Sean Power - Reviews & Interviews

Stuck
Jan/Feb 1997 - Encore:
"STUCK-ing it out" (by Brian Scott Lipton)

STUCK-ing it out

by Brian Scott Lipton

David Rubinoff is an artist in a society - in his case, Canada - that underfunds the arts. He is openly gay, but not effeminate (which, he notes, can alienate certain segments of the gay population and confuse segments of the heterosexual one). He is ]ewish. In short, David Rubinoff understands what it's like to be an outsider.

So it's no surprise that for his fifth play, "Stuck," the 32y.ear-old Rubiioff decided to create a one-man, multi-character show about a different kind of outsider: Jack, a gay, short, unemployed, marijuana-obsessed actor who, on top of everything else, fancies himself a latter-day Jack Kerouac.

And, perhaps, having explored such psychologically familiar territory, it is also not surprising that "Stuck" blew away critics and audiences alike at last year's Toronto Fringe Festival. That high praise, coupled with ambition and circumstance, has prompted Rubinoff to bring "Stuck" to New York - a city, that knows quite a lot about out-of-work actors, gay men and outsiders - for an eight-night run, starting February 7, at HERE.

"I think Jack is like many actors I know, one of those talented guys who just doesn't fit in, who doesn't have the right look," he says of his main character (played, as in Toronto, by Sean Power, a straight actor Rubinoff first saw on stage two years ago). "I think he has a lot to give, as both an actor and a person, but he just isn't sure how to go about it. So, he's stuck, and hi more than one way."

Although Rubinoff has already booked another Toronto production of "Stuck" for three weeks in April, he is using this limited New York run to work on expanding the piece past its current 50-minute format, and hopes to attract New York producers and theatre companies into considering a long-term Off-Broadway production later this year.

Still, like most writers, Rubinoff is already partly onto his next project. While he really enjoyed experimenting with "Stuck"'s Beat-inspired, stream-of-consciousness style, his work-in-progress, "Tomorrow I'll Be Dead," is a rerum to an earlier form (namely, farce). Clearly, being stuck is not what Rubinoff has in mind. *