Rhonda Brown knows she would have hit it off with Molly Ivins.
Brown, a Denver-based actress, says she sees the world in a similar light as Ivins, the Texas-based newspaper columnist, satirist and rabble-rouser who spent decades fighting the powers that be. Ivins, who died in 2007 after a long struggle with breast cancer, used her words as a platform for political action and advocacy. She styled herself a “populist” and a “left-libertarian,” she targeted presidents and congressmen with a razor-sharp wit and a conversational tone.
It didn’t take long for Brown to find personal connections in the life of the fiery columnist. In preparing to play the title role in the LIDA Project’s production of “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins,” Brown discovered a kindred spirit.
“We would have been really good friends,” Brown said. “I fight for a lot of the things that she fought for. It just felt like I was meeting a friend.”
The one-woman show by twin sisters and journalists Margaret Engel and Allison Engel takes a comprehensive approach to Ivins’ life story. The 75-minute production draws from decades’ worth of columns, interviews and input from Ivins; it explores her fight for relevance and equality in a media landscape dominated by a boys club mentality.
And the weight of bringing that life to the stage falls entirely on the shoulders of a single actress.
“I wasn’t really sure I wanted to take on something like this,” Brown said. “A one-person show is an actor’s greatest dream, it’s also their biggest fear,” Brown added, pointing out that the task of tackling a solo show is equal parts ambition and fear.
But the power of Ivins’ message was strong enough to make Brown move past her misgivings. “It was her fight for poor people, black people, gay people,” Brown said.
That message was also powerful enough to spur members of the LIDA Project, a Denver-based meta-media art collective, to snatch up the rights to premiere the show in Colorado less than a year after it kicked off in Washington D.C. with Kathleen Turner in the lead role.
Brown, producer Zeik Saidman and director Brian Freeland put their own spin on the show, and the LIDA production played to sold-out crowds during its recent run in Denver. The production was popular enough to drive two additional weeks of performances at the Aurora Fox.
“We got to make our show. I felt a lot of ownership around that, making artistic choices that didn’t show Ivins in one light,” Brown said. “We dealt with her alcoholism in a way that I don’t think other people have. You want to remember the best of people, but we really held that drinking up to the light.”
There’s no escaping the political messages in the piece, and the timing of the added run at the Fox makes that element all the more stark. The show kicked off in the most heated moments of the presidential campaign; it will wrap up its run less than a week after Nov. 6.
But Freeland said the message of Ivins’ life goes beyond a single election, a particular political party or a lone candidate.
“If you look at it as a lead-up piece, it’s incredibly potent … The biggest motivating message is that you have a voice, and the voice happens to coincide with your power to elect,” Freeland said. “But what happens afterwards? I think the message is more important when you’re not in the middle of an election season. How do you remain involved and keep folks accountable?”
That question is a central part of Ivins’ body of work. She operated in a media landscape that’s far different from today’s web-based, 24-hour news cycle. She battled to get her voice heard, to break down barriers and offer a new
perspective.
“I don’t feel as if there is the old boys network. If you have a voice, you have that ability to jump in at any point,” Freeland said. “I’m very hopeful that a young woman today doesn’t have the impediments that she did.”
The show brings that progress to light, Freeland said, in a style that’s full of all of Ivins’ wit, passion and dissent.
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707