people because they have phenomenal voices. Like Julian Fleisher, Justin Bond, Colleen McHugh or Bridgett Everett– those are the people I try to catch. My nightlife is not going out to bars and clubs. My nightlife is going out to do something or see someone.