By SCOTTY BENNETT
Storytellers are artists who use a palette of verbal and physical effects to paint, in sound and motion, the picture the wordsmith creates in words on a page. David Dean Bottrell is both a craftsman and an artist. His show, Teenage Wasteland: Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, True Stories of Heartbreak, Hard-ons & Hair, is a hilarious, heart-touching, biographical exploration of adventures from his teenage years that shaped the man and artist he is today; tales filled with humor exploring his thoughts on having survived the years of self-discovery. These stories are emotionally engaging, connecting with every word, gesture, and facial expression, making for a masterful evening of storytelling.
Bottrell opens the show with a prologue on how he came to be standing on the stage at Dixon Place as a part of the HOT Festival, so many years after the first time he was on their stage. He presents a brief account of his adventures in playwriting, performing, and survival in the Big Apple and Los Angeles, seducing the audience with his openness and vulnerability.
This production takes the audience through a series of stories ranging from adolescent tumescence of a sexual nature to a haircut that goes seriously wrong to the discovery of music and acting. They are all told, blending funny with serious and sometimes sad, but still ending with an upbeat vibe.
He starts with a story about his experience at thirteen when seeing a scene of kissing in a television movie triggered a physical and emotional reaction he had never experienced before. The movie would never have been allowed in his evangelical Christian household had his father not fallen asleep with the television on. What followed from seeing the film was a hilarious exploration of his body using a hall mirror he took into his bedroom.
He continues the story by describing the location of the house as being next to railroad tracks and how the light of passing trains shone in the window. On one particular occasion, when he was naked on the roof of the attached garage, thinking about his time with the mirror, he panicked when he heard a train approaching. What happened next was a series of missteps from the garage roof, leading to an unexpected and explosive conclusion.
The rooftop at thirteen leads to his adventures with a touring church choir. The thing that led him to audition for the choir was his attraction to a girl in the choir. It became a moment of realization of his own sexual identity, being different from other boys. Bottrell talks of two boys he became close to, one of whom shared his budding realization of an attraction to males. This encounter ultimately led to his first homosexual experience in the form of a kiss. The other of the two, Gary, was a childhood friend who wrote letters to Bottrell while he was in college. They went unanswered until 2011 with an interesting result.
A story at fifteen recounts an adventure in a hair salon. A woman in his hometown had a beauty salon that she combined with a barber shop next door, creating a “unisex” hair salon. Bottrell describes himself as a boy with straight hair and a cut that made him look like a little Dutch boy. After seeing a picture of someone with curly hair, he decided that he wanted the same thing. After learning it was a process called a perm, he did various projects to raise the money to get one. The end result was a head of beautiful curly hair.
Bottrell’s story is filled with humorous descriptions of the unisex shop’s creation and the reactions of some townfolk to this new enterprise. He engages the audience in his excitement about getting a new hairstyle. It is a masterful lead-up to the moment when his life would be changed forever by the reaction of the boys in town to his new hairstyle. It was the time he was “outed” as being gay. His telling of the story solidly engages the audience with the emotions he was experiencing at the time, from the excitement of getting the “perm” to the crashing reality of being bullied for who he was. Even with the sadness inherent in the experience, he concludes the story on an upbeat note.
Bottrell is such an engaging storyteller and performer that the listener doesn’t have time to ponder what has happened since the next adventure begins. He skillfully weaves the narrative about those early, awkward teenage years, connecting with an audience’s memories of their own time growing up. The timelines move forward and backward, presenting the events and their impact at the time and the results they had on him years later. He does this with a blend of humor and pathos that captures and holds the listeners’ attention.
Each of the remaining stories brings critical elements of his life that impacted the man he became. The story of getting stoned for the first time while out with a group of friends to buy Christmas presents is masterfully recreated. He introduces the group as “outsiders” in the high school culture of the time. These people were considered “weird” because they walked outside of what was considered the “norm.”
The story of his discovery of theater is powerfully told, with a poignancy about some of his friends in that world, especially a girl named Valeryn, who holds particular importance. She was a year ahead of him, in 11th grade, and a member of the drama club, so to be near her, that is where he had to go. She is the muse to his being swept into the world of dramatic theater at the age of fifteen.
Although he knew he was gay, Bottrell was smitten by this beautiful, confident, engaging teenage woman. The drama club was a special place, and as Bottrell describes it, “We were the school’s walking wounded. Our door was open to the geekiest of the geeks, the gayest of the gays. We were the pimpled, the strange, the short, the fat, the dim, and the dull. Among our ranks were the girls who would not be going to prom and the boys who could neither catch nor throw a ball.”
Bottrell acted in plays with Valeryn for two years, often cast as part of a couple. The two became friends and would discuss things that interested them. There was never any chance of a romantic relationship, as she was dating someone four years her senior who had a car. The fact that he was nerdy and gay also played a role, although he spoke of how he wished those things would go away. After her graduation, she left town, and he knew nothing about what happened until he searched for her fifteen years later. The story of that reconnection is a powerful emotional moment in the show. It must be experienced to be fully appreciated. It will bring a tear to your eye. It is also a story that solidly displays Bottrell as an outstanding storyteller and performer.
The final story references several elements and characters from various parts of the play, blending them into a tale about returning home to a world that no longer exists and confronting one’s memories of a bygone time. It is a comforting and satisfying ending to a wonderful evening of storytelling.
David Dean Bottrell is a superb storyteller and performer. He effortlessly gains the attention of his listeners and gently, lovingly carries them through 80 minutes of engaging and thoughtful moments in his adventurous life. Teenage Wasteland: Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, True Stories of Heartbreak, Hard-ons & Hair is the first of his stories about growing up. He promises to regale all who will listen with a second part dealing with sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen.
In addition to being a first-rate storyteller and fine actor, Bottrell is also an accomplished screenwriter, playwright, and the author of “Working Actor: Breaking in, Making a Living, and Making a Life in the Fabulous Trenches of Show Business.” As an actor, he has appeared on a great many shows, including “Modern Family,” “Law & Order” (the new one), “Law & Order: SVU,” “Mad Men,” “CSI,” “True Blood,” “NCIS,” “Days of Our Lives” and “Ugly Betty.” Most notably, he played the creepy Lincoln Meyer in season three of “Boston Legal.”
Teenage Wasteland: Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen has been performed at venues throughout the country, with the next performance scheduled for August 1 at the Hyannis Arts Hall in Hyannis, MA, followed on August 2 at the Wellfleet Preservation Hall in Wellfleet, MA. Check online for ticketing and directions. If you love great storytelling and performance, this is a show not to be missed.
