Magical Storyteller Cale Will Spin His Tales at Sushi

SAN DIEGO â€”  The clues were almost non-existent. Almost nothing prepared David Cale or anyone who knew him for the magical storyteller he became.

Cale grew up in Luton, a working-class suburb of London, in which neither he nor anyone he knew had read a book. He was kicked out of school at 16 and escaped a lonely childhood to come to the United States four years later--in 1979--hoping to become a singer.

After not much success with getting people to listen to the songs he wrote, he went to a reading at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, a series at St. Mark’s Church in the East Village. Out of frustration, he dropped the music and “hurled the lyrics out.� People listened. And applauded. They have been applauding ever since.

Cale will bring the West Coast premiere of his latest collection of monologues, “Deep in a Dream of You,� to Sushi Performance Gallery June 13-30.

Even now, however, after years of success, the 32-year-old New Yorker can tell stories, but can’t tell you where they come from.

“I just don’t have much self-awareness in terms of what I do,� Cale said, speaking on the phone from his apartment in his gentle voice, which still betrays his British roots. “My life has gone through such a transformation in terms of where I started in England, it’s ludicrous.�

In a way, “Deep in a Dream of You,� which was commissioned and performed at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, is a departure from the frankly autobiographical nature of Cale’s earlier work, such as “The Redthroats� in which he told the story of a young man, not unlike himself, who left England for America with the ambition of becoming a singer.

Then again, Cale suggests that an autobiographical strain remains even though his monologues in “Deep in a Dream of You� range from a man’s voice to a woman’s voice and move from the savagely heterosexual to the homosexual to the whimsically fantastical--in which a man climbs into a woman’s eyes, and she follows him inside herself.

“They end up being emotionally autobiographical, even though they’re wildly off base factually,� he said. “I start writing things, and I start performing them, and it starts to feel as if it happened to me. Sometimes, the line between what happened and what didn’t happen becomes blurred.�

According to David Petrarca, a resident director at the Goodman Theatre who directed “Deep in a Dream,� the secret of Cale’s success with audiences is that he is able to make people believe that the stories he tells have happened to them on some emotional level as well.

“David is like a scout sending back messages,� said Petrarca from his office at the Goodman. “He’s exploring this uncharted territory, and what you find out in the course of the show is that the territory is inside of you. . . . He’s such a warm personality, that regardless of what uncharted territory he’s taking you into, you know that you’re safe with David. And the thing that makes this piece different is that he takes his audience much further into some very, very frightening places.�

For Cale, that connection with the listener is the key to his performance.

“If the shows work, they are like a dialogue with the audience,� Cale said. “You can just hear and feel with the audience, and it’s like a conversation. If I’m doing it the way I like to do it, I’m listening to the audience and the line between the audience and the stage should disappear.�

Sometimes, the very intimacy of the communication between Cale and the audience makes it hard for Cale to take his audience to these uncomfortable places. Cale doesn’t usually work with a director; in this piece, he worked with Petrarca to ensure that he would not back off from taking the piece further than he might have gone himself.

There was one monologue, “The 40 Winks Motel,� that Cale refused to rehearse because, as he put it, “it was too wrenching to perform.�

In the story, a man goes off on a sexual bender with a young woman as a response to another young woman that he’s really in love with.

“I wanted to cut it,� recalls Cale. “I thought it was going too far, and it was ugly, and I didn’t want to do something that was ugly.

“At rehearsals, I was this baby who didn’t want to rehearse it. We kept putting it off, putting it off, putting it off. I would whisper it. I wouldn’t want to do it out loud. But it’s really a key part of the show. It’s hard to perform because, if I do it properly, it has to be a defenseless performance. That’s why I asked David Petrarca to work on it.�

The Goodman Theatre has been one of two key artistic homes for Cale, who has performed three shows there: “Smooch Music,� “The Nature of Things� and “Deep in a Dream of You,� which had its premiere there with an elaborately designed set and lights and live musicians in February. The other venue that he describes as his artistic home is Sushi.

“Deep in a Dream of You,� which Cale will present here in a stripped-down, bare-stage format without live music, marks his fourth appearance and third show at Sushi. He began building an audience here with his very first show, “The Redthroats,� which he performed twice at Sushi in 1987, the first time as a Neofest presentation. Sushi sold out the house for “Private Stories with Private Parts� last year.

The currently planned three-week run for “Deep in a Dream of You� is unprecedented at Sushi, where shows are typically allotted a Thursday-Saturday slot.

But Sushi’s founding director, Lynn Schuette, said she believes that, if anyone can carry a three-week run here, it’s Cale.

And Cale believes that the piece may have a special resonance in San Diego, in part because the water imagery that suffuses the piece made him think of this city. In one piece, too, there is a character, a sailor from San Diego, who has an unexpected sexual encounter with a young boy. For this run, he said, he may also insert a piece cut from the Goodman production that takes place at the San Diego Zoo.

Cale said he also likes the idea of going from the stylish extreme of the Goodman production to the simplicity of Sushi.

“I like something that will go in a lavish context, but I also like just doing it with a chair.�

In a way, he said, doing it alone with the chair accentuates the loneliness at the heart of the piece.

“The thing about these shows is that I often don’t know what I’ve got until it’s in front of people. I didn’t realize how much all of the characters in the show are so isolated and how they are trying to reach beyond themselves to connect. The only thing I was trying to do with the show was be honest and human. But there’s a lot of loneliness in the show.�

Performances of “Deep in a Dream of You� are at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays, with additional 10:30 p.m. performances on Saturdays, through June 30. Tickets are $11; $8 for Sushi members. At 852 8th Ave., San Diego, 235-8466.